411–420 of 1001 posts
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Hmmm.. I would guess decoupling would allow variable ratio steering based on speed or preferences.
Electric power assist already allows that. It's probably cheaper, lighter and maybe safer to have no steering column.
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CAFE standards have been around since 1975. Yes, they helped incentivize manufacturers to aggressively market trucks and SUVs, but they don't explain the recent increase in the size of those trucks. That part's new.
Despite some misleading pictures shared on social media, if you do an apples-to-apples comparison (e.g., a 1972 F-150 and a 2023 model with the same bed size), they are about the same length. The differences are vastly better driver safety and fuel economy. Even the differences in height are often overplayed by making bad-faith comparisons: https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads... The main diff…
Funny that the cheaper model's 0-60 time is listed as "4.1 SEC. 0-60 MPH", but the more expensive model is listed as "2.6 SEC. 0-60 MPH With rollout subtracted." The whole rollout for 0-60 thing is a big fuss in the car magazine subculture - instead of counting zero to 60 from a standstill, they now count zero to 60 in a drag race style, where you have to trip the starting light by going forward a foot or two. What t…
Couldn't software gradually increase power to match the grip of the tires and prevent spinning? Or would that slow it down because a spinout 0-60 (not counting rollout) is faster that a "perfect throttle" 0-60?
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Weekly I put $90 in the tank. Charging 100kw I believe would cost me $15. That figure seems about right.
My brother spends $100 a month to charge his Tesla at home. I fill up my hybrid less than once a month at about $40.
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The tax credit is guaranteed as long as you made less than 300k this year or last year (150k if not married), and it is now given directly at time of purchase instead of later when you file. Seems OK to include. The gas savings is much more speculative.
Do people making less than 150k buy 100k cars? I don't have a good sense for how Americans budget their vehicle purchases.
I was visiting my hometown where houses are 200k and lots of households make 100k-200k/yr. All the driveways were full of new trucks, SUVs, and boats.
Faster quarter mile drag speed than a Porsche 911 _while also towing a 911_ That's incredible marketing. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1730331223992472029
It has a 1/4 mile time (9.9 seconds) a full second faster than a Cybertruck (10.9 seconds).
Its sort of like saying some kid on the high school track team running all out is faster than Hussain Bolt when he's running a warmup lap.
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Oh certainly. Trucks inside the USA are their own kind of culture (which I do not feel great about).
I see big RAM trucks show up increasingly more often in Amsterdam. 10 years ago there was just 1, and this week I think I spotted the 4th in my neighbourhood.
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$50k Cybertruck will never exist, any more than $30k Model 3 existed.
Musk promised $35k Model 3, which did in fact exist at first, for a couple months. It's now $39k. https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/31/11335272/tesla-model-3-an... https://www.tesla.com/blog/35000-tesla-model-3-available-now
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It's bizarre that in the middle of a oil market crisis it wasn't expected that the consumer market wouldn't have moved to higher MPG vehicles on it's own anyways. To me, this is one of the hallmarks of a highly monopolized market where consumers don't have any actual choices, and where competition for consumer approval is almost entirely absent. The correct answer would have been to increase the number of companies m…
>Now we have a market that's almost entirely bound to congressional whim Agree 100% >mostly disconnected from consumer demand Disagree. Sedans are still around (Camry, Corolla, Civic, Accord), but consumers are voting with their wallets for crossovers. Ford killed the Focus and Fusion because they simply couldn't be sold for a profit since most people didn't get the high end models, and to be honest, I'm surprised Ch…
They stopped providing it as a model to the American market. It's based off a Ford platform, though, and other automakers are continuing to use that platform. The Focus also continues to be a model in European markets.
During the beginning of the pandemic there were also parts shortages. Many manufacturers stopped making their lower end vehicles and only produced the higher end ones with the limited parts they could get, because, they can convert those parts into higher profits.
I think these decisions are best viewed as the awful intersection of short term wall street thinking combined with latent and intentionally imperfect measures of consumer demand.