591–600 of 642 posts
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What's wrong with minivans? I always loved having the ability to haul tons of stuff or people depending on the need.
Agreed. I would love a good electric minivan (e.g. an electric Honda Odyssey). There are supposed to be a few coming down the pike but I had to buy a cheap used internal combustion one for now.
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I've also driven my Nissan Leaf since 2013 with zero shop visits outside of tire shops. Wah. That is crazy. The total cost of ownership for that car must be incredibly low. Think about what that means for the future of all auto mechanics. Will there be far fewer? Anecdote about a Nissan Leaf: I'll never forget being on holiday in Sri Lanka, walking through a tiny, countryside village. I was on my way to see a Buddhis…
> I guess she is still driving it today! Why do some people refer to cars with female gender?
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Turbos aren't very simple. The 'toyota synergy' style hybrid transaxle is a whole lot less complicated than most transaxles too. ICE cars already had an electric starter motor, so it's just adding a second electric motor and some batteries and a charging circuit. The benefits are clear. Immense range, lower fuel consumption, longer maintenance intervals vs an ICE only, etc.
turbos are cheap and reliable, its very rare to see blown turbos on maintained non-modified cars with the exception of BMW putting them in the valley of the V8 engine and other idiotic designs. Most turbo failures are from not doing oil changes on time or crappy modified ECU tunes.
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Turbos aren't very simple. The 'toyota synergy' style hybrid transaxle is a whole lot less complicated than most transaxles too. ICE cars already had an electric starter motor, so it's just adding a second electric motor and some batteries and a charging circuit. The benefits are clear. Immense range, lower fuel consumption, longer maintenance intervals vs an ICE only, etc.
turbos are cheap and reliable, its very rare to see blown turbos on maintained non-modified cars with the exception of BMW putting them in the valley of the V8 engine and other idiotic designs. Most turbo failures are from not doing oil changes on time or crappy modified ECU tunes.
A turbo has about as many parts as the entire electric drivetrain. There's just a lot less to go wrong and you don't need lubrication or maintenance for solid-state non-moving parts.
Translation: luxury vehicles are the future of car sales. Model Y is 2 times as expensive as a Corolla. Plus you can go and find an older Corolla with 100k+ miles on it and pay perhaps $5k cash for it, then drive it for another 50-100k. I don't see people in the service industry picking up a used Tesla, now or in the foreseeable future.
I think one of the reason is most non uber wealthy people are putting a hold on car purchases right now until EV prices go down. We are in a huge transition phase, with lots of inflation everywhere. For most people EV are still too expensive or inconvenient [1] and they don't want to buy a new ICE car or start a 5y leasing on a car they may soon not be allowed to use wherever they want.[2] Also they fear they won't b…
I've been wondering how many others are frustrated like I am.
I've hit the 10 year mark on my current ICE vehicle, and I sorta assumed EVs would be a lot more common and cheaper now. Even the small vehicles are being sold for luxury prices, and the 7-seaters (which I'm looking at) are priced in the high-end-yesteryear-sports-car tier.
I'm seriously considering just buying a Tahoe or Telluride and waiting another 10 years for an EV.
Translation: luxury vehicles are the future of car sales. Model Y is 2 times as expensive as a Corolla. Plus you can go and find an older Corolla with 100k+ miles on it and pay perhaps $5k cash for it, then drive it for another 50-100k. I don't see people in the service industry picking up a used Tesla, now or in the foreseeable future.
> I don't see people in the service industry picking up a used Tesla, now or in the foreseeable future. Purchase price, you've already touched on. You can't even get a USED Tesla for under $20K. The second problem is charging. Apartments generally have a lack of EV chargers.
Intuitively, I guess most people would certainly be fine charging once a week for half an hour when going out (restaurant, shopping or else), given the average distance driven per week.
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> Even Americans who don't drive that often will generally change it about every 6 months. What? Back when I drove a Corolla (in the U.S.) I never changed my oil more than once a year, and no one ever pestered me about it. Where did you get that?
From what I can tell, the average American drives somewhere between 12,000-15,000 miles a year. The average oil change interval for modern cars is 7,500-10,000 miles, so using the higher interval you would expect to change your oil roughly twice a year.
For this kind of question about maintenance, I wish I could find a histogram or at least quartile summaries of per-vehicle distances per year.
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How chip shortage still a thing? It’s not that car chips are 5nm even. Toyota should be able to put its weight just like Tesla does.
From what I remember, basically everything that isn't a phone or computer is on older process nodes that once were cutting edge. Some of these are so old that it doesn't make economic sense anymore to scale up capacity, or it might not even be possible anymore to easily do so. As a result you have production lines that were reasonably well suited for demand pre-covid, now having to deal with everyone stocking up on w…
Toyota could have done that a long time ago (they know a thing or two about supply chain, don't they?) but they prefer to keep the shortage as an excuse for their poor sales performance.
Before Covid, one could buy Toyota vehicles 6% under MSRP. Today, Toyota dealers want $5K mark up fees, on top of MSRP, then all extra garbage, with 3 months wait time. If your family already owns an ICE vehicle, just buy Tesla Model Y as a second vehicle. These car companies and their dealers just try to screw customers with all hidden garbage.
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From what I remember, basically everything that isn't a phone or computer is on older process nodes that once were cutting edge. Some of these are so old that it doesn't make economic sense anymore to scale up capacity, or it might not even be possible anymore to easily do so. As a result you have production lines that were reasonably well suited for demand pre-covid, now having to deal with everyone stocking up on w…
Tesla rewrote their software to use newer chips as soon as the crisis hit. Toyota could have done that a long time ago (they know a thing or two about supply chain, don't they?) but they prefer to keep the shortage as an excuse for their poor sales performance.