My boss let me take her Ranger company car for the weekend when they first came out, and I was super impressed compared to the current generation Tacoma I had driven. I felt that the powertrain was smooth and had plenty of power, and the interior was a lot nicer than what Toyota offers.

Everytime I see a Tacoma, it has a whole bunch of craft beer stickers, a chain ring sticker, and some hipster-ass “up north” sticker.

You are not wrong. To put this in perspective, these are sold in third-world markets where most people are driving rickshaws, scooters with 5 people on them, or donkeys with a cart. When viewed through that lens, this is very safe. If you made it as safe as a mainstream car from the US or EU, nobody would be able to…

Curious about crashworthiness....

Neutral:

On a nice day it was between 50-60 minutes each way.

I have this argument with my dad all the time.

Taurus SHO.

How about the other Jalop that actually owns one?

I had a 106 mile round trip commute a while ago because I wanted to live in the country and all the jobs are in the city.  Eventually we had to move back for other reasons, but I would trade off an hour commute for the ability to live where I want any day.

US emissions regulations require a useful life of 150,000 miles, so the vehicle needs to meet emissions requirements at that point. 10 years/150k is pretty much the standard design life these days as a result.

OEMs have been trying to make small cars more attractive to buy, but it only makes sense to go so low before they start losing money on them. Most of the small cars out there today are not exactly profittable.

What the fuck do we call Diddy?

I work in automotive safety for an OEM so I understand the challenges of the repair processes post-sale.  I can understand the rationale for an automaker wanting to do that, but I was more surprised that the laws allow for it.

I am surprised right to repair laws do not prohibit that.

And this was the way, back about 50 years when we had high tax rates for the ultra-rich. Before Reagan broke up the unions and reduced corporate income tax to promote “trickle-down economics”. Back when CEOs made about 7x the average worker, not 278x like it is today.

In response to the Tesla article yesterday, I found that the average wages at the Freemont plant are near the poverty line for a family of 5 for that county.  I bet a lot of Amazon workers are in the same boat.

It was, I read both numbers and crossed them up.

Honestly, if you really think about it, most businesses cannot be wildly profitable without exploiting its workers to some extent.