You’re not alone in making questionable life choices and being in a tough economic situation as a result. Here's to a prosperous 2020, my friend.

The Prius got a nice bump from a gas hike at the beginning of the decade (I might be off by a year or two) but it all levels out again once the gas prices stabilize. People have short memories for pain.

Ah, the joy of cherry-picked stats. I’ll play: in the month of August 2018, Toyota (excluding Lexus) sold just under 200,000 units. By contrast, Tesla sold just under 250,000 total units for the entire year.

Around 140,000 miles on the low end just to break even, assuming a constant gasoline price of $2.50 and 35 mpg. 

Considering the amount of antique vehicles sitting in collections, the average is a weak statistic here. 

Having a winter is not the same as requiring a block heater. 

This was my immediate reaction. I was next to a Colorado at a stop light yesterday; it was the same size as my 1500.

My regional manager at Pizza Hut had one when I worked there back in the 90's. 

This is the most interesting thing I’ve read on Jalopnik today, and could be a teaser for an upcoming episode of VINwiki.

I don’t think it would be feasible to go back to that model in Montana today simply because of the amount of times I’ve been stuck behind some clown on US-2 between E. Glacier and Kalispell going 40 because the posted limit of 75 makes it almost impossible to film the trip for their 50-subscriber YouTube channel.

How many people would have to pay the toll each year to pay for the first mile of road? 

Newer ones can be turned off as long as you don’t plan on keeping it off for too long. Since mine tends to burn about a quart of oil every 500 miles, I find myself turning it off to add more oil almost daily.

Sometimes I leave my engine idling while I'm shopping, even if I plan on being a few hours.

Sounds like someone utilizes one of the mentioned spaces.

I agree that a proprietary solution is not a good one for the consumer, ever. I think the best common solution will be a product of the competition as consumers decide what works best for them. Cooperation between the major players can be a good thing but the line between cooperation and collusion is a fine one.

In other words: private enterprise using government funds. The government didn’t meet any challenge there, other than spending the money. It could also be argued that every previous generation of the US government was more effective than the one after it. I think we’re all better off letting the people who designed…

You average 10,000 miles a year AND you "regularly" make 600 mile roundtrip drives? The math is incongruent with the word choice.

Who built the railroads?

The government didn’t have anything to do with Blu-ray vs HD DVD thing. Nor did it help people choose between VHS and Betamax. Let’s leave the government to create and fix its own problems; the market will take care of the important stuff.

If the people selling it can't make it convenient for the consumer, their company will fail. This is not the responsibility of anyone other than the business owner.