This is why I’m surprised we haven’t seen any big OEMs make plugin hybrid trucks. Even an 8kwh battery from a volt can pack a serious punch for accessories and the mileage improvements would be impressive if you don’t have a long commute. 

Consumption is about 1.3-1.9 kw. For the larger battery cars you’d still have plenty of range. If you only have a 60, yeah I’d recommend turning the AC off during the day and just using it for sleeping, which is what camper mode is about anyway. 

Also SoCal is currently in the midst of a hydrogen fuel shortage.

With a modern car it’s rarely the engine that gives you most of the headaches, it’s everything else around it. Here’s a model S that’s done 400k miles including maintenance records.  I’m guessing the Audi will be at least this good, and likely a bit less maintenance just by virtue of having normal freaking door…

Yeah had some nice falkens.

It’s actually not a terrible snow car. Even when we’d get a pretty good dump (6" or so) you don’t really need all that much ground clearance, and the limited slip rear makes sure at least you have 2 wheel drive. Never got stuck, and it was great to see people’s faces when I’d make it to…

Still see a lot of relatively low mile examples. I feel like most of the production was bought as weekend toys.

Very few people daily’d these. Only idiots like me put snow tires on them :) 

unfortunate result of China shock after the rush to bring them into the WTO. 

This is one reason why I think electric transportation is coming faster than people realize. Gas and Diesel cars are becoming more complex and expensive to maintain while battery prices are falling. At some point even with the drawbacks it’ll just be way cheaper to go electric. 

So you’re gonna buy a leaf? 

We’ve seen this game before.. they DGAF about debt when they’re in power

Also at this point that would’ve really hurt FCA and Ford so I’m sure they were getting lobbied hard on it. 

At this point EV development is likely going to be driven by China and falling battery prices. They could probably scrap CAFE soon because a lot of people will be switching for economic instead of environmental reasons.

This might be 10 years away, but that’s only 1 or 2 model cycles. 

We forget that congress can update laws. Heck they almost killed the whole program last winter to pay for more tax cuts. At this point though some companies will likely have credits left in 2024 when battery prices are expected to make it cheaper to build and EV than an ICE car. 

Basically they represent the donors which seem to lean more towards a sort of bleeding heart libertarianism. I don’t have the poll handy but the donors were actually to the left of the rest of the party on gay rights, hence why that got done. 

yes but the purpose of the credit was to accelerate EV adoption. Unfortunately giving each automaker an allotment of credits means that the first movers are doubly punished since not only will their competitors benefit from them scaling the technology and driving down costs, but will also have a reserve of tax credits…

I really wonder how this incentive structure is going to survive next year. Are we really going to have a system where the federal government will give you more of a tax credit to buy an Audi or a Jaguar than a GM or a Tesla?

GM will also probably be sunsetting by then. They’ve burned a lot of credits on the Volt. 

At least in urban areas we should really push this on to commercial buildings. Your car likely spends as much time parked at work as at home, and bonus is that during the day we have solar on the grid that needs to be soaked up to reducing the late day ramping (lookup the duck curve) 

Yes but the reason they don’t is because they have strong unions. So overall wages in those sectors aren’t determined by a minimum wage law. The unions in Sweden and Norway actively oppose minimum wage laws.

It’s basically cherry picking a feature of a different system that is technically true but incredibly…

The reason they have no minimum wage is that they have crazy strong unions and they don’t want that number to anchor negotiations. 

yes we’ve all heard the stories of terrible working conditions in:
Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Lichtenstein, Italy, Finland, Malta and Cyprus