Trolleybuses are even better. Dead-reliable and no big battery as a degradation liability. Sure the powerlines are unsightly, but at some point they add charm and only really need to exist on dense routes. I guess I just find it ridiculous that certain cities are getting rid of their trolleybuses for battery buses in…

I’ll do you one better: trash trucks and mail vans. I absolutely hate being woken up by the CNG scream of the sanitation guy flooring his Peterbilt from house-to-house at 5 AM, or the racket of a LLV cranking and failing to start after being shut off at every house. Even if you’re not looking at tailpipe emissions, ICE…

I guess so, but around 30 seems to be the norm with most manufacturers. Anyways, are ULEZ zones that large? I would have thought around 20 miles of EV range would be plenty to get out of any city center.

To be fair, the O’odham name for Tucson is Cuk Ṣon, pronounced closer to ‘Took-sun’, so calling it ‘Too-sawn’ is actually a Westernization.

All of them? For sure the Ecoboosts have some foibles, but they can be bulletproofed with a little preventative maintenance, right? That 365 hp Flex has always been a secret fantasy of mine.

True! What’s old is new again...

Good. I’ve never understood why they’d hide them only to include fake ones. Even as a kid I appreciated our Odyssey for making its hidden tip as covert and functional as possible without drawing attention to itself. This is how you actually hide an exhaust pipe.

https://www.idtechex.com/en/research-article/will-solid-state-batteries-eliminate-the-need-for-ev-fire-protection/29300

Mostly I was being provocative, but liftbacks have long been a separate bodystyle in the European sector (Rover SD1, Citroen CX/XM, pretty much every large Renault ‘sedan’, Ford Scorpio, etc.) Through the 2000s it was pretty common to offer a liftback and a sedan separately.

Sure, but 43 miles seems like range overkill on a ‘performance’ PHEV. Most PHEV crossovers barely do 20 or 30, and I’m sure many of those are used in ULEV zones. 

But why? It still doesn’t explain why there are lighter PHEVs, full EVs, and even hybrid pickups despite this supposedly riding on their ‘all-new’ CLAR platform that’s supposed to incorporate aluminum and CF to be lighter and stronger than ever.

Yeah, but it still counts for something to invent a segment and sell millions of copies. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t make it inherently irrelevant and terrible. The history books are full of bad cars that made their mark. 

The Neon was no bad car, and no one had the minivan formula down like Chrysler did. Took everyone else 20 years to come to the same FWD box-on-wheels conclusion that ChryCo had right out of the gate. The longitudinal FWD cars were decent for the money too, and had quality interiors.

sedan?

meh, Subaru got to it 20 years earlier

They were actually pretty good at it until Daimler decided everything needed to cost less.

Isn’t there ‘Toyota tax’? Also new Toyotas have been having quality issues—anecdotal, but my mom’s friend just had her 2023 Camry blow a radiator hose and lose all its coolant. For a lot of poor folks on a limited income, a new car that’s available on a dealer lot that day without having to search through pre-owned…

A ‘perfect’ car (i.e. best at being a ‘car’, which let’s not forget, is a transportation means to get from A-to-B) should be reliable, good on gas, spacious, and fast enough so...

Have you tried not driving it? I think that’s recommended in the owner’s manual.

But will this always be a problem? IDK, to me it’s always seemed like a ‘it’ll get solved as the tech gets better’ sort of things. Smartphones catching on fire used to be all the rage, but you never hear about that nowadays.