Some context for why people’s hackles were raised to 11 over this specific issue, beyond evidence that the OP had apparently actually shorted Tesla: for many, many years, there’s been a troll pushing a conspiracy that Tesla suspension is failing and Tesla’s trying to cover it up, up to and including scouring car…

Yeah, making it a dealer installed option means that the dealer is bringing the vehicle out of emissions compliance, which is federally illegal. And, that’s part of the problem - making an emissions-compliant manual tune often means sacrificing drivability.

Auto stop-start, automatic braking (with a catch), and steering assistance are all possible on manuals, though, and I believe there are manual cars with all three.

Essentially:

Depends on the hybrid system.

A lot of modern cars are like that, especially with the front camera packages, especially if you have a tall torso or sit up high.

Or they could've made the car three feet longer so the Kamm tail would be longer, and therefore the window cutoff would be lower. But then it'd be a completely different size class of car.

The point of independent motors is that you don’t have to sync them at all, though, the road does that for you, for free. It just works.

Needs more Rollgolf, if we’re Mastermilo posting:

And yet he keeps starting bidding wars between governments for tax breaks on his factories, threatens those entities with demands for public financing

You forgot about the new Venza, which is slightly bigger than the RAV4 but smaller than the Highlander.

Except there really is a new Corolla wagon. Two, in fact (because Japan needed a smaller sedan and wagon and they based the JDM sedan/wagon on the hatchback wheelbase, but the entire rest of the world got the longer Prius wheelbase for the sedan/wagon). And they’re both the same height as the hatchback.

And, I mean, Buick was doing stuff like this: https://archive.org/details/BUICK94 (that’s 1994, but IIRC there was earlier stuff)

The letter says you can take any jackstands in for refund, not just the recalled ones.

It’s a more general term, referring to things maintaining design cues of the original thing.

Kinda, except the US system is worse in that it allowed the actual fleetwide targets to be relaxed if light trucks increased market share, whereas the European system does not relax the fleetwide targets at all if everyone gets heavier.

A lot of what’s going on, as well, is that a lot of PHEVs were designed to get 50 km on NEDC.

So the thing with relying entirely on fuel prices is if something happens to cause them to come down, the demand for more efficient vehicles goes down, causing manufacturers to avoid making them. Obviously high fuel taxes helps reduce the price fluctuation, but still.

Yes, there’s that (and hybridization, as Bdog pointed out), too, to reduce the emissions (claimed or real) without degrading performance.

Hybridization is absolutely a strategy, too, both due to the direct efficiency improvements if the hybrid system is at all competently implemented, as well as how they count them.