Came here to say this - the competition for this car is probably a 10-year-old Leaf for 1/6 of the price. I’ve actually seen more first gen Leafs on the road recently, because I think many people realize they are super cheap option for a short commute and city driving. Why anyone would buy this Mazda, with its crazily…

The best fairly modern targa is the 991.1. Last naturally aspirated non-GT 911. Sounds so much better than the 991.2 and 992 turbo cars. 

You might be able to tell from the minor exterior differences, and on the inside if it had a GTS-specific race-tex interior, but I highly doubt you would be able to tell a GTS from an S in terms of how it drives. That little bit of extra torque in the 991.2 GTS vs 991.2 S really wasn’t noticeable in daily driving, and…

I ordered one when it was first announced, and my wife has since confirmed I am not superior. So the answer is no.

I think they are all pretty bad though. I rented a car from heathrow Avis once that had four different brands of tires installed, which I discovered when the flat tire warning came on about 20 minutes after I rented it. Avis then tried to charge me for a new tire. I switched to Enterprise for a while, only to be…

On top of that, a friend has the regular e-tron, and he’s seeing it get not much more than 200 km of range in normal driving, compared to the 350 km official number. It almost sounds like something is wrong with it, but he pretty much can’t go anywhere beyond short city drives without range anxiety. It is very nicely…

In that case it’s surprising that you’re so disparaging about the 964. Yes, the 993 may be objectively the better air-cooled 911, but a good 964, with its subtly modernized treatment of the original 911 shape, its liveliness and lack of understeer, is a wonderful thing.

Now an EV that only weighed 1,500 lbs really would be as groundbreaking as FSD  is supposed to be.

Rest assured that the fraudulent misuse of investors’ funds by the existing EV startups continued throughout the week.

My old neighbour has the first generation of Highlander hybrid, on its original battery pack. It is still flawlessly reliable and relatively economical after more than 300,000 kms. He bought it new and intends to keep it until it dies.

You are clearly incapable of engaging in a rational way, since you started out by being openly confrontational, and now are proving my point by conflating my wish for more balance in our approach to Covid with the idea that I’m ignoring risk or want an “all or nothing” approach. You can continue to advocate for an…

If you want a good Clarkson fix right now, I highly recommend Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon. The premise is him trying to farm the 1,000 acres he bought in the mid 2000s, and which until 2019 a real farmer farmed for him. It’s Clarkson at his self-deprecating best, with much of the obnoxiousness that came through in later…

Yes, I have two children, and I’ve witnessed my 13-year-old acutely suffer from the social isolation we’ve inflicted on children over the last 16 months, to the point of spiralling into severe depression.

The paranoid set is definitely harming lots of people. Children, the poor and marginalized, small business owners, domestic violence victims, people who’ve had cancer treatment delayed or missed diagnosis of cancer or other conditions that benefit from early treatment. Maybe not so much in the US where life seems to…

The chance of what? Are you really going to argue that young kids are at serious risk from Covid? Again, the science is very clear that there is little to no risk of serious illness, let alone death. The flu is a more serious illness in children tha. Covid. This is not a controversial statement, but I can’t imagine…

Your child is at virtually zero risk of covid, certainly less risk than he or she is of seasonal flu (which would also be unlikely to cause any long-term damage). I’m well aware that covid is much more dangerous than flu for the elderly and vulnerable, but I’m much more worried about the damage to normal life and…

Most governments have used behavioural psychologists explicitly to terrify people, so many of these professionals have been complicit in promoting these kinds of mental health issues.

The interest rate can be used to screw the customer in other ways. Often you’ll see leases advertised with super low interest rates (in Canada the interest rate rather than the money factor is always what’s advertised). Generally those 0.5% lease deals are on outgoing models where the residual is very low. The…

So Elon Musk didn’t hype it up when he made up the robotaxi bs, or said Tesla would be at level 5 autonomy this year? The whole premise of Tesla’s communication strategy is to produce this hype.

I think this is it. A mid-2000s Cayenne isn’t exactly fun to drive, even leaving aside the reliability issues. A friend has a 2009 Turbo S, which is significantly updated from the 2005 in this story, and it just feels old, not special at all in the way that a 911 can be.