Yes, that’s a better way of looking at it - there is no wrong choice really, and while they do make you pay up for it, Porsche are pretty unique in the level of choice and customization they offer.

It looks like I’m getting an allocation for a 992 T, so I’m obviously biased. However, it really has the potential to be the nicest 992. One thing you don’t touch on is that the base Carrera (and therefore presumably the T) has less turbo lag than anything else in the Carrera range, since it has smaller turbos. My…

Do you mean the XC40? Volvo has done a great job on their interiors - everything you touch feels well made and expensive. I did think about a Polestar 2 or XC40 P8 instead of the Ioniq, but they are probably too compromised in terms of efficiency relative to an EV built on a dedicated platform. The EX90 is tempting.

I tend to agree, but the reality distortion field is still pretty strong. I just spoke to a parent at my son’s school who got a Model Y a couple of weeks ago. From the way he talks about this car, you would think he’d encountered the second coming of Christ. A lot of people are still in awe of Tesla.

How do you propose storing this energy and providing grid stability? Utility scale batteries are simply not an option at this time, because of both the massive cost and equally massive environmental impact. As it stands, a combined solar / battery solution has a similar or higher footprint than natural gas generation. …

All these articles about how bad leasing is are pretty misleading. Whether you lease or buy a new car, your biggest cost is depreciation. With a lease, you are paying for the depreciation, and if the residual value is correctly calculated, you’ll pay only for that depreciation plus the financing cost over the term of…

These were pretty terrible cars when they were new. Seems highly unlikely that it’s improved over the last 25 years.

4th Gear: I would have a lot more sympathy for Musk if he really was someone who likes “engineering swings for the fences.” I think it’s more like he likes the very first part - massively unrealistic and often impossible engineering goals, which are primarily designed to generate hype. But how many hard engineering…

Let’s hope this also prompts Honda to bring the e to North America. It makes so much sense for a small city car to have this kind of range / battery size, to keep the cost relatively low and still make it viable for the vast majority of commuters and other urban users.

Wow, even by Porsche’s standards, the option pricing here is... aggressive. The Rallye Design Package is $32,490 (Canadian). A lot of words to pretend it’s more than mostly paint and stickers. My favourite part is the implication that you are paying for the spoiler, when you’re actually just paying for a bit of it to…

Yea, the article is funny. It starts out all sunshine and happiness and then 75% of the way in, the terrifying truth is revealed.

I do think it’s unlikely that Lucid will get the rug pulled completely out from underneath it. They have a bit of momentum and what looks like a great product, so even if they have to restructure, there will probably be investor appetite to keep it going. I’d be more concerned about what the parts / service / warranty…

It argues for exactly that. China is not a third world country that is just discovering capitalism. Large business and the state work in lock step, so every time you support Chinese corporations, particularly the largest, you’re consolidating the regime’s power, not disrupting it. If the CEO of BYD was publicly…

Yea, this is probably the right answer. I quickly looked at some old Tesla data and their COGS per vehicle was about $70k in 2013, on annual sales volume of about 22,500 cars, and when the MSRP was $60k - $90k depending on trim. Their across the model line COGS had fallen to about $43k per vehicle by 2021. Obviously…

There is no helping you if you are in such denial. Read this and just say you’re comfortable with this:

The US does not have concentration camps, the UK’s surveillance infrastructure does not stop you leaving your home if you’ve posted something the government doesn’t like on social media, we can vote in real elections, the state won’t torture us or harvest our organs. The Us and Uk are flawed; China is a totalitarian…

Those same people probably happily buy BMWs, funnelling money into the slave-factory-running, Nazi-supporting Quandt family’s pockets. To be clear, I think Musk is a grade A egomaniacal jerk, with very suspect views in many areas, but the nonsense he posts on Twitter about US politics is minor in the scheme of things,…

Yep, it doesn’t disappoint, although I didn’t actually get to sit in one. All the criticism it gets about limited range is really missing the point. It’s a city car, not an interstate road trip long hauler, and it’s just perfect for ripping around central London (easy to park, exempt from the congestion charge, etc.).

You could move to Canada, in which case the restriction is only for cars less than 15 years old. It really opens the door to a lot of choices.

This was also my first thought. I saw one when I was in London recently, and it looks even better in real life than in pictures.