The main thing Tesla did was use extreme hype to convince investors to subsidize massive losses while batteries were simply too expensive to allow EVs to be profitable when sold at somewhat comparable prices to ICE vehicles. This is the main thing Musk deserves credit for - creating the reality distortion field that…

When it has:

That analogy doesn’t really work, because the marginal cost is trending up not down with EVs. Batteries aren’t experiencing some kind of Moore’s Law of price / capacity. Between 2013 and 2017, Li-ion battery costs really did drop sharply, but the price curve really flattened out, and is now going back up, or at best…

The Cross Sport seems like such an odd choice. You can fold the third row down in the regular Atlas and have an extra 40% of trunk space over the Cross Sport (55.5 vs 40.3 cubic feet), and then have the third row for when you need to cart around some extra kids. And you get the added benefit of not looking like the…

On my most recent charge to 100% on my LR AWD Ioniq 5, the indicated range was over 550km (340 miles). You can get 300 miles easily with fairly normal driving. The Taycan range is much better at higher speeds, but overall the Ioniq has outperformed our expectations.

On my LR AWD Ioniq 5, my indicated range is often 100 km more than the official range. I do think these cars will do better than the EPA range in the real world.

Those seats look about as high quality as the fake leather seat covers you’d see in the back of an Uber X.

A better deal is riding a bike so you don’t have to own a car and pay for gas or insurance. An even better deal is walking so you don’t have to buy a bike.

It really depends what your expectations and priorities are. A Countach is objectively difficult, exhausting and uncomfortable to drive. A 1970s or a 1980s 911 isn’t in the same performance league as a modern 911, but it still has lovely steering feel, a great driving position, sounds great (much better than a modern…

I don’t think the Lotus name is meaningful to many buyers, and those who do know it are thinking about lightweight sports cars, not generic looking electric SUVs. If someone showed me a photo of the Eletre and told me it was a new Hyundai or Kia, I wouldn’t think anything of it.

Unfortunately it’s not even the line Chapman used. It was “simplicate,” not “simplify,” and it was not an original saying (it was coined by a designer who worked for William Stout).

Lamborghini Countach. Absolutely horrible to sit in, let alone drive. I just cannot imagine driving any kind of distance in one of these without wanting to push it off a cliff (or sell it on BaT) at the end of the journey.

I think it all comes down to consumers just liking things that work well and disliking things that don’t. They really don’t care about the reasons behind what works and doesn’t, the excuses for what doesn’t in particular, or any of the other nuances that might come into play.

It’s also that it wasn’t built on a dedicated EV platform, but instead on a modified Q5 platform. I think this really compromises the battery packaging. A friend has one of the earlier model years, and it is actually an incredibly quiet and comfortable car, but the real world range is abysmal. He’ll often struggle to…

I did say “even without the salvage title.” I wouldn’t call it a good buy at $31k with a clean title. Up close, the interiors and paint of these early Model 3s really wear their miles heavily. I couldn’t wrap my head around paying two thirds of the new price for a three-year-old car with this many miles.

I wouldn’t call this cheap at all. It’s got almost 50,000 miles, and even without the salvage title, if it sold at 66% of its original price (I think they were $46k and change in 2020), that would be very modest depreciation in the normal world of cars being rapidly depreciating assets. I also wouldn’t call 66%…

That’s definitely true. When I cancelled mine, it was apparently taken by the next person in line within a few minutes.

Every Porsche has an allocation before it can be built, so that’s not specific to the T. I do think it’s a great car, and unique in that it’s got the base engine but manual (which as well as being not an option on the base Carrera comes with a unique slightly shorter throw), and the torque vectoring so you can get the…

I had a second generation Leaf, and it was actually a great car. Roomy, quiet, very relaxing to drive and generally delivered better range than the official numbers. I didn’t own it long enough to experience the battery degradation that is apparently an issue, but after almost 20,000 km, the battery health indicator…

Seems a bit pointless driving the air suspension / rear axle steering version, since neither of these options will be offered on North American market models.