My guess is it would work like this: cars are sold fully optioned. you then get to subscribe to whatever features you want (much like how they add XM radio to cars now) And probably receive a lifetime of marketing messages about how summer is coming, have you thought about unlocking your AC? once everything is on a…

You are correct, lenders are not holding a gun to their head saying they have to take these rates. BUT, we live in a country where we have outsourced our transit to the private sector in most places, so if you want a job, you need a car. If you want to get your kids to school, you need a car. If you want to basically…

Right there with you- Adobe switched to a subscription model for creative suite and for a while we could all hold out but eventually your vendors are like “we literally can’t work with the files you sent us.”

The software suite I use for work switched to a subscription model. I held out as long as I could but eventually you either get with the program or you... find another job I guess. Gonna guess it will be the same for cars. 

Boy, capitalism is just about at the maniacal laughter and blackmailing the world stage.

I mean. you say that but it will eventually happen as it gets normalized. And you know eventually it’s going to mean that your sunroof and air conditioning are subscription locked. Ugh. Capitalism sure is awesome. 

My girlfriend likes to remind me that “men are afraid a woman will laugh at them. Women are afraid a man will KILL them.”

So what you’re saying is that their lax interpretation of patent law has spawned a lot of innovation and learning over a very short period of time while our patent system has locked down innovation pretty hard and makes it difficult to create anything new without an army of lawyers to fend off the lawsuits.

Are you also nostalgic for the tiny, friendly, two-door SUV?

Yeah, but they’ll all be dead before the really good stuff starts so no big deal.

It’s a pretty strong argument for rail. Use your car for local stuff. Take the train 3 states over to grandma’s house.

It’s a pretty strong argument for rail. Use your car for local stuff. Take the train 3 states over to grandma’s house.

I’d guess that one of the other big issues is, when you swap over to electric, there’s a whole lot of new factory hardware that needs to be built and installed- with ICE, they’ve been able to just update the machinery they have for decades, replacing only when necessary. But think of all the machinery it takes to make…

If they were any other car company, selling a 4 and 10 year old sedan would be considered stagnant. They still sell because they’re still at the top of the pile. But their designs are getting old and stale and the rest of the world is very quickly catching up.

I mean, it seems like their product is already stagnating and he’s tanking the stock on his own... The model S is now 10 year old with almost no real design updates. The model 3 is pushing 4 years with no design updates. Both have been sitting on the same basic platform with the same range since they were released...

Tough but fair. What I meant was, pre-tesla, almost anything efficient was a rolling penalty box- think, first gen Prius, where it was a genuinely shitty car and driving it showed that you cared about the environment but that would be the ONLY reason you’d drive it. With Tesla, suddenly it was, Wait, I can have a…

100% and if it was literally any other company, I’m sure they’d have been at the table. Buuuuuut... Elon Musk.

though he is very Boomer in embracing Detroit and not, very conspicuously, Tesla.

Bulletproof. if you can turn off indexing it makes shifting in bad conditions easier. It’s why people still use bar end shifters, and that’s really all this is is moving bar ends to brake hoods. 

OH GOD I have done that. Coming down the backside of observatory hill at UW madison. No brakes because I still cared about what other bike nerds thought. started going down the hill, a moment of inattention and suddenly my pedals are spinning far faster than I have the ability to push back on and I’m coming up on a 4…