Just curious, which EV do you drive?

Part of the problem on some cars is that manuals are no longer the lower budget option. Since they make/sell fewer manuals, they sell them at a premium. I didn’t realize this was happening until I was at an auto show last week and saw it firsthand. I was shocked that the manual was now the upgrade when just 5-10 years…

I really don’t understand the dislike of CVTs. I’m a hardcore manual driver, but if I was forced to drive an automatic, the CVT is the least-worst option. Lack of shifting gears means it isn’t in the wrong gear, and holding the engine right at the power peak nets the best acceleration.

Since most places a working person commutes to/from are parking lots 50% of the time, nobody wants to get that much left-leg exercise while creeping along in that bumper-to-bumper traffic. While I prefer a manual, I won’t buy them any more even if available, because of the inane traffic situations we all face. Gimmee…

Actually, the RAV4 isn’t sold anywhere anymore.

My experience with a rental Ford Fusion (with *only* 6 speeds) was pretty dreadful. Even driving a constant speed on a level road consisted of the transmission continuously hunting through 3 or 4 gears trying to decide which one it wanted. It was hopeless in transient conditions, and completely refused to shift down…

Give it another five years and electric cars will be way more doable for much of the population. We’re still very much in the transition phase, and we’re only just not starting to get any selection and meaningful competition in the electric segments.

5th Gear - This is great for consumers, but bad for job loss in energy. People are buying gas guzzlers more and more, but when oil reverses its slide, then they are going to be stuck with expensive gas guzzlers. It happened earlier this decade and will happen again.

As for the packaging of options, blame the Japanese model of assembly efficiency that everyone started noticing in the 1980s.

4th Gear: Truth. I checked out a Dodge Dart at NEIAS last weekend, and was not impressed. I mean, it’s not a bad car, but it’s nothing special and not nearly as good as the competition. Then again, Chrysler doesn’t exactly have a reputation of building awesome small cars...

What other myths do you think automakers are holding on to?

Neutral:

Automaker myth: all consumers care about are cupholders.

Maybe in Scandonavia the word impossible has a different meaning?

>fuel economy
>electric car
...But seriously, I can see the “drag is a bad thing” angle.

The when was the last time you saw something on the roof of a Range Rover or G-Wagen? That’s their competition.

How many Cayennes, MDXs and X5s have anything on the roof. Very rarely do you ever see it.

I think this is mostly for the escalators that are realllly long. The London Underground has quite a number of stations that are 2-3 escalators deep and that are so long you only get a few people walking up them at one time. So only half the escalator capacity is ever being utilised.

They were actually selling Flint tapwater. That’s why it was so cheap.

I have moved directly from Hawaii, to the English countryside to Southern Spain, and I had a hard time adapting to air in all the moves. By far the worst was Spain, the combination of old diesel vehicles and 2 cycle scooters everywhere made the air there the worst I have ever experienced.