Have you driven an Exocet? How does it compare?

People typically charge EVs overnight when electricity demand is very low. You can’t just turn off powerplants during low demand periods, so there’s typically a bunch of wasted power being generated overnight. Using that excess power to charge EVs would be a huge win in helping to balance the grid.

Beautiful color! Reminds me of the cinnamon interior available on E46 BMWs.

Okay... but most people do sell the car eventually, so it’s a very real expense / cost of ownership, and it’s often the largest cost by far if you buy new, so it should be taken into account when making a purchase. I bought a used first gen Cayman S a few years ago, and it’s barely depreciated at all since I bought…

His advice is to buy a used car that’s going to depreciate less than a new one, which ultimately leads to a lower total cost of ownership. That’s it, and it’s good advice. The reference to 0% financing is just commentary on “don’t let this 0% number trick you into thinking it’s a good idea”. He’s right.

The general financial advice is to maximize the money you put into appreciating assets (investments) and minimize the money you’ll lose to depreciating assets (e.g. cars). I realize you’re being sarcastic, but food and water do not depreciate (unless you let them go bad, in which case they would recommend against…

A car is absolutely an asset by the very definition of the word (“a useful or valuable thing, person, or quality”). It just happens to be a depreciating asset, so the “people” you’re referencing are 100% correct. I think you’re confusing an asset with an investment, which is an asset that is supposed to appreciate. In…

Yeah it’s pretty absurd. I don’t know the details of the board’s compensation, but Musk’s is entirely based on stock performance, so he doesn’t get paid unless the stockholders (these pension funds) see massive gains. They’re also compensated via stock, not cash, so it doesn’t affect company operations at all. It will…

It could be sold as a kit car. There are very few regulations on them in most states. I’m in the process of building an Exocet, and finalizing registration in MN doesn’t even require any sort of safety inspection. They just verify that the parts aren’t stolen.

It’s relatively light, it’s easy to make huge power, and it’s readily available for reasonable prices, so it’s not going away until there’s either a better option or governments start putting extreme regulations on combustion engines. Why is it silly? Lots of people (most I’d guess) don’t care about originality. They…

Trying to get my Exocet finished in the next month or two!

With the variety of trims and options car makers are offering now, that range doesn’t seem that far fetched. Look at Porsche. The base model Cayman starts at $57k while the Cayman GT4 starts at $99k and can be optioned to ~$130k very easily.

Yes, it’s shockingly easy to come up with a better price estimate. Every auto journalist treats the conversion like it’s some sort of automotive company voodoo and just says “this probably isn’t a good estimate”. Remove the VAT (20% for cars in the UK), then use a reasonable currency conversion rate. In this case, we…

I bought a mint 2006 Cayman S with 45k miles for $24k three years ago. You can get one with more miles in the high teens.

My parents had an automatic allroad. That transmission was awful, and it was extremely expensive to repair or replace. Even for a non-enthusiast, manual would be the way to go if someone wanted an allroad. 

Polaris acquired Brammo, an electric motorcycle OEM, in 2015. The obvious thing would be for them to use that tech in an electric Indian motorcycle (which Polaris also owns), but I’d be surprised if they don’t start launching most of their lineup with an electric option in the near future.

Correct. Why bother with actual research on the subject matter, though? There are other people’s YouTube videos to share!!!

A patent filing is not a reliable indicator of which features will be in any particular product.

At that point, why not just create a rendering using the CAD files? It’d probably be a lot easier / faster, and the photos don’t even look realistic after all that editing anyway.

Exactly. This is why the Germans are so serious about properly managing their lane position. It’s incredibly dangerous if they don’t. There are cars doing 200+ kph on the same road with tiny econo-cars that have a max speed of ~100 kph. Germany also has incredibly strict requirements with frequent testing for what’s…