Amtrak only exists because the cost of running passenger rail was killing the freight railroads. It shouldn’t be surprising that taking the money-losing parts of a bunch of companies and putting them all in one company results in a company that loses money. So the question is if we want passenger rail at all, because…

The EU isn’t all of Europe, it’s less than half. Europe is 3.9M square miles in total, larger than the continental US, with 44 countries. Only 28 of which are members of the EU.

“Europe” isn’t smaller than the US. Individual European countries are small, analogous to individual states, and many of them are densely populated - but not all of them. Sweden is bigger than California but only 9M people. The rest of Scandinavia bar Denmark is similar. Russia is as empty as the American west. Sweden…

Prendergast finds it frustrating that there’s money and political backing to study a non-existent transportation system but not to buy new trains or run them more often.

hyperloops would have even poorer route selection. the midwest is flat, but you think a giant vacccumed tube is cheaper than a rail line? 

Setting dumpsters on fire is how American capitalism makes its cash. There ain’t no profit in simple and cost effective systems.

Trains would make a lot of sense if America had better trains 

Contrary to many peoples thinking, infrastructure isn’t a one and done proposition, that’s what got this nations bridges and Highways into the situation there at now. The time to take idea’s like high speed rail, hyperloops and monorails seriously is now, before you get to experience gridlock traffic nearly 24-7 where…

“OH LOOK ANOTHER ELON MUSK HIT PIECE BY JALOPNIK”

Automatic transmission in a sports car is an automatic crack pipe.

Can’t do an automatic in a Corvette, sorry I don’t make the rules.

First Gear - Well at least all the requisite senior leadership types got their kickass quarterly bonuses when pushing this thing through into production and no one will take that from them. Thats all that matters in the end.

“How does the range of this EV compare to the range of a diesel-electric locomotive, which I could also afford?”

As someone with a 2013 60kwh Model S, whose range is ~170 miles, I encounter some sort of need to hit a charger about twice a year. If my range was 300 miles, as the newer models are, that number drops to zero. The difference between zero and two isn’t great, but it’s hugely mitigated by the availability of…

I did my very best to find a sh!t to give but, alas, I have none. 

ThE UlTrA wEaLtHy ArE JoB CrEaToRs!

Then why does every single business do this? Case studies in B-school are great and all, but in practice, every single fortune 500 company do this. One of the problems is the way executives are compensated, where their performance packages are tied to stock performance, and stock performance reflects QUARTERLY…

And just like modern BMWs, they are stuck in the shop with broken sensors that are waiting to be fixed by the manufacturer after being forced to admit they fucked up.

I'm not seeing the "smoking hot" part, Patrick.