When I read that I wondered how much of it is just the market though.  From the story:

They need to double down on the products they have promised and deliver. People are starting to question if the emperor has clothes on, and he can’t keep wowing people with the future while they stumble in the present. No one’s saying don’t innovate, but they need to produce at some point, and every time things get…

Not sure what that means, how would you prevent another state or country that borders Lake Michigan from drawing water from it?  It’s a huge body of water on the borders of multiple states and two countries, no one technicaly “owns” lake Michigan.

The insurance thing is not surprising in light of his goal of creating a “robo-taxi” fleet in the coming months. The insurance questions about who’s liable if a car without a driver has or causes an accident would probably mean most insurance companies wouldn’t let people use that feature.

Actually they don’t have your address according to the article:

Most EV users quickly find PlugShare, but it’s use criteria is user entered.  Guessing this ties to those companies servers.  Wonder how it handles things like dealer and open charge points, which right now is the majority of the options in my area.

1st Gear: I think this is as much about getting access to the IP and patents Rivian is collecting in this space. That’s chump change for the R&D money it would cost Ford, doesn’t hurt if you end up being able to sell manufacturing capacity to them either.

It can be had with a six-speed manual (yes) or a 10-speed automatic (ehhh.)

Not assume, but promise, because any more that seems to be the primary job, promise big to get the job/money/support and deal with the fallout later. If you get canned, well that’s why they call it a golden parachute. They just move on to some other company that doesn’t look too closely at their background and rinse…

For information the Wirecutter did not really like this model.  See the competition section.  Too bad, really looking for one of these for the new house.

For information the Wirecutter did not really like this model.  See the competition section.  Too bad, really…

Exactly. I’ve done the same at a lot of shows, row after row of Mustang/Camaro/Hot Rod, boring. After resto-modding a vehicle myself the beauty here is in the work not the result. I don’t love the car, but I definitely respect the talent required to do it.

But why have sedans if modern CUVs are basically as efficient, are more popular, and can probably be sold for more money?

You’re missing the budget side of things though. Developing a vehicle costs many billions of dollars, why spend that money on platform that is both low margin and shrinking in sales “because someday people might be forced back into them again”.

Agreed, even though the range and such will be worse for the Y because of it’s size and aero, it would have both had more widespread appeal, and would probably have been better received when the 3 was a squished version of it, because even though we all know that CUVs are just taller/lifted hatchbacks and wagons,…

That battery is also designed to use 88 percent of the total capacity because this “ensures battery longevity, repeatable performance and peak charging power for longer amounts of time during the charge cycle.”

Of all the tariffs that don’t make sense this seems is the worst. This isn’t a Mexican car company that might loose it’s competitive edge, Mexico is mostly manufacturing or assembling our cars. Putting a tariff on American branded “Mexican” cars is literally taxing ourselves.  I’m not sure how this is really a…

Well the places it would work best are those where you wanted to slow down: hills, intersections, etc. but that’s when you just use regenerative braking anyway.

I think you must have a very finicky car, or a badly setup carb. While they are definitely not as convenient as fuel injection, and proper tuning is a skill, everything you described has not been my experience with carbs.

Because the cost of that motion is resistance, hence why electric cars use that power generation for braking, and it can be quite extreme. Grab one of those little crank lights and you’ll see how much energy is needed to make even enough power to light an LED.

Guess I’ve never had a car with suspension sensitive or weak enough that a pothole upsets alignment so badly it affect the handling or tires that I didn’t know about.