Look, I’m a political economist, and I honestly can’t tell you why it’s legal to let companies suppress unions. I’m not talking illegal suppression tactics that skirt the rules. I’m talking the legal “well let’s just let workers hear both sides” bullshit. Completely ignores power.

I gotta agree with the others, you missed the point entirely. Jalopnik has a few articles detailing what union members suffered in the beginning with their drive to improve working conditions.

It only feels like a stranger if you sit on your hand until it goes numb first.

But that’s the point, the dealer believes that demand so outstrips supply that they are throwing away a larger opportunity to make money by talking to an educated buyer, as they can’t just “get another unit” like they normally could.

Ships are harder because they are mostly outside U.S. regulatory control- most international shipping is not done by U.S. -flagged ships. You could impose requirements for ships coming into U.S. waters, but you have the issue of needing international shipping for a functioning economy, and the fact that there’s no…

Real estate financing is different from new vehicle financing. A vehicle comes from a manufacturer with an MSRP, and lenders tend to not stray too far from that in terms of what they’re willing to finance. The price of an existing home is a far fuzzier thing, and part of home financing is an assessment of the property…

Just remember that most of that job will be putting together business cases to prove that cool cars, cool colors, manual transmissions, etc. will actually make money for your company. Which they usually don’t. So prepare to have your soul crushed on the regular as you muddle through internal bureaucracy, argue with…

A friend recently remarked to me about how odd it is that his favorite car magazine comes from his insurance company.

The definition of worthwhile changes depending on your credit score.

Wait a second, the Russian dude is saying that your oil pressure drops when the filter media gets full? What kind of cut-rate crap is he using that doesn’t have a bypass valve?

“experts from GM and (battery maker) LG have identified the simultaneous presence of two rare manufacturing defects in the same battery cell as the root cause of battery fires in certain Chevrolet Bolt EVs.” Seems like its a manufacturing defect which in my opinion would make LG liable. I’m sure a lawsuit is…

Unless you have a few pounds of C4 and an empty field.

GM is responsible for the vehicle, the entire vehicle. They, in turn, are very likely to demand a consideration from LG for the losses associated with the recall. How much may depend on the contract for supplying the cells; if it’s not enough (and LG really wants scrutiny and public exposure) a lawsuit by GM to get…

My guess would be that they replace the whole battery pack. But that they have some system set up where the first round of replacements are reconditioned in a loop, so after the first few thousand The battery packs going in are repaired packs from the first ones. And so on. At least with other recalls that I have had…

I’m also curious about this. Depends on the contract involved. If LG made the parts out of spec, then they would be liable. If it’s due to a design issue, GM could be at fault. In reality, after all thepolitics, it’s probably somewhere in between.

Yeah, It’s called hilltop reserve mode in the older models and just a setting in the newer ones.

There’s a software setting to tell it what % to stop at. By default it should charge to 90%, not 100%. 

The car usually still works fine (dangerous to shut it off in a traffic), just displays some kind of “missing fob” warning message on the dash. Once you turn the engine off, you cannot restart it without the fob. By this time the car is already in some garage about to being taken apart or having another ECU with a…

The Question really should be reversed: “What’s worth going cheap on.”

Tires. Don’t buy the cheap Chinese/Taiwanese tires that are extremely hard and increase your braking distance. They lack grip and tend to handle abysmally in the rain. There’s plenty of cheap tires made by proper tire manufacturers you should buy instead if you’re working with a limited budget.