Yah, there’s H70 (10,000 PSI) and H35 (5,000 PSI) - I’m told all the new cars run H70 and some older cars run H35, which is on the way out gradually.

hmmmm...they were fun and a good value, but they had some seriously shit quality and reliability. Paint peeling off everywhere in and out of warranty, major a/c issues, water leaks from the frameless windows and elsewhere, lots of NVH issues. And the well deserved reputation for repeat head gasket failure.

Back when…

My 2013 Fit Sport 5MT (2540 lbs) was only 213 lbs heavier than my 1993 Civic Si hatch 5MT (2327 lbs).

Not really -
The 2013 Fit is virtually the same footprint as the 1992 Civic Si hatch. I owned both.
The Fit is about 7" taller, but length and width are nearly identical.

1992 Civic hatch:
160" L x 67" W x 53" H and 2327 lbs (5MT)

2013 Fit hatch:
162" L x 67" W x 60" H and 2540lbs (5MT)

The Mazda 2 was pretty miserable. We rented one in Australia for a week and I couldn’t wait to give it back.

Some context is important here:

I just returned from a month of living in Puebla, where the big VW plant is that has been there since 1973 and supplies cars for the whole world except China.

This is what stuff costs there:

Bus fare: about 35 cents US - many many people take the bus.

An average 1 br/1ba apartment: about…

Yes, cheap hydrogen has been “just around the corner” for 20 years now. And Toyota is a stogy, conservative company that made a huge bet on hydrogen, and lost. In the 7 and a half years the Mirai has been available to buy, they have sold a total of a mere 7,000 units, less than a rounding error for a company that size…

That’s also hilarious, you didn’t think this through at all, did you?

More battery storage facilities are coming online and curtailments are being reduced. And transmission congestion has been the biggest cause of curtailments, not lack of need for that power. Rising demand for EV charging will also use up more of…

Workable how? For Cummins? Maybe. For their customers? Likely not, for all the reasons I listed.

That’s hilarious.

- where are you at? If you’re a PGE customer in nor cal you can get the same EV charge plan we have - ours was 11 cents per kwh off peak, for the entire house. I’m sure that will go up as they raise rates to cover their billions in liability for killing all those people but it’s still way cheaper than 34c/kwh.

Obvious to who? The average person has no idea about any of this stuff, and the average enthusiast who doesn’t live in California has no idea there are so few hydrogen stations, that half of the few we have are usually broken and that hydrogen is so expensive if you have to pay for it out of pocket. Even the (few)…

AutoWeek drove their Mirai 189 miles on 3.3kg of hydrogen, which works out to 57 miles per kg. That hydrogen cost them $16.47 per kg, actual pump price. The Mirai theoretically holds 5.6 kg of hydrogen. So using Autoweek’s actual real world highway mileage that works out to a useable range of about 285 miles, leaving…

The only tailpipe emissions from fuel cell cars is pure water. But fuel cell cars are still obscenely expensive to build, even charging $60,000 MSRP each, Toyota reportedly loses $62,000 to $120,000 for every Mirai they build.

It’s a good thing for Toyota that the Mirai is a miserable sales failure, only selling…

That’s great and all, but using vast amounts of electricity to produce commercial quantities of hydrogen is both highly inefficient and quite expensive relative to just using that same amount of electricity to charge EVs. The molecular bonds of water are very very strong and water is very stable.

It takes 50-55 kWh of…

California resident here, the only state with any real hydrogen refueling infrastructure and the only place you can buy a Mirai or Honda FCX Clarity fuel cell car. They can hardly give away Mirais, even with $15,000 in free fuel included with each new car. Why? Glad you asked!

The whole state only has 43 hydrogen…

Hydrogen for ultra efficient fuel cell cars is a dead end right now, so burning hydrogen in vastly less efficient turbodiesels as a motor fuel is even more of a dead end, practically speaking.

I live in California, the only state with any meaningful hydrogen refueling infrastructure. There are only 43 hydrogen filling…

Not this time, apparently

In Mexico right now, had a fabulous plate of five al pastor tacos last night for Cinco De Mayo after the military parade, took an *epic* plumbing-defying dump this morning before heading out. Can confirm.

Congrats, Bradley! This is an excellent farewell piece. Hope your new gig is awesome, and maybe I’ll see you out on the roads out west in my TourX or on whatever bike I get next. Shiny side up!