One day Elon Musk is going to wake up and realize that Greg Abbott isn’t trapped there with him, he’s trapped there with Greg Abbott. Texas is a state that depends heavily on oil and gas, to the point where they passed a law punishing banks that divest from oil and gas stocks; it’s going to start putting the squeeze…

I admit I’ve never quite understood Maseratis; if you’re going to spend supercar money, wouldn’t you want to spend it on something that advertises you have supercar money? Why spend that kind of cash on something that looks like a Volvo?

I have a hard time believing that every car company would be able to standardize on one battery that will fit every car, from subcompacts up to pickup trucks. It’s just such a vital part of the packaging of the vehicle.

For commuting it’s really not necessary, though, because you can charge overnight at home or during the work day at the office.

This isn’t a huge surprise — anyone who’s owned diesels for a while will tell you there’s both a bacteria and a fungus (both often erroneously called “algea”) that can “infect” your fuel tank and clog your filters. They require a small amount of water in the bottom of the tank and live at the interface between the…

Emissions from the tire in the photo are especially high, because it will eventually blow out and cause the Explorer it’s on to roll, releasing quantities of gasoline and oil into the environment. ;)

Part of what’s going on here is Lexus has 2% of the US market share. A number that small actually argues for pursuing polarizing styling, because if they do something that 96% of people hate, but 4% of people really love, they can potentially double their market.

I know I’m in the minority here, but I just can’t see paying $28K for what’s basically a VW Beetle in disguise.

I don’t mind the stops, it’s the risk of getting stranded and need to meticulously pre-plan that’s a barrier for me.

But with COVID surge after COVID surge happening, often the only practical one.

I’ve often advocated for this, but I don’t anymore, because have you tried to rent a car lately?

Yeah. EVs make a great “second car” for cheap commuting, but for long trips you still need an ICE. Honestly, for a lot of people the most cost-effective solution would be renting a car for the occasional road trip, but lately the rental car market has imploded, so that’s not quite so attractive anymore either.

I plan where I stop for the night (because most campgrounds require reservations) but I don’t plan every fuel stop. I run off the front tank until it’s empty, then I start looking for a gas station once I reach 1/2 on the rear tank. That’s about the extent of my planning. ;)

The problem with battery swapping is the battery is the single heaviest component of the EV, and it’s tied into not only the electrical system but the cooling system as well. It’s like offering engine swapping; it’s a really complex ask. Not to mention that it precludes using the battery as a stressed component of the…

Unattended point-of-sale systems seem like a technology that should have been perfected by now but is shockingly unreliable. With everything from vending machines with tap-to-pay to pay-at-the-pump systems at gas stations, I’m constantly running into errors.

Not only is the Cybertruck extremely polarizing, to say the least (not necessarily a bad thing for a small car company), it involves build processes that aren’t applicable to Tesla’s other vehicles. It’s a weird outlier.

You also don’t want to start the engine if the car is in an enclosed garage, or you’ll quickly convert one lethal problem into another.

Yup. Most cars have a manual way to reset the cutoff, but there’s no way I’m going to be digging through the owner’s manual learning where it is while I’m exposed in the middle of a freeway.

This actually goes back way further than airbags. Fuel injected cars have had inertial fuel pump cutoffs since way back in the 80s, so that the electric in-tank fuel pump won’t keep pumping fuel into a potential fire. This wasn’t a concern before that because most cars had engine-driven pumps that would stop as soon…

I would not touch this for any price, but Jeep people are their own breed, so I expect a bidding war that ends with some fanatic paying $5000.