Oh, I’m not trying to downplay the problem of failing up... I’m just pointing out how often the person that fails upward is doing so because someone else set them up with some mighty fine coattails, and the person who paved the way is shown the door and given no credit..

Its crazy how people have reset their expectations over the years.

For comparison, here are various Toyotas with passenger volume/luggage volume in cu. ft...

2021 Toyota Corolla : 89 / 13
1990 Toyota Camry : 89 / 12
1990 Toyota Cressida : 89 / 12
1990 Toyota Corolla : 84 / 11

They’re bigger than what we used to consider…

“You should not have to look at a damn center-mounted touchscreen button to change your wiper speed”

CORRECTION:

You should not have to look at a damn center-mounted touchscreen to operate ANY basic vehicle function that a driver might reasonably expect to have to use while in operation. This goes all the way to HVAC…

We had a CEO at our company that assumed the position in the midst of the great recession with the previous CEO having gutted us of investment for new products. He caught all sorts of flack for our performance. He eventually was fired by the board. His treatment was grossly unfair, particularly as he oversaw getting…

Well, perhaps its more of a bit of a mix of both.  Trump has shown his authoritarian side, but we’re mixing in a bit of socialism through bailouts and buyins of corporations.  It’s a bit ironic, because we’re supposed to believe democrats threaten us with socialism, yet it was Bush who ended up having us buy large…

Having had Fords and Toyotas both in Michigan and Ohio, from my experience neither had a claim to superiority on suspension durability. Both ate sway bar links. It’s like clockwork for me - at 13-14 years old, both brands end up needing lower control arms and ball joints, a half axle or two, sway bar bushings, and…

Yeah, but this is pretty indicative of a serious design or manufacturing defect. An impact large enough to lead to this would have damaged other components as well.

Unfortunately, yes. Most hospitals do not allow staff to use any PPE not provided by the hospital, even if used in addition to what the hospital provides. So in this case, for example, we can source KN95 masks, but the hospital only provides simple surgical masks that don’t seal well. You have to use their mask and…

Household consumer goods...  we literally cannot make them fast enough to meet demand.

The profit here is no more imaginary or troubling than what we saw at Tesla. Ford has lost tremendous amounts of money on their autonomous unit in recent years. Now there are companies seeing a value in what they produced and are buying the product. Given how this went down, you can’t count on it as an ongoing profit…

I’m not worried that a pink slip is around the corner.  We’re making obscene profits right now.   I am worried about getting sick, though, and possible long term disability from that, since my wife works at a hospital and their exposure is sky-high and infection control protocol at hospitals is universally shit at…

Am I the only one who thinks that the picture makes it look a bit like this has already been t-boned?

1st-3rd :

So automakers with sales biased to Europe and Asia are bound to do better in the short-mid term. Have you seen GDP numbers? Germany was down 10%, the US down 32%. And we still don’t have any semblance of control over virus spread. We’re still in line for a lot of pain - they may have the worst behind them.

The first two model years were horrid for reliability - but they improved to be some of the most reliable compact cars after that.

“The price tag for all this is $12,000 and that’s where this C-Max really gets interesting. That price is a huge 66% reduction from its original MSRP, and that’s in just four years’ time. “

That’s nice in theory, but these came with huge discounts off the lot when new and had enormous first year depreciation, so this…

How much training does an electrician need to install a 240V charger?  Shouldn’t be any harder than running any other 240V circuit and wiring up something like a clothes dryer...

I’m sure you can find good deli meats in Indiana.. just not in your normal grocery store.

Just across the border in Ohio, we have a fair number of butchers with good quality stuff, and one of our local stores has a ridiculous selection. This is just half of their higher end counter, where stuff generally goes for $12…

Theoretically there is no risk to an employee taking patented information with them - because patents are public record already and the person/company taking out the patent has to reveal their best practices to get the patent granted.

It’s trade secret information that’s the riskier thing.

Yep - you nailed it.

Bulls like to say it priced for growth. But growth beyond that of any other automaker? Because that’s how they’re priced. Basically all future growth is already priced in...

2nd:
I understand Tesla’s position. But note that they hired a LOT of people off the traditional automakers with knowledge how to improve their systems and profited off of that. It’s not a one-way street. In my experience, a lot of these lawsuits are intended to force the other party into disclosing their practices to…