evenshorteroh

9/28/21

Companies don’t give a shit about personal income taxes their employees pay. They care about the taxes they would pay - and in virtually all cases, these decisions comes down to which state offers the bigger bribe. I mean incentive package

9/28/21

Yes, there is such a comparison. The old Harbour Report used to publish this on an annual basis (they still do, but you have to pay now)

The difference isn’t what you think it is.

For example, here’s the number of man hours required in 2007 for stamping, assembly, engine, and transmission all combined, per vehicle on…

9/28/21

1st:

The odds that these plants end up being nonunion are slim. Domestic manufacturers have plenty of plants in “right to work” states, and they’re all unionized.

Realistically, they can’t pay workers much less than they pay union workers already, simply because wages everywhere have climbed.

But I can guarantee the…

9/27/21

The 2nd generation wasn’t terribly efficient, but most cars of that era weren’t, either. And it was widely considered to be one of the better looking cars in its segment, and competitive with the significantly more expensive Accord or Camry.

Was the 3rd generation an improvement? Absolutely - in every respect but price…

9/15/21

1st:

I’m not defending the accuracy of Bloomberg, but Electrek is rife with errors on a daily basis, so I’d certainly lean towards Bloomberg’s story.

9/14/21

2nd: Here’s what I’d like to see happen:

I’m not so into consolidation. There are crappy dealers and good dealers for every brand, and having more around would be good... at least there’s a chance that the one decent Honda dealership might stick around and not get sucked up by the half dozen crappy ones in my area.

But…

9/14/21

What’s amazing is the traditional dealer model was set up precisely because so few people actually did ever test drive what they were going to buy, and were so urgently demanding a car that if the dealer didn’t have exactly what they wanted in stock, they’d go elsewhere - even to other makes.

9/13/21

Couple of issues with those metrics:

1) When the displayed difference between a Ford Crown Victoria and a Mercury Grand Marquis is half that of the difference between their best vehicle and the average, you should immediately question the statistical significance of the data.

2) Differences in rates of problems as used…

9/13/21

I believe one of the reasons for “lifetime” fluids is that they actually call in the manual for inspect and replace as necessary, but by not having a schedule, when organizations like Edmunds analyze cost to own, they don’t include any fluid replacement in their costs.

It may seem small, but you can actually make a…

8/9/21

I’d love better roads, too, and would advocate for higher gas taxes to cover the full cost.

But as for what I propose, you’re right - a straight gas tax does punish poor people. A gas tax used to fund a uniform tax credit does not necessarily do this.

If the average consumer uses 600 gallons of gas per year and you…

8/9/21

Many states have “fixed” this already. Here in Ohio, if I drove a Prius, I’d pay significantly more in total taxes than if I drove a Corolla. If I drove a Model 3, I’d pay even more. If I drove a Prius, my total taxes would be about the same as driving an F-250 the same distance.

Our asinine legislature has decided to…

8/9/21

Not necessarily.

I mean, gas taxes already are regressive in nature. But hear me out....

Say we gradually increased gas taxes to $4 per gallon (tax, not price at the pump). That’s $3.82 per gallon more than currently is charged. Prices where I am would be about $7 per gallon for regular.

Without any other programs, that…

8/6/21

Meh...

There really is a logic to allowing a larger vehicle to get worse mpg... I mean, none of us would expect a 15 passenger Transit to get the same mpg as a Prius C.

But a better approach than CAFE would just be to tax the living daylight out of gas and use the revenue to fix roads and provide a refundable tax credit…

7/20/21

Wait - so instead of paying a pretty penny for “self-driving”, I can buy a subscription for it instead at a price a fair bit higher than the highest monthly total cost of ownership for any car I’ve ever bought (including new cars, mind you)???

6/17/21

My biggest gripe I’ve ever had with a rental company (Enterprise) : a family trip out west where we reserved a full size sedan. Get to the airport and they don’t have one. “Don’t worry, you’ll get an upgrade”. Their upgrade? A Chevy Trax.

A fucking Chevy Trax is not an upgrade to anything sold in the US.

OTOH, the last…

6/17/21

So my kid once projectile vomited all over the back seat of our Mazda.... onto the front, the floor, the seat, the seat back, the headliner, etc. We cleaned up what we could (on the road in the middle of nowhere), got a bottle of this stuff called Odoban at the nearest truckstop, and sprayed everything down. The smell…

6/16/21

Neutral : I disagree that there was an EV drought in the 2000s. The 90s EVs were very primitive vehicles and there was a lot of development left to make a viable, affordable EV. They never stopped work towards improving on the concept - they simply saw there was no profit to be made yet in the market as the tech…

6/15/21

My former 1997 Taurus that I bought new is still on the road today. And the body still appears to be in good shape - granted, I sold it about 10 years ago, but dang that thing doesn’t give up.

6/14/21

The only city in Ohio with even passable public transit is Cleveland. The rest have pathetic excuses for it.

Here in Cincinnati, the system is so awful that the commute I used to take in my beater 98 Camry took me ~20 minutes and cost about $5 a day in gas, insurance, maintenance, repairs, etc. Riding the bus would…