You’re probably right. I know the Lexus LC, the GX, gets a third row but it has a V6 powertrain.

Toyota has a really dopey allocation process that does a bunch of bad things (the PHEV’s are impossible to get if you want one), but the only thing it does right is get a good amount of base trims on the lot. LC has a narrower window in terms of trims that are going to eat away at 4R sales on way or another.

I still can’t figure out what the point of the new Land Cruiser was in the first place. The 4Runner was already just a special Prado for the NA market. I don’t really know what they are going for by having both of them in the showroom other than SUV’s for their own sake. 

The LC is equipped with a hybrid where the battery fills up the space used for the 3rd row.  My guess is opting for a higher trim with the hybrid in the 4R also locks out the 3rd row since the platform is the same.

1. I doubt dealers will order much stock of the SR5s because...

In the suburbs of my large metropolitan area the off-road trim seems to be mandatory for trips to Target.

I agree with you for the most part. But my wife is a high miles driver. The OEM tires are still good at 40k miles but due to change soon. But those high miles fixes do start to add up. Timing belts,spark plugs,water and fuel pumps. I’m doing all of that with a relatively bullet proof Mazda that is approaching 200k…

Yearly tax with some factor of frontal area and overall weight.  Frontal area also scales if you lift your vehicle

Pretty sure that the guy who’s on a 3 year wait list to get his SF90 is going to yawn when Ferrari tells him the price just went up by 10% because of tariffs.

I tend to believe the numbers especially as I suspect the first wave of buyers have made the upgrades needed to support home charging. My wife has an EV and is very unlikely to go back after her first experience. I'm hoping the lifetime maintenance costs do balance out as we don't really save on gas due to having some…

Yeah I thought it was fishy too. My guess is the “Global EV Drivers Alliance” is a community of people who are pretty into their EVs....

First gear: how does this parse with the McKinsey study that suggested 46% of EV owners would consider switching back to internal combustion cars? (https://www.motor1.com/news/724788/half-ev-owners-american-switch-gas/) I don’t presume that either is 100% correct, but this shift in six months doesn’t strike me as…

“I’d settle for taxing investment profits at regular income tax rates.”

Wall Street guys are surprisingly dumb, and will believe the hype. A while back Derek Lowe’s science blog fscked a "stock market technical analysis" of a biotechnology firm where the Wall Street guy completely ignored the fact that their core product failed FDA trials. 

Removing windows to see your impending death when Elon’s system fails is also way to save money.

Sounds like the right answer is better public transit, not half-assed attempts to make car-culture work for people who can’t drive. 

I’d settle for taxing investment profits at regular income tax rates.

(Teslas are depreciating faster than Masers)

These guys are money pimps. They don’t know, or care to know, how the auto industry works. They just want to generate churn in auto stock values. They don’t even care if it’s up or down, because they can make money either way.

Meanwhile, the Tesla subreddit is being dominated by people trying to ditch their Teslas and how most of them are underwater because values are tanking (Teslas are depreciating faster than Masers) and for some crazy reason they decided to buy (and not lease) an EV. They are also asking for recommendations and the most…