Today’s small CUVs are only slightly lifted hatchbacks.

Interior switch gear is another fun one. I grew up in Germany and my family had a trucking/warehousing company. It was always fascinating to see my grandfather’s /8 Merc share bits and bobs with utilitarian vans and trucks.

In large urban areas, they’ve got a definite niche. More so in Europe than here in the US, but you’ll still see a ton of them here, especially in coastal cities.

That’s kind of like when they advertise those fruit snacks for kids (which are basically candy, as there’s more high fructose corn syrup than actual fruit in them) as fat free or gluten free.

Unless they build it in North America to get around the chicken tax, nope, it won’t come to the US.

It bothers me as well. Wouldn’t bother me as much from a different brand, but Porsche is all about highlighting the engineering and has a very long tradition of going a little above and beyond in creating kickass drivetrains. If they can get over the cringe it must be inducing inside the building to use turbo in this…

Neutral - so who gets to decide what constitutes a “Real” Land Cruiser? Toyota’s been building off road vehicles for a very long time. They’ve used that nameplate for a very long time for a whole bunch of those vehicles, ranging from agricultural/UN spec barebones trucks all the way to very heavy luxed up…

In my town, we have a similar ordinance. Reason for it was that shade tree mechanic flippers would put a bunch of cars in conspicuous places and block use of those spaces for other purposes - like people using parks or trailheads, etc. 

Incidentally, since these scenes of chaos were at a factory gate, the hourly folks wouldn’t have gotten paid for any time that day, since they didn’t clock in. Whereas the old school method of calling them into a meeting with the manager would have happened on the clock. Just another way in which this is just full of…

Another way of looking at it - we’ve spent the last decade or so being incredibly vertically integrated, because there was no supplier ecosystem to draw on, and no off the shelf stuff to buy from contractors. So we rolled our own, built a whole lot of manufacturing capacity, and focused on that more than on making our…

If you’re not road tripping, then you either charge at home, at work (more and employers provide chargers), while shopping or going out to eat (lots of chargers popping up in grocery store and strip mall parking lots), or recreating (lots of them popping up in parking lots for rec centers, gyms, etc.).

Anytime a reduction in force happens to be an incredibly round number, like 10% of employees, it’s a great indicator that it’s not the result of careful analysis identifying redundant/unnecessary jobs to eliminate, but more of a knee jerk process of trying to keep investors happy. And whenever that’s the way you run…

As much as I am skeptical of all things Tesla because of all the well-documented issues (quality issues, insistence on downright dangerous human/machine interfaces like FSD, Autopilot, and of course burying all kinds of controls in a touch screen, design for cheap manufacturing rather than low total cost of ownership…

Hey, that’s an entirely too reasonable take!

Same story with Amtrak between Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR. We’re just south of the border - riding the train to Portland is scheduled to take something like 4 1/2 hours, which is pretty comparable to what driving the same route on I-5 would take if there’s no major traffic. But just like there’s always traffic on…

1st: Tesla really doesn’t want anyone looking too hard at their FSD/Autopilot claims vis-a-vis their liability for those claims.

The apparent mental  health issues and drug use probably have a bit to do with it as well...

I used to watch Top Gear, and then later on The Grand Tour, with my son. It was perfect silly stupid entertainment to bond over with a pre-adolescent and then adolescent. But between him growing up a bit, and both of getting bored of them just recycling the same schtick in ever more contrived scenarios, it got a bit…

Fake news - if it’s called Yeehaw Junction, it’s gotta be Texas.

The folks who leave their gas powered car near empty and get screwed when it’s time to evacuate are not necessarily forgetful people, they’re poor or low income people living paycheck to paycheck. They defer expenses as much as they can, and that means getting gas only when strictly needed, so they can manage cash…