Happy to have done my part to make your day better ;)

In a few years, the answer will be any of a bunch of EVs coming onto the market now or soonish. For example, the Kia EV9 is a bit pricey for now - but between those getting discounts right now to keep up with the tax subsidized American made ones (and production moving to the US soon), along with rapid depreciation,…

It’s a different kind of fun - nope, it’s not a canyon carver (although those BMW SUVs handle curves a whole lot better than they have any business doing at their weight and size), but between the cushy interior, the composed ride, and all that torque, driving something like that can be really pleasant.

I grew up in Germany, and my parents had a trucking company. My dad taught me to drive a full sized commercial truck at 11 years old (with an unsynchronized transmission and no hydraulics on the clutch, so I had to stand up from the driver’s seat to get enough force to push the pedal when double-clutching to…

Bullshit - Piech wasn’t expecting the best, he was expecting compliance at all cost with his megalomaniacal demands. He was directly responsible for instilling a culture that resulted in Dieselgate and tremendous quality issues that plagued VAG for decades, all while wasting a bunch of resources on halo projects to…

The amount of discretionary police power given to CBP in that rather arbitrary 100 miles from the border limit is frightening. I live close to the border in Washington, and things here tend to be pretty mellow compared to other places, but the presence is always felt, and I’m told that folks in the Latino community…

I was wondering the same - that’s gotta be a trick of the light, but it sure looks like a front-end cousin of the Camry dent. 

Agreed - my wife has a ‘15 Outback. The system in that is so damn buggy, it keeps losing even basic BT connectivity. She would gladly take what was in a 2012 Toyota I had over this and do without the stupid touchscreen.

If he had stepped down a while ago, definitely. If he steps down a few months from now, there will likely not be enough experienced people left for new leadership to take over and make it better. Whether they’ve already crossed that line is a little hazy for now. Meanwhile, this whole dumpsterfire will be terrific…

Absolutely true, and from a rational point of view, very much analogous. Psychologically, though, it’s different - VW, for example, sold the exact same engines with the exact same hardware and turbos at something like five different power levels, and the only difference was ECU firmware. But they never offered you an…

I can’t be the only one who thinks that the ever-escalating acceleration race is not a good thing. Minivans doing 0-60 in 7 seconds was already a bit strange to me. Stock family cars doing that in under 5 seconds now in the EV age seems not just unnecessary but unnecessarily dangerous. And when you get to something a…

That’s mega insightful ;)

There’s probably a sweet spot where you save a ton by making large castings (which can also be engineered very nicely in terms of predictable performance in a crash, since it’s all about the material and shape, and not complicated by welds and fasteners and such) and saving a ton of money, but still having it perform…

Yes and no. Yes, that would be highly relevant information, because it would allow us (and the regulators) to evaluate the overall effectiveness (or, if they actually make things worse compared to unassisted driving, danger) of assistance systems overall.

“Ruin” is a pretty strong word for that. A Crosstrek is lifted about 2" versus the Impreza it’s based on. Yep, that’ll make a pretty big difference for an enthusiast doing spirited driving on mountain roads, but for appliance commuter use, it doesn’t lose that much. And the people who buy them like having a bit more…

There’ll be a lot of grousing about how people are buying too much car, being financially irresponsible, and so forth. And yes, there are a lot of people like that - but let’s be honest about one thing: In the US, there are a ton of people who work full time (or more) but can’t get ahead. And once you’re poor, life…

The only way that this shit will ever get sorted out is with legislation enshrining privacy as a consumer right that simply cannot be traded away. 

Wagon Guy’s top three (emergency lane changes, emergency breaking, regain control of a skid) are incredibly important - and completely ignored in drivers’ ed. My wife has this theory that we now have two generations of drivers who learned all the “know” about driving from Mario Kart and have no understanding…

Which would work out fine for them if they could drastically increase volume. But they are running out of people willing to buy Teslas because of their unique combination of factors (aging cars with questionable UI choices, charging network no longer exclusive to Tesla use, core potential demographic turned off by the…

Ford still makes small cars in other markets. They just don’t bring them here, because they’re not making money here - at the prices they have to charge for them, people who buy Ford would rather buy a CUV/SUV/pickup.