I don’t think any country was putting an ICE ban in constitutional amendments. Those are typically rather difficult to do and reserved for something bigger than specific policy changes.

I think both the Lucid Air and Model S are more like an E class than an S class (both in size and purpose). They aren’t going for ultra-lux comfort. 

Nobody cares about weight in that class of vehicle.

It’s a tradeoff. A similarly interesting/fun car that’s reliable with plentiful parts availability is going to cost a lot more than $4,500. Some people like to tinker and/or are willing to accept the risk over paying 3x as much for something more common. 

I’d mostly be worried about the windshield if it could cause registration issues. Engine stuff is fairly available because the 12v Busso had a decently long run in various forms (~15 years). In fact, I’m currently building a 12v Busso for my 1967 GT and was able to get everything without too much trouble. But 164…

If you throw all the sound deadening and NVH reduction at an EV S-class, it’s likely to be even better than what they did with the ICE version. Even better than shifts that are “direct” are no shifts at all. The reviews of the new EV Rolls are quite positive. 

Yes, but valve jobs were much more commonly performed back then. Heads couldn’t go 200k+ miles like they can now, even with the leaded gas. So if you owned a car that needed leaded gas, you fixed the problem when it was time for a valve job (or the car was junk anyways).

But a lot of those multi-family housing situations also exist where people don’t rely on cars as much. Yes, owning an EV in New York City is difficult, but owning ANY car in New York city is difficult. The biggest problem will be suburban apartment dwellers, but they probably represent a much smaller slice of the…

It sort of did. Many valve seats designs required the lead, so the switch to unleaded was a problem for many older cars. For a car, it’s not so big of a deal to retrofit through a valve job, but for airplanes with strict safety rules that don’t allow you to modify the engines, the switch to unleaded never really…

If the infrastructure got to the point that 300kw fast chargers (good for an 80% charge in 20-30 minutes) were as available as gas stations, then the pain would be fairly moderate even with current technology. The canonball run types would still want ICE, but for the once or twice a year road trip, users might be…

Sometimes they do if the true costs of those products are externalized from the user. For example, R-134A was not a superior refrigerant for automotive air conditioning to the R-12 it replaced. However, R-12 needed to be banned because of the ozone layer depletion it caused, the cost of which was collectively borne…

One point on India and other countries in the region is that 4-wheel passenger cars are actually a minority for motorized urban transport. Electric mopeds and tuk tuks are actually making a big difference there and in fact a complete shift from gas mopeds and tuk tuks would probably dent their gasoline usage more than…

If we are talking military, then all bets are off. But I don’t mind small landing strip “airports” for regular civilian purposes. No services, but no crowds or long security lines. 

Neutral: I fly a lot, so I’ve been to a lot of bad airports. There are “worst” in different categories:

Apple pays more mostly because the vast majority of their workers are white collar skilled labor. If the Big3 just outsourced all of its manufacturing and only kept the folks at corporate HQ, then the average pay would skyrocket because most of the people left would be engineers, lawyers, and accountants who typically…

Said it better than I could. The problem with “record profits” is that there is no guarantee they will continue. In fact, there’s a lot of reasons to believe they won’t. There was a ton of pent up demand in 2022 and dealers were still able to charge ADM on just about everything. There still some of that in 2023, but…

The engines do drown out a lot of the noise. I rarely hear crying children in the back if I am near the front of the plane. 

You are making some incorrect assumptions about my politics. MAGA dude should be in prison. 

The only difference between this and the $300 electric scooters all over Amazon is the funky plastic cladding. 

What was dishonest? Nobody forced them to rent this vehicle.