I found N. Carolina particularly hard to navigate (especially before modern navigation software) because the highways tend to be designed without visual reference points and most of the exits are cloverleafs where the direction you exit won’t always correspond to the direction you will end up traveling. All you see…

I can’t think of anything more gross than “exploring” the Belgian Congo in a $300k rig while watching the enslaved population toil outside. Sort of the equivalent of taking a luxury RV tour through Darfur today.

If they want to put NVH in an EV they can do it without gimmickry. Pull out sound deadening, use straight cut gears in the direct-drive transmission, and set the suspension race stiff with hard bushings in the steering. It won’t sound like a gas car, but it won’t be quiet. 

Just out of curiosity, I checked lease deals for Rivians in my area. They wanted $823 a month with $7k down for a base R1T. So a bit more expensive, but not dramatically so.

10k/yr is a pretty standard lease threshold. It’s slightly below the average miles. Most people don’t take road trips on the regular. 

Carmakers did make EVs on ICE platforms in the early days and they were generally terrible. You don’t just get a ton of luggage space in the trunk if you try to shove an EV powertrain into an S class, because you end up having to put a bunch of electronics in that space (because the vehicle wasn’t designed with proper…

Mercedes is particularly bad because the “EQS” can refer to a sedan or an SUV. In fact, if you google “EQS”, you get two official links to Mercedes Benz USA:

I think part of the problem is that it can’t really be the “same vehicle” in most cases. EVs have different packaging concerns than ICE vehicles and need their own platforms. So you can have an EV that looks pretty similar and fills the same niche, but it won’t be the same like vehicles with two engine options would…

Peak EV charging is rarely synched with peak air conditioning use in the hot summer. In fact, the EV charging can help by stabilizing the load rather than a big spike in the afternoon, allowing more baseline generation. 

I’ve heard “toe the line” as referring to MPs in British Parliament physically standing on the right side of a line when casting votes with their party. Wonder which one is correct.

There are likely local upgrades needed to support these stations, but it’s not an overall grid issue. The total grid power used by 100 cars slow charging for 100 minutes is the same as 100 cars charging for 10 minutes each, 10 cars at a time. Stations with 500KW charging capacity are being installed now, so they’ve…

Lotus Emira? 

Toyota sells over 10,000 86 (not including BRZ) per year. Even without regulatory requirements, I don’t see how that makes selling performance vehicles economical at all. 

It’s been solved from a technical perspective, just not from a practical/implementation perspective. If there were 500kw fast chargers on every corner and everyone could afford a 500 mile EV like the Lucid Air, then range would be a non-issue.

500 performance cars a year? That would mean the only performance cars are supercars because you can’t make a profit selling 500 a year of any mass market model. 

Why not just a spec Miata? 

The right buyer for this already has a specific series they want to run it in and a specific reason why they want to run that particular series. Someone who just wants to go racing should just buy a Spec Miata or a Spec Racer Ford. Someone who wants to do track days doesn’t need a full-blown race car.

Corvettes are pretty cheap speed. A c5 Corvette tops out at 175mph. You can get one of those for under $15k. You can get a c6 for $20k that will do 186 without power adders, but the gearing will allow it to do well over 200 if it has the power.

Those are cool, but my understanding is they aren’t really all that effective (at least the stock ones weren’t). I’m not a drag racer, so off the line heat soak isn’t that big of a deal.

You drop the whole engine in as a package. On an assembly line, bolting on a pitch stop is a MUCH cheaper/simpler process compared to having to separately attach a FMIC and bolt up the plumbing.