Me buying a fat bike for $900: Christ what an indulgent purchase on my part how am I going to justify this.

None, bring up the oil exports, as exporting oil gives us a lever to use against our enemies, like Russia, and our frenemies, like Saudi Arabia. Back when Bush Jr. was in office, oil independence was all the rage.

I think it has less to do with reliability, something pretty much every automaker is struggling with right now based on recalls, and more to do with the fact that the pool of people who can pay current new car average prices is shrinking quickly, something that's going to accelerate once Chump is back in office and…

It'd never fly at the federal level even if we didn't have a demented doofus coming into office, but on the municipal level, nobody on the city council will care that Chuck from the Burbs will cry if he has to leave his toy truck at the city line, because he doesn't vote in their elections.

People drive into cities when they could take public transit. People buy three row SUVs when they’re the only passenger 99% of the time. People buy pickups because they’re afraid strangers will think they’re gay.

Yeah, this is why while I support congestion pricing and market pricing for parking I know in my gut they won't reduce emissions. A lot of driving, even commuting, is just performative consumerism and making it cost more will just make them pay more.

He's a 9/11 truther among many other very stupid things, so odds are pretty good he thinks it's a grant, not a loan.

I mean, impaired driver sure, but also we’re embarking on a massive social experiment in which millions of drivers over 65 who refuse to admit their eyesight, reflexes, or reaction times could EVER degrade, while their insecurity over their increasing fragility drives them to buy larger and larger vehicles to “feel…

Amtrak relaunched the Minneapolis to Chicago line and ridership blew away their expectations. Weird how convenient options that cost less are more popular.

Whenever I tell people the “boom years” were because the US and USSR were pretty much the only country that hadn’t had its industrial capacity utterly destroyed in the war, they just stare at me.

It’d be stupid if this were a personal beef, but even factoring in what a petty grandstanding asshole Newsom is, the fact of the matter is Elno is actively fucking with politics and causing enormous damage because his feefees are hurt. Newsom quite reasonably doesn’t want to keep paying Elno to do that.

So in other words he'd create space for somebody else to build a larger charging network in one of the biggest car markets in the world?

Wait, chasing a dwindling pool of affluent buyers is a bad business strategy? Man good thing the rest of the world’s automakers aren’t pursuing the exact same strategy!

What gets me is I grabbed an ebike from a kiosk to go to a dentist in a place in my area notorious for poor parking (Comm. Ave in Boston.) Took me twenty minutes, each way, in part because I could ride through areas you can't take a motorcycle.

Or you could just get an ebike, which is dirt cheap relative to a motorcycle, doesn’t require nearly as much maintenance or gasoline, doesn’t need to be parked, etc.

Weird way to spell "ebikes."

The best part is their compliance car still moved a ton of units despite begrudging marketing and all this pissing and moaning. They must have been livid.

“Sob! Weep! We have to make EVs for our biggest sales markets where buyers are looking for smaller and more economical cars! Sob! Weep!”

It’s a moot point anyway. Chump getting reelected basically guarantees the death of the car subsidies cities provide. Since cities have to reduce emissions and Chump thinks trees eat methane or whatever, they need an option that’s cheap, fast, effective, impossible for the feds to mess with, and easy to sell to the…

Cities keep falling for it because they don't have to pay for it and they don't have to close any streets.