“Mercedes Says Cheap EVs Aren’t Coming Any Time Soon”

The EV market has been skewed in the wrong direction. I drive a Leaf and have since 2011. Most Americans could easily manage an EV with 100 miles as a second car, and many even as the only car in an urban area. Zero to Sixty in 3 seconds and 400 mile range makes EVs expensive. The Leaf is a good car for moderate…

“We cannot achieve our 50% profit margins and compete with Tesla on range and acceleration”

Moral of the story.......... Don’t fuck with the Russians!

I’m Shocked!

This was my take also. Mercedes ain't making affordable cars? Huh. 

Expensive carmaker CEO says cheap cars aren’t coming any time soon.

The problem is that out of the 20+ EVs that are on sale, just three come in under $40,000, one of which (the Leaf) starts under $30,000. 

I mean, what counts as “affordable” these days? The MSRP on the Nissan Leaf starts under 30k. The Chevy Bolt is about 32k.

I didn’t think Toyota could lower their standards like this. Hopefully they won’t think panel gaps and poor build quality are cool, too. 

Conservative? 150 degrees of rotation is going to be terrible, progressive or not. People have difficulty being accurate with a linear full-rotation steering setup, so this is going to be a shit show at near lock. These cars are going to drive like a video game at lower speeds and will not be predictable for anyone…

While Toyota’s approach makes more sense, the “conservative” approach would have been to have it be a goddam circle. 

We all thought the BMW X6 was a joke too.

It uses less material so it’s less expensive to build and Toyota/Tesla can save a buck or two on the BOM.

It is the privately owned ordinary cars that are the true losses, because those are cars people cared enough for to tranship rather than replace. They meant something to someone, and that is a shame to lose those emotional connections.

I wonder when this will put a dent in the luxury housing building boom. Maybe the feds can empty out some of these overseas tax shelters and free up some big city real estate for actual residents who actually need it. Dare to dream, thatguy. Dare to dream.

I rented a Euro mid size SUV (which would be a small SUV here - think X1 or Q3) in the UK last month. Delivered an average of 50mpg. Allowing for UK vs US gallons, that’s still 40 mpg. Gas not diesel, 5 passenger, four doors and decent hatchback load space.

I would take being on a motorcycle with the slim potential of being thrown from a crash to some kind of relative safety over being chewed up alive inside of that Renault any day of the week. There’s no way that’s safer.

Goes to show you that some companies will do the least amount of work they can legally get away with.

Quick summary for the impatient: