The 2024 Model Year is shaping up to be the year of the EV. I suspect we’re 6 months out from seeing Toyota announce their EV Tacoma and FJ based on the concepts they showed last month. It looks like GM, VW, MB, BMW, Kia/Hyundai and Ford will also be bringing serious new offerings. Hell, the CyberTruck might even be…

You haven’t lived until you’ve wiped with snow.

Strongly agreed. I’d add on pads / tampons and a jumper battery pack. For folks with a vehicle that has some space, adding a good shovel, fire extinguisher, air compressor, tire plug kit and a tow strap can be literal life savers if you drive rural roads.

Everytime I look at the giant Waymo sensor pod or see the array of sensors on the Stanford project cars tooling around Palo Alto, it feels pretty clear that Elon may have lost the plot on making Level 4 and 5 autonomy a reality with cameras alone.

GM tried with the Bolt to middling results, then realized the top of the market has more room for innovation. Hopefully this ridiculous monster is the beginning of effective EV adoption for mainstream NORM buyers.

At $36k, plus the cost of a good bed cover, I’d still say that the Maverick Lariat FX4  is the best little adventure vehicle money can buy. It certainly gives the Subaru Outback and RAV4 TRD a run for their money.

This is a really good assessment. The last season took the ups and downs that made the previous seasons so great into smooth upward trajectory with small blips of sadness or frustration.

Market data gives limited insight when you are talking about new/emerging categories or niche markets. The broad category of “Adventure Vehicle” is arguably the hottest and highest margin segment in the NORAM automarket right now, and Nissan has missed the boat with the exception of the new Frontier.

Given the wait times and mark ups on AWD Sprinters and Transits right now, Nissan could make a real business case to bring this over for both the commercial and consumer market.

Absolutely. The only way to stay on the road was put it in 4-Lo, drop it in 2nd and let the engine modulate speed.

Toyota’s 4wd can do that, but it doesn’t mean I can. Putting A-TRAC on is like putting the 4wd on rails.

I was driving in untracked ice / snow this weekend and Toyota’s A-TRAC is quite a thing to behold in 4-Lo. In conditions that were so slick it was hard to walk in boots, A-TRAC was finding traction up and down 12% hills.

This is a tough choice for shows to make. Insecure has ignored the pandemic and let the protagonist thrive as an event planner. The choice makes sense for the story Issa Rae wanted to tell... but there is something hard about seeing beloved characters get to just skip through the challenges the real world has faced.

“Jeep Wranglers are good in the snow.”

I have an uneasy truth with my partner on this. She has committed to feign an audible “oh, cool” when I spot a special car. In return I owe her 7 minutes a week listening in rapt attention while she explains 90 Day Fiance. 

Tesla only survived because of a $465M taxpayer loan and $7500 tax credits on the first 250k cars that they sold. It is a remarkable company that jump started global EV sales; but they only got through 2009-2016 because of public funding. It’s more than a little frustrating to see Elon go full libertarian 12 years…

He put in $6.5M of the original $7.5M in funding and the founders were out before production started in Fremont. I don’t particularly care for Elon, but he has overseen every major development of the company since they picked the name.

I work at a company that produces a popular voice assistant, and “*service*, play Despacito” remains a hilarious meme on our internal chat to this day.

Pipes, bongs and papers are pretty, and I know some people like the ceremony. If you leave in one of the free states, it seems like a no-brainer to stick to edibles. If instant feedback and inhalation is your thing, the Pax vaporizer really can’t be beat.

I strongly agree. It’s a 50 page Atlantic article in the form of a fun and digestible movie.