That level of knowledge deserves more stars than I can give.

C’mon! Noone with the Volkswagen Routan? A Grand Caravan with VW badging!

I tow my motorcycle to the track behind my Golf Sportwagen perhaps 10 times/yr. 215 mile round trip. The current crop of EVs is borderline for that use case on a single charge. So...I haven’t bought one. I found it was pretty easy not to buy one.  I didn’t even need to rant about it on-line.

I’ve been saying it for 11 years (I leased a Volt in ‘11): people will find EVs desirable for exactly the reason you mention - it’s the ultimate in smooth, silent operation.

Reading the source article carefully, it sounds like he sent some emails and slack messages and figured out where the source repository was (gitlab.uber.com?) and saw whatever projects were open to the company (not many, I hope). Uber shut down a bunch of systems out of caution/fear.

To your point, I wonder how culpable the dealer experience is in motorcycle sales never fully recovering after 2008/2009? “$7800 OTD on an $5400 MSRP bike? Screw that.”

This. My pet theory (that I’ve repeated here several times) is that the dealer network largely was built when bike sales were much higher. Sales collapsed in 2008 and never fully recovered but there are still many ‘mega’-style dealers just filled with mouths to feed. It should not take armistice-level negotiations to…

Tangentially related - the first female winner of a MotoAmerica motorcycle race (MotoAmerica was founded in 2015) was 15 year old Kayla Yaakov, who won a Junior Cup (max age, 25, but realistically all teenagers I think) this past June. She is currently 4th in the standings.

Ugh. THAT dealer. A salesman there lied to me twice, more interested in selling me the used bike in front of me than a new bike that, it turned out, was three weeks out. Not six months. And no, Ducati does not require a customer deposit to order a bike *rollseyes*.

It bugs me so damn much that they never publish median, though they clearly have the data. It must be dramatically lower.

I caught a YouTube video of a drag strip event full of insane ‘street’ cars. I think one snuck into the 7s. There were quite a few crashes. Things can go sideways (heh) in a real hurry on a prepped dragstrip really deeply into the run. Not knowing anything about anything, I kind of thought you launch hard then watch…

The most recent estimate I read has 14.4MM US car sales this year. 2019 was 17.1MM. I wonder what the real demand is right now, factoring in delayed purchases? 18MM? More? How long do you think it will take to make up that shortfall?

You can’t extend your (frankly, amazing) experience across the whole market. The numbers don’t support it. Cox just revised 2022 estimated new cars sales in the US to 14.4 million from 15.3. 2019 was 17.1!

Old reply but I paid $6500 for a mint matte black 848 Evo after briefly considering a V2. Changed the fluids and belts, threw some good tires on it, and now I’m tracking it. FWIW, there are better track bikes (similar money would put me on a 675 Triumph) but I wanted the Duc, so that’s what I got. 

You have to work out a contract for your electricity, trying to time the market to lock in a good rate? Otherwise, you pay the equivalent of a hotel’s super high “rack rate”? I just want the lights to come on...

A friend is an airline captain. He had a colossal screw up recently where he had to return to gate TWICE. First was because they calculated overloading as they pushed back (either the air temp increased or they put too much fuel in). They were able to off load fuel. Then they pushed back and ... went illegal and had…

LOL.  Right?

Ugh. The average monthly payment IS NOT $712. That headline is bullshit. $712 is from the “Cox Automotive/Moody Analytics Affordability Index”. The referenced documents explain it all but, of course, no-one even took the 5 minutes required to skim them.

Tell me this includes motorcycle dealerships. They are the worst in my recent experience. $7800 OTD on a $5400 MSRP was the high score when I naively thought I could buy a cheap new Husky with no hassle. I’m not sure I’m ever going to buy a new motorcycle but I’ve bought 3 used ones in the last 8 months.

The problem is that, while your bank was very good about making you whole, there was a period of time where your money was gone. For people on the edge of solvency, that can trigger a cascade. After the third time the debit card from my credit union was compromised (used ONLY at the supermarket and lowes depot), I…