4th Gear: Japan Auto is doomed unlessthey get their EV act together. Toyota’s and Honda’s arrogance has come home to roost. With the $7,500 EV credit likely to be resurrected for all automakers durng a “phase-in period”, suddenly ICE sedans and small SUVs over $35K will all appear a little too expensive compared to…

Not one decent EV offering from Japan, NOT ONE (fancy announcements from Nissan/Toyota with no inventory to speak of do not count). Hyundai group has raced passed them in one model year and will lap Japan next year.

Sadly that boat has sailed - no thanks Tesla you’ve started a terrible trend.

Actually, they’re taking orders NOW (refundable reservations for $500) and customization (colors, options, etc.) next fall 2023 and deliveries in early 2024 (similar to the timeline for the C40 launch). $80,000 is a bit rich for average charging speeds that are almost twice as long as the EV6. They need to increase…

Maybe it’s that Sony-Honda joint venture designed to inspire the Playstation generation

Toyota is not doing well at all and faces an existential crisis right now. It will be canceling the current EV platform (too costly) and starting from scratch while planning to raise the prices of all its vehicles next year. Not offering EV vehicles for the next 2 years? Good luck with that.

2nd Gear: “Elon Musk’s fuckery with Twitter and Republicans has hurt Tesla’s brand in liberal California. Shocking, I know.” Oh give it a break, it has NOTHING to do with Musk’s politics and everything to do with actual car prices: Model Y is $64K while the Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Ford MachE all better values befo…

Yes to Vision EV Concept and No to everything else so far

ROFL that should be BMW’s new tagline because seriously, this is the issue facing prospective BMW buyers. It’s ugly but everything else is so good. This is how I perceive the Tesla Cybertruck - I know it will be pretty impressive on specs, hardware and EV competency but that design *blech* you either hate it or love…

They do invest greatly in R&D but sometimes it’s in a completely different direction than where consumers are trendin - in this case, they bet bucks on hydrogen fuel cell instead of EV. That’s lost time to play catchup. So you are correct about R&D, but doesn’t always pay off (not any time soon at least)

Inflation is a thing right now. Wages have been going up since the pandemic, so has power and transportation costs, not to mention raw materials, etc. Throw in dealer markups and limited availability of only the more expensive models, and the middle class is in for a long ride in their 9 year old car until affordable…

1st Gear: “As a general rule, it’s foolish to trust any company...” this goes without saying in any capitalistic society where market bubbles (aka irrational exuberance) are the froth of life and the stock market ecosystem defines society. All employees are assets to be used, abused and discarded, whatever has the…

And having the least comfortable hard as nails seats does not help the Bolt at all

Sorry, just looks like another giant luxo-sedan a la Buick. I rather get the Taycan if I’m getting a boring 4-door sedan. Specs are AWESOME but the looks are meh for me.

Kia/Hyundai will be rolling out EVs for $35K MSRP next year which will be the game changer for adoption. From the beginning, the Bolt has the worst car seats for a modern car so apparently it’s going to cost an extra $10K for better seats. 

I completely agree. I don’t know if we will exceed 20% adoption due to the limitations you’ve described but for sure 15% adoption is very achievable if only limited to metro areas with adequate off-street parking. As for infrastructure support - CA is spending billions on a pointless high speed rail. Billions that…

5th Gear: “In theory, this should mean that the first five percent of EV buyers have struggled through the poor infrastructure, lack of charging support and mediocre range to pave the way for a bright battery-powered future that should soon follow.”

Inflation much? Dang - I wouldn’t look at this twice. I’d rather get the equivalent Honda Civic for this price

Oh no say it ain’t so - the ONLY Toyota EV announced is so far behind the rest of the market and so unavailable that this is a moot point

My dad bought a first generation LS400 when I was in high school and WOW, it was so great compared to the competition. We loved it so much he bought the SC400 coupe when it came out - again WOW. I was less impressed by the GS we got a few years later, and less impressed by my mom’s RX and now I’m utterly depressed by…