I’d say the level of denial is starting to mimic blackberry.

Yes, which is one of the reasons why EV adoption is happening quicker in Europe. 

Toyota = blackberry.

Nope. Try again. The cost to replace the battery is expensive, but it doesn’t degrade 60% in 10 years. More like 10%. 

Anyone surprised by the sticker price?

I’m surprised they would announce a new design with an ICE when most countries are making efforts to move away from them. I guess they aren’t planning for it to be a volume seller or available in many markets. 

In the 80’s, buttons were the design trend. Lots of buttons. The more square, the better. For whatever reason that trend has continued to now-ish. It’s swinging back in the other direction with a more minimalist design.

The part that amazes me most is that nothing was learned from any of these recessions. The moment the economy swings down even a little, there will be a lot of people defaulting and then another economic crisis. 

How did someone making under $18/hour and with $20k in debt get an auto loan for that much?

You can do the same with direct sales. Difference in this case is the dealership will allow you that test drive and charge you an arbitrary markup.

You’d be surprised. There are a lot of folks here who will tell you why dealerships are so great and direct sales are terrible.

Waiting for the dealership stans to tell us all about the value dealerships bring the consumers with their markups…

They aren’t making the fat profit margins on them, so don’t expect to see many. 

I think they are hideous as well. But I also think the people in the US that love trucks for their image will eat it up. The biggest limiting fact will be price. if they can deliver it at or around the stated price of $40k (doubtful) they won’t have issue selling in mass. $60/70/80k and it will sell like the model s…

Plot twist… most auto manufacturers already produce more efficient cars and engines outside of the U.S. R&D would be minimal. 

Ford is earning $25B in gross profit and they have discretion on what they spend it on. In this particular case, they do not want to reorganize their spend for additional labor costs.

Except, historical evidence and multiple bankruptcies by the major US automakers kind of indicates that’s not how it works. At all. Note, after each bankruptcy they mostly recovered by ruthlessly slashing their labor costs to regain profitability.

Profit matters less when you are a multibillion dollar company that’s 100+ years old. The expectation is they will rebound. For example, Boeing, a $100B company that is 100+ years old, had two 737 crashes, hundreds of people dead, the lawsuits of those families, and its best selling plane grounded. At the same time,…

Tech companies definitely have more leverage, however Ford/GM/etc... are companies with $150B+ in yearly revenues. They have also been around a very long time, and have little issue getting credit.

They have plenty of money to invest in new products, tech, etc...  None of these automakers have a capex problem.