As always - I’ll get my car in for the recall repair when the %$#@#$ parts are available!

It isn’t just the charge time - solid state promises higher energy density and less capacity loss over time as well.

Thankfully, suppliers and automakers are promising solid state in 3-5 years.

I’d argue very few people will ever be convinced of that. I do a lot of woodworking, as do some coworkers - the rest bought trucks justifying them with the trips they take to the lumberyard. I rent a truck the 2-3 times a year I need to do that for ~$20 each time. My gas savings the rest of the year more than pay…

“In Education, really shitty teachers are virtually impossible to fire and take years to dismiss, after they’ve caused damage to so many kids.”

You see, this sort of statement is actually unadulterated bullshit.

They’re actually easy to fire, if the principal actually does their job and can state WHY they should be…

When I bought our Mazda6, the 1 year old used car with 35k on the odometer was $800 more than brand new. When I bought my old Taurus (a car at the time that had horrendous depreciation stats), the 1 year old used car was only $3k less than a brand new copy with more features.

Going through your list of pros, I see…

The rule really should be simple -

Take the expected life of the vehicle. As a default, use 15 years. Divide the off-the lot new price for that vehicle by that lifespan. Then multiply that amount by each year or each 10,000 miles on the odometer, whichever is greater.

If you aren’t getting more than that base figure,…

You might be shocked at how little hit some vehicles take. You’re not typically getting a private party sale at that point, and the dealer markup can kill you. I see dealers demanding only a $1-2k discount on a 1-2 year old vehicle that originally had an MSRP of $30k all the time.

Hell, last time I bought a car…

Actually, car manufacturers have been pushing the ends of charge/discharge to 10%-90% lately. But they’ve only done that after finding 20-80% worked better than they thought, and I believe the only ones pushing it to 10-90 are using active cooling, too - it helps a ton for life if you use active cooling during…

Actually, not so much for Ford or GM, either - they, Toyota, and Nissan are not far behind Tesla. FCA is WAAAAY behind on that mark.

Nonsense. This tax credit is by its very design set to phase out in the near future. And even then, car companies are throwing fortunes at developing more electric vehicles knowing that most of them won’t be eligible for the credit.

Also, your perception of batteries doesn’t match their realities. Modern EV…

Nonsense... the UAW has agreed to plenty of cost-cutting measures in the past.

Not everything in Kentucky is run on coal.

The Kentucky Coal Museum is run on solar.

One of the many reasons it is difficult to discuss is that too many people have false perceptions about the costs of what need to be done.

Take green energy - thanks to an explosion in popularity, there has been significant investment in fixing production issues. For decades, solar panels were basically made from…

It takes a lot longer to buy a brown diesel wagon. :P

The general rule of thumb, though, is that no vehicle is ever built without an order - whether from a dealer guessing what people will want for their lot, or from one putting in an actual customer order. It’s pretty easy for them to put in special orders between the…

You are correct, sir. They can generally get the vehicle out the factory doors within 2-3 days. The rest is transportation.

For reference, the publicly stated goal a few years ago at Ford was 14 days or less for any model, from the moment the order is received to the moment the vehicle is delivered to the customer. Simplifying the number of permutations actually allows this to be much lower in practice, since with fewer permutations,…

How do you propose to neutrally balance the arms at all positions - this isn’t simply balancing while sticking straight out - it has to handle all arm positions without adding load, and assist in carrying load at all positions when required. This can’t be done with a steadycam rig.

Never let them know that you have a dashcam... calmly let the whole thing play out and THEN nail them later.

I’d wager they can find a way to spin off the battery business. There’s almost always a loophole - such as structuring it as a spin off of the car business rather than the battery business. It would just be semantics, really...

Oh, no - that was their net loss. Their cash burn is MUCH worse. They burned through $1.31 billion in cash last quarter alone - total free cash flow was a negative $1.42 billion.

A company can survive negative cash flows if it has hopes of pulling a profit - but Tesla is lighting money on fire hand over fist and…