It’s a lot of fleet sales, but small in number compared to off-lease vehicles - so its not like the good old days when 100,000 1 year old Tauruses hit the market every single year, causing massive first year depreciation and dragging down new prices, too... But both have really refocused their fleet sales on the…

yeah, but what did you pay for it?

Around here, a 5 year old tacoma with average mileage would have to have had an original sales price around $35k to still sell for over $20k.

That’s not much difference in terms of % depreciation than a Camry/Accord/Fusion. In dollar terms, its considerably more.

My cars remained useful up until the day I sold them and well after... any vehicle in working order is useful....

Quite a bit not correct here...

First off, NHTSA tracks vehicle lifespans, and there is no significant difference between trucks and cars for longevity. People may think so, but there isn’t.

As for selling cars “in droves to rental companies”, this isn’t quite correct, either. The kings for rental fleet sales are…

Part of the “higher depreciation” for cars simply comes from higher discounts on the initial sale. All these services that rate depreciation calculate it vs. MSRP, not actual sales price. When calculated vs. actual sales price, the depreciation curves are much much closer.

That said, its absurd that they should be…

The risk of being underwater is really only in the case of an accident, so long as you save the extra $ that you’re saving in the form of the lower payment.

For example, if a 5 yr loan at 1.9% keeps you from being underwater and a 7 yr loan at 1.95% would have you underwater for awhile, but you saved the difference in…

“Lenders in America’s $1.2tn car-loan market are extending terms for as long as eight years, meaning they face a greater risk of defaults and meagre recovery values.”

The conclusions here are not necessarily true. The risk of default is going to be more a function of the credit rating and financial stability of the…

The time they still didn’t pull a GAAP profit while manipulating things to create the false impression of a profit?

The constant excuse-making of long-term capital investment causing short-term losses (it doesn’t, that’s not how capital investments work) gets really old.

Where do you get the idea that they would be profitable if they hadn’t done that? They never were particularly close to being profitable on a GAAP basis before, and capital investments don’t come out of current earnings.

I just want to know if Mazda will match the Accord’s fuel economy...

Thanks to Ford being a bunch of idiots and pulling out of the market, I’m left with 6 or Accord as the only likely choices for my next vehicle based on what is on the market today. I prefer the dynamics of the 6, but the space and fuel economy of the…

YES.

It is quite literally his job to respond to questions from all sides. He has a fiduciary duty to be honest with shareholders, even those shorting his stock. If he feels the people asking the question are shorting his stock and taking the wrong opinion, it is his duty to explain why. Not to act like a petulant…

This only digs the hole deeper. Whether the people asking the question are short-sellers or not, the information is prudent to any investor in the company. Pointing to the newsletter is absurd as it doesn’t contain the details they were looking for, and was not released much more than an hour before the actual meeting.

…

““They are actually on the *opposite* side of investors. HyperChange represented actual investors, so I switched to them.””

The “dry” questions were fundamental questions about how the business is functioning. Investors need to know this information. Claiming that this fundamental knowledge works against investors is…

Tesla stock is back even higher? No, they’re still down about 5% from before they announced earnings.

True - though most were sold only in the past few years, by which time automakers would have already been prepping for meeting the standard. Pretty much any new application after 2012 I would count on likely being ready, which means most of them. Heck, Ford has produced 10 different ecoboost engines, all but 3 of…

Not accurate..

Just more evidence of the laziness that can infect an industry at times when not sufficiently prodded by the outside.

Same nonsense when they proposed significant increases in semi truck fuel efficiency. We heard all sorts of cries on how it would be impossible, too costly, etc. Then just a year or two after the…

Tan is fine *if* they choose an appropriately dark color for the surfaces that would be reflected. My 96 Taurus had a tan interior, but the dash was a dark brown - no reflection problems.

“Nailed It” on Netflix hits that same approach - people trying to bake some overly complicated cake and failing miserably. And they all have a good time laughing about it, and the professional chefs are actually quite complimentary and just give them advice on how to do better next time.

Try watching “Canada’s Worst Driver”. They put a giant tank of water on top of a car with an open sunroof and the drivers have to negotiate a course without jerky moves or else the water will slosh through the open sunroof all over them. :)