Ridesharing is generally bad marketing for a given car, considering that most of the models listed really put driver ergonomics first and the back seat last (hello, Prius V). It’s how I learned to hate Nissan Jukes: Never driven one, never been in the front seat of one, but I’ve been in a couple Jukes as an Uber…

True, and the radar is useful at understanding what’s in front of the vehicle (and possibly, depending on the way the AI works, in “tagging” an object, so it can then be tacked optically from the sides/rear as the car passes).

Sure - I can totally see ways where a vision-only system becomes reliable and cheaper to implement than a vision + other sensor system, but I can also see ways where we get flooded with cheap LIDAR sensors to the point where not including them becomes ridiculous.

Well, that may be how it’ll start, but there’s realistic ways that the technology could scale (essentially, by using the kinds of things that make chips cheap to mass-produce). Even getting the cost of the system down really could help.

TOTALLY agree. I’ve taken shortcuts with code before - “eh, let’s just get this to work with the sample file then I’ll fix it later” is a common refrain in my head - and it’s always a bad idea.

Technically, yes, but sometimes it’s used to describe situations where the system isn’t currently working but might be fixable if you say, flash new firmware on it.

You’re missing the point. A modern car’s screen doesn’t just show the current radio station or track, it’s a full on infotainment system, showing the driver information about the car’s condition.

The solution is like coming up with a healthy diet: A little bit of everything, but using the “worst” stuff only in moderation. Moving a single human around in a box that’s 15 feet long x 6 feet wide and weighs a ton and a half is never going to work en masse for dense urban areas.

Not to get nitpicky, but LIDAR is an optical system, using lasers, it’s just that way, you get fast and accurate distance information.

To be fair, things have changed since you were a kid. The CARD Act basically raised the (no-cosigner) age of getting credit to 21, and for some people growing up in low-income households, parents might not be able to cosign. I’m not sure if secured credit cards - exactly what they sound like, where you’ve got a…

Oh, I’m not advocating that people with bad credit get into long-term car loans with 10%+ interest; I’m saying that interest rates go way up for people with bad credit. I used to volunteer with a group offering financial advice to low-income people, and I’d see stuff that was really infuriating, since it was often…

Maybe you were just doing it wrong.  Next time, try to relax and you might have a better time.

That’s the problem with the current-gen H-RV: It’s less functional space than the Fit for thousands more. I wish the H-RV was replaced by something closer to what the Element was, which *did* have significantly more space than the Fit, and still had the cool seat-folding features, etc.  (I shopped for a used Element a…

The argument against continuing to build them is that the capital demands are huge (money out with no money back), the potential that some customers might cancel orders (has happened once, but I think is somewhat unlikely outside of a stunt, given that you can’t just get an A320 on the same schedule instead), but,…

... if you’ve got good credit. 5, 7... longer loans for someone with bad credit are not likely to come cheap, in particular, since the vehicle is likely to be significantly underwater for the length of the loan, further reducing the ability for a company to recover losses through reposession.

This! And even if you thought they were a good idea, why limit the incentive to a certain # of vehicles by automaker? Fast forward say, 5-10 years, if the subsidy is extended that long: Any manufacturer that gave a damn about electrification is past the phase out, but say, Mazda (which doesn’t currently have an EV for…

It’s an odd construction, but my read was “I will buy this, and I will buy the PS Classic, if you can easily hack it to add ROMs. BTW, guys, can you easily hack the PS Classic to load new ROMs?”

Well, FedEx and UPS have done purchases of a handful of electric vans, but F-150s are used for everything under the sun.

That’s certainly true, but you’d think that Ghosn’s defense would be easier if he could show other examples of how people in situations like his were treated. He can’t really say “well, here’s some other perks that foreign CEOs of major publicly-traded Japanese companies get,” because AFAIK, he’s the only one (at…

Again, not suitable for every case, but a lot of vehicles never tow nearly anything close to their max weight. I was thinking more of delivery vans, which tend to be based on truck platforms (think Ford E-series).