On the other, I wasn’t thrilled with how Skinner’s character was portrayed. His hatred of import cars and undying love for fat-displacement V8s felt very heavy-handed and stereotypical. Perhaps this was funny for a non-American audience, but for me it felt tired and stale. Like, “Oh, look, here’s a twangy American…

Gotta side with Nico on this one. Maybe not on the percentages, but genetics certainly plays a role. F1 is full of people with comparable privilege who will never reach his level.

I do all the time. I started out working in the field on industrial equipment, then moved into a design role on the same equipment.

Bullshit. I, and a large portion of the engineers I’ve ever worked with, do tons of wrenching in our spare time. We’re very aware of what servicing something is going to be like when we design it. That’s our job. Sometimes, when we see something is going to be a pain to work on, we design it that way anyway. That’s…

When your one year old Subie is burning a quart of oil every 270 miles, that reasoning doesn’t work, nor does it when the same faulty cheapout $200 power window regulator design (VW) is used for years without improving the 2cent plastic part that fails over and over. Nor Takata switching to unstable ammonium nitrate…

Anyone with any auto industry experience at all has been shaking their heads this whole time.

I laughed as well on the initial timing roll out, but what I did not expect was Musk selling his employees on purchasing pre-production vehicles. He is selling his test fleet, it’s quite brilliant (if you have people loyal *read:dumb* enough to pay for them).

Their initial timeline of a trickle of cars by the end of 2017 had a cushion. Their latest timeline of July release had removed all cushion. I think anyone in the automotive industry would agree that is an extremely accelerated timeline and pretty much requires best case scenario to make happen.

Your last paragraph was the entire point of the article that Musk is firing back at. It wasn’t about how Tesla is fucking things up. It was about Tesla knowingly selling an impossible production ramp up timeline in order to get more preorders and boost stock prices. His complaints about the article are nothing more…

Except most manufacturers understand how long and difficult it is to set up a new line, so they don’t make ridiculous claims about building an absurd amount of cars before they’re ready. They also don’t throw themselves “we built a car” parties when the line isn’t even running yet.

An automated line to do something as simple as secondary packaging of say, syringes, can take months and months to set up beyond the initial design, build, debug, install, etc.

Right? I’m sitting over here like... “yeah, that’s called setting up a factory.” I don’t do anything nearly as complicated as a full automobile and I’m still completely unsurprised by anything I’ve read. Worst that can be said is that Tesla/Musk underestimated the timeline, but the process itself seems pretty normal.

As an OEM on my 5th car launch... this is how it starts. A new body line is ambitious and tuning and optimization is often done months into start of production.

The main game changer this season is that the cars and even tires are allowed to be wider. Cornering speeds seem to be unprecedented, hence we are seeing lap records being broken this year.

GODS MASSA WAS STRONG THEN

Abarth 500 with warranty that sound is amazing

I mean, minimum wage in California is 10.50 an hour, regardless of tips. It comes down to a belief in the right to a livable wage for work. Plenty of folks disagree in the whole premise of minimum wage.

The pitch to drivers is that it’s income, but instead, it’s more like a great way to convert depreciation into cash.

I guess it’s just unreasonable to expect that someone should be able to earn enough at an occupation to survive.

For a long time i thought Hamilton was a jackass, but lately, i kind of like the guy