Agreed, I like this solution more

The oldest of my EVs is going on 6 years. I got 30k out of the factory tires, replacements (upgraded from OEM to performance summer tires) were $345 a piece and came with an alignment. Also have winter tires since I live in the snow belt but I wouldn’t call their initial purchase a maintenance item. Might have done…

A place where, even if the screen is broken, you can operate it manually by hand. I wouldn’t say a physical gear shift has to be a “lever” or a “knob” to count as physical.

For the door, it’s because it’s a frameless door where the window tucks under the door trim to seal out water and make for a quieter side. If you use the mechanical release, it doesn’t drop the window, so you’re fighting past the seal and trim and could break it off. The alternative would be to have louder cabin noise…

Then the issue would be people pulling it accidentally. Which in a frameless door that seals when closed, you can bust the trim off if you fling the door open on the regular.

I own two EVs and my car insurance premiums are +/- $5 over my state average for all cars. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but it still makes me very skeptical of the claim that EV insurance costs more.

Except that the oil itself needs to be replaced 2 to 3 times per year, which can be in the $30-100 range per. And then the air filters, the coolant flushes, the brake pads, etc.

But not really mentioned here is what the maintenance savings is, to make an apples to apples comparison. If you’re paying more for crash repairs, but much less for maintenance, it could still come out in your favor, especially if you’re not one to get into a lot of crashes.

It might be sooner than you think.

I agree that the screen shifter with no stalk is dumb. There is, however, still a physical gear shift in the Model X. It’s on the center console at the base of the wireless phone charging dock, straddling the physical hazard light button.

Model X has both a physical gear shift and a physical door release. The gear shift is sort of similar to Honda. The physical door release is similar to almost every other car.

Everyone looking at the situation seems to throw some amount of blame on the Model X. Some blame the doors’ convoluted emergency opening system

Agreed. I face this issue all the time when new passengers get the front row of my Model 3. I’ve had to catch so many people in an instant because I saw they were about to pull the manual door release

Ah gotcha, it’s the Taycan Cross Turismo I was thinking of

Cobalt, you mean the stuff used in gasoline production to make the exhaust more environmentally friendly? As far as I’m aware, all commercial gasoline production uses cobalt.

My point was that it’s probably very very rare for a 2 seater car to have 4 doors. At least the Mazda RX-8 still had a back seat so the doors made sense.

It’s already a liftback so you could really do that anyway even if there were still four seats. I guess it’s just a weird cost savings measure to keep the 4 doors rather than designing a new 2-door body, even though these things are expensive as heck anyway.

What a wacky gray area. If you took a coupe, cut the door in half, put a hinge on the other side so the doors opened like a wild west saloon, would that also make it a sedan?

Good catch, thanks. Still pretty hilarious that you can buy a 4-door 2-seat car from the factory

I guess it’s a good thing then that lithium comes from evaporating briny salt water ponds and collecting the deposits on the bottom.