It worked for him in the past with Tesla where the engineers missed his ambitious timelines, but still came out with a vehicle much faster than most of the industry was doing (even more difficult for a startup to achieve, especially on a brand new chassis and relatively new technology).

Good point about correlation factors. The nature of the brand (being all EVs) will tend to concentrate the cars to certain states and driving locations. Without controlling for those factors, it's anyone's guess why the numbers. It also matters if the fatalities are talking about in-vehicle or to others.

I was kind of beat to it, but here’s the more detailed explanation:

“Door locks are used for locking the door. In many cars those are automatically released on release of the airbags.”

It’s cheaper because if you actually examine the design in detail, the mechanical door pull is just a simple lever cable. This design eliminates the need for a lock mechanism because the “lock” is 100% software based.

The rear door releases are hidden to prevent children from pulling it. Putting it in an obvious place would defeat the purpose of child locks.

I have the same experience. The emergency release handle is in the intuitive place where people would look for a door release. The door button actually few people use on the first go because they don’t expect to press a button to open the door.

That seems to be a myth. The doors instead likely couldn’t open once the water pressure gets high enough. Basically unless you open the doors immediately before the water gets high enough, you won’t be able to until the water pressure equalizes.

My understanding is although Rivian presents itself as similar to Tesla (proprietary OS, no Carplay or Android Auto), it’s still a work in progress in terms of software. For example, they only got YouTube this year. A lot of their software features (like charging management, Bluetooth key) is more rough around the…

I doubt Musk can make any promises until the picture is clear on tariffs. Up to 200% is a deal killer obviously, but even a substantial amount lower may still make it so it doesn’t make sense. His caveats in the original promise was probably exactly because of this. I wonder how precious trade agreements (including USM…

Yep, as much as Musk complains, Democrats have been positive to Tesla and there is no indication Harris will change the overall trajectory. For the consumer side tax credit, Tesla is one of the biggest beneficiary parties due to being one of the few vehicles meeting domestic content requirements. For CAFE standards,…

Yeah, I was looking down the comments and you are the first one I see that noticed it was the trade-in value, which is BS for determining actual value, especially given Tesla is known to give low ball offers in the first place. I did a quick look on autotrader and even lower end 2022 Model S with higher miles can…

Battery packs are modular and made up of many cells and given how relatively small the diameter of that drill looks, at most it might short a few cells even if drilling clean through (which as others pointed out it likely only drills enough to get through the casing). Being able to get water in to keep the cell temps…

Liability (including criminal or otherwise) is different from insurance.

Not sure what facts you are talking about that he is ignoring, he seems to be right. Other than trucks, SUVs are outselling cars.

It didn't sound right to me either when they announced owners have to pay out of pocket for the recalls. But in this case, if forced to pay for it, they may just throw up their hands and not do anything as it seems unlikely they have money left to do it.

I don’t think EV owners are smug about it, the point they just want to make is having an EV is not always necessarily a bad thing in an evacuation. This is just a reminder that even though gas can be refueled quickly, in a disaster scenario getting it is not always possible.

I think all the automakers putting the ports in the front had the idea that people would pull into a garage and then exit and go toward the front of the car. Basically what made sense for a gas station analogy may not necessarily make as much sense in a home setting.

The FAQ pages says they are working on an extension cable adapter, but it will probably take some development time to design one to either work with the liquid cooling or with a built in chip to reduce the power or do some sort of smart temperature based power reduction.

Presumably that is for AC cables? Superchargers are high power DC so use copper to reduce heat generation in the cables. As it is, they already have to use liquid cooling to be able to keep the cables a reasonable thickness/weight, switching to aluminum will likely require a higher gauge which would defeat the purpose.