I like it, but I think the pricing will make the R1S from Rivian seem like a very good value especially since Rivian still qualifies for the $7500 tax rebate. With this launching in 2023 you’d have to bet on Rivian bungling their launch not being able to build in volume. The R1S can pull a 3 second 0-60 without using…

Because you’re not the only car manufacturer out there? So sure, Ford could insist on charging MSRP for their cars, but the other manufacturer would just lower their MSRP to take sales if they’re all direct and they have the dealer margins to work with. Competition doesn’t go away just because dealerships go away…

So if your argument is that selling direct isn’t economically beneficial to the manufacturer because it “gets really expensive, real fast” then why would dealerships be afraid of these manufacturers selling direct? Clearly they’re going to fail and tie up all their money in their own sales network so you might as well…

Manufacturers have to compete with either other, so even without dealers involved there will be price competition. Like you know, Rivian competing with Tesla for SUV and truck sales. Consumers also despise haggling so I don’t understand how you could possibly see this as a positive. You’re literally haggling over a…

Honestly at this point I think EV powertrains are developed enough that hybrids and plugins just end up alienating both the people who want high tech electrified torque in their car and also the people who want the last and greatest of the ICE sports cars with an incredible exhaust note.

Buying up debt is actually how the United States “prints more money”. It’s not literally going out and printing money but the central bank of the United States goes out and purchases US Treasuries which basically pumps money into the economy.

That’s not true, numerous states have other green energy sources like hydro (much of the pacific northwest as well as much of the northeast of the US is powered largely by hydro). That’s why all those power hungry server farms are put in Washington state.

Sure but then it gets relegated to a second car and in that case you don’t even need the kind of range this car has since the vast majority of people aren’t commuting 250 miles a day so if your use case is limited to going to work and maybe the mall then coming back home then you really only need like a 150 range-that…

You do realize that the phone has a perfect record of the exact time he pulled up each website, right? As does his cell phone provider via their DNS servers.

I don’t know why you would expect autopilot to do any of the things you claim it should have done. Regular autopilot is just a lane centering adaptive cruise control system so of course it’s not going to get out of the left lane. It also won’t slow down just because some idiot in a BMW in the lane next to you is…

Tesla came out with their charger years before SAE released their SAE CCS plug. It’s their exclusive club because nobody else cared to build out a real charging network until numerous years later.

Honestly I wish the other plugs were at least a little bit less clunky even if they didn’t want to use Tesla’s design. That SAE CCS plug is comically huge and clunky while Tesla’s design is literally 1/5th the size even though it predates the SAE CCS standard.

It would be nice but you do get pretty used to the speed being on the center screen in the corner closest to the driver. Honestly it’s just a cost control measure more than anything else. 

$5K? You just add a dryer wall outlet plug to your garage that should cost maybe $500 and then you plug in the charger that comes with the car. Maybe spend another $50 buying the dryer plug adapter on newer cars since they don’t come with them anymore.

Just looking at how laggy the computer interface is in reviews drives me crazy. It also looks ridiculous to me that they literally stuck a wheel onto the LCD screen. It is nice that you can get ventilated seats in the Mach E but otherwise the Model Y is the much easier vehicle to live with. 

It’s over $40K by now and this particular car costs $49K if you don’t waste $10,000 on the full self driving nonsense. So it’s only about 20% over the median vehicle price. Many states offer EV incentives as well so for many buyers this will be very close to the median new car.

This just reeks of extreme cost cutting

If they want to sell more of these they need to do better than a 50kw maximum DC-DC charging rate. 259 miles of range is great until you realize that you’re going to be at a charging station for over an hour while competitor EVs only need 1/2 the time to charge.

Tesla has service centers and now that they’ve sold so many cars the service isn’t as good as it used to be (like guaranteed high end loaners all the time used to be the norm back in the Model S only days), but they give out Uber credits if there’s something wrong with the car and if it’s a longer repair they’ll still…

Taiwan’s response here has literally zero to do with geopolitics. They just have no chip capacity and there’s no real way to add chip capacity. The chip shortage is due to US policies now disallowing use of Chinese fabs like SMIC, but it’s not like Taiwan can just immediately double or triple their chip outputs. It’s…