High-earning plug-in hybrid owner here - I go to Walmart, not super regularly (I’d never buy groceries there) but if I need stationery, a key duplication, toiletries, etc I go to Walmart because it’s closer to my house than most other stores. I prefer Amazon for the most part but sometimes I can’t wait the 2 days for…

95 RON is actually equivalent to 91 in the US

It’s amusing how so many people don’t realize that putting 87 into a car that “requires” 91 is perfectly fine (as long as you don’t make a habit out of it). Automakers know that sometimes you can’t access 91 on a cross-country rural drive, and that sometimes you slip up and press the wrong button.

Trust me, allowing naturalized citizens to run would not actually change anything.

Trust me, allowing naturalized citizens to run would not actually change anything.

Parents owned a Lexus LS430 for 15 years, and while it was rock-solid reliable and never left us stranded, its electronic were not immune to failure. To its credit though, absolutely nothing broke until about 3 years after the warranty expired.

I was in Shanghai a few months ago and the 25% import tax doesn’t seem to be hurting sales of flagship German cars (A8, 7-series, S-class) and even Lexus. US-made German SUVs are also quite popular.

I stand corrected. Didn’t notice that the SLR was LHD. The i8, however, was indeed made in RHD.

“fled” is the wrong word, haha. The handover to China was expected and planned decades in advance. It was a formal and friendly withdrawal.

Hong Kong is a tiny dot on the map with extremely limited land. It drives on the opposite side of the road from mainland China, so cars registered in Hong Kong are for the most part confined to Hong Kong’s boundaries.

They’re right-hand-drive. Can’t bring them to the US.

Unions are responsible for giving us many of the workers’ rights we enjoy today.

In this globalized world, it’s tricky to determine the actual origin of individual components.

For cars, that is already true. Most cars imported from Mexico are low-end low-margin vehicles. Trucks, SUVs, and luxury cars are predominantly made in the USA or in other first world nations like Canada, Germany, and Japan, all of which compete on quality rather than labor cost. Labor and energy costs are actually…

It’s called one-size-fits-all. It’s the same reason why we often get multilingual labeling on retail products even though there is no reason to do so in most states. Why make different variants for different regions when it’s cheaper and more efficient to make one version for everyone?

I’d prefer having charging outlets and then having the IFE thrown out to save weight. I know airlines wouldn’t pass down the fuel savings, but they might at least delay the inevitable fare hike a little longer.

Even if California scraps its own standards, there’s still our neighbor to the north - Canada. It’s likely that manufacturers will want to keep up the one-size-fits-all strategy and make all their US cars compliant with Canadian standards anyway.

I’m also curious about how Canada - whose standards are as strict as California’s - will affect automakers’ decisions. A huge chunk of US-made vehicles are exported there tariff-free thanks to NAFTA. Even gas-guzzling behemoths like the F-150 sell pretty well up north despite high fuel taxes.

Some restaurants in immigrant communities are cash-only. It’s easy to suspect that there are tax evading shenanigans at play, but I actually suspect that honest cash-strapped immigrants just want to avoid paying the credit card processing fees since running a restaurant is difficult enough.

My ATM card is locked such that it’s only useful for cash withdrawals and can’t be used to directly pay for anything.