And also just switched to unleaded fuel a few years ago.

From a product standpoint Ford would make no sense for an FCA merger. That leaves VW and Toyota as the most viable options, both could use a truck/SUV boost and both have stronger small car lineups.

That is the nature of the beast with turbocharged engines. Cruising nice and easy? Great mileage. Pushing hard? Bad mileage. The same engine should do better in a car application than a truck application (less weight/towing).

you mean the same sub 3 liter engine that does just fine in a 4000+ lb F-150 towing 7,000+ lbs?

penciled to appear before the end of the next decade.

To step up the autonomous capabilities to a point where the car is 100% capable on its own would most likely require more or more powerful sensors and controls, not just software.

I was surprised when they said the model 3 even has autopilot. Any higher level autonomous controls will definitely be introduced at higher price points first. It wouldn’t surprise me if the next generation of model S is the first to reach level 4, but the model 3 is all about reducing cost, don’t expect anything new…

I don’t think so. Believe it or not, it takes time to build one of the largest buildings on earth, and you don’t build it unless you are 100% sure of what you can produce there.

They have enough space to achieve those volumes but there’s no way they’ve tooled it all up. And the plant was probably working 24 hours per day at those volume, which Tesla does not yet have the employees for

Yet, the gigafactory should be capable of producing substantially more batteries than tesla could consume when their vehicle factory gets up to full production.

He doesn’t mean developing the model 3 at all, he means doing a big public reveal and encouraging pre-orders 2 years out so they can get the money from the deposits. They’ve made over $200 million from these pre-orders.

I read the article you stole that phrase from yesterday, how clever and original.

Huge potential fines are no longer threatening if they are never enforced, justifying the companies’ hubris, they feel they are above the penalties.

The billions of dollars in fines would stop the other automakers from bitching about the money they spent to comply as you suggested they would. And without a substantial fine there is no incentive for VW not to try this again under the new stricter standards.

$900 million government fine, ~$600 million paid in claim settlements to victims, $2.8 billion in recall repair costs in 2014, and ongoing lawsuits and litigation is scot free? I agree the fine should have been a lot higher, but you can hardly call that scot free.

Doesn’t count, he didn’t torque the lugs down to specification.

In F1 qualifying you can realistically only get 1 or 2 fast laps out of a set of tires. This means teams have to send drivers out from the pits a couple laps in advance so they can do their out-lap then a fast lap before the end of the session, etc. It’s not like these guys are pounding around for the entire session…

The lap has to be finished before the 90 second cutoff in the new format. As long as teams know that they can plan for it and it shouldn’t have much of an impact, they will know they need to start a flying lap in time to finish before the cutoff.

I’ve visited many times and sat in the back of these things countless times. They are right and S-classes are wrong. God I wish we had these in the US.

I hate to break it to you, but if you are 30 years old you are considered a millennial by most experts.