There’s a guy in my office who’s like this - he’ll forego other options that are in budget to get the largest wheels available. He’d rather have big wheels than heated seats, and we live in New England!

That’s a good point. But the job market in general is pretty tight right now, so if people want to go outside automotive there’s probably plenty of opportunity. 

1st - moves like this might help in the short term, but it leads to more pain in the long run. When a company starts cutting things like travel expenses to save a buck and cutting pay people start looking at other jobs. The ones that leave tend to be some of your most valuable employees too, as they’re the ones that…

I’m guessing there’s a “no more than” missing in front of 1200.

My thinking exactly. She wants another crossover, and this would be perfect for her commute (20 mi each way, but she might be able to plug in at work).

This is pretty much exactly what I was looking for a year ago - notifications, media controls, a long battery life, and actually looks classy. I ended up just getting a versa but I still don’t like wearing it at work or in formal settings. If this was around it would’ve been a slam dunk. Sigh...

A fix for the Black Hawk is already underway - look up the ITEP program. New engine with more power that should claw back the payload it’s lost over the years. Pair that with some new rotor blades and a fly by wire system and it’ll be much better than before.

Now that actually makes some sense.

Oh I know, I have one. Super disappointing. It’s got decent passing power but off the line it almost feels slow. My A4 2.0T felt faster with ~220 hp.

True, but I didn’t think that had to do with the performance aspects. The knocks against the old Vs seemed to be things like the interior and dealerships.

I understand the desire to compete more directly with the Germans, it’s the choice of using V for that I don’t get. They spend 20 or so years building V as a legit contender for M/RS etc at least from a performance standpoint. Why confuse customers by making it a totally different thing? Didn’t they already have…

So they’re really doing it - throwing away any credibility the “V” cars have gotten for what reason, exactly? So someone can claim they drive a V but only has to pay 45 grand? 325 HP is what you can get in Fusion for god’s sake.

I don’t think it’s the emissions from the race itself, but rather the construction to get the track up to safety spec.

I’ve become pretty jaded to these “battery breakthrough” articles myself, but at least this one has a real vested interest behind it that’s already making moves about bringing this to market ASAP. This might be one of the few we actually see.

This tech is actually being worked on, though I doubt the production version will be able to jump. Look up a company called Clearmotion.

I have a Fusion sport...it doesn’t work very well. 1 flat and a bent rim from potholes in 2 years (separate incidents).

Slightly off topic and a good bit less serious - not me, but my wife called the cops on a school bus driver who was pooping in the woods a few houses up from us. She saw the bus pulled over in the middle of the day, nobody in it and got suspicious. As she drove by she saw the driver squatting next to a pond on our…

“were you unaware that the intent was to produce a desirable motor car, you would likely have interpreted as the most eloquent argument in favor of the abolition of the sense of sight ever recorded by the hand of man.”

This goes back to my inner 10 year old. I remember watching one of the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies and at some point his super high tech invisible Aston Martin cleared its windshield by...the same boring wipers as any other car. I thought why hasn’t anyone come up with better tech to clear water from a windshield?

It does seem odd that they’re touting all these highly detailed images and 4k video shooting which will make huge files...and then still giving you 64 GB standard. That phone is going to fill up quick.