You have an interesting definition of Vaporware.

The demonstrator already has its engines and is in pre-flight testing.

It’s interesting to see how all of our crazy CFD modeling and generative design capabilities send us towards the same general shape when you’re trying to reduce a supersonic pressure wave. It’ll be interesting to see whether the X-59 or the Boom scale demonstrator will fly first.

This is the answer to that question we’ve all had:

I mean, its not very likely Buffet made that call himself. It was probably the droves of much-younger analysts and advisors that Berkshire employs, and they (and Berkshires stakeholders) DO care about the long term.

Thats drayage. The trouble is that nobody needs 500 miles of range for drayage, so you’ve got lots of extra cost and weight that arent necessary for that work.

Well on one point, I can at least say Nikola isn’t scamware. Rough start and shitty founder who pushed his luck, but they are earnestly engineering and building trucks now. I see them all over the Phoenix area and they’re shipping working trucks to customers and they’ve been well received so far.

Commercial transport already as a combined weight limit, so its not actually that a Tesla Semi will be too heavy versus a Diesel Cab with the same load- its that the Tesla Semi is forced by regulation to carry LESS LOAD, which means less money for the driver and more trips for the company.

Every mile of range is about 25-50 pounds of battery, so you’ve probably got 15k pounds of battery alone, and that really eats into what you can actually transport with these things.

“How much extra does it cost to engineer and build vs a more efficient, but slower, truck?”
Less than you would expect. Most of that 0-60 is thanks to the crazy torque, power, and software, which are all development efforts that benefit way more than just a 0-60 time, namely towing. One of the benefits to EVs is that…

This comments section is full of people basically saying that Rivian should just make a cheaper trim level or fundamentally sell their trucks for less… or even referencing the recent price increase, as if the inflation-adjusted price of the trucks isn’t still LOWER than what they originally said they’d be in 2019.

Yeah how dare they create price models before a completely unanticipated global supply chain clusterfuck made literally every fucking resource more expensive, with the automotive industry getting hit harder than most.

I think the essence of Rivian’s complaint could be better summarized-

Yes- the people who buy $80k+ vehicles are the same people who can credit a significant percentage of their net worth to the creative avoidance of taxes.

I’ve heard fake technojargon in a throwaway episode of a B-series MCU show that sounded more believable than this.

I’m not sure if it’s sadder if it’s an honest attempt at a scam or if he genuinely believes. Or if he was dumb enough to believe someone else’s scam and become its figurehead.

Yeah it was hard to convey in the flow of the story, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they brought us an old-stock base-trim 2018 model is that they took a bad read on our knowledge level and financial status. I think they thought they could “surprise us” with a decent car they needed to move and a lower payment…

Tempe Honda in the AutoNation complex off Elliot

Oh yeah- my fiancé is actually way less of a pushover than I am. She was being unseasonably polite with these folks, and I think it was because we were genuinely expecting to do all our research and buy a CRV anyways, given our mutual history with Honda/Acura. It was also the first stop of the day for us so we were…

It’s one thing to try to make a sale happen- I get that -but it’s another entirely to try to separate a couple and pressure the one you view as more malleable or less savvy into signing paperwork, lie to her, put fake paperwork between us and a test drive, and CONTINUE to force the sale on a car that isn’t even what…

One note worth adding- Normally for test drives its polite to call ahead or even make an appointment. We called ahead everywhere we went- only Volvo and Mazda wanted to make appointments, everywhere else just told us to stop by whenever. It was a Tuesday or a Wednesday we had taken off to go car shopping specifically…