Yeah I’m a pretty big Rivian fanboy and was probably going to pull the trigger on the Gen 2 R1T next year, but... dang. This is good enough to have me wondering if I should wait even though that would mean limping my current car to 15 years and >200k miles.

Legally, an “award” is not necessarily winnings and is typically something earned or owed. It’s not a prize. At the end of the year I sign a release for my corporate stock “award”- I didn’t win anything, I earned a bonus in stock for my contributions.

My point is that he’s not afoul of sweepstakes or lottery…

Exactly. They also never use the terms “win” “lottery” “sweepstakes” “give-away”, etc... it’s always that one person will “earn” $1M. The fine print even requires the “selected” (not “winner”) to submit a W-9, as if they’re an independent contractor.

Actually pretty much- the fine print requires them to submit a W-9 like an independent contractor would. I’m not a lawyer, but I know Elmo has fucking fleets of them on retainer. Everything about this drips “careful, precise wording”. They want the public to assume it’s a giveaway, but they’re selecting the most…

Never says “randomly selected” anywhere- Amber assumed (as many people would at first blush) that this is a give-away or lottery, and used that verbiage in the article. That assumption is exactly what Elmo is going for, but it’s never stated anywhere on the promotion. In the fine print they even mention that people…

Doesn’t appear to be a lottery- they never use the term “win”, only “earn”. You get $1M as salary for being “hired” as a “spokesperson” for the America PAC.

Doesn’t appear to be a lottery- they never use the term “win”, only “earn”. You get $1M as salary for being “hired” as a “spokesperson” for the America PAC.

The other clever dodge happening here is that its not actually a sweepstakes or a lottery. They never use the verbiage “win” - it’s always “earn”. They even clarify that you’ll need to submit a W-9 if you’re selected.

So basically, one person per day is selected and offered a job as a temporary spokesperson for the…

To be fair, $30k in 1997 is about $60k now. This was a pretty nice ride in ‘97.

Yeah if I can convince my wife to wait, I’d love to put her in an R2... god knows I’d need the extra time to save up if I’m getting an R1T!

The other major consensus happening in these comments is, regardless of hybrids, the obvious solution is EV for the day-to-day and ICE for road trips, towing, etc.

This is so fundamentally obvious that it’s a huge thorn in my side... My wife and I are driving 16 and 13 year old cars respectively and are very much in…

The obvious consensus throughout that I agree with is that a PHEV that can actually do ~50mi at highway speeds on battery power on would be the perfect vehicle for pretty much every American, especially because that scheme is platform independent. You can get it in a city car (BMW i3) or a truck (upcoming RAM) and…

Yeah if you want to pick up some plywood or drywall in your Gladiator you’ll need to poke it against the back of the cab and lay the stack on the closed tailgate, or it’ll teeter on the wheel arches. And that limits the number of sheets you can pick up.

Honestly, IMHO, the Gladiator is probably the all-around worst…

Rivian is 54" with tailgate closed, Gladiator is 60" with tailgate closed. Cybertruck actually has a 72" bed, but only at the floor. The back wall of the “cab” is overhung, so at the top of the bed the length is only 66".
The Cybertruck bed is also relatively narrow at 51", same as the Rivian. That being said, the Gladi…

Because it was only $100 and was, at the time, for a $40k truck. We have no metrics on the actual reservation attrition. It’s possible the vast vast majority of those reservations have already been refunded.

I’m willing to believe that the number was somewhere between 1M and 2M, for three reasons:
1) They promised a base price of $40k, making it competitive to other trucks, which are the best-selling market segment in the US
2) Reservations were open world wide, so it certainly includes Canadians and Europeans as well
3)…

They were coming in regularly, but they failed to set up equipment or bring in their own crafts that could track or follow the drones, which were apparently longer than a Chevy Tahoe?
Normally I’d be like “oh well obviously those are OUR drones that WE’RE testing, but the testing is obvious so they need a cover” but…

Also, revisiting this because “they don’t have anything to learn from their own design” is the most virulent possible cancer to the mindset of engineers. There is always something to learn by reviewing your own designs.

I thought someone had done a bad job of circling something in a screenshot with the microsoft snipping tool in that first picture of the interior.

Mine was totaled in an accident during the height of the COVID used car bubble. Almost paid $25k for a second gen, decided that $25k for a decade-old used car was insane and I needed to be getting something bigger and more interesting for that money and took a chance on a ZDX. I don’t regret the ZDX, in fact I adore…