What would be the benefit? How would the additional battery be charged?

This is an amazing, well thought out build. But I feel that in the quest for (relative) simplicity, it skipped over regenerative braking, which greatly reduces it’s usefulness.

I wonder why they chose the narrow rear track. An attempt at better aero, or was there some other reason?

“I don’t care if all functions for HVAC, entertainment, etc, are voice activated, thought activated, butt-twitch activated, etc.”

I thought there were steering wheel controls, do those not do volume?

I hear models I, E, and R are in the pipe.

This. Also there is this silly rule that while Kelvin are degrees they aren't called that. 15 degree Centigrade, but 15 Kelvin.

“torque is a better representation of available power than”

550lbs is about 1/6th of the cars weight or less, and that’s at 180mph. At a more sane speed of 90mph, that would be 138lbs. I picked 90 because it makes the math easy, but it’s a far more likely corner speed at a track.

At least with gasoline motorcycle, it costs a lot more to make a motorcycle than it does to make it faster. A bump in power is a cheap way to make one more desirable.

Not putting a downpayment does save you a bit of money, but puts you in a higher risk of being underwater as the vehicle depreciates. Or you can spend a bit more money to guard against that risk. Remember, we’re only talking about the interest on the downpayment, so it’s likely to not be a lot of money.

Especially since cars are more reliable than ever. Even at 10 years most are perfectly fine.

Not that I recommend insanely long loans, but the best way to avoid being underwater on a loan is with a downpayment.

I don’t see anything here to “play out”. Electronic speed limiter have been around since at least the 90s. Volvo isn’t pushing some new technology, nor is it setting it’s limits particularly low.

Looks like Volvo’s think that they cannot. Or at the very least they can’t protect their drivers in an accident at that speed.

Any limit is going to be arbitrary, virtually by definition. There is a lot factors that determine failure and it’s impossible to know ahead of time what all of them will be. Even tire failure isn’t just about speeds, it’s temperature, loads, road conditions, etc.

Virtually every modern car has an electronic speed limiter, in the interest of safety. Some are higher and some re lower than 112mph. 

Is this really that different from the national do not fly list? There is no way to actually know what causes people to end up on that list.

Even assuming perfect efficiencies, their workout will have to be the equivalent difficulty to pushing their car 300 miles.

Why would they have thought that? $35k was always going to be the base version.