Hope you like potatoes

Watching this might help raise your anxiety

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(1959_film)

Yes, I’ve argued that too. While there is the factor of fast changing technology, I think used EVs are a great buy right now.

I’m not in the market for an additional car although I’ve actually been tempted anyway …. I have two college kids sharing my old Subaru and it would prevent a lot of fights if I had another old vehicle for them

Then again my older kid just applied for a summer job with like 90 miles each way commute so may not be appropriate for limited or unknown range

My experience across three 2014+ Subarus with CVT has been flawless. Not the H6 though, all flat 4

It’s still more an infrastructure problem than a car problem. I wouldn’t have any hesitation doing that in my EV, but the real difference is I live on the east coast where there are plenty of chargers. Actually I suppose the important question is what direction we’re driving 2,400 miles, because I understand the Midwest is a desert

The concern about cold and EVs is overblown. While sure in the arctic ….

• heat pump makes a huge difference in winter range
• my car really only loses noticeable charge while idle because I keep sentry mode on. I live in a busy area so the entire car keeps waking up to make sure no one is vandalizing it. If I turn that off, the loss is not really noticeable
• I believe Tesla replaced the old tech 12v lead acid battery for running accessories with a lithium ion battery meant to last the life of the car

I believe the other factor in the most publicized instance of cold weather affecting EVs was people. People waiting until they’re desperate, then finding lines, and waiting in their vehicle with heat on

I always thought this was one of the reasons for an EV incentive. Encourage more people like me to buy the expensive ones sooner to develop the market, guaranteed demand for manufacturers, but that also gets us faster to the point of cheap used EVs

It takes just one small change …. My family did similar, but those stops were planned for mealtimes. We either did fast food or brought a camping stove, but always ate outside the car. Kids were encouraged to “run down to the end of that path with the dog”. Anyhow, the presence of even a fast food meal meant that there would have been plenty of time to charge.

It depends where you live. We have cheap gas and I live in an area with one of the more expensive prices for electricity (and there are worse), but “filling up” at home is much cheaper than “filling up” my ice car.

However

• yes, we only have expensive EVs here. You can make up an extra $5k of purchase price with money saved on operations, but $10k or more is much harder
• trip chargers are already in a race for exploitation, profit seeking. Except for Tesla, prices are high, maintenance is low, and they compete for trapping customers more than attracting them
• since EVs became political we are currently off balance between supply and demand, so used cars are over supplied and lost much value. The quickly changing technology just makes it worse

The problem is those days are gone, even without EVs. Between modern automatics more efficient and longer lasting, and cheap reliable CVTs (also more efficient), manual transmissions have no future. I also prefer driving a stick, and frequently complained about limited availability in the US, but technology has passed it by

Recyclability: most of ICE cars are recyclable,

There’s no reason to expect this will be any different with EVs. There are already companies claiming better recycling rates, but they can’t scale up yet because there are not enough retired EVs

Admittedly I did similar. At one point I had a non-working detector and noticed it was long expired when I tried to replace the battery. I realized I had been in my house more than ten years and the detectors had been installed by a previous owner, probably in the early 2000’s. Those did NOT beep when they expired

When I replaced those, the new ones were all configured to beep when expired and they were starting to push the sealed detectors with ten year non-replaceable battery. Sure enough, ten years later they all started beeping that they were expired.

I guess I assumed that it’s been 20 years and most people will have replaced detectors at least once. In my state, there’s a required inspection that all detectors are up to date before a house can be sold

(Which is really annoying because mine are all battery but the current standard is they must interconnect so I’ll need some electrical work if I want to sell my house)

Don’t they all do that now? Tell you when they’ve expired?

You keep it until the next hazardous waste collection day, then put it in your car to bring there. Spend half an hour waiting in a big line of cars, get up to where they take it and get yelled at for wasting their time on such a small amount of hazardous waste

Huh, I wish my town would do those corner protectors. There’s one corner especially, a block from my house, and on a major walking route to our neighborhood elementary school. After it snows, I frequently see tire tracks across the sidewalk from people who cut the corner badly. One of these days, they’re going to run over a kid on the sidewalk on their way to school.

Car wash? I’ve never heard of that and there’s never even an option to tip. You pay list price ahead of time, then when they’re done you drive away.

It’s probably different if you get your car detailed, but that’s already not something I’m willing to pay for

It’s a nice ideal. Insurance can in theory help smooth out whatever life throws at you. But in the modern world, their incentives are to not

This is not as big a deal as the headline shows. No one would pay that much.

The unfortunate reality is American healthcare is geared to generate humongous bills but that’s just the starting point. Normally your insurance company will then negotiate it down. If you don’t have insurance, you can usually get them to write off huge amounts.

One of the underlying problems is not everyone has insurance but everyone will get at least emergency care. Hospitals know there will be a lot of bills that can never be paid, so their initial bill to everyone needs yo account for that loss.

That and the general extractive nature of the us health care system, the massive number of layers and middlemen that all need to show a profit

But clearly the problem here is the non-us insurance company not dealing with it until forced to nine months later

Worst case scenario- go home and never come bs k. That bill is not following you to another country

Vodka

I hear you. Sometimes my teens never notice. The beeping annoys me from the other side of the house but my teens right there can’t hear it