I listened to the entire Tesla investor call last night and, amid the exaggerations and big promises, the one thought that I couldn’t shake was that this didn’t sound like Iron Man. I don’t know that any human being is well-equipped to gain the kind of adoration and wealth that Musk acquired, let alone so quickly, which may explain why he seems unable to maintain either.
His ability to gain all that money and all that fame had less to do with a specific genius, and more to do with a somewhat ineffable quality of showmanship. The ideas may not be his, but his gift has always been in a certain kind of external and internal aggrandizement that inspired his employees to do what some thought could not be done, and that inspired investors to put money behind yet-unrealized goals. He had the juice.
I don’t love putting a question in a Morning Dump headline, but I’m so far from an answer that I couldn’t make it definitive. Does Elon Musk have the juice? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it, and the Q1 call and numbers aren’t supportive of the notion that he does.
It’s not like everyone else has the answers. Chinese automakers are obviously killing it when it comes to electrification. They have an abundance of juice, and that, itself, is a problem. GM is stuck in a weird spot with its own electrification, being both ahead and also, still, tentatively behind.
Does Matt Farah have the juice? Zack and Matt just did their 1,000th episode, so it seems likely. Matt also gets a fun profile in Bloomberg that’s worth reading.
Tesla Was Profitable In Q1 Thanks To Regulatory Credits
Tesla has sold the most popular car in the world for roughly the last two years. Built in the United States, Germany, and China, the Model Y is a global phenomenon. Last quarter, the automaker embarked on the ambitious project of switching over all lines almost simultaneously to start pumping out the revised Model Y.
In any other universe, this would be a big accomplishment that would dominate the headlines about the company around the world. That’s not what happened. Tesla’s Q1 numbers were bad in a way that these plant disruptions cannot fully explain. All the numbers are here if you want to look. The company’s once mighty operating margin, which reached into the teens as recently as Q2 2024, dropped to just 2.1%.
What’s the cause? Here’s how Tesla describes the ongoing issues the company faces:
Uncertainty in the automotive and energy markets continues to increase as rapidly evolving trade policy adversely impacts the global supply chain and cost structure of Tesla and our peers. This dynamic, along with changing political sentiment, could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term. We remain committed to expanding our business model to include delivering autonomous robots across multiple form factors and use cases – powered by our real-world AI expertise – to our customers and for use in our factories, as we navigate these headwinds.
It is easy to point out that the tariff uncertainty, caused entirely by the current administration he helped elect, is partially his fault. On the call, Musk reiterated many times that he’s not the President, so it’s not his decision. But it’s hard to see the “changing political sentiment” as anything other than an own-goal. Musk may be trying to save the planet with the Department of Government Efficiency, but right now the biggest shift in money seems to be to investors shorting Tesla stock and not to taxpayers.
Musk said last night that he’d be stepping away from DOGE soon, as he’d done the hard work of setting it up and trying to control the “insane deficit.” That is, in theory, a noble goal. We do have a large deficit, and it does need to be addressed, and a car blog isn’t going to be the place that solves that problem, but the chainsaw approach hasn’t exactly endeared Tesla to a lot of its natural buyers. Here’s how Musk responded to that concept in his opening:
The natural blowback from [my work] is those who were receiving the wasteful dollars and the fortunate dollars will try to attack me and DOGE team and anything associated with me. So, but then I’m really left with two choices. Should we just let the waste and fraud continue?
Some of these cuts suggested by DOGE have included such “wasteful” dollars as, let’s pick a random one: the people who run the Veterans Affairs Suicide Hotline (though these folks were reportedly re-hired — an indication of just how hastily this is all happening).
As Electrek points out, this is all a bit ironic given that Tesla wouldn’t be profitable this quarter without the existence of a government-engineered wealth transfer in the form of regulatory credits:
[It’s] particularly relevant today, to the very earnings call where Musk made his ridiculous assertion, because in Q1 2025, Tesla only turned a profit due to government credits. Without them, it would have lost money.
Per today’s earnings report, Tesla earned $595 million in regulatory credits in Q1. But its total net income for the quarter was $409 million.
This means that without those regulatory credits, Tesla would have posted a -$189 million loss in Q1. It was saved not just by credit sales, but credit sales which increased year over year – in the year-ago quarter, Tesla made $442 million in regulatory credits, despite having higher sales in Q1 2024 than in Q1 2025. So not only were credits higher, but credits per vehicle were higher.
Having the juice means your haters can’t touch you. I think it’s a big sign that the market response to the company’s numbers, as measured by how Tesla futures performed, was pretty muted, but then went up when Musk said he was getting the hell outta DOGE. The company’s stock opened higher this morning, but isn’t as high as you’d expect given that other market trends (President Trump seeming to back down on firing the Fed Reserve Chairman and China) are propelling stocks forward.
The whole call was like this. Musk sounded listless and unmotivated, broken up by the occasional laugh. Most of his pronouncements were a rehash of previous statements or a downgrade of previous promises. As mentioned yesterday, the cheap Teslas are likely to be decontented cars. Musk had to make it clear to people who were expecting Cybercabs on the streets of Austin soon that the vehicles will, in fact, just be Model Ys.
From the SeekingAlpha transcript of the call:
The team and I are laser-focused on bringing robotaxi to Austin in June. Unsupervised autonomy will first be solved for the Model Y in Austin. And then — actually you should parse out the terms robotic taxi or robotaxi and just generally like what’s the Cybercab, because we’ve got a product called the Cybercab and then any Tesla which could be an S3 extra wide that is autonomous, is a robotic taxi or robotaxi. It’s very confusing. So the vast majority of the Tesla fleet that we’ve made is capable of being a robotaxi or robotic taxi.
Later on the call, he goes further to admit that the company will launch with 10-20 of them, maybe, and someone else from Tesla says that, of course, there will be remote teleoperators.
Here’s the weirdest exchange, though:
Elon Musk
Yeah, I mean, very basic terms. If that — if we’re seeing an accident every 10,000 miles, well, then you have to drive 10,000 miles of average before you get an accident or an intervention. So, it’s like, okay, I mean, we must be really, you don’t have to be very worked out by the sheer number of Teslas doing [indiscernible] in Austin right now. We’re like, it’s going to look pretty bizarre.
Ashok Elluswamy
Some people are chasing us away.
Being charitable here, maybe he’s talking about interventions only, because an accident every 10,000 miles is bad. That’s an accident every year. If you’re getting into an accident every year, you’re not a good driver.
At this point, I could keep going through parts of the call I found underwhelming, but it doesn’t matter. Elon Musk is famous for pulling rabbits out of his hat, and it’s possible that in five years, everyone is sleeping inside autonomous Teslas, humanoid robots are doing all of our jobs, and Tesla’s AI rules everything. It’s possible.
The important thing for me, though, is that Musk’s explanations and enthusiasm have never sounded further from reality. That’s subjective, so I invite you to listen to the call and see if that sounds correct to you. The stock will probably rally today, and if it does so, it’s probably not because Musk wowed the crowd with a new idea, but because he’s taking a break from extracurriculars.
I mean, when you’ve lost longtime cheerleader Ross Gerber:
The billionaire’s work as an adviser to Trump and his embrace of right-wing politics in Europe have drawn widespread opposition, including protests and vandalism at Tesla showrooms.
“His time is very valuable, and I think Tesla needs his attention,” said Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management and a prominent investor.
“But it doesn’t change that people don’t want the Tesla brand. I don’t know how you fix that.”
You fix it with the juice, which is not always a renewable resource.
China Has The Cars, What It Needs Is The Customers
It’s the big Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition this week, which is what no one calls it. Instead, it’s Auto Shanghai, and the home automakers are happy to celebrate that local Chinese brands now control 70% of the marketplace after taking a back seat to Buick, Volkswagen, and other Western cars for years.
China has the juice. So much juice. Too much juice. There simply aren’t enough customers even in China to contain all that juice. The juice must be released somehow.
While barely any Chinese EVs are sold in the U.S. — meaning the new 145% tariffs U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed on China have little direct impact on them — any hopes of expansion into one of the world’s biggest markets may be dashed. Other governments’ efforts to avoid a flood of imports and slower global economic growth also pose threats.
China’s passenger vehicle exports hit 6.4 million units in 2024, more than 50% above second-ranked Japan, according to consulting firm AlixPartners. But it estimates that export growth will slow to just 4% in 2025, from 23% last year, due to the effects of tariffs.
A bright spot for Chinese exporters has been Russia and Belarus, which have been under economic sanctions from the West since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, noted Andrew Bergbaum, global leader of automotive and industrial practice at AlixPartners. “China’s car sales to Russia and Belarus have more than doubled over the past five years, insulating it in part from the volatility of tariffs,” Bergbaum said.
You can’t gamble feeding BYD on that Belarusian money; it might not always be sufficient. (hopefully that link explains what this line means)
A Rocket Scientist Cannot Buy The Silverado EV He Wants
Here’s a remarkably good but frustrating story from Jackie Charniga over at the Detroit Free Press (who has consistently impressed me with her work the last few months). It’s a literal rocket scientist trying to buy a Silverado EV and not being able to do it.
From the story:
For David Rosing, a former system engineer at the CalTech Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Sunland, California, the decision to purchase an electric vehicle was far from rocket science. After meticulous research and a thorough understanding of the technology, Rosing decided back in January to purchase a Chevrolet Silverado EV.
Since then, he has tried, and failed, to procure the exact version he wanted. When he learned that the assembly facility that produced the truck of his dreams would be laying off employees, he felt betrayed.
“I would love to get the message to the C suite at GM that there’s a lot of people ticked off at Tesla looking for something else,” Rosing told the Detroit Free Press. “Please pass along a message to the workforce at Factory Zero that there is, indeed, demand for their products.”’
This seems to be the classic trimflation problem, where given limited production, it’s not easy to find the exact lower trim model that you want because the automaker is not economically incentivized to build it (in this case, it sounds like a specific blue LT extended range).
Matt Farah, Pro-Urbanist Car Guy
I’ve been meaning to write up the 1,000th episode of The Smoking Tire podcast because it’s a big deal. I’m a bad friend and haven’t done so yet. It’s above. Please watch and enjoy it. The show’s hosts, Matt Farah and Zack Klapman, are great people and super knowledgeable.
Matt, like many of us, recognizes that for all the good cars bring into our lives, some walkability isn’t the worst idea. Here’s a long profile in Bloomberg from David Zipper that gets into how loving cars and loving cities don’t have to be contradictory thoughts:
“In this city, some of the most desirable places to live are the most walkable,” he told me over lunch that afternoon. “But you can’t build more places like that right now, because of parking minimums and stupid s— like that.”
In addition to gushing over the latest Lamborghinis, Farah can hold forth on the benefits of multimodal streets, the perils of car bloat, and the upsides of upzoning. He believes that it’s entirely possible to love cars while recognizing that cities would be better if fewer people used them.
“LA is a place that doesn’t understand the difference between car dependence and car enthusiasm,” Farah said. “If I can just make that one point, I think that would do a lot of good.”
I think this is correct. Wanting a car and needing a car are sometimes different things. Commuting in Houston and being stuck on freeways didn’t make me love cars. Being able to take the train into New York and then come home and have the energy to take my BMW on a joyride upstate makes me love cars.
Farah also goes on to say that the idea of a “war on cars” is dumb:
“Car enthusiasts hear talking points like that and think ‘They’re going to take your cars away.’ Of course nobody wants to do that.”
It’s a fun profile. You should consider reading the whole thing.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
ABBA’s “Mamma Mia” just turned 50, and it would be a shame to honor that here. It’s fine if you’re not an ABBA fan. I am not an ABBA fan. But I’m not not an ABBA fan. If the sound of this song brings you no joy, then you must be one who enjoys only sadness.
The Big Question
Who, in the automotive industry, has the juice right now?
Top photo: Austin Powers, Depositphotos.com
Stop trying to make “the juice” happen!
But honestly, I was entertained by this TMD. I cannot really comment on who has this so called juice right now. Definitely NOT Stellantis. I would say Hyundai/Kia maybe but I just can’t quite get on board with that, so yeah, probably BYD. The C8 ZR1 Corvette is awesome, but out of my price range. I cant afford a C6 ZR1 even. Sigh. I dont have the juice apparently.
If by “Juice” you mean Ketamine, Steroids and artificial-insemination – Yeah, Elon has that.
If you mean putting out automotive products people want to buy?
Then it’s the folks at BYD.
Just another compliment to Matt for these TMDs. Your writing just keeps getting better. That ineffable quality often referred to as ‘Voice’ is something you’ve got in spades and just keeps growing.
As a public figure, Elon Musk has gone from an early Howard Hughes wannabe to a very watered down late Howard Hughes.
Just to be clear, that’s blood and not juice he is holding.
Does Elon Musk have the juice?
How many kids does he have ?
Nothing about DOGE is related to saving the planet. Come on, Matt.
If anything, DOGE’s stated goal is to save money at the expense of people and the environment. Pretty much the opposite of saving the planet.
Is he? I feel like he’s famous for over-promising and under-delivering. In some cases he over-promised to the point where even under-delivery was still impressive, but nothing he’s done has been particularly magical. Although if you are instead comparing him to a stage magician who is all smoke and mirrors that is very disappointing once you see how the trick is done, I agree.
It’s also possible I will begin shitting diamonds tomorrow and become the new richest man in the world. It would require violating several of the known laws of physics (and likely be very uncomfortable), but it’s approximately as possible as what you just said. 😛
I think the past few years have made it clear to all but the staunchest fanboys that he never actually had it to begin with.
Tesla sold just 6,400 Cybertrucks last quarter.
At this point, we know its a crappy truck, poorly manufactured, and literally useless.
The only possible reason 6,400 deplorables purchased one of these monstrosities is to advertise to the world they are a total douchebag. (Likely replacing the coal rolling Ford F-250 impounded by your state police).
I’m not convinced he ever had the juice, and was just taking credit from others. I can’t imagine that anyone at this point thinks that his spending more time leading any company is a good thing for that company. They’d do a LOT better by dumping him, but of course the board is just a bunch of his buddies/family.
He probably has the juice, but there’s no nutritional value.
So, Kool-Aid?
Probably Flavor-Ade. (That’s what they drank in Jonestown)
Yes, he still has the juice. He sent some to some lady for her IVF
Blank
I will subscribe immediately if you modify the top shot to make it a vial of white stuff lol
“getting the hell outta DOGE,” very good, I haven’t heard that yet.
Also, “Unsupervised autonomy” in June makes me feel sorry for Austin.
I mean, he had to be corrected on the record that they would be supervised, so….
Experienced and aggressive injury lawyers are waiting to take your call…..
Wait until some impaired UT students get a hold of one of these taxis. No amount of supervision will help.
No, Elon Musk is famous for convincing rubes that in 1-2 years, there will be a hat, and that when there is a hat there will be a rabbit inside it.
He’s also been able to convince multiple women to bear children with him.
His special skill is that he’s really, really rich
Very rabbit-like behavior.
When did rabbits start using IVF?
“Hey baby, are you watership DTF?”
…I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist
I wish I could upvote this a hrair times
I’ll bet “multiple” was not involved!
I’m pretty sure Musk is just bored with Tesla. SpaceX, Twitter, DOGE have all been more exciting distractions for awhile and Tesla would be better off if the absentee dad didn’t come back into the picture whenever he felt like it.
Driving in cities…
As I’ve stated ad nauseum for the past few weeks, I just spent 12 days in Europe. 8 of those days were in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
That city is 100% setup to repel cars. It is 100% setup to attract biking and walking.
It’s simply amazing.
The whole infrastructure is designed specifically to cater to bikers and walkers first, public transportation 2nd, and cars last. Dead freaking last.
The whole city center is a walking and biking shrine (wrong word??). The lights are all designed to put the bikers and walkers first, and be safe. The bike lanes are almost always separated from the car lanes. There is VAST sidewalk infrastructure with no cars, or minimal cars. The 30kph speed limit prevents death, and the traffic flitsers (cameras) support/prevent any speeding. They make it such that it’s nearly impossible to speed anyway. Combine that with vast amounts of parking garages (not free, of course) that are close and convenient to the same walking and biking spaces. So, you can easily drive in, park, and walk around.
I’d like to highlight another great example of how they make this work outside of the city. In Meerhoven, a sublet of Veldhoven, they design the neighborhoods to have only only one or two roads in and out. We visited the neighborhood where we lived (19 years ago), Grasrijkt. The area is grown VASTLY since we were gone, but I recall the same kind of planning back in the day. As we drove around, we wanted to go to the immediate next neighborhood, the road was literally 50 feet away from us, but we were prevented from getting to it without having to leave the current neighborhood at it’s planned entrance, going alllll the way around to the entrance of that new neighborhood. It was almost frustrating until I remembered why this even existed. To make matters even more interesting, they allow small cars to traverse the biking paths. These cars are designed to fit between the bollards that block off the bike path between the neighborhoods. So, it’s possible to travel between them, just not with regular cars. It’s utterly brilliant.
tldr; want to enjoy cars AND your neighborhood, model your infrastructure in such a way that it promotes walking/biking/e-scooters and physically prevents them from moving to the different areas within the city. Provide clean, easily traversed roads with clear signage and great traffic control (lights), as well as a population willing to embrace this culture, and you have a recipe for living a very happy life.
NOTE: The Netherlands has a bit of cheat code with all this in that the total elevation change through the city is less than 20 feet. FTR, for me to get to the city I currently live in, I need to go down a hill that drops 200 feet over 1 mile.
The other major change or cheat code I noticed was e-bikes. Just… wow. 18 years ago I could go about 5-10km without much thought in bike powered by my own feet. Now that they have e-bikes, the ability to communicate and travel are just so much easier. That 5-10km easily becomes 15-30km. You can now have a girlfriend on the other side of town and see her daily with an e-bike and never break a sweat (while riding of course). 🙂 🙂
But. But. But. All their children are dying because they aren’t driven everywhere in a seven seat truck.
Also of note: winter in the Netherlands isn’t like winter in Boston or Detroit.
Not the two winters I was there. It’s more mild in the NL in winter. Not by much, but it is. The canals also don’t freeze over like they used to, unfortunately. I would put NL about where Virginia is on the east coast. Get’s winter storms, but is mostly cold rain.
As a Virginian, that sounds about right for winter (my flat corner of the state got its first snow in three years a few months ago, and it had melted off the pavement in less than 48 hours), but I’m guessing that climate change hasn’t quite blessed the Netherlands with the heat and humidity of a Virginia summer yet, let alone those of New Orleans or Houston. (And that’s a good thing, as I also remember my last encounter with a Dutch national in an apartment with the air conditioning off on Memorial Day weekend reminded me of those stereotypes of European standards of personal hygiene.)
This does not sound like a negative, having spent time in both Boston and Detroit in the winter.
Going down that hill is the good part!
…it’s having to come back up it on the way home that’s the problem.
Musk? as far as I know. He still seems to lean heavily into the great replacement theory and donates to a lot of hard core right wing groups, especially in Germany an…oh, you said “have the juice”? I thought we were talking about something else.
Took me a second but ISWYDT.
Still waiting on evidence of the “fraud and abuse”.
They have the resources to disappear college kids for writing op-eds, but not to go after all these fraudsters that have been ripping the American people off for so long.
Oh, that’s right, those are the people IN CHARGE.
Uh, “Lutheran Family Services”? Clearly a front for cartel drug running with a fake-sounding name like that
They’re looking in the wrong place. Fraud in government work is way harder to pull off than in the private sector. At least it used to be when there were things like inspectors general.
He is decently ignorant at times.
As Mercedes reported yesterday we have states banning Kei Cars, and many JDM imports that were legally imported from their roads. So yeah there is a war on cars.
Also Tesla owners who find their cars vandalized because someone they’ve never met did something after they bought the car probably feel like there’s a war against them as owners of a particular brand of car..
Farrah is referring to people thinking that it will be illegal for them to buy/own any car because the government wants people to just walk and take the bus.
The kei car thing is because some lobby group wants people to buy new cars and are pissed they found a loophole. It’s the opposite of a war on cars as a concept.
The Tesla thing is also not a war on cars, but a form of protest. I agree that it’s not right people’s private property is being vandalized, but at the same time, I can’t imagine you would’ve been the most popular person in town if you drove around New York in a BMW in 1942.
And then there are the ‘road diets’ they’ve been implementing in my area. Reduce 4 lanes to two lanes (sometimes leave a center turn) and add bike lanes that no one uses, so a transit bus w/ 5 people on it can backup 20 cars behind it.
Unprotected bike lanes are absolutely useless. A few months after they’re painted around here, the lines are scrubbed away from motor vehicle traffic driving over them.
They’re obviously not going to get used because they offer no real protection over just mixing it up in traffic with your bike.
Then why build them? Previously, autos would just go around in other lane on the rare occasion had to ‘share the road’.
Not to mention cyclist would have to ride through all the debris that accumulates in non-traffic lane.
So politicians can claim they did something for the cost of some road striping.
First they came for the JDM Imports…
It doesn’t really matter why, it’s precedent that they can use to go after other cars, likely non FMVSS automobiles. In 49 states if you can’t get insurance for a car it’s not street legal, all it would take is a little bit of pressure and you’re car is effectively banned. Sure you can own it and drive it on private property, but that’s still a ban.
The “Tesla Thing” is a war on cars, just on a specific brand of cars, usually against the end users of said cars. Until automakers make good on their promise to adopt NACS people who want to sell their Tesla and by a new EV are forced to adopt a BEV with a charging standard they know is going the way of the dodo. Not to mention used Tesla’s are not exactly a hot commodity going for more than a new NACS equipped BEV from another automaker will go for, so either they eat the loss and buy a new car, or they buy a car reliant on a worse charging network with questionable charging network support IF it’ll work with a NACS adapter.
I don’t car how bad someone has personally wronged me, I don’t take it out on their automobile. 99.99% of Tesla owners haven’t personally wronged the people vandalizing their shit nowadays, they just own what was arguably the best BEV in their respective categories. Once Native NACS becomes standard for current production BEV along with the opening of the Tesla Supercharging Network then Tesla won’t make the best BEVs, but the quality of charging along with the built in navigation to said quality charging infrastructure put Tesla way ahead of everyone else.
Standardizing on one plug should also allow the best charging networks to win out, instead of being forced to use whatever charging network offers the charging standard you need.
I knowingly went with a 25 Nissan Leaf S which uses CHAdeMO and J1772 charging plugs because I just needed something for in town use 99.99% of the time, and when I need to drive cross country it’ll be on a U-Haul trailer being towed by a U-Haul Moving Truck to it’s final destination.
However if the Leaf Had NACS and access to the Tesla Supercharger Network, I could easily drive it just about anywhere even with only 149 miles of range.
My point is that the kind of ban Farrah is talking about is a blanket ban on all cars, period. The lobby group’s goal with the kei car bans is ultimately for people to buy more cars, but the correct ones.
If the anti-kei car group had an expressed goal of getting people to take public transit, and that is why they were revoking registrations, then you could say these bans are indicative of a war on cars.
It seems to me that you’re talking past each other. It looks like LM’s point is the way the language is written to ban kei cars is broad and generalized enough that it could easily be expanded to ban plenty of other cars, not necessarily that the AAMVA isn’t interested in going beyond kei cars (even though they are). The problem is that, once the laws are in effect and precedence is set, it’s not too far a reach for someone else with money to exploit something like “does not conform to FMVSS” as a way to attack old cars, probably with the convenient excuse of them being polluting and unsafe (Won’t SOMEBODY think of the children!). After all, the creatures of the current coup are digging up ancient laws to exploit right now for other nefarious means. With the way things have been going into the realm of absurdity, I’m a bit concerned about those old ridiculous laws that are still on the books that were formerly humorous Buzzfeed listicle fodder will be rediscovered by the Confederates and used. You know, stuff like: a woman needs her husband’s permission to cut her hair.
Yup.
Not to start another tangent but in legal cases across the country we’re seeing Jim Crow laws and other laws specifically implemented to keep non-whites from owning and or carrying firearms be used as justification for why state licensing for firearms ownership is legal and why may issue CCW permitting is legal (back in the day was ‘shall issue unless you ain’t white’).
A ton of laws that are abused today were made up long before we were born, twisted to justify doing X today with them.
It’s not “a form of protest”, it is a crime.
It’s both.Doesn’t necessarily mean the crime isn’t worth it in the long run.
I think in this case it probably isn’t worth the crime.
Probably? There are situations when it’s ok to fuck with a total stranger’s property for legally liking what they like and spending a substantial amount of money for? It’s not like anyone has bought a Tesla to support The Proud Boys or anything, lol.
Most likely, they bought it because it met the needs of their use case, or the compromised a bit to help “save the planet”.
Ironically, those that are committing the vandalism scream from the rooftops for everyone else to make their purchases in the same vein.
There is no “probably” here. It’s lunatics committing petty crime. No one should be cool with that. Ever.
Is there a situation where you would willfully and premeditatedly commit a property crime on a total stranger that was “worth it”?
I’d love to live in a nice walkable area where I could just walk to shops restaurants and work, but that is at odds with my desire to have a few acres and a large outbuilding to house my cars and other hobbies. Also it’s not even very realistic to walk from the front gate of my work to the building I actually work in.
That’s my problem, too. I love a walkable/ridable place (bikes are another love of mine), but that means close proximity to other humans when you don’t want them around and I’ve known and lived next to too many humans to want that.
“Who, in the automotive industry, has the juice right now?”
Luc Donckerwolke is the absolute juicemeister right now. Hyundai/Kia/Genesis’ dominant presence at NYAS when other manufacturers are retreating from the show circuit is an indication of that energy. Kia is putting out genuinely desirable products at excellent price points. Hyundai’s offerings are strong across the board, and if the N74 sees the light of day as a production car they’ll have a legitimate halo car. Genesis has become a proper luxury brand in its own right with aspirations toward the ultra high-end market. Plus he’s a legitimate car guy and a bit of a badass.
He can also pull off an all-black outfit without looking like the world’s most pathetic divorced dad.
I’m having the same problem with the Silverado EV, we aren’t even going to bother with a test drive until they start offering the actual options we want. We are definitely looking forward to the price drop.
I am miffed that they did not call it the AvalanchE
My brain still says “Avalanche!” everytime I see one.
Evalanche? (Preferably pronounced like WALL-E would say it, “eeeeevah-lanche”)
I will forever struggle with the idea of being pro-transit in the US. The trains and busses in our city are so freaking sketchy, and I do not have a death wish. Cars provide a security of not having to ride with strangers (sans the ride share services, of course). Walking isn’t much safer, and is completely out of the picture during our hot summers (110+ degrees). My city is also an hour from my city and is spread out, so public transit would only be so effective. I guess I will always be a suburbs kind of dude.
I am also terrified that automotive enthusiasm will become prohibitively expensive if society goes away from cars. It might end up as toys for only the rich, and I am far from that.
I’m not enamored with the state of public transit in the US either, but I would sooner assume it to be a lack of investment in it than an inherent fault of it.
Hard to invest in it when cities were never designed for it in the first place. When invested in, it is seldom done well.
A lot of cities weren’t designed for cars either. Just look at pretty much any major city in the northeast, they all pre-date the automobile and had more effective public transit a century ago.
A whole lot of North American cities grew up on privately-run streetcar lines laid by property developers, which eventually were pawned off on the city as they aged and costs went up.
So they were once designed for it…
I generally dislike using public transit as well, but I agree with this statement.
Transit itself isn’t necessarily the problem, it’s all of the other things that our U.S. society refuses to deal with that’s the problem that then manifest themselves on the public transit system. Homelessness, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, grinding poverty, hopelessness, mental health (non-)care, inaccessible affordable healthcare. Other countries have this figured out. Riding a bus isn’t the issue. The other people on the bus are the issue. (assuming of course that the bus goes where and when you want it to for the most part).
Your shuttle bus from any airport to any airport economy parking lot IS public transit but doesn’t generally suffer from any of the above problems. Why? Because the people flying don’t generally suffer (visibly) from the above issues.
The problem is not that public transit is a bad idea, but rather that the US stopped investing in it. And because we stopped investing in it, it developed this stigma that it’s for losers and weirdos who have no other option or something.
I really recommend going somewhere that knows what it’s doing when it comes to public transit. London is a great example – I’m a complete idiot, but I was able to get from the airport to my hotel in the center of London for just a few bucks. And when you’re in London, you can get a bus to pretty much anywhere you want to go for even cheaper. It’s mostly efficient, safe, and clean and everybody uses it. That’s an example of what we could have here if people cared enough.
I used the metro in DC and was impressed. Otherwise, I’ve always been sketched out.
The DC Metro is legitimately excellent.
And I was, too, the first time I took public transit in London. But I realized that was because I had an unfair stigma of the whole concept simply because I had never used it.
I have lived in the NYC metro area for 20 years and ride the Subway and PATH systems all the time. The first time I rode the DC Metro I couldn’t believe they had carpet on their cars. It’s not the easiest system with the distance pricing and I think they have replaced the carpeted cars recently but DC is a pretty good system especially for the US.
This is good advice, but I spent years commuting by bus in a couple kinda crappy midsize American cities. I think it seems much worse than it actually is to people who don’t use it with any regularity. Sure, sometimes there’s a weirdo or asshole on the bus. Sometimes a bum will decide to sit right next to you with his trash bag full of cans on his lap, but most of the time its just people trying to get where they’re going, looking at their phones or reading a book. The worst part for me was always the time, it takes forever to get places on the bus sometimes.
I agree – most of the stigma that transit is for weirdos and full of dangerous criminals is based on “if it bleeds, it leads” journalism and reports from people who tried using it once in a city they weren’t familiar with and they felt uncomfortable.
I take regional transit and/or the subway daily and, while I admit my experience isn’t universal because I am a generic white guy, the vast majority of all trips are fast(ish), safe, and far more relaxing than sitting in traffic and dealing with parking for equivalent trips.
The average price of a new car in the US last year was $48,000, and with the looming impacts of Tangerine Palpatine’s tariffs, they are poised to get even more expensive. Cars are already getting more expensive without the need to engineer a society that is turning away from them. This is the same logic people use when they try to argue that raising the minimum wage will make things like fast food more expensive. So we don’t raise the minimum wage, and fast food gets more expensive anyway.
If Trump is Tangerine Palpatine, would that make Elon Darth Vapid?
I dig riding motorcycles and enjoy a good drive but I frickin’ love transit. I love being able to just kick back with a book in a battleship of a vehicle and not worry about the automotive moshpit outside.
That said, most US transit systems are structured for two kinds of people: 9-5 downtown commuters, and people with whose time has very little value. Neither of those apply to me, so even living outside a city famed for its public transit, I rarely use it anymore.
The only different kind of system I’ve seen was Via Rideshare in West Sacramento, which blew me away with how it served schoolkids, beer-drinkers, grocery-shoppers, and all kinds of folks who valued their time.
The only juice Musk has these days is Bone Hurting Juice.
I also agree with Farah that I would LOVE to live in a walkable area with good transit to/from the things I need.
I’d love to sell my boring family hauler and just have a fun car for going out of town and enjoying on weekends.
4loco isn’t a juice?
4Loko is a sign you took the wrong path in life.