why don’t you drive an EV?

the lovely Emma B and i have come back down to earth. neither of us have a daily commute that a car would help with. as Ed says, owning an expensive hunk of metal that's just going to sit there for a lot of the time is stupid. and there are more car share schemes in London than i'd realised.

the last piece of the puzzle is figuring out how to get 2 kids + dog from London to southwestern France. car hire websites are surprisingly terrible at this! where my disrupters at??

Do monthly car subscriptions exist in the UK? Might cover your trip and give you a preview of how much use you get out of owning.

Not ev but this is the active thread I guess

"The cowboy dream has created a booming market in prestige ruggedness.” @rachmonroe on the Texas vintage truck market https://t.co/WaqfEMmtWr

— Kyle Chayka (@chaykak) December 1, 2021

that article is bizarre. people have been buying and maintaining model-t fords and '56 chevy bel airs for decades, it's literally the same thing.

In Austin, as in the Bay Area, Nonnenberg told me, tech workers make up a large share of buyers. “People are spending a whole bunch of money to buy a 1964 Ford pickup truck, which is so rudimentary in its construction and design and capability,”

when you have never heard of the concept of antiques

the classic car market is going nuts right now, just like all collectables are since the pandemic, tho i think trucks are hot suvs particularly

new cars are so much better lol

some old cars do look very nice tbf

I thought that link was going to be about these kinda models:

https://i.imgur.com/RVGW0ew.png

i think the article is identifying a phenom - yes, car collectors have always existed but historically 80s cars didn't enjoy as much popularity as like 60s/70s muscle cars or w/e. that's definitely changed and i've seen some trendy, non-car people post recently about how all of a sudden they want a 1980s mazda b2000 truck for example.

yugo or gtfo

this is the relevant twitter feed, it’s been going for years. u+k

https://twitter.com/chodspot?s=21

weird 80/90s cars being in style pretty much just has to do with the fact that children of that era are of car collecting age now imho, and they are approaching it with a classic quirky gen x sensibility, that and the pandemic of course has made buying things more popular

i made a new ilcars thread mods (car modifications)

yeah that's def a huge part of it too xp

str8 fire beautiful retro hyundai EV concept cars

https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2021/11/Hyundai-Grandeur-concept-car-hero-852x479.jpg

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/15/22783810/hyundai-grandeur-heritge-concept-ev-80s

https://media.autoexpress.co.uk/image/private/s--bBYKrZVs--/f_auto,t_content-image-full-desktop@1/v1618587076/autoexpress/2021/04/Hyundai%20Pony-14.jpg

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/hyundai/354771/retro-tribute-original-hyundai-pony-hatchback-unveiled

silly exercise but one would be foolish to deny the execution

Twenty minutes into this Mach-E rental and I'm already 100% "shut up and take my money!" I feel like such a shill...

given the inventory around here at least, that's the only way you get a car these days

nice xp

New thread: I am at an EV charging station

re: pace of electrification, the entire Audi fleet will be EVs by 2025.

they lying

i’m pretty sure that’s public knowledge!

what that theyre liars

why people want to own a car that works 365 days a year, rather than rely on renting for unusual situations

I had a Very Bad experience with @Hertz over Thanksgiving.

This is what happened & the letter I wrote. We are totally fine, & our Thanksgiving ended up wonderful, but I suspect this is a fraudulent business practice, & I want to give it visibility for those who don't or can't. pic.twitter.com/cr9haMSeXd

— Kate Klonick (@Klonick) November 30, 2021

wow that looks egregious. in an efficient market, such companies would go bankrupt and exit the market - oh wait

i’m telling you, why haven’t these yoyos been disrupted out of existence

Car rental companies are fucking notorious for pulling this shit, especially in North America. They overbook shamelessly at busy periods. If I rent during the holidays, I will make multiple reservations with multiple companies because this will happen and no amount of consumer protection law seems to stop them doing this.

Sold: Vortec-Powered 1971 GMC K1500 4x4 for $66,555. https://t.co/f6jDjVOeQH pic.twitter.com/eS4j7TWCD8

— Bring a Trailer (@Bringatrailer) December 2, 2021

So in the end, I did shut up and give them my money - yesterday I put in my order and deposit for a Mach-E GT standard in dark matter grey. Build times are 24+ weeks out which will give me time to unload (*gulp*) sixteen cylinders of dinosaur power here at HQ.

sick, what cars are you selling

damn elvis wtg

good luck on selling your bugatti veyron

A 2013 Dodge Charger R/T. It's my daily driver even though I've been WFH for years and not daily driving at all. Eats luggage, stuff, road miles, and gasoline in roughly equal massive amounts (seriously, a bass head/cab, an AC30 amp, two guitars, pedals, us with all our crap and on the road for a week) Apart from the time last year when an animal got up into the engine bay and ate all the wiring it's been as reliable as a miner's donkey and has never, ever stranded me. Went on a totally awesome road trip out to Nebraska for the solar eclipse and back through Montana and full bore through Nevada like I was goddamn Kowalski and Challenger incarnate - only I was trying to get to that awesome gourmet gas station in Lee Vining before it closed (I made it). I love how it's an amalgamation of every car I've ever owned: various Detroit iron of the 70s, a pickup truck, several BMWs, a boring unstoppable Ford of the 2000s. I'm angry that it's associated with DodgeBros and the police because it's been really fun to drive and ability to carry a LOT of stuff has been a huge plus.

The last time I filled the tank it cost $82. If it was a van, it would have Frazetta art of dinosaurs gazing haplessly at the arriving meteor.

Car #2 is a 2009 Aston Martin V8 Vantage I inherited from my mom. (*insert requisite waaah, I inherited a supercar from my parents here*) Equal parts unpleasant, iconoclastic, and awesome. Sometimes it's fun to drive and every road is flat but most of the time around here in LA, the awful transmission is fighting you, some asshole in a Tesla or a Corvette wants to drag race, there's some nasty interior reflections from the light-colored interior that makes it hard to see. My mom believed that it was eventually going to be worth a lot of money someday but she would have been completely unprepared for a world where not just internal combustion, but driving itself would be obsolete.

A couple weeks ago I was up on Angeles Crest Highway to take pictures of the AM in prep for selling and met a guy who had a McLaren 570 who was also getting ready to sell it - he had a full crew with a drone pilot, separate camera truck. He was in line for an all-out Mach-E GT Performance and that he was done with gas. Worth noting that the camera crew was using an ID 4.

Take it to the people who have learned how to live thread ;)

sick, i saw the eclipse in wyoming, it was incredible

there was 360 degree dusk all the animals went silent and a guy nearby yelled holy shit

you should sell the aston martin on bringatrailer

you should sell it on [gesticulating wildly] doug demuros auction website for cool cars from the modern era

This might not make sense, but do they sell analog EVs? Cars with actual needles on the speedometers?

I saw one model where you could cycle through half a dozen dashboard backgrounds each time you got into the the car and I was all NO NO NO NO. It's bad enough when they do this at Dairy Queen.

I saw the eclipse in Missouri. Whole day felt like a night scene from a cowboy movie.

https://i.imgur.com/VSf7mcx.jpg

can barely find a gas car with analog dials these days (not actually true but kind of true)

one of my cars has a voltmeter its cool

tell us about your cars

jay leno ovah heah

its a 1989 black toyota mr2 that used to be owned by a lady who worked for the department of defense, and had a garfield sticker in the back window according to the flipper i bought it from (unfortunately he removed it)

nice, i think you should get another garfield sticker for it

yeah it's still got the paw prints... i might

the most important EV in the U.S. will be the success or failure of the Ford F150 EV, because ultimately you're going to have to convince the "Suburban guys who drive giant pickups for literally no reason" demographic for EVs to be mainstream

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, November 29, 2021 2:38 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

early days but looks like a hit

Reservations for the F-150 Lightning are now closed. Order banks open next month. https://t.co/AR0cIdFOcW

— Michael Martinez (@MikeMartinez_AN) December 8, 2021

although not clear they've won the "Suburban guys who drive giant pickups for literally no reason" demo yet: "Farley says 70 percent of Lightning reservation holders are new to Ford and to pickups."