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l1tany11

162 karma · joined June 14, 2021

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l1tany11··on Tesla Hasn't Had a Successful New Product Launch Since JB Straubel Stepped Down
I’m not saying I would. I’m saying that 1.7 million subscribers currently do, and that number is growing rapidly. It’s also a big reason why people buy the cars. People legitimately talk about and consider it from a safety perspective. Drive to the ER, that kind of thing, as well as a luxury feature.

People don’t like driving, and they hire(d) people to do it for them. There’s even a word for it: chauffeur. Now the car does it itself. Yes the chauffeur could do other things as well, but you can’t pay a chauffeur $99 a month.

l1tany11··on Tesla Hasn't Had a Successful New Product Launch Since JB Straubel Stepped Down
They update it all the time. It’s not old, it’s new. Yes it finally is starting to achieve the promise of 10 years ago… and the market is recognizing it and they are calling out the subscription growth on the earnings calls. 67% yoy growth this year.

Most people don’t care that some guy paid $10k for a feature on a $80k car 10 years ago that didn’t achieve its crazy promise. They care that they can pay $99 today for a feature that blows away their expectations, AND is good enough to not just be a surprising novelty but something they use long term.

l1tany11··on Tesla Hasn't Had a Successful New Product Launch Since JB Straubel Stepped Down
You mean when sales were lower? Sales numbers are pretty clear. They are up every year, along with the price.

The slate is a joke. They said they need to sell 80k per year to break even. The maverick is currently only double that in its 6th year, after a major mid cycle refresh, basically without competition. Now the slate is going to appear with less utility, fewer features, 205 miles of range and sell in comparable volumes? What a joke.

l1tany11··on Tesla 'Cannot Guarantee' Roadster Reservation Holders Will Ever Get a Car
Listing a bunch of sedans? Ok… do you know what a sports car is? Obviously not.
l1tany11··on Tesla 'Cannot Guarantee' Roadster Reservation Holders Will Ever Get a Car
Sedan, sedan, not in us market, not in us market, not in us market… this roadster is going to be made in the US for the US market, which in terms of supercars/hypercars is a huge part of the global market.
l1tany11··on Tesla 'Cannot Guarantee' Roadster Reservation Holders Will Ever Get a Car
And what other electric sports car can you buy? Oh wait, I almost forgot, they don’t exist. Unless you count the >$2M Rimac which is stated to go out of production at the end of this year. If this roadster becomes available, it could easily be the only electric sports car on the market.
l1tany11··on Florida's HOAs and condo associations are making the housing crisis worse
That’s the entire point of HOAs though; so that the city can offload those costs onto another organization AND collect the same revenue they would otherwise. At least where I live, it’s well understood among developers that the zoning and permitting process is how this is enforced.

The real, completely arbitrary thing that makes housing expensive is zoning. There is research on this. Zoning, especially in the long term, has enormous effects, including on things seemingly unrelated such as reducing construction productivity, reducing competition among construction firms (fewer contractors) and reducing housing supply (supply vs demand).

I think people generally don’t appreciate how restrictive zoning effectively is. It’s not just what you can build, but how big it is, layout things, and can even reach into aesthetics etc.

l1tany11··on An airport cooled by natural ventilation
Yeah and obviously it was impossible to put solar on the roof to power the AC because of their vanity roof design. So worse indoor air quality, and more heat and humidity. What a triumph of design!
l1tany11··on Back and shoulder surgery is often worse than useless
Multiple times in Southern California I’ve gotten an mri for like $350-400 next day, in a 3T machine with Simonmed.
l1tany11··on Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test
Simplest explanation comes from Tory Bruno: they design with a factor of safety just above 1. 1.1 to 1.25. This is one of the reasons they wait for good weather to launch… they are trying to maximize payload. Also until recently, it’s been sort of a vicious cycle: rocket is very exquisite and expensive, so spacecraft needs to last longer and thus gets more exquisite and expensive, etc.

Have you seen how many issues race cars have? Same shit. It goes on and on.

l1tany11··on General Motors is assisting with the restoration of a rare EV1
There is a big market for it, but I don’t think that market exists until you go another 10+ years down the road. And then that market will likely be largely filled by used EVs.

The problem I see is that many people are skeptical of EVs, most people don’t have experience with EVs or any existing EV infrastructure (a charger at home), and having an extra car kind of sucks (parking, registration, insurance, etc).

l1tany11··on How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps
Same thing in the US. Tesla does exactly that at their supercharger sites. Probably not all of them, but definitely some of them.
l1tany11··on Ford Has Steered Its Former EV Truck and Plant Plans in to a Ditch
Streetfighter v4s has a 4 gallon tank and gets 25-30mpg. It’s what I’m most familiar with, but all my friends with different bikes are in about the same boat as me. https://www.reddit.com/r/Ducati/comments/wlw98q/v4_fill_ups_...

It’s more common among the sporty bikes. A lot of these bikes didn’t even have a fuel gauge until that long ago. Just a fuel light. Tons of guys say they go about 100 miles for fill ups. Maybe that’s cause of the history of the bikes, you want a number that’s easy to remember cause you were really looking at the odometer as your gas gauge. Even a Harley bob only has 165 miles of range according to the website. Assume you don’t go from absolutely full to empty, 1 gallon less than the maximum, you’re at 120 miles.

Yeah the live wire is real expensive. Where are you going to charge it? It doesn’t make sense. Compared to a car the battery is tiny, so you should be able to charge at like full DC fast charge rates on a level 2 charger. Except the original livewire had a super weak built in charger so it couldn’t charge at above 1.4kw? So you had to look for dc chargers. It failed for really good reasons. That’s the point I’m trying to make, it failed for good reasons. I think it’s actually rational.

Traditional motorcycles are a terrible use case for replacing with electric right now. But on the commuter side they are becoming insanely popular (although I think usually they are the illegal suron type bikes).

I’m not gonna defend harleys and cruising. I don’t get it. I’m just saying these things are mostly toys. The new bike buyer is buying a toy. But lots of people have lots of reasons for things. Personally I think sporty cars are about handling and power and stuff so I think sporty EVs are great. Most people disagree with me. They want noises and “character”.

l1tany11··on Ford Has Steered Its Former EV Truck and Plant Plans in to a Ditch
I think you’re way off tbh. Something like 85% of the motorcycle market is for pleasure. Plenty of those bikes have a range of only ~100 miles as it is. Stopping is not really the problem. The problem is the charging infrastructure does not exist and the charge times are way too long.

Do some motorcycle owners commute on their bikes? Of course, but that’s clearly the minority of the market. The reason cycle trader is full of low mileage bikes is that the whole activity is kind of a pain in the ass when you think about it. Add charging to that and it’s just too much to bear.

Pleasure riders often ride on nice sunny sundays in groups to ruralish areas where it’s scenic and the roads are winding with few traffic lights etc. they need to be able to “gas up” a significant number of bikes quickly. And that shit is a pain to organize so they do it like twice a year. Hence the low mileage.

Electric motorcycles really are a super hard sell. The stark varg makes way more sense cause that’s a type of motorcycle that gets carried to the destination most of the time anyway. So the range thing is way less of an issue and the upsides stand out way more. That’s probably why I see way, way more Vargs or bikes like them than live wires.

l1tany11··on In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution
100%. Tire technology is a real thing. Tires have advanced a ton in the last 10 years. But driving style is the biggest thing. Some people can only get 10k miles out of a set of tires, while others with the same car and tires get over 40k.

But they do care about tire wear a lot, they know the acceptable wear life for the class. A couple years ago I bought a set of Pirelli tires that were ~50% off because they were an older version; hoping I’d get some benefit. Unfortunately they had half the life and were a bit worse in every way than the newer tires I had before and after.

l1tany11··on BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive
Are you serious?

New motors, new battery pack architecture, chemistry, etc, new body structure (giga castings), new interior, new facia and body panels, new computer architecture, new door handles. It goes on and on and on. Find me a part on your 2014 that is the same on the 2025. Show it to me in the Tesla parts catalog. It’s online. Should be easy.

Get a grip.

l1tany11··on BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive
2025 S is the same as your 2014 S? That’s some hilarious cope. Stop lying. You know it’s completely different. Yes, a model S is still a model S. And the F150 is still a pickup truck. Surprise!
l1tany11··on Tesla Is Recalling Cybertrucks Again
90s trucks sure. But they turned into tonka trucks over the last 30 years. The grills and everything just keep getting bigger.

It’s actually worse than that though. Ford got rid of the heavy duty package on the f150 and said to customers “just buy the f250 instead”. Which is even more tonka.

l1tany11··on Germany's Porsche pauses shift to EVs as profits tank [video]
They don’t have a sports car EV though. They launched a sedan, crossover and midsize SUV.
l1tany11··on CEO pay at top US companies accelerates at fastest pace in 4 years
The Starbucks example to me is a bad example, and seems very cherry picked. They mention the one time stock bonuses he got, most likely part of his recruitment. He’s a highly sought after fast food executive. They also got him to work in Seattle. Last time he switched companies (Taco Bell to Chipotle) they moved their headquarters to him in Newport Beach. Chipotle moved their headquarters from Colorado to California, and their stock went up ~5x during his tenure. That’s probably why he got a huge signing bonus. And Chipotle wasn’t paying him peanuts either, apparently he made $38M one year and was averaging around $20M.

He stated his plan with Starbucks is focused on “theater” and in person service. Doesn’t sound like coffee bot to me.

l1tany11··on OpenAI Employee Stock Sale Would Value ChatGPT Maker at $500B
Because people think the progress shown with gpt5 is unimpressive. Meanwhile Claude is very successful, Grok has come out of nowhere and according to some benchmarks matches or exceeds gpt5 slightly. Meaning openai might not be THE horse to bet on. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a race going on with the potential for a big prize at the end, even at current valuations. Only time will tell! As per usual!
l1tany11··on Electric Vehicles Died a Century Ago. Could That Happen Again?
Pretty much. The math is pretty simple: the more you drive the more economical an ev is due to it being more efficient and lower maintenance. Fighting against EVs is fighting an uphill battle. But I suppose it’s the only logical thing to do for the oil companies, and so many people are afraid of change they can easily leverage that. The whole range anxiety thing for instance is such a joke.
l1tany11··on What's in that bright red fire retardant? No one will say, so we had it tested
Not if it’s below regulatory threshold. Which they seemed to say it was in the article (they said it’s below EPA threshold, so I assume that means the OSHA threshold too).

The article never says how much they detected. I can only assume it’s because it’s a nothing amount. If it was significant they would have been saying how much. It’s hard to take the article seriously as a result. We have crazy sensitive tests now, they do nothing in the article to show it’s not just another story about how sensitive testing is these days.

l1tany11··on Homes Withstood the LA Fires. Architects Explain Why
Why do you think that would solve the problem?

Keep in mind stucco is very common in Southern California. Basically a 7/8” thick layer of concrete on all the exterior walls. It is fire resistant. Many such buildings burned down.

This isn’t the three little pigs where the brick house is the solution. And that wasn’t the moral of the story anyway.

l1tany11··on US house prices in 1950 vs. 2024, accounting for inflation
The things you are pointing out are largely styling choices. The difference in quality of finishes are, like mentioned, solid surface quartz counters which are basically stain proof, large porcelain tiles, toilets that flush more effectively, low voc paints, engineered wood flooring that doesn’t warp and creak, etc.
l1tany11··on Four dead in fire as Tesla doors fail to open after crash
I’d be curious if there’s a single brand that has no electronic door latches at this point. Every brand I can think of has them on at least one vehicle. They have been in mainstream brands (like Chevy) for like 20+ years now.
l1tany11··on Volkswagen to Invest $5.8B in Rivian Through Joint Venture
Same thing has happened in corvettes. Corvette has has electronic doors since at least the c6 (2005) and just like the Tesla has a manual release. But people still get “trapped” and die. There was even a story of an older guy dying in his corvette from asphyxiation because he couldn’t figure it out in ~30 mins.

In fact the Tesla release is more intuitive than the corvette. The corvette has it on the floor, the Tesla it’s right in front of the window switches. In my experience people pull the manual release thinking it’s the primary all the time.

But yeah, never mind the fact that electronic door latching has been around in the industry before Tesla even existed, and is present in VW and VW group vehicles let alone most other brands.

l1tany11··on Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
What’s wild is this is happening in Georgia.
l1tany11··on High Levels of Banned PFAS Detected in Hershey's Packaging
There are much newer products than boeshield which have a lot higher wax content, preform a lot better, and don’t have the nasty stuff in them like naphtha.

Silca ss drip, ufo drip, flower power wax are all drip on lubes that all test better than boeshield (last longer, less chain wear, etc).

Boeshield is only 2.5% wax.

l1tany11··on Welcome to the Era of the $20k Family Car Insurance Bill
Or it is a reference to everyone apparently needing to go to college etc, and there being a nationwide shortage of people entering into trades, mechanics, fabrication, machining, etc. All the “bad” jobs you should stay in school to avoid.

Turns out we live in a built environment, not everyone can sit in a cube.

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