The economy is booming!

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
TacoMac, post: 14783359, member: 940740"]They do. It's actually Tesla that doesn't. But what you have are a bunch of fangirls, especially on this forum, that run around singing Tesla praises even in the face of certain doom.



It's not just electric. It's EVERY vehicle. You could spend the next two years reading about it all right here: https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations

all the manufacturers have to follow the same rules. Tesla should as well. those rules are in place to prevent things like suvs that flip over, they don't have anything to do with automakers being able to make electric cars or not...or design, or efficiency, or appearance....just safety...

Now, TECHNICALLY, Tesla is not an automotive manufacturer. They're an "energy and automotive" conglomerate. Part of the way they sold Tesla electric cars was as a network, not an automobile. That's why they built that entire network of power stations all over the damn place.

That's also how most of the parts of their cars went through without ever having to pass scrutiny...which is of course why they've had to disable the auto pilot and had so many recalls about their battery packs bursting into flames.

The registered big automakers would never (and presently aren't) get away with that.


Tesla should have to follow the same rules as other auto manufacturers, and the same review processes...but other automakers have recalls every few months...they are and do get away with it, till they get caught....




Yes, there is. There didn't used to be until the SUV was created. When it hit the streets without a classification because that type vehicle had never existed, they started having all kinds of problems with them flipping over.

Because, of course, it was a fucking horrific, top heavy, piss poor design. They amended the laws accordingly to prevent that from happening again.



Because:
  1. It wouldn't pass scrutiny and would be illegal.
  2. Nobody would buy it because it's a shoe box that will get you killed.
There's a reason the Smart car never took off. It was a death trap.[/QUOTE]
it's only a death trap when you have it on the road with multi ton suvs and trucks...two matchbox cars crashing together don't do much damage....
and why would it be illegal? do the Chinese not use brakes? if it has seatbelts and minimal structural integrity, it'll pass American standards....we have sold corvairs, pintos, fieros, yugos.....if they'll pass....a skateboard with some foam taped to it ought to pass..
Tesla is a name for an idea...makes no difference to me who actually successfully implements the idea...Tesla, or Ford, or Honda..or two hindus from a village in india....i support Musk, because he's trying to change things...i'll support anyone who actually looks like they're trying to achieve something...
 

TacoMac

Well-Known Member
and why would it be illegal?
Well, first off it's top speed is 62 mph which disqualifies it from being safe for highway travel.

Secondly, China (surprise-surprise) does NOT have the same safety standards that we do. It would utterly fail the front and side impact tests and be labeled as absolutely devoid of safety. Nobody would buy it.

Thirdly, it's not $5,000. It's actually $14,000 plus incentives FOR QUALIFIED BUYERS.

Fourthly, it has a range of only 90 miles.

It's a marketing decision based on common fucking sense. NOBODY WOULD BUY THAT PIECE OF SHIT IN THIS COUNTRY.
 

Grandpapy

Well-Known Member
Smart Cars Earn Highest Safety Rating. As for safety, the ForTwo did well enough in crash tests by the independent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) to earn the group's highest rating—five stars—thanks to the car's steel racecar-style frame and liberal use of high-tech front and side airbags.
 

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
TacoMac, post: 14783359, member: 940740"]They do. It's actually Tesla that doesn't. But what you have are a bunch of fangirls, especially on this forum, that run around singing Tesla praises even in the face of certain doom.



It's not just electric. It's EVERY vehicle. You could spend the next two years reading about it all right here: https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations

all the manufacturers have to follow the same rules. Tesla should as well. those rules are in place to prevent things like suvs that flip over, they don't have anything to do with automakers being able to make electric cars or not...or design, or efficiency, or appearance....just safety...

Now, TECHNICALLY, Tesla is not an automotive manufacturer. They're an "energy and automotive" conglomerate. Part of the way they sold Tesla electric cars was as a network, not an automobile. That's why they built that entire network of power stations all over the damn place.

That's also how most of the parts of their cars went through without ever having to pass scrutiny...which is of course why they've had to disable the auto pilot and had so many recalls about their battery packs bursting into flames.

The registered big automakers would never (and presently aren't) get away with that.


Tesla should have to follow the same rules as other auto manufacturers, and the same review processes...but other automakers have recalls every few months...they are and do get away with it, till they get caught....




Yes, there is. There didn't used to be until the SUV was created. When it hit the streets without a classification because that type vehicle had never existed, they started having all kinds of problems with them flipping over.

Because, of course, it was a fucking horrific, top heavy, piss poor design. They amended the laws accordingly to prevent that from happening again.



Because:
  1. It wouldn't pass scrutiny and would be illegal.
  2. Nobody would buy it because it's a shoe box that will get you killed.
There's a reason the Smart car never took off. It was a death trap.
it's only a death trap when you have it on the road with multi ton suvs and trucks...two matchbox cars crashing together don't do much damage....
and why would it be illegal? do the Chinese not use brakes? if it has seatbelts and minimal structural integrity, it'll pass American standards....we have sold corvairs, pintos, fieros, yugos.....if they'll pass....a skateboard with some foam taped to it ought to pass..
Tesla is a name for an idea...makes no difference to me who actually successfully implements the idea...Tesla, or Ford, or Honda..or two hindus from a village in india....i support Musk, because he's trying to change things...i'll support anyone who actually looks like they're trying to achieve something...
With Tesla, there are people on both sides who have big money at stake who are willing to say anything. Elon Musk can't keep his mouth shut or make a deadline. Private Equity investors are betting big time that the company will go belly up and are shorting the company. Those same VCs (vulture capitalists) are famous for pumping out negative news akin to the propaganda Trumpkins use. Part of what they say is true so it's believable but the message that Tesla WILL go belly up is their own and far from certain.

So, I don't believe anything anybody says about Tesla, the company. They have made some good cars. I've never heard a Tesla owner complain about their car. I don't know many but they all get bright eyed when they talk about it.

Electric vehicles are disruptive technology and the big automakers are too tightly coupled to internal combustion engines to make the transition. They face a classic dilemma of keeping their existing and huge product lines profitable while developing the disruptive tech into comparatively tiny markets with huge investments. In my career, I've seen this same problem in other industries several times. The big company has always lost to cadre of smaller company that were entirely based upon the disruptive tech. Not to say that every one of those start-ups made it. Most don't. But eventually some do and they are the ones who carry on from where the older companies left off.

Examples:
Xerox and Kodak vs digital imaging and printing
Sperry-Univac, IBM and DEC vs personal computers

GM and Toyota, for example, are behaving exactly as those companies did towards the end of their heyday.

A good read on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
, generally referred to as The Innovator's Dilemma, first published in 1997, is the best-known work of the Harvard professor and businessman Clayton Christensen.

Clayton Christensen demonstrates how successful, outstanding companies can do everything "right" and yet still lose their market leadership – or even fail – as new, unexpected competitors rise and take over the market. There are two key parts to this dilemma.

  1. Value to innovation is an S-curve: Improving a product takes time and many iterations. The first of these iterations provide minimal value to the customer but in time the base is created and the value increases exponentially. Once the base is created then each iteration is drastically better than the last. At some point the most valuable improvements are complete and the value per iteration is minimal again. So in the middle is the most value, at the beginning and end the value is minimal.
  2. Incumbent sized deals: The incumbent has the luxury of a huge customer set but high expectations of yearly sales. New entry next generation products find niches away from the incumbent customer set to build the new product. The new entry companies do not require the yearly sales of the incumbent and thus have more time to focus and innovate on this smaller venture.
For this reason, the next generation product is not being built for the incumbent's customer set and this large customer set is not interested in the new innovation and keeps demanding more innovation with the incumbent product. Unfortunately this incumbent innovation is limited to the overall value of the product as it is at the later end of the S-curve. Meanwhile, the new entrant is deep into the S-curve and providing significant value to the new product. By the time the new product becomes interesting to the incumbent's customers it is too late for the incumbent to react to the new product. At this point it is too late for the incumbent to keep up with the new entrant's rate of improvement, which by then is on the near-vertical portion of its S-curve trajectory.
 
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TacoMac

Well-Known Member
As for safety, the ForTwo did well enough in crash tests by the independent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) to earn the group's highest rating—five stars—thanks to the car's steel racecar-style frame and liberal use of high-tech front and side airbags.
Nope. It's rated at 4. To their credit though they did make a LOT of steps to make them more safe. From 2014 backwards, the front end has only "nominal support for impact" and is not rated at all. With optional equipment, they were able to get a rating of only 1 star for a front impact. That's why they bombed out and people stopped buying them. My glove box was built tougher than that.

The car they tested also had "optional equipment" that pushed the price up to $28,500.00. That much money for that little shit car? No thanks.
 

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
Well, first off it's top speed is 62 mph which disqualifies it from being safe for highway travel.

Secondly, China (surprise-surprise) does NOT have the same safety standards that we do. It would utterly fail the front and side impact tests and be labeled as absolutely devoid of safety. Nobody would buy it.

Thirdly, it's not $5,000. It's actually $14,000 plus incentives FOR QUALIFIED BUYERS.

Fourthly, it has a range of only 90 miles.

It's a marketing decision based on common fucking sense. NOBODY WOULD BUY THAT PIECE OF SHIT IN THIS COUNTRY.
probably not, but they sure as hell will in China, and probably most of the rest of Asia...and i would here...to use around town...fuck, if i didn't live on a mountain side i'd ride a bike, and there are no fucking side impact panels on a bike...you can't look at it like it's supposed to compete with highway cruisers...it's to get groceries in, to run to the mall in, not to get on the interstate with...

and while it doesn't apply to this specific vehicle...
https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-china-auto-export-20180205-story.html
they are learning, and getting ready to start marketing their vehicles here, vehicles that will pass inspection...
 

TacoMac

Well-Known Member
First off, China doesn't learn anything. They steal it. They've been sued by every automaker on earth pretty much for it. They take things, reverse engineer it, copy it, put their own badge on it and sell it. BMW is cutting any additional growth in China because of it.

Secondly, this is the United States. Not China. You simply WILL NOT EVER get people to spend 10's of thousands of dollars on a small piece of shit with no performance, no range, no features and no real style. It's been tried many times. It has failed every single time.

That's part of why Tesla was so successful in the early going: it was an electric car that didn't make you give up everything you love about a car. Unfortunately, it was (and still is) out of the price range of most Americans.

Things like this don't happen overnight. It takes a lot of time. Decades, really.

This year is the last year Volvo will ever make an all gasoline car. BMW is going that way in a few years, as is Honda, Toyota and eventually the U.S. Cadillac hopes to be all electric by 2030.

Things are in motion, but it's not going to happen this afternoon. Sooner or later though, they'll become the standard. When that happens and people no longer have the choice, they'll buy one.
 

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
First off, China doesn't learn anything. They steal it. They've been sued by every automaker on earth pretty much for it. They take things, reverse engineer it, copy it, put their own badge on it and sell it. BMW is cutting any additional growth in China because of it.

Secondly, this is the United States. Not China. You simply WILL NOT EVER get people to spend 10's of thousands of dollars on a small piece of shit with no performance, no range, no features and no real style. It's been tried many times. It has failed every single time.

That's part of why Tesla was so successful in the early going: it was an electric car that didn't make you give up everything you love about a car. Unfortunately, it was (and still is) out of the price range of most Americans.

Things like this don't happen overnight. It takes a lot of time. Decades, really.

This year is the last year Volvo will ever make an all gasoline car. BMW is going that way in a few years, as is Honda, Toyota and eventually the U.S. Cadillac hopes to be all electric by 2030.

Things are in motion, but it's not going to happen this afternoon. Sooner or later though, they'll become the standard. When that happens and people no longer have the choice, they'll buy one.
you're right, but the manufacturers could speed the process up significantly if they wanted to...but profits are more important than progress. anyone like musk, anyone who shakes things up and keeps things in the public eye, are a good thing, even if he personally fails miserably....
 

hotrodharley

Well-Known Member
“The above 36 percent gig economy statistic comes from a Gallup poll. They estimate “that 29% of all workers in the U.S. have an alternative work arrangement as their primary job. This includes a quarter of all full-time workers (24%) and half of all part-time workers (49%).Aug 31, 2018”
57 Million U.S. Workers Are Part Of The Gig Economy - Forbes

There ^^ is a significant portion of the miraculous jobs that are being bragged about.

Here is part of why we have “full employment” yet stagnant wages. Here is part of why 7,000,000 people are 90 days or more past due on auto loans. Why student loans are so delinquent.
 

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
Lots of positive economic facts in this article..

A Hot US Job Market is Coaxing People In From The Sidelines.



https://apnews.com/c721261f31134ba0b77b440682a68c3a



MAGA!
could have been a decent post, offering a pretty well written article, expressing an opposing view point....had to throw in the trump gang sign though...
so this proves what? that trump has been able to maintain the momentum better than he was expected to? that he can indeed maintain one of Obama's policies if he can use it to make himself look better?
the only way to make America great again is to kick trump's ass the fuck out of the White house, and then rub conservatives noses in his shitpile for the next 4 or 5 terms, at least....so yeah....maga....
 
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