@sn4cktimes My guess is that buying the set for $7000 would come out of one budget and having you try to make things comes out of another budget. It may be shifting the accounting work based on what can be spent. Sure, it costs more in the long run, but internal rules can often lead to wasteful spending.

@davesaddiction It's designed to look good while you lie back with your Tesla on autopilot heading into the side of a truck.

Let's go with the Toyota 3.5 Liter 2GR engine.

Lotus Evora 400 (2GR-FE)

Toyota Tacoma (2GR-FKS)

I don't even trust jack stands. I only fee safe working under my truck if I'm holding it up with a Ferrari.

There is some more information on potential Tesla touchscreen failures in the news this morning. Autoblog has information on what the failure is and the Seattle Times has some additional information.
https://www.autoblog.com/2021/01/14/tesla-nhtsa-recall-touchscreen-failure/
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/tesla-balks-at-touch-screen-recall-us-agency-takes-action/

My day job is as a product safety engineer, and I work closely with my company's safety attorneys. My thoughts are based on my experience only and I do not have specific information on discussions within Tesla.

The basic concern of the NHTSA is that the defroster can only be accessed through the touch screen, and the touch screen uses a memory type that will reach its maximum number of read/write cycles in 5 - 6 years. This could disable the defroster which is considered a critical safety feature.

Tesla has 159,000 cars to fix. At best, it will cost them $1,000 to fix each car based on a rough estimate on the cost of parts, labor, logistics and the overhead of managing a recall. It could cost them as much as $2,000. That means that running a recall would cost $160M - $320M. This would wipe out profits for quite a few consecutive quarters and would have a dramatic effect on the stock price.

However, there is a risk if they don't run a formal recall. If a single Tesla owner gets in an accident because the defroster failed due to the touch screen failure, they will sue Tesla. The plaintiff's attorneys will argue that Tesla was aware of a defect and they ignored it. They will argue that offering a software update for a fee is not an acceptable remedy for a known defect, especially if the software update only delays the issue and doesn't fix it. Tesla's attorneys will have to argue that the defroster is not a safety system, or they will need some other argument to indicate that the driver was at fault for not manually clearing their windshield when the defroster failed.

The risk is that this could become a class action suit. The plaintiff's attorneys may argue that the basic remedy would be to refund owners the cost of their vehicle, raising the potential cost to Tesla by a factor of 50. This doesn't even include possible punitive damages.

This is all supposition. I don't know any internal discussions within Tesla. I can't even state if the NHTSA position is correct. I can only estimate what the potential risks to Tesla are.

One thing to remember is that the plaintiff's attorneys will sway the jury based on emotion and the Tesla attorneys will try to use logic. History shows that emotion is often more of an influence on juries.

GM faced significant financial impacts from their ignition switch problem and only survived through bankruptcy and the creation of the new GM that didn't have to cover all of the financial obligations of the old GM. A jury may see Tesla as worse for knowing about the problem for a long time and charging customers to fix it, especially if that remedy only delays the issue.

This is high stakes poker. The financial risks to Tesla could be significant.

@adversemartyr The photo is flipped. It was here on Oppo earlier in the day in Just Rolled Into the Shop.
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/5705/my-favorite-jrits-posts-of-the-week-vol-196/1

@davesaddiction Since there is a bench seat in the trailer, it would be perfect for driving around those relatives that you don't want to listen to.

WhoIsTheLeader had a recent post about a trip to Six Flags that included their railroad.
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/3541/the-cars-of-six-flags-no-brakes-no-steering-and-off-side-steering

That sent me down a rathole looking at similar railroad rides at other theme parks and zoos. A number of those showed a design of an engine that looked oddly familiar.

I finally remembered seeing it at the Museum of Transportation in suburban St. Louis. They have one of the two GM Aerotrains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerotrain_(GM)

The passenger cars were built with parts from GM busses and the engine borrowed styling from GM's cars. The back end of the train even has tail fins.

GM designed the train with air ride suspension and other features to try to make it comfortable, but it never worked well. The railroads were trying to compete against air travel at a time when jets were coming into service and they gave the Areotrain a try. It didn't work as advertised and they were quickly retired.

The Museum of Transportation has a small car collection and even a few planes and boats. However, their train collection is excellent.

@Dr-Zoidberg If you haven't watched the video, you can't be sure that it's what you think. That lumber may just be a clickbait picture to draw you in. The real plan may be to put a mattress in the bed so you can start a mobile gigolo service.

@whoistheleader My mother lives in Atlanta, so I can imagine it. I would be less worried about the city center than some of the winding, hilly residential areas around town. I would also hate having to find two adjacent empty spaces to parallel park.

@rallydarkstrike A bad spark is the most common reason for a misfire, but it's not the only possibility. It could be a fuel problem or a compression issue.

If it's fuel, it could be a clogged injector or a clogged fuel filter. If it's the fuel filter, the weakest injector would show problems first.

Compression would be a more worrisome issue. I would hate to think of a valve not seating, damaged rings or worse.

@whoistheleader Back in 1989, I got to take one of those Dodge vans on a road trip. I was only one year out of college when I got an offer of a large load of free furniture from a relative. The problem was that the relative lived 200 miles away. A friend offered to loan me his van and I accepted.

That was the first time I drove anything larger than a Dodge K-car. It was an interesting experience. For the first time, I got to experience the thrill of driving a giant, beat-up vehicle where "might makes right". When I signaled a lane change, people got out the way. I was glad of that. The van was so tall that I couldn't see the 1980's Hondas and Nissans right next to me. Their rooflines were well below the bottom of the windows. Blind spots were huge.

@tripper I have a friend who had one for years for a family of four. He liked it because it was a good balance of large interior size for a small vehicle. He has two young kids. The 5 is smaller than most minivans, so he could fit it in small parking spaces. The sliding doors made it much easier to get the kids buckled into the car seats, even in the tight parking spaces. The way-back had enough room for anything they needed to carry on trips with kids.

@classicdatsundebate My great grandfather decided to leave Prussia when the Prussian army made him an offer of free room and board, free clothing and only a moderate chance of getting shot on the front line. My great grandfather considered this, though about his future, and caught the first boat to the United States he could find. He landed in Galveston and eventually moved to St. Louis where there was a large German-speaking population he could blend in with.

@skyfire77 When I was in third grade, the class had an assignment to draw the flags of the countries where the ancestors came from. I was out sick and I did the assignment at home. Since part of my family had come from Germany, I drew a flag with black, red and yellow stripes. I was too young to know about WWII, but when I came back into class later that week, I was surprised to see all the other German flags were red with a white circle and this strange black cross.

Needless to say, my parents were not happy when they found out. Some of our relatives disappeared in the war. We only know that they were sent to Theresienstadt and we don't know where they ended up after that.

These days, I would do something different. Most of my family left central Europe in the 19th century, before a unified Germany. Based on where they came from, I would more likely use the Prussian flag.

@tonicipriani Do they have the Active-X Box version?

@fintail said in This makes me mad:

And Hungary is seen from the (western) European viewpoint as regressing dangerously to the right.

I have a Hungarian friend who lived in Japan for a number of years and now lives in Germany. He has often expressed how disillusioned he is at his country's shift to the right. He has no plans to return as long as Viktor Orban or his party are in power. In short, there are even some Hungarians who thing Hungary has moved too far to the right.

I have a weekly conference call with him and colleagues in London. We used to trade complaints about Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Viktor Orban.

@gmporschenut-also-a-fan-of-hondas said in Where would you go?:

@roadkilled That it doesn't go clockwise triggers severe ocd.

If it makes you feel better, you can put a pointer above the circle pointing straight down. Then you can rotate the circle clockwise and the months will progress in correct direction.

@fintail said in Where would you go?:

@adamftw PNW is full

I'm not sure the PNW counts as having four seasons anyway.