Depends on how you define "much better option". Given that I'm only going to commute in the thing; I have charges at home and at work; the chevy volt is fugly; chevy have a history of making cars that have crap build quality (including the volt); I don't need to lug around a heavy ICE to get to work and back, the eGolf is a far better choice for me.

Actually, if you're leasing, the leasing organisation is buying the vehicle, and hence they are responsible for claiming the tax credit. They then pass on the $7500 at the dealership because they're confident that they are able to actually claim all of it.

No, $159 with about 3.5k down. And no, the point of a lease in the case of an electric vehicle is that you'll pay about $8000 total with the ~$120 * 35 + $3.5k deal, less $2500 tax rebate. The end result is $5500 - which will be substantially less than the depreciation even on a petrol vehicle, let alone the depreciation on an electric vehicle (with its battery aging rapidly after 3 years, and much better tech available presumably).

You'd be utterly insane to actually buy the thing with that deal.

$229 a month is VW's list price. If you actually go to a dealer they'll give you $159 a month straight off the bat with no negotiation (at least in the bay area). If you then actually phone a bunch of them up and argue about the price you'll get down a lot further.

Shame you don't live in a relevant state though :(

First, the current price is actually about $27.5k, because the gvmnt gives you $7.5k cash in hand. Second, as someone who just leased an eGolf, you can get the base price down to about $26k before you even apply the gvmnt incentives if you're half good at arguing.

The reason you haven't heard of the eGolf is two fold:
1) It's very new. VW only started selling them about 4 months ago
2) VW deliberately went out of their way to not make it look electric - there was no fan fare about this new fancy electric thingamabob, because it looks exactly like any other Golf.

Yep, I'm currently leasing an eGolf for less than $120 a month. That's less than I pay for my petrol car. That and I get the electricity free from work makes it an awesome deal.

And... this is the definition of functional programming (referential transparency). So yes - it actually really *just like* functional programming, because it *is* functional programming.

That would be because the PS3 and PS4 use sony's proprietary graphics API that looks nothing like OpenGL.

The OpenGL API contains various features that are simply not conducive to writing either a fast implementation of the standard, or a fast application that uses it. The two main issues are:

1) That OpenGL is a state machine, draw calls are issued at arbitrary moments when in arbitrary states. This means that the implementation can't validate that the draw call was made in a valid state until you actually make the call. That doesn't sound like much, but it actually turns out to be a major headache. It means that compiling shaders can end up delayed until you actually make a call because you don't know what vertex formats it'll read, what blending modes it'll use, etc. It means that uploading data can be delayed until you make a call because you don't know what format it needs to be in. It means that blobs of data can't be placed in the right area of memory because you have no knowledge of whether the memory needs to be for fast reading only, fast read and write (only on the GPU), pulling off the GPU onto the CPU etc.
2) That lots of OpenGL operations are explicitly thread safe, and there's no way to tell OpenGL about the fact that two operations won't interfere with each other. Want to overwrite an area of a texture for the next frame while the previous frame was rendering because you have knowledge that the two won't try to read and write the same area at the same time? Nope, tough shit, can't be done. Uploading the texture will block waiting for the GPU to finish rendering with it.

Apple acknowledges that these are problems, and as a result, they've made their own graphics API (Metal) which is much more similar to how D3D and Sony's proprietary APIs work. Thankfully, the next OpenGL spec (code name Vulcan) will head towards this way of doing things, and maybe we can get back to the standard open way of doing things being reasonable.

They're talking (badly) about Metal, which is a graphics API that's much more sensible than OpenGL (i.e. doesn't involve a bunch of state changing, and unverified states).

No, Metal for Mac, which is a graphics API that works in a similar way to D3D 11/12. i.e. not a state machine, but instead issuing buffers of commands based on pre-verified states.

Yes, but Mars has toxins like no air in the atmosphere.

On both planets, if you stick your head out the window, you're going to die. On one of them though, you have ready sources of water etc.

Yep, for sure. This too is my second vehicle. For sure with the limited range it couldn't be my primary one, but for commuting it seems ideal.

Yep, speaking to a couple of colleagues who have the same car, it seems like I managed to negotiate a very good deal. The car is in theory about $34k. There's a $7.5k federal subsidy that comes off that (and is included already in the numbers I quoted above). There's also then a $2.5k CA subsidy that appears in your taxes (and was not included in the numbers I quoted above), so basically, I'm getting a 36 month lease for around $5,700. I figure the depreciation on the vehicle alone would be more than that even if it were petrol. Given that it's electric, and the battery is likely to wear, I'm guessing the depreciation would have been closer to $15-20k.

That sounds like an issue with the laws surrounding driving cars, not an issue with crossing the road.

Aside - while I have no stats to back it up, my bet would be that it's far less dangerous to jay walk in the UK than it is to cross at one of America's crossings attached to a huge light controlled crossroads (mostly due to right turn on red, but partly due to just the sheer number of things drivers must concentrate on). Speaking as a European living in the US, America's road designs are utterly and thoroughly fucked.