Well, here's the current map of superchargers: http://www.teslamotors.com/sup...

So unless my plans coincided with that map, I would still take a gasoline fueled vehicle. But like I said, that range isn't a deal-killer for me, personally, because I have the option to take a second vehicle. But I don't represent the majority of the people, and the majority of the people don't plan their routes around charging stations, and given that we're talking "wide acceptance" I would presume that means something that is useful (in the context of this type of travel) for the majority of the users.

Actually looking at the current supercharger map, I think I would take a Tesla on a previous road trip I've made. I could have made that supercharger map. A couple of spotty areas, but doable. For me, a very small portion of potential road trippers on a specific route.

I'm not trying to hate on Tesla. Like I said in the parent, shiny, want. But my circumstances support it and I'm not egocentric enough to think that what's good enough for me is good enough for everyone else.

Yes, exactly, but although to prevent others from misunderstanding what you clearly understand, the 80% figure was just a standard Pareto choice.

In my case I would have to decide what percentage each of my needs/wants is. Is it a percentage of my annual miles/km driven? Percentage of activities that merit a certain vehicle? Or percentage of days of the year that I perform those activities?

A Tesla-like vehicle would certainly cover 99% of my miles driven, but maybe only 70% of days I use a vehicle, but also 90% of the activities for which I want a vehicle.

I've had two cars most of my serious adult life, so it wouldn't be a concern for me, personally (I'd simply take a gasoline powered vehicle on a cross-country trip, which I've done on several occasions).

For a cross-country trip, though, yeah, 265 miles isn't far enough. That's about four hours of driving versus the 400 mile range of a typical gasoline car giving about six hours of driving. And it only takes a few minutes to fill up, and you don't have to plan which gas station you use. So for a lot of people, the idea of making a cross-country trip in a Tesla is still disadvantageous versus a traditional automobile.

Tesla is shiny, and I want one. It would serve 80% of my driving needs. I still require a different capability vehicle for the rest of my needs/wants, though.

Actually you import cars into China. The duty is reported to be 100%. My neighbor had to import her Lamborghini (it's too big for her garage, so she leaves it parked outside). Another neighbor has a Lincoln Navigator that's not made her. Another neighbor has one of the big GM-Hummers, although to be fair, it's possible that it was manufactured here.

On the subject of made-in-Chinay, most of my neighbors have Chinese-made Audis and Mercedes, though. My Chinese-made Ford is just as good as Belgian-made version, except for the reduced feature set (really, no fuel economy indicator?). The key thing is that although Chinese people are building them (really, robots are doing the heavy lifting), it's still Europeans and Americans here ensuring that our brands are not injured by local practices. There are thousands of foreign engineers in China making sure that we build the same stuff in China as we do in the rest of the world.

Access.

People will laugh. But in an office environment it's an excellent solution. But one can still write formulas directly in reports and forms, so code review isn't necessarily easier.

> One, a crash with a bigger car is worse _for me_.

Why do you think that? Whether your car hits a stationary brick wall or a parked Suburban, a tiny, little Aveo, or an infinitely thin, infinitely strong force field, the force of the impact is the same for your car. There might be said for variation due to the specific dynamics of the crash, such as, does your little car do under the SUV's front bumper, but the mass of the object you're striking isn't relevant beyond the point your car can no longer move the object you're crashing into.

Or, well, you get to silver, gold, platinum, or diamond and then get promoted to business class 90% of the time for the price of a coach ticket.

It's seldom that Slashdot takes me on a Wikipedia-like adventure. But once I was there and realized that archive.org is more than a Wayback Machine, I started looking up issues of RUN magazine (C=64 and C=128 centric magazine of the time). I was determined not to stop until I found the two "Magic" articles that they published for me. Issue 65 and Issue 69, long lost in the real world, and now added to my digital trophy case.

I can't believe I was programming 8502 assembly language back then and haven't so much as learned a damned thing about Java these days.

What is "incorrect"? Companies will change parts due to customer satisfaction, too. That's not an admission of wrongdoing. It's an admission that they didn't meet customer satisfaction the first time (and yes, you could jump in and say that not dying is satisfying, but that's not my point).

In the case of the ignition switch, there's very easy plausible deniability. The newer, customer-satisfying version has higher torque. Customers have come to expect resistance when they turn a key, and they identify a too-easy-to-turn key with toy-like "cheapness." If the new key switch module can add less than 1 per unit in manufacturing and also improve customer satisfaction, then it's absolutely justifiable in this situation.

There is a huge emphasis on closing efforts these days. The result of all of this work is that I typically slam car doors closed, because my old-man expectation is that the door is heavy and needs a lot of energy imparted into the action. Most customers, though, appreciate easy-to-close doors. Car makers go through a lot of effort to compete with each other on this detail. It's not at all related to safety, but to customer satisfaction.

Of course "customer satisfaction" leads to increased sales and profitability. It's a downright disservice to spread misinformation that manufacturers (of any product, not just cars) only compare bottom-line price, because the successful ones realize that they cannot compete based *only* on price.

Most companies pay a 13th month salary just before New Year, and that's also when Red Envelopes and bonus payments are made. So in cases where people are going to leave anyway, this is the time they're likely to do it. To be qualified for 13th month and bonus, you have to have been at the company since October. This all causes:
  - Lots of people don't return to work after New Year. In my company it's about 11%.
  - It's very, very hard to hire people (except fresh graduates) between October and New Year (Jan-Feb, usually).

Internal migrants are also similar to Mexican migrants in the USA. They come, make a lot of money (by their standards for a short time), and return to the family home. And in the case of our engineers, they simply add our prestigious name to their C.V.'s and get a 30% raise at the next company.

All of these menu's are driving me crazy. I's don't need so many menu's. You's should all's agree with me.

I miss the craftsmanship of professional journalists sometimes, and if not the journalists, then at least their attentive copy editors who know basic English pluralization rules.

Didn't Ford do this a year or two ago for some MyFord Touch systems? They sent owners a USB stick, but also gave them the option to bring the car to the dealership if they weren't confident in doing it themselves.

My Zephyr (now MKZ) definitely used dead reconing, back in 2007 or so.

According to some online book weight calculator I randomly tried, a 500 page, common-sized book may weigh 700 grams. So the shelf could hold 170 books before approaching the weight of a 120 kg operator. That's a lot of books for one shelf. In all likelihood the shelves hold fewer than 170 books.

More than likely OSHA and operator safety, too. I didn't read the FA, but I imagine most of the shelves -- even when full -- weigh substantially less than a 120 kg warehouse worker.