Even as much as I love my Polestar 2, I disagree. The simple fact is that Android Automotive (what you used in Volvo) is an operating system that can be locked down by the vendor installing it. GM will almost certainly use Android Automotive but with a locked down app store so that only their apps can get installed... the ones they monetize.

Plus, there's the fact that a car's lifespan should exceed that of a cellphone. This is exactly a problem we're hitting with our Polestar 2's (and Volvo XC40's which are based on the same platform); the CPU is just too old and slow to support newer and better features, and in fact was probably borderline for the apps already released at launch. The CPU in the car isn't easily upgraded (though they are doing an upgrade for the Polestar 3 but that's a completely different computer and car) but you can upgrade your phone whenever and use Android Auto / Carplay with the latest and greatest apps at "full power".

I use Android Auto daily in my Polestar. The only thing I use the integrated system for any more is navigation on long trips due to the integration with the charging. However, with the recent addition of live integration with ABRP on my phone even this might go by the wayside.

This is why you remove it from the heat completely the very moment it starts bubbling.

Also don't press the coffee into the funnel, rather just fill with gravity to the top and then gently brush off any excess with your finger.

I have a Polestar 2... about 4500lbs. My first factory set of tires lasted 30K miles, but got replaced because I got a lag bolt through one of the tires AND the rim right at actually 32K miles, and since it was about to go into winter in the Midwest I felt it safest to have matched wear across all four tires.

I now have over 70K miles on my car and while I'm looking at the tires thinking it might be time soon for some new tires it's more because again it's about to go into winter in the Midwest and I prefer to have good rubber when the snow falls. All-season performance tires, I do NOT drive like a granny and I have the performance software upgrade so I do occasionally enjoy doing the 4 second 0-60 launches for fun.

The weight difference issue is also super overblown. Note that while my car is around 4500lbs, a directly competing car at the same time with similar performance and overall practicality was the Audi RS5 Sportback (2022 model year) which has a listed weight of 4000lbs. So there's a 500lb difference but it's important too to note that car weights are listed as empty weights. 15 gallons of fuel weighs 90lbs, 8 quarts of oil add another 15lbs and so on. The difference in weight is pretty small when you look at directly competing ICE. Yes, there's definitely an issue of tire wear because of the power the cars put down, but I've driven powerful cars since long before I drove an EV and they are all in the 3.5-4.5 second range and had tire wear similar enough that I don't seriously believe it's a factor.

Thank you for making the perilous journey from 2005 in order to make this comment. We here in 2025 appreciate it greatly.

Klendathu are just dialing in their aim...

Seriously; I mean I understand people's desire to understand a thing that affected all our lives so significantly, but I seriously just don't understand why the source of the virus really matters. Whether it leaked from the lab or jumped from a bat in a market, the Covid that affected our lives and continues to affect our lives isn't the same virus. It mutates, has mutated and is now a distinctly different virus than it was when it first arrived. Even if some lab in Wuhan has a sample of the original virus in a freezer it's unlikely that virus would be useful except as an historical footnote.

So again, why exactly do we need to know this and why should any of us care?

Well, first of all think of it as an electric enclosed motorbike, not a car. Then a whole lot of it makes a lot more sense. I too am a bit dubious of their 500 watts of solar power, but there have been some interesting developments in panel tech recently that they could be using that could make it feasible. The proof is in the pudding so to speak.

It almost certainly has turn signals. I don't think that's a question as adding them is cheap, easy and with LED highly efficient.

The side mirrors do seem small, and you're right they could well be cameras. I know that's legal in some countries and they might have applied for some sort of exemption? The footage on their website shows much larger mirrors so I don't know what the status is of those.

The brake lights flickering is super common with video footage shot on a lot of modern cameras. Check any car review and you'll see the lights flickering. It's the nature of LED's and does in no way represent how they look in real life.

I think most of the reason they're not showing it from the rear is because it does look sort of awkward from that angle... the video is all about marketing LOL.

Again, this is a commuter vehicle and can be thought of as more akin to a motorbike than a car. Almost every commuter I know has no real world use case for a rear seat... hell I know I don't. In fairness, I do often commute on my motorbike too. The trunk is a decent size for a backpack and a few grocery bags. This isn't a hauler... again think motorbike but with a much larger storage than most motorbikes offer.

I agree I find this interesting. I already have a perfectly good EV so I'm not looking to make a move to an Aptera, but I could see a world where something like this could replace 99% of my use case, even being a more comfortable commuter than my motorbike now that I'm getting into "getting too old for that shit" territory LOL

People (myself included) ride motorcycles. Yes, we even commute on them. If we stop thinking of the Aptera as an electric car and instead start thinking of it as an enclosed 3-wheeled electric motorbike it suddenly makes a lot more sense and becomes a lot more attractive.

I have a use for AI, specifically OpenAI's. I have a ton of legacy code written in (of all languages) Forth. This is for embedded devices and it's complicated by control loops that are written in machine language in order to keep the performance up on these controllers with low cost industrial grade CPU's. The code is pretty slick all things considered, but it's a really hard to maintain mess mostly because I'm not a Forth programmer, and especially with the machine language stuff in there it's complicated.

About a month ago I embarked on a journey to re-code all our software in C. ChatGPT (paid) has been incredibly useful in both helping me understand what's going on in the Forth code, and helping to translate it into C. The new code usually isn't compile-ready but it's close enough that it just takes a few changes and I can compile and burn to the controller. Yes, I actually can have it translate the code directly into a compile-ready version but learning the process and learning how the code translates has been incredibly useful in helping me with the old Forth code and has also helped me find fixes and optimizations that mean the new C code runs better on the same hardware than the Forth stuff did.

So yeah... one good use for AI. There ARE good uses for it but it's a tool like any other. It's also great for help with writing, especially formal writing.

There's a part of me to this day that's still mad that nobody on CIX (English BBS with early Internet access) told me about Yggdrasil. I downloaded Slackware as my first Linux distro and yes; went through the hell of configuring that bitch.

I mean, I learned a lot too but the pain of that installation set back my Linux usage "in anger" by months. Though once I had it up and running it was a ton better than my Windows installation.

Thanks for unlocking that core memory BTW. I was trying to quit drinking this year... guess that's going out the window now...

You realize that's almost exactly what people said in the early 1980's when the Y2K bug first started to become a concern?

This!

As I recall reading, all of the bills serial numbers were recorded before the money was given to Cooper and none of those bills have ever turned up in circulation again. Most likely they are spread all over the wilderness and have probably succumbed to the elements by now.

I develop embedded systems for a living. I'm not sure why I'd need GPIO and I2S pins on my laptop directly when I can buy a simple USB to GPIO or I2S adapter. Heck, I have both hooked to my docking station so when I'm at the office I can work on them, but not sure why I'd ever need GPIO sitting at a coffee shop or on an airplane unless I feel like getting arrested for being mistaken for a terrorist building a bomb.

Not sure I fully agree with that; there have been some incredible performance increases in laptops in the last few years, and incredible efficiency improvements as well. I went from a Dell Latitude with a 9th gen i7 to a Framework with an AMD 7840U and I've been completely blown away with the performance and efficiency compared to that ~6 year old Dell. CPU and GPU performance are incredible and yes will allow me to do stuff on them that I found taxing on the Dell. For the record I do a lot of CAD and CAM work on my laptop, as well as circuit board design for embedded systems.

I'm also delighted that GPU performance improved to the point that I can happily play a huge number of even pretty recent games. Sure, not the super demanding AAA titles on ultra quality, but even some premium titles I can play quite happily at medium settings and they look and play just fine. This in a slimline 13" laptop is really quite impressive and I've been really happy with the Framework.

J1772 is typically used for 11 or 22kw stations, otherwise known as "destination chargers". These are AC and not DC chargers and are typically only running at household voltages (110 or 220 in the US) and are the same as people use to charge their cars in their garages.

The standards everyone is talking about here are for DC fast charging which are distinct from the AC chargers. Tesla's NACS adapter can carry both AC and DC voltages depending on what it's connected to; in a home or destination charger it's usually AC while at a DC fast charging station it's at home.

Adapters exist for all of these and work well. They are also easy enough to store in your car so it's not like it's a huge issue. J1772 is more common because it was a standard long before NACS, but new installations of destination chargers at hotels and the like are typically using the NACS connector so you'll see the older standards phase out over time.

My car has CCS and recently got access to Tesla Superchargers (Polestar 2). I keep a NACS-J1772 and a NACS-CCS adapter in the trunk of my car. The former allows me to use NACS destination chargers while the latter should allow me to use NACS superchargers... though because I just received it yesterday I haven't had a chance to test it. I will probably test it this weekend as there's a Tesla Supercharger about 20 miles from my house.