I've been fighting reoccurring fraud charges on one of my cards for fucking YEARS. This explains why, after canceling my card, I soon start getting new charges on the replacement.

Absolutely infuriating.

I'd be pretty sad if I were stupid enough to finance $3900 on a gadget with no financial return potential. No idea what the terms are for such financing, but at 6% over 36 months (eg. similar to what you'd pay for a car loan) you're paying an extra $500 on that price. That's insane to me.

I was taught that financing things was foolish, and a waste of money. Only finance something that will earn you money or make you money: a car for getting to work, a house (which will appreciate, or at least not waste your rent money on someone else's financing), a business opportunity, or a degree (which is much less of a benefit today, than it was even 20 years ago).

I'm not sure what the whole point of this post is. I guess the OP is likely a new adult who's had very little real world experience to date with financing and getting suckered by a product launch marketing, and it's unfortunate they had to suffer $4400 for such an opportunity. At least it wasn't a college degree.

In retrospect, perhaps it'd have been better if everything ended back then.

Yep, lot more scammers on Amazon now than in the past, and the prices are massively inflated.

It's usually cheaper and faster to get something delivered from Walmart or Target for us, and we know it's not going to be a knockoff piece of crap.

If it's not needed immediately, I'll just use AliExpress.

For the first year of Covid, my deliveries were sometimes nearly next-day. I don't know how they did it: I could order something at 10pm and I'd have it the next day by 5pm, generally. Note: I'm 6 or 8 hours (depending on which way you're going) from the nearest distribution center.

Now, it's not uncommon for Prime items to take a week to get to me. Due to the added cost of most things on Amazon, I've been using AliExpress more often. It's the same shit, and you'll pay a lot less.

Shipping anything from UPS to any other location seems to start at about $25 here. It cost me about $70 to mail a teeshirt to Arizona with UPS.

Consumer goods? Sure.

Machinery, industrial equipment, and so on? Not even close on the high end.

But it's within spitting distance for midrange, and enough for almost applications, at a fraction of the cost.

If you're going to assert "won't" instead of "can't", you're effectively asserting a conspiracy: despite the clear and apparent benefits to EVs, these companies are refusing to make them. That's a fairly bold claim I'd like to see substantiated.

The alternative is that they can't make them (while being cost efficient/marketable and/or reliable).

Those are the options.

Ford has always been the 'more bling than sense' option, at least as long as I've been alive. Some are very nice vehicles, and their interiors are top notch for an American vehicle (vs like, a Land Rover), and they're often the vehicle most purchased by people who aren't smart enough to connect the dots or pay attention to their environment enough to not buy a vehicle which is obviously not well built. Case in point - middle aged Karens buying gutless Mustangs. Their reliability is even worse than VW.

No, Ford is bad at it. They're bad at it because FOrd isn't good at making reliable vehicles. Ask anyone who's had to get work done on their Ford's, or a Ford mechanic.

The engineering culture at Ford is such taht they design things to be sold, not maintained. This is true for all Fords, with things like having to completely disassemble large parts of the vehicle to do basic maintenance being commonplace, even on ICE. Little things change sometimes multiple times per year on the same model year, so you're never sure if you need parts from one year or the other until you try to fit them. This leads to some really horrible QC, with vehicles often failing straight off the lot. I've known 2 people in the last several years to have their brand new Ford have major mechanical failure, and heard a number of other anecdotal stories from others.

If you need more anecdotes, just hop over to Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist and look at the used price and condition of Fords vs comparable Chevy, etc. vehicles. Pick one - Ford trucks, midsize/small cars, SUVs, hatchbacks. You'll pay significantly less for the Ford, which will likely be in "better condition" with fewer miles, than the comparable vehicle for this very reason. Case in point: old Broncos vs Ramchargers or K5 Blazers, or trucks in general. There's a definite pecking order and it is largely based on the reality of overall vehicle quality. A 25 year old rusted out Toyota with 250k+ would go for 8k, where a similar truck from Chevy S10 $4k, but the Ford Ranger - which may not be rusted out or have any visible issues - sits around at $1500-2000 for months unsold. (I say this as someone who buys, repairs, and flips old vehicles.)

Now imagine those problems when you add software computing parts to every component in the operation of the vehicle...

Economies at scale don't work when you're operating at a loss - as all EV production has until very recently (to the exception of some Tesla models). Every other manufacturer has to subsidize their production with increased costs for their other models.

"New" at it? Do you consider the fact that Ford produced one of the first commercial EVs over 100 years ago, or that they've been in continuous commercial production of EV and hybrid vehicles since 2011 - likely designing them for many years prior to that (probably around 2008, like every other automaker, when the gov't started pushing massive subsidies in that directioN)?

Tell me, do you consider a "tech startup" that's 13 years into funding and on Class K funding to be "new at it"? Come on.

Most of the EV vehicle costs are material costs - the batteries, copper for the motors and wiring, and so on, are a huge part of this cost disparity. The bulk of the vehicle weight is in rare earth minerals, and that weight is not insubstantial.

How many decades does a technology get a free pass for being 'new'? Tesla is 20 years old. There other motor vehicle companies which have come and gone. The industry as a whole (EV vehicles) have massive governmental subsidies at every stage of production, and regulatory burdens are almost completely absent. There is every financial incentive to succeed.

If Ford (5th biggest automaker in the world) can't make it happen, and Toyota can't and won't make it happen (#2), and VW (#1) clearly can't make it happen (link), and the ones who ARE making it happen are still struggling financially even with these subsidies after 20 years, there's either a larger economic problem at play, or the technology simply isn't suitable for mass production of consumer cars.

Can you imagine Chrysler, Ford, Chevy, etc. having these kinds of problems in the 1930s and 1940s, 20+ years after the beginning of mass production of a technology, competing against horse drawn carriages? Just silly.

Fundamentally, EVs won't be cost effective or desirable for most people until they solve the energy efficency problems, the capacity problems, and the endurance problems. That boils down to finding a better energy "source" than lithium charged by diesel-powered Superchargers, at a minimum.

This is like saying that the car that slows down after crossing the finishline first, is slowest.

Apple has US phone market dominance, the only thing that's decreased is the percentage of new activations. That means they're reaching market saturation, if anything.

Add to that the fact that 5-8 year old iPhones are still perfectly functional and useful, in most cases, in contrast to Android devices which are lucky to get updates after the first year or two...

There is nothing new about this technology. I've been using Topaz AI's Video product (ne service) to upscale and enhance videos for years.

That sounds absolutely ridiculous.