Meanwhile, in Australia - which has no car industry anymore - Chinese cars are selling very very well.
Because they're cheap, good (some say brilliant) and very well equipped for the price.
My next car might be one, for a bit more than the price of RAV 4 XSE, but it would have four heated, ventilated and massaging seats, 21 speaker sound, power panoramic sunshade for the panoramic glass roof and less than 5 seconds to 100kmh - and so much more that the Toyota simply doesn't offer.
It's a BYD Sealion 8 that I'm looking at, though plenty of others also offer gobs of luxury and/or performance for a very competitive price.
Why would I want a car with less?

Discord has apparently been doing age checks in Australia since late last year.
I'm in Australia.
I use Discord - infrequently, not daily but several times a week to look at a very small number of posts and perhaps post a reply or comment.
I've not (yet) been asked for any age ID, nor has anyone on the same server/s that I've asked.
So, it may be that we are worrying about nothing?
Or it may be that I and my friends are not people in their target range due to our very minor useage of Discord?
Or maybe they've deduced that our age is WELL ABOVE 18 via our posts, length of time on discord and topics that we discuss - I dunno, but the youngest of the group is in their 30s, so...??

For my Octavia's 1.4 litre engine the fuel consumption difference is miniscule, according to the car it uses 0.5L/hour when idling (though this doubles if the aircon is on).
So I agree, the larger the displacement of the engine the more you'd notice the economy improve.
That said, it reduces emissions and my car being a manual it's unobtrusive, by the time I've fully depressed the clutch the engine is running again.

I don't like ads because they don't offer me anything useful.
I'm old, I already own everything I need.
I don't need to replace anything - except my toaster which, oddly for a purely mechanical device, stopped working a day ago. And I'll take it apart (after unplugging it) to see if I can fix it before buying a new one. And I don't need ads for toasters, I know where I'll get a new one and what it'll cost.
But in general, adverts offer me nothing but annoyance via occupying screen space and often blocking what I'm trying to read.
So that's why I don't like adverts, other's mileage may differ.

"...In the land down under, heated front seats and a heated steering wheel are available in a month-to-month format..."

As an Australian (a Sandgroper to be precise) I have absolutely zero desire for heated seats or steering wheel. COOLED seats and steering wheel? Hell yes, THEY would be worth it for me! Perth doesn't get cold, but it does get hot.

I'm digressing, sure, as I understand a lot more people seem to live in the colder climes than the warmer ones, hence heated seats came out before cooled/ventilated seats did.

If you bought a car that didn't have heated seats - you don't have heated seats.
What's the issue?

Of course, if you got it from a dealer who advertised that it had heated seats, and they stopped working after you bought it, that's the dealers problem to resolve, not yours.

And yes, I'm aware that some cars have all the hardware and (disabled in settings) software to have heated seats, but if they were not sold new with that option activated, then you can either subscribe to it, or just accept a car with the features you paid for - which doesn't include things like heated seats.

Or, you know, share the link for the video on [video site] so anyone can use anything to watch it?

Huh, and until I 'duck duck goed' Pennisetum Clandestinum, I had assumed it was a body part of a human...

Well, today I learned that it is not! :)

"If we'd had a bit more "Drill Baby Drill" in years prior to today, we'd likely not be seeing $5+ per gallon gasoline prices today."

Seriously?? You really think that? Why??

10 seconds of typing and I find this fact checker:
"President Biden claimed that there are 9,000 unused oil drilling permits. That’s mostly true.
At the end of 2021, there were about 9,000 approved permits to drill. They include some issued under Biden and some still active from Trump."

So, despite having over 9,000 (9,173 apparently - I'm sure you can confirm this as easily as I did) drilling permits, pretty much an open invitation to, ahem, 'drill baby drill', baby has not been drilling, because that would increase expenses and lower profits.

Remember, you live in a country which apparently believes companies only exist to increase value for their shareholders, not to actually do good for the country/s in which they operate.

Drilling more wells to pump more oil to lower the price of oil for Americans? Why, that's tantamount to socialism!! It's certainly not part of the 'me me me!' culture that is the USA of today.

1.6 gallons per FLUSH??

West Australian here, my toilet uses 3 litres for a half flush (yellow stuff in the bowl) or a massive 4.5 litres for a full flush (the bowl has brown ick in it). These dual flush are mandatory and have been for years for all new builds and renovations.

1 US Gallon is 3.785 litres.

So, for a start, if your 'new' toilets are only single flush, not dual flush, that's problem one. Second problem is the sheer volume of water being used each flush, 6 litres! Third problem? If it's yellow, let it mellow - if it's brown, flush it down.

You do NOT need 5 flushs per person per day.

And in Perth, the capital of WA, we drink recycled sewerage and desalinated water, our dams are pretty much empty (we pump the treated effluent into the groundwater table and then suck it out from elsewhere).

We are walking the walk.

" If I was buying Twitter I would demand to know the median IQ of users."

If I was buying Twitter I'd do my DUE DILIGENCE before signing the purchase contract...

Nice! The whole week off, on full pay!
Sweet!!

"Lairs"??

Did you perhaps mean "Liars"?

Because that would make more sense in context - though I admit so many James Bond (and other) movies have their evil villains ensconced in volcano, space or other equally unlikely but amazing lairs.

I can easily see Vladimir Putin clasping his fingers together - snickering evilly - as he plots the downfall of Ukraine, while in his secret LEGO lair (because the dude is a currently a ridiculous tool for utterly failing to defeat a much smaller and presumed weaker country - but could easily afford ALL the LEGO sets).

Well, thanks, but I'm not a researcher and needed to go shopping so... :)

Here's a recent article about Australian floods and a flood proof house:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...

And here's an article about insurance costs in the same town:

https://www.theguardian.com/bu...

And here's yet another one with insurance costs of $1,000/month or more.

https://www.theguardian.com/au...

All of these articles mention frequency of floods, and that the historical frequency is obsolete as floods are increasing in number and volume.

And here's an article with actual figures of likely amounts of uninsurable properties, and costs:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/sc...

It seems that a 1% risk per year of a damaging event is enough to make a property effectively uninsurable, as the premiums are likely to be 1% or more of the value of the property, each year.

Also, seems a lot of the change can be attributed to being built on flood plains, or too close to the ocean, sometimes on actual sandbanks, though this isn't all new developments, some towns are over a century old and have been flooded before, but not as badly as recent floods.