Most actual hatchbacks even in Europe are plenty low, I've read the specs. But you've also got a whole class in Europe of "people movers" which are taller which doesn't even exist as a class in the USA, though some of our CUVs are definitely representative of that idea — mostly Hondas. Here, if we want that we generally use a minivan, because we pay less for fuel (not so much less right now, but still generally less, especially outside of California) and because we don't pay such an insurance premium penalty for vehicle mass.

My theory is that this is basically the leveling lift taken to a ridiculous extreme.

Right. For those who don't know, pickups are normally built like that and then people put "leveling lift" kits on them which lift the front to match the rear. If you never put anything in the bed then this is a cheap way to get more ground clearance, because there's less in the front. (Except for the diff, yeah, but you can either get a shield for that or just steer it around obstacles.) But then if they put stuff in the back, the front of the truck is sticking WAY up in the air, and their headlights are shining in your face. They never, ever re-aim the headlights.

Automakers make what will a) sell and b) make the most profit, and most individuals are buying vehicles based on style, while fleet buyers are buying them based on estimated TCO over an approximately ten year period. So a genuinely good pickup which is very reliable and is also very useful to an individual tradesman and also very maintainable for a long time is a very hard sell. Fleet buyers don't want to pay for vehicles designed to last 20+ years, and they buy the bulk of the base model "tradesman" type pickups. That's why those vehicles are scarce on or even literally absent from showroom floors — often those configurations are only available to fleet buyers, because there's not enough per-unit profit in them to make it worth it to sell them to you or me. Consider the tale of the Nissan NV200.

They always had different frames and axles, OBS trucks only had the same bodies, which wasn't true before that body style and then wasn't true again after the OBS. OBS super duty models also only used a frame stiffener rail instead of a unique frame, but they did use a unique rear axle (Dana 80 instead of Sterling.)

That seems ultra weird. Why would it be hard to make a RHD model of a vehicle with no steering linkage?

Vehicles last longer when operated occasionally than when put up like that, in particular seals will take a set and dry out. Coolant also includes corrosion inhibitors, as long as you are changing it regularly it will actually reduce corrosion.

Yes, but there is a fashion trend of making fake manual transmissions to please people who are stuck in the past by making their cars slower and less smooth.

The time penalty is trivial, but it is literally all that these systems are doing besides potentially playing video game noises at you to distract you from reality even more — the entire non-auditory function of the system is to introduce a delay to invoke nostalgia in the user.

An actual driver's car, which isn't necessarily the fastest possible car, is enjoyable to drive on its own merits without anything fake. The main reason why shifting is fun is that you are actually doing something that needs doing, and you can derive satisfaction from doing it well. The more mechanical the car is, the more enjoyable it is, because the more you are effectively controlling that machine's actions to execute your will.

The computer generated fake shifting of EVs is a way of turning driving into Dance Dance Revolution. It has as much relationship to actual shifting as executing quicktime events in A Way Out does to escaping from prison, but it does seem to amuse some people. As long as it produces sales, it's a success, but I do predict that the popularity will wane rapidly as people learn to enjoy the actual EV driving experience. Being able to hear the tires before they start squealing is great. Of course, for that you are ideally in something light and tight, not a gigantic modern behemoth. Electric Miata, anyone?

I scoff at the Cybercuck, including the styling, but I think there are plenty of worse looking vehicles which are recent. Aztek and Multipla leap to mind, the former looks deformed (the proportions are just terrible) and the latter looks like a graphics error. But the shape is terrible as a pickup to the point that it makes the 1st generation Ridgeline look sensible.

The main factor besides the door handles and the break resistant glass is the significant electrocution risk. Tesla's documentation for first responders includes an incredibly busy 4-page "rescue sheet" (last time I looked, four pages was at least two sheets) and a 36-page "emergency response guide" which is no less dense. You practically need to take a course to learn how to safely extricate someone from a CyberDumpster, and they are literally designed to make that difficult to do.

The break-resistant glass is sold as a security feature, despite the fact that it does not actually provide meaningful security — a thief has the leisure to dick around prying your window open, which is not something first responders should generally be doing if the high voltage electric vehicle is sitting in a body of water. So the magic glass really just makes it more likely that you're going to die, and makes glass damage more expensive to repair, with no measurable benefit.

In the US cars relatively rare, most people have CUVs and hardly anyone is buying normal cars any more, they are now around 1/5 of sales. But yeah, if you're getting a "car" you want it to be low, so it's made low. If you're getting a "small SUV" (actually a CUV but most people have no idea what the difference is anyway and the vehicles are sold under the same rules so does it matter? depends on the discussion in question) you want it to be tall and look masculine, unless you're a Honda buyer in which case you want it to look like a minivan apparently.

I don't know where the screwup was. I think it was with the website actually, doing something tricky with CSS to display the code nicely. It doesn't actually matter who didn't do the thing that they would have had to do though, it's a fundamental error in the creation of the language. This is literally going back to an aspect of punch cards.

The appeal to popularity is a logical fallacy.

What he did should not have been illegal. This is the argument actually being made.

Everything you can might get you some serious negative attention.

TikTok now refers to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, what more do you want?

Right, normally they aren't trying to implement Elon's ideas. They have competent people design the products.

I give at least one half of one shit about 48V. It's not going to make me buy a DumpsterTruck, but I do think it's inevitable eventually and is also a good idea in general. You will have to use some sense when installing equipment, and not just splice into circuits you don't belong in... but that was really true anyway. There's few right ways and many wrong ways to make modifications and additions to automotive electrical systems.