Also, about two weeks after I first got my Model X, it sprang a coolant leak because somebody didn't fasten something together properly in the back end of the car.

So I wouldn't call it maintenance-free. It is complicated enough that things absolutely can go wrong. They even used to recommend a coolant flush after a year of ownership, though at some point, they stopped doing that.

Until it isn't. One part of that coolant system (some sort of crossover valve or similar) failed on my Model X and damaged the front motor just a couple of weeks before its drivetrain warranty expired (so I only paid for the valve).

No, they don't. They have massively less brake wear than a traditional ICE car. But that's also true of a plug-in hybrid.

You're right about the fuel filter. It doesn't get changed often, but it does get changed.

But EVs have a massively more complex cooling system than ICE cars, because they have to have coolant flowing through multiple motors on opposite ends of the car and through the battery in addition to the HVAC, and you have a heat pump instead of just a simple radiative heat exchanger. And most people do not ever replace the coolant in their ICE cars.

EVs and hybrids shoudln't have significantly different brake wear. Factored in oil changes, which includes the oil filter. I've never needed to add any other fluids in any car I've owned other than wiper fluid, which an EV also requires. I guess I left out the air filter, but that's such a tiny maintenance cost compared with the other stuff that it almost isn't even worth mentioning.

Belts and transmission do wear out eventually, but that's not an issue unless your car is outside of its warranty period, and an out-of-warranty EV can also have things go wrong. The only straightforward comparison is between two in-warranty cars, because it's impossible to predict the costs for an older vehicle reliably. It might go 300k miles or it might blow a head gasket 10 miles out of warranty.

Jiffy Lube in the Bay Area. And while cars are under warranty, if you don't do an oil change at the recommended interval, it can negatively impact your ability to get engine problems covered under the warranty, so most people do so.

Of course, they also charge you more for your heat and air during the day. With a whole-home time-of-use plan, they're likely to get their money either way.

I'm pretty sure the only way you're not going to get screwed with your pants on is to have a separate meter on an EV-B rate plan. Totally worth $1.50 a month. Too bad I'm not currently eligible because of where I live (because PG&E doesn't own the meters). Then again, I have unlimited supercharging, so I guess I probably wouldn't use it anyway. :-)

Sure, but only if you also have a Powerwall or similar. Otherwise, your car is going to be at work during the day, rather than charging at home, and you're going to be getting jack s**t for your excess solar during the day thanks to PG&E's rate structure, and then buying that power back at night at full price.

PG&E nearly went bankrupt with lawsuits over their mishandling of gas pipe maintenance (San Bruno explosion) and high tension line maintenance (multiple wildfires). If they can't make a profit from cutting corners on maintenance, their only choice is to make a profit with extortionate rate hikes. /s

In all seriousness, the biggest mistake multiple California governors have made was not letting PG&E go bankrupt, buying up the assets, and starting over with a state-owned not-for-profit power company. For-profit essential utilities are like for-profit medicine: you pay more for less. Competition never really works when you have a natural monopoly like essential utilities or when comparison shopping is impractical, such as emergency medical care. That's why certain essential services are generally better off socialized. And anybody arguing otherwise doesn't have a solid grasp of economics.

In California, even if you can charge at home, the cost per mile is more than many gasoline-powered cars:

Model 3: 3.7 to 4.2 miles per kWh. PG&E residential service averages 45.33 cents average per kWh. That's 10.79 to 12.25 cents per mile.

My usual gas station is $3.90 per gallon. A Prius hybrid gets 56 miles per gallon. That's 6.9 cents per mile. Add to that an oil change for $100 every 5,000 miles on oil changes, which is 2 cents per mile, and the Prius hybrid is still 2 to 4 cents per mile cheaper than the Model 3.

The only way you save money per mile with an EV in California is if you have free unlimited supercharging or free workplace charging. And even then, somebody is paying for your charging, just not you.

Colloidal silver is almost certainly useless when taken orally, but don't knock silver in general. It is used in wound dressings for a reason. Candida auris is one of those reasons. From the article:

You don't have to take over a country to get that. The U.S. brain drains countries that aren't democratic just fine. There are a few that we arbitrarily choose not to brain drain or sell to (currently Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, I think), but very few countries are on that list. And Cuba was one of the countries that I was thinking of as a country that has nothing worth taking over, because if it did, then those gains combined with eliminating the risks associated with having a country like that so close to our borders would probably have been enough to tempt someone to overthrow its government long ago.

Then again, Republican war hawks have started thumping their chests about Cuba now, so who knows. It might still happen.

Only if you have something that someone else needs, such as oil. Without that, nobody will bother.

Given how corruption usually works, they probably sold them to some even worse third-world country and deposited the resulting money in a private Swiss bank account.

No, that's actually the only correct interpretation of those words in English. If someone's actions caused the leaking to stop, then a native English speaker would say, "After Half a Decade, the Russian Space Station Segment Leaks Are Fixed" or "... Leaks Have Been Stopped/Fixed". (Or they would avoid passive voice and explicitly say who stopped it.)

Saying that something stopped is different from saying that something was stopped. That helping verb indicates that there is another actor other than the leak who caused the event. Without it, the only correct way to interpret that sentence is that the leak stopped on its own, and that nothing was done to make it stop.

This headline would have caused my newswriting professor's forehead veins to rupture.

I'm not sure how that's possible. Unless Wikipedia is wrong and Google search is equally failing to find a later version, the last version of iOS that the iPhone 5s supports is iOS 12 (2018). The last version of iOS 12 ever released was iOS 12.5.7, which was released in January of 2023.

Are you sure you're not talking about the iPhone 6s?