Driving my car to someone else's to-do list also doesn't equal free time. Whether they'll offer latte or not is up to them. Reimbursement of vehicle expenses wpuld actually be nice & fittig, but I actually aleays imagined it would be part of the travel compensation. (Per-km or per hour... it's all this same as long as it comes out to cover what needs to b covered.)

And between you and me? It's not about the typing of numbers or the spreadsheet; a trained monkey can type numbers - in a spreadsheet too, if it's well trained.

It's about which numbers to type.

I sure as hell ain't cooking, sleeping, bringing my kids to soccer training, doing laundry, enjoying my hobbies or whatever "spare time" activities I'm into.

Ikea furniture was cheap when they hit the market. Today it's expensive, amd doesn't have any wood except for 2" x2" piece where the screws go in. I'm actually building my own kitchen right now, out of aluminum and full wood, cheaper than Ikea sells their cardboard ones.

Car quality, in.particular on ICEs, peaked 25 years ago. Except for US cars, they stayed crappy all along. Yet prices, compared to income, are now double that.

Planes have a lot more seats, less space now. Like A LOT.

It used to be that Siemens/Bosh appliance hold 10 years, Miele 20, nonames 5-10. Now Miele is down to about 10, and I haven't had a Bosch/Siemens dishwasher that survived 5 years in more than a decade (yes, I've had 3).

And don't het me started on food. I've actually started growing my own, or buying home.grown and maming my own pickles.

TFA is about EVs, and the discussion thread about (lack of) merit of European EVs opposed to Chinese ones.

Just a few points: Dacia Spring is a security nightmare, too.

And cars today are actually simpler to.build, in particular EVs. Technology is more complex, but it doesn't need to b more.complicated. It's just made that way by the manufacturer's attempt to monetize on the driver, not just the car sale.

Also hybrids are the worst of both worlds. They're terribly complex beasts, and if you agree that car manufacturers fucked their clients with ever crappier and defect prone cars the past 20 years, then you know why you absolutely want to avoid hybrids after the warranty time is over.

*bwaaahaha* Yeah. Right.

Some early 1990s or older ones, T3 or T4 model maybe, but not the T5 and T6. And they do rust regardless of how good you treat them, unless the first owner was a body expert and did an expensive after marker cavity sealing. Any T3/T4 that still runs today and is held together by anything more than dirt and rust is pretty much survivor bias.

Same with BMW. The M43 hasn't been in production since the E36 model. That one was alreay surpassed mid-late-90s by the E39.

Try buying E60s or E90s from the late 2000s or 2010s, with an N53 or any newer motor, and watch your money melt away. Don't lnow about later ones because frankly I gave up on them.

Same with Audi.

The German car industry peaked in 2000-2002. Since then it's getting crappier by the year. Benz took a little longer, they still made.good cars until the 2010s, but they've also stopped with that and selling BS now.

Most Chinese EVs are apparently better quality than their European counterpart. And the components in European electronics and electrics are also mostly Asian, so... *shrug*

As to driving from Romania to France: the chargers are the same regardless of whether the car is Chinese or European (and yes, there are enough; getting more.as time goes by, Europe's EV infrastructure ia generally a bit behind).

Range already IS higher and cost IS lower... with Chinese manufacturers.

Ioniq ia not a European car, so.it's disqualified by default.

Nut just foe the sake of argument: where I live most models go for 50+ kEuro, the cheapest I found was 45k.

Yes, EVs with a decent range exist but pretty much my point: they're expenaive. And Chinese models in the MW charging range (0.5 MW or 1 MW) are common enough, so recharging takes 10 minutes. Infrastructure im Europe sucks, but that's hardly the fault of the EV manufacturers.

If you want to argue for a go-kart on steroids instead, available in Europe for 15-25k... fair enough. Comparable vehicle class in China is around 8k. Still just about half as much.

China is a decade ahead whichever way you put it.

It's the other dimension stupid.

It's not an EV.

So... you think European cars are kosher?

*cough*Dieselgate*cough*?

And let's not even talk that I've had the motor on my VW T5 replaced twice before its 200,000 km mark, for broken transmission chain. And large parts of its drivetrain once.

And that I've had the transmission chain on a 325 BMW replaced at 50,000 km. And then the motor replaced ar 65,000 km for problems with its connecting rod.

And that I'm essentially about to have to replace injection valves on two BMWs before their 200,000 mark.

And the only thing VW seems currently interested in is how to market my data to insurance companies, because by its own admission (I have friends that work for VW, that's how I know) - VW's greatest customer base with its new ID.x line of EVs isn't the driver anymore; it's the insurance companies.

How well to you think an industry is going to meet your needs that doesn't see you as its customer anymore?

You can get a new one for 50k-ish in Europe, but large part of that price is horrendous tariffs. The actual price in China is a lot lower. You can get a "used" one (i.e. 2-3 months old, pretty much the scenario described in TFA) for 35k.

You can't get any other family electric car for 35k. And the ones you get for 50k don't compare to the p7, not by a large margin. If you want something that does compare, you need to reach for 6-figure cars, something like Tesla's Model S.

Today's phones aren't always better, in many ways they're worse: less stable, break more easily, not repairable. And they're not the same price (which was our premise), they cost a lot more.

What they are though is based on better technology.

But why don't you take something that's pretty much settled, technology wise? E.g. washing machines? (IKEA) furniture?

Nobody ever makes "a better product". Everybody makes as crappy a product as their own conscience will allow. If there's any wiggle room between what it costs and what they can sell it for, great! - the product has a future. Otherwise there's never a product to begin with.

When there's extra money freed by lower costs, they make the same product cheaper and sell at a higher margin; they never upgrade the product quality while keeping price and margin fixed.