You're engaged in the same kind of thinking the automakers are, and it's why they are struggling. Think less about the people currently buying trucks and more about the people who would be buying a truck if it didn't cost $70k.

It's about making a market, not chasing a market. Slate seems to have understood this. Ford seems to again be chasing, only caring about that gap in their lineup since Slate started threatening them.

A similar disease affects many markets in the US, but housing and automotive are obviously the most egregious. Everything has to be "luxury" now, and the demand is that you pay for it, whether you like it or not. Set up a space where that doesn't happen, people will run toward it. Anyone with a budget to consider, at least. Which is actually a lot of people. All abandoned by Ford.

There are a lot of people on this site who understand that. There are also some who don't, and I question what they are doing here.

I feel bad for drivers who've started on one of these "self-driving" cars and never learned how to (for example) keep a steady lane, or the correct way to reverse (turning your body around). I feel even worse for having to share the road with them.

Many cars on the lot today seem designed to baby the driver to disconnect from the road and get in some quick FaceTime on the freeway. That's the "luxury" automakers are pushing today.

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For the 3 days a year that I need navigation, I don't have a problem sticking my phone on my windshield. Well-worth the privacy and security for the other 362 days.

I hadn't considered security updates, but I hope disabling all the remote features on the in-vehicle display and calling the manufacturer to disable the SIM has reduced the attack surface.

I would hope any critical safety/security updates have a recall notice sent out to alert me to visit the dealer. But I know that's probably not the case.

Whatever the company loses in MSRP discounts they'll claw back through monthly fees. Tesla buyers in 2026... the company sure knows its target market. I do hope the company stays afloat, and all those customers stay there, instead of contaminating the rest of the market with their burning desire for another monthly fee.

More likely is they take the brake pedal away entirely and give it to the computer. Which you in turn subscribe to, for amazing features like "accelerating" and "braking".

An automated system wouldn't have the same situational awareness. Some parts of the plane might be smashed up, doors inaccessible, things outside a door (fire) preventing it from being used, etc.

I'm nowhere near my limit of focus. I play combat flight sims with a lot more than 1 gearshift to manipulate. But on my drive to work, I want to stay as far from those limits as possible.

I've driven dozens of manuals when I worked as a valet, enough to know I'm not interested.

By "honest" they mean "acceptable". It's acceptable to them, but I'm not so sure it's acceptable to their customers.

Why wouldn't you want to identify an "illegal"? That's how the NSDAP handled theirs; that ID number tattoo was the first thing they got.

Do you have a resource explaining how to do this, or is the idea to have everyone disassemble, reverse-engineer, then re-assemble each vehicle they purchase?

There's no reason to believe turntables will be readily available in 20 years but CD drives won't.

I'm putting my money on both being available, because any new format they might propose wouldn't have functionally better quality, and it would be encumbered with all kinds of other crap to make it less-desirable.

"made some poor choices" - succinctly sums up the majority of AI deployments.

They already cured it, but the file got deleted. Nobody can remember what prompt they used.

I wouldn't mind that, but first you'd have to provide me with a bus.