Nailed it. I considered buying a truck for years, but the minivan has everything I want out of a vehicle. I'm so glad we got one. It's strictly better for hauling dimensional or ply, strictly better for long road trips, for gas mileage, etc. It even tows more than my jeep did, but not as much as a full size pickup. and it has a really nice reconfigurable roof rack, so adding a trip carrier on top is simple. Add to that the optional bench in back, the built in vacuum, the built in TV + entertainment, the full length moonroof, on and on.
It's a luxury vehicle that beats SUVs hands down, and most functions of urban trucks as well.
It just gets soccer mom vibes, so it's not $120,000
>It just gets soccer mom vibes, so it's not $120,000
The vehicle with soccer mom vibes may fit your use case better but that doesn't explain the cost difference. Mini vans are cheaper to manufacture. The frame, axles, brakes, engines, towing, payload hardware etc. are all lighter duty.
Agree with you, but want to say trucks are really for towing. To haul you want a trailer.
For example the f150 is rated for 1.2 tons, the 250 1.3 to 1.8 depending on configuration. gotta go to f350 for an 8 ton configuration.
For people who don't think about this often, imagine four 200lb guys riding in the cab of the f150. It's already a third of it's payload capacity at that point. Can't fit too many bags of cement in after that.
Of course this is moot in comparison to a minivan which has a payload capacity of about 3/4 ton. You’ll be over capacity in the minivan if you have a 175lb person on each seat.
> Agree with you, but want to say trucks are really for towing. To haul you want a trailer.
> For example the f150 is rated for 1.2 tons, the 250 1.3 to 1.8 depending on configuration.
Now I'm really confused. My father's Citroën CX station wagon (built 1983) was rated to tow 1.5/1.7/1.8t depending on configuration (AFAIR 2.5l Diesel engine for 1.8t), and we regularly made use of that. Admittedly 2026 is not 1983, but a BMW 3 class (not X3) can also tow 1.8t. A current VW Passat tows 1.8t to 2.2t. (Both of those are available as either limousines or station wagons.) What's the point of the F150 then? I guess if you want to do tow 1.2t every day? I would expect that the max rating also be higher if the reliability/life is better...
Ed.: nevermind, I should've just looked up the F150. It's listed as 3.4t up to 6.35t depending on configuration. Where do you get 1.2t? Is there a separate rating for "when you do this every day"?
Ed.²: wait, are you talking about hauling there? That really didn't come across for me, with the preceding sentence. (more searching) Ah, yeah. 1.4t for F150, 2.6t for F350. The 8t on F350 you're mentioning is for towing again.
(FWIW, Europeans needing anything like this generally get a Ford Transit or Mercedes Sprinter.)
Payload is almost always your limit, not pure towing capacity. You need to look at the maximum weight payload your vehicle is configured to carry (usually on a sticker in the door jamb) - this limits how much you can tow because you need 9-13% of your trailers tongue weight on the hitch which your car carries 100%
If you have 800 lbs of payload, two 175 lb adults you now have 450 lbs left of payload for a trailer you are left with ~4500 lbs of tow capacity using 10% of that on the tongue. It's not just people either - anything in your vehicle lowers your payload (the physical hitch itself, pets, coolers, accessories, ect)
Lots of people just look at pure tow capacity but ignore tongue weight/payload capacity of what they are using to two.
Most common F-150 configurations are actually limited on their tow capacity by payload over their advertised raw tow capacity. My 2012 F-150 farm truck has 1400 lb payload, minus two people and the hitch you're at ~ 900 lbs left for tongue weight so ~ 9000 lb pull load or ~4t
The other thing people neglect to consider is just where they tow and WHAT they tow. There's a big difference between a flat utility trailer and a square cargo trailer.
I guess my point is numbers aren't everything.
Source: 20 years in the professional trucking industry
You're absolutely right, and I would hope people have at least some awareness of this. (There's enough trailer accidents & wrecks to indicate against that, sadly.)
That said, looking at the numbers still makes some sense to get a rough understanding of the design space of these cars though. (And, well, the numbers I was replying to were confusing the heck out of me.)
(My source: German class BE driver's license = car with heavy trailers. You're limited to 0.75t trailer OR (car + trailer) ≤ 3.5t without that, in B. The E is a separate exam, both theoretical and practical. Aside from theory bits on how cars with trailers behave, you have to parallel park or T-turn a trailer to pass it.)
The taller the car the less safe it is for everyone around it.
And I rented an SUV once and was surprised by how small it was on the inside compared to the outside. Seemed way less practical than it could have been.
They are tall for ground clearance. Fantastic if you deal with a lot of off road situations. Like all other things discussed in this thread, it is underutilized.
Still, I prefer driving a awd suv in winter if I am at risk of being in a snowstorm.
It's the starting listed price. For an anchor, it determines a lot about how the first few days go. It's also a great headline. It's also also what employees picture when they evaluate their stock options, I bet.
What you've shown is that there is a crossover where a gas car + generator beats an electric car.
That doesn't mean electric cars shouldn't be considered as power backup, or that buying a nice electric car vs a nice gas car doesn't come with the added benefit of "Don't need a 10k generator anymore".
> That doesn't mean electric cars shouldn't be considered as power backup, or that buying a nice electric car vs a nice gas car doesn't come with the added benefit of "Don't need a 10k generator anymore".
From redundancy perspective, a genset + car is hands down a better combo. A functional ICE car is cheaper and goes everywhere without any trip planning around charging stations, which is another plus.
If cost is your only factor yes. But the vast majority of people pick cars they like, and EV's are great. No need to dog on them needlessly. The trip planning thing is super overblown. Now 2 years into my first EV, going to a charger that's not my house _at all_ is quite rare - couple times a year; even when I travel Portland to Seattle, I don't have to stop on the way such that outside Olympia, I don't even know where the charge stations are. And that's the worst it'll ever be.
> and EV's are great. No need to dog on them needlessly. The trip planning thing is super overblown.
I never said EV is not great and it is nice that it is working out for you, but facts are facts. Also, while EV footprint is growing around the globe, there is wide vast world beyond USA where charging issue is still true (and the repair shops).
There's a vast world in the US where charging is still an issue. I live in an apartment in a major city with no garage or parking lot, so owning an EV would be very difficult, since there's no way to charge residentially. Or if you're on call, in a rural area, where charging at home might not leave you with enough charge to drive across the county without notice.
ICE cars are barely cheaper, almost never over any span of time due to cost of ownership, and there's no trip planning around charging. It's clear you've never done a road trip in a Tesla. Almost all Tesla owners have had ICE cars first, not sure who you're trying to convince here with your lies.
I mean presenting one set of tradeoffs just shows that there are tradeoffs.
If you're looking at two $55,000 cars, and one has power interconnect and one does not, it's not like adding a $1000-$10,000 generator on top is somehow immediately better unless you're adding in factors that make it better (like buying a cheaper car). There's 3 or 4 superchargers within a few miles of my house, and every time I've lost power I could easily go charge my car so I never worried about that.
Not everyone lives in that situation or has the same "one or two days without local power but chargers still work" threat model. It just so happens that's been the biggest actual, real, problem that my car could have fixed for me.
I have a 2017 Tesla S100D. (Yay back when we had letters and numbers!)
As you probably know, there's a 12 volt battery in these cars. That battery is automatically recharged by the big 100kWh main battery.
Some years back, I bought a 12 volt, 2000W inverter and connected it to this 12 volt battery in the Tesla, ran a couple of extension cords, and powered our refrigerator, extra freezer, and a number of other things with it for many hours. The main battery percentage in the car showed an appropriate drop. This actually wasn't during an outage, it was contingency testing. We already have a natural gas, 3600 watt generator that connects to one of our panels and use that during (unfortunately frequent) outages.
In my 2017, it's a bit of work to get to that battery, but it's quite doable and seemingly quite safe. The obvious, very rough/estimated/simplistic math is the 100kWh main battery divided by 2kW is about 50 hours. Different factors would push that number up and down of course.
During an outage I tried the 12v and found it was unable to surge the freezer box. Now, the inverter I used wasn't great, but IIRC I read they didn't allow significant current off the cig lighter outlet.
I will definitely try this again. If it works, that'd be great.
Have an older Model Y too. It’s a real bummer that Tesla decided to give up being the bleeding edge tech company. No V2L/V2H, no Apple CarPlay, no longer range leaders in their category (though still cheapest per km range).
Oh I assure you, all industries are clown-driven, clown-built, and clown-maintained. Nobody has time to do things according to a retrospective analysis of "best" which will just be re-evaluated next generation. We build with what we have and fix when we must.
Caloric restriction is probably exactly like exercise in that it was normal, so "scheduling" autophagy for the "famine" times meant it happened regularly and alongside similar systems.
What did it for me was that IF comes with muscle growth hormones increase.
I mean a 3-5 day hunt can look a lot like a marathon and a fast / IF mashed together.
Will we say the same thing about the 4 million software jobs? When we're doing landscaping work in our 40s for 1/10 our past salary is that improved economic efficiency at its finest?
Sorry, spatial intelligence and embodiment is coming for those jobs too. But if you are making “a 10x salary” today then it’s probably a good idea to prepare for an early retirement. An opportunity never afforded to the old folks currently doing those 1x salary jobs.
Entirely defensible. My only caveat is that 100% automation is a myth that ignores second order effects. Labor prices change in response to demand, just like raw materials. Some jobs will be cheaper for people to do, and much of the "economy" might end up friends and family cooperation.
As a software engineer who is working on retiring to a small farm somewhere, I have no problem with the prospect of living on 10% of my former income, assuming, the other 90% of my income used to be spent on obtaining resources that I now can obtain for myself or no longer need.
In other words, if I can do more for myself, I require less interaction with commercial and governmental institutions.
Since money is a form of communication, if I am conducting fewer financial transactions because I am solving problems on my own, my standard of living doesn't necessarily decline with reduced income.
30 years ago, if you needed a one off plastic part by tomorrow, you were most likely simply screwed.
20 years ago, if you needed a one off plastic part by tomorrow, you could probably get it at a fairly high cost.
10 years ago, if you needed a one off plastic part by tomorrow, $10 worth of gas across town and back and you had your part for an affordable price.
The world never ended, people just adapted to the new environment.
Today, if you need a one off plastic part by tomorrow, you ask AI to crank out a 3D file, its in your hand in a few hours, and you crank out 4 more parts in the remaining time.
If the individual is more productive on his/her own, he/she will naturally conduct fewer commercial transactions with his/her neighbor or neighboring tribe, and the forces of supply and demand do exactly what we know they do.
Some numbers get smaller, some numbers get larger, and we all wake up tomorrow and eat breakfast.
Having food you can eat is wealth.
Having 100% of your time at your own command is wealth.
AI is doing what every politician promised, and none could deliver.
It just made everyone (potentially) wealthy.
And it will only get more interesting in the Confucious sense as more people realize this.
Dare I say it .... world peace ? ( dependency on others as a source of fear and insecurity -> AI reducing dependency to minimal amounts -> every individual confident and secure -> ego death -> world peace ... the presumed potential path )
https://croissanthology.com/earring
This, above all else, is how I think of LLMs now. You have an exoskeleton, or you have a whispering earring.
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