I don't know..just watching the show..

He's book smart but says dumb things daily. He's a nut.

From what I've heard, Musk is an extremely ambitious workaholic. It wouldn't surprise me if he has a motor that is always turning, feels the need to constantly be working on something, and resents anything that slows him down.

As NASA is planning for next year, I think.

(May be not missile; cannot come with the correct terminology right now, senior moment )

A few years ago I watched how the rocket went up and perfectly landed as planned.

That said, Musk's behavior of late is childish, and appalling. I think the stress of running five companies is finally breaking him mentally.

and get very crappy mileage.

Until an electric car can go more than a couple of hundred miles without needing a multi-hour recharge, I'll stick happily with my Honda Fit.

with 80% recharge in 20 minutes.

If your daily commute is under 100 miles a day, and you can charge at home, a used 2016 Leaf, or a used 2016 Voltwill serve you well for less than $10K . The Volt has the advantage of being a plug in hybrid, so it can switch to gasoline after its 53 mile EV range is exceeded.

As in 600 or so miles each way. So I drive 300 miles, spend 20 minutes recharging so I can drive another 200 miles, another 20 minutes to recharge so I can drive 150 miles.

A Volt is twice what I'm willing to pay for a car. It never fails to astonish me when I see what people are willing to pay for cars, how much car debt they take on. Me, I pay cash for a car. Always have. Yeah, I could buy a second hand electric, but I'm extremely happy with the 2017 Fit I now own.

And I see no point in owning two cars, quite honestly.

I've only put gas in my Fit three times so far this year, what with not driving it very much and definitely no long trips. I am retired, and when I was working my daily commute was about seven miles in each direction. Of course, who knows when any of us will again be driving 600 miles to visit family or friends, or just for a vacation.

"It never fails to astonish me when I see what people are willing to pay for cars, how much car debt they take on"

Maybe because they need a car and don't have the money to pay for it?????

So yeah, I understand that most people are incapable of saving a dime, and so they will need to take out a loan on a car. But to spend six years paying it off? Dumb.

Every time I hear the sad story of someone who bought a brand new car and two months later had it totalled and are shocked, just shocked to learn that the insurance company will only pay out what it's worth, not the thousands of dollars more they owe on it, I have no sympathy.

food and restrooms. If you have kids, those stops can clock in at 30 minutes. My longest trip has been around 800 miles, done over two days. I stopped to charge three times, once for lunch, and twice for a bathroom break. When I got done eating, I was 100% re-charged. The pit stop, put about 150 miles back on the clock in about 15 minutes.

I have been driving EVs since 2014, starting with the 2012 Leaf that only had about an 80 mile range (it replaced a 2009 Elantra). Two years later, we replaced our Sentra with the Volt, and it was our commuter/long range car. We went from burning around 800-900 gallons a year before the Leaf, to 400-500 gallons after. This dropped to 64 gallons with the Volt. Other than tires, cabin filters and washer fluid, we had no other repair expenses.

The Fit is an excellent car, and if you can pick up one for about $5K, that's a good buy. My wife and I had planned for years to lower our carbon footprint with solar and EVs. Our final car transaction was last year when we sold our Volt (for about 80% of what we paid for it used), and bought a Model 3. It will be our last car, but we now no longer burn any fuel for transportation, or home use.

At the moment, new EVs are too pricey for most people. Used EVs are far more affordable. However, at the rate that battery pack prices are declining, I expect to see EVs on par with ICE cars (range and price) within 18-24 months.

My stops are quite brief, usually ten or fifteen minutes.

If I ever buy another car I might look for a hybrid of some kind. But at 71, this may possibly be my last car since I tend to keep a car a good ten years. Someday, I will probably need to give up driving. My city has excellent senior van services, which I don't need at this point. There's always Uber or the like, or I might relocate to a city with better public transportation. Or move into some kind of senior housing where they drive me where I need to go.

The Volt is an top notch hybrid, and an excellent piece of engineering. If nothing else, it is a completely different driving experience.

Probably 10 plus years old, and well over 100k miles.

While my last several cars have all been second hand, I prefer to purchase a fairly new one with reasonably low mileage, especially as I have been putting quite a lot of miles on the cars once I have them. I also tend to purchase from a dealer, because I'm acutely aware that there's a lot I don't know about cars and I am willing to trust a dealer.

Car buying has changed a whole lot in my lifetime, and since we can now got a heck of a lot of information on the internet, I feel as if buyers have a lot more power anymore. I actually went through a period of time a while back where I bought three cars in six weeks. The first two were because my sons each totalled a car (no one was hurt) a week apart, and then my car blew a head gasket, so I decided to replace it. And neither one had owned the car that got totalled for more than a year, so I bought five cars in a bit over a year. Buying a car isn't scary at all for me.

So, I got a look behind the scenes at a lot of their shenanigans. Four years into my job, sales of our systems began to wain, and we were only selling to the “buy here, pay here” crowd, as all the brand dealers now bought there software and hardware from their manufacturers (captive customers). I wrote a six page memo to the owner that we should start retraining our staff in HTML and SQL database, and create web sites to help dealers sell cars on the Internet. Dead silence for two months. So, at a staff meeting I asked if he had read the memo. He said he had, and while he appreciated my suggestion, I didn’t understand the car sales biz (being a computer guy). Dealers were never going to sell cars, or even show cars online, as they had too much invested in proven sales methods: advertising in newspapers, on billboards, radio, and TV.

They went bankrupt in 2000.

Things were falling apart for “traditional” dealers over the last few years, and the COVID crisis is accelerating their decline.

Customers do have way more resources now than 20 years ago, and the death knell is tolling for the “good old days’’

When I look back to when I first bought cars, and how the entire process evolved over the years, I'm glad to be buying cars these days.

I have actually written up a sort of guide for buying cars. There's a new car and a used car version. I don't pretend that the guide will get you the best possible deal, but I am willing to claim it will be very helpful.

I will point out that I emphasize paying cash if at all possible.

though I never let the salesman know that is my intent. At the very least, folks should come with their own financing, but again, keep it to themselves until they hammer the best deal out, then say, "On second thought, I am going to pay cash (or I have already gotten my loan)".

...the car market is a tad different for sure. When one buys a shirt, suit, dress at say Macy's, no one expects to bring in their used clothes with the intent to trade them in for cash against the purchase price of the new duds, eh?

Used cars are the drag on pure on-line sales and a situation that's hard to fix. One fix reminds me of Japan IIRC in the late 50's and up until the late 70's or so. If you owned a car or light truck back then, after so many years (it was 5-9 years I think) the government mandated that you has to buy a new car and dispose of the old one on your own! Tens of thousands of cars were shipped by boat to neighboring countries to get rid of them and get their populations used to owning and using cars.

This ended up being a rather brilliant strategy: as planned, it propped up the post-WWII car industry and gave rise over the decades to now all-powerful Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, et al companies and all those parts suppliers. It also did plant the seed that germinated into the use of gas-driven cars & trucks in pan-Asia, China & India and put those bulls pulling oxcarts and the like back in the fields!

Btw, I had to look it up in an old Bloomberg article. The 'tests' at least long ago were how the government made it initially work: 10 years old and you had to junk it!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1998-06-14/why-the-japanese-dont-keep-their-cars-for-long-intl-edition

under the weight of right-wing ideology. It is very much dividing the EV community. Those of us who, despite being Tesla owners, condemn Musk's remarks are now attacked as anti-EV, which is BS.

I had immersed myself in the renewable power/EV movement to get AWAY from toxic discussions of politics, and now Musk brings it into an area that was having great success despite well financed atroturf groups. Add in Michael Moore's hatchet job "Planet of the Humans" and we have just lost to decades of progress.

Can't afford one but that's besides the point.

I'm completely with you.

Or maybe even a Prius Prime. After seeing Elon go full red pill truther, Tesla is officially off my list.

about to launch full production of their EV. Focus is the day to day Urban Driver and I understand the Battery Recharge is minutes rather than hours. Oh btw,a fraction of what a Tesla costs..

As long as I maintain the old thing it just keeps on truckin'. Good mileage and gas is relatively cheap.

It's not in my price range lol.

Seriously consider that. Thanks!

Right now, thinking about the Volvo XC40 or VW ID.4

Have to wait a few months to see the final specs.

He's a loon.

Just Friends.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/jeffrey-epstein-bezos-musk-billionaires-dinner

...it'll be hard to beat. 'Course I hear most of the first run as 2021 models is already sold out. That should tell you something........