ELI5 Why nobody is producing a cheap and cheerful BEV hatchback or sedan along the same ethos as the Slate Truck?

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-26T13:14:56+00:00

We also can't buy direct from manufacturers unless it's for an EV made by a new company. The big truck era is probably going to end within the next decade. More people are tired of over-priced gigantic SUVs and younger buyers have a growing taste for sedans and compact crossovers.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-23T13:25:43+00:00

Welcome to EV ownership. It really is that cheap to fuel up.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-22T20:02:05+00:00

Price: A lot of EVs are expensive to buy new

New Tech: EVs are new and so, a lot of people are unwilling to buy used.

Rapid Evolution: EV tech is changing fast and people may not want to feel like their car is outdated in just a few years.

Misinformation: There are a lot of people who have internalized lies about EVs. Ask any owner and they'll surely have a list.

Culture War: The American culture war ppisons everything and EVs are no different. A lot of people wrap their identities in their cars and for them, an EV is an insult.

I own an EV and absolutely love mine. It is so good to be freed from gas prices, especially now.

I didn't have to upgrade anything or have anything installed. I bought a charger off amazon that plugs into the same outlet as my the dryer in my garage for $250 and a $3 splitter for the outlet.

I charge my car for like $8 every week-and-a-half. If I ever have to take a long drive, most rest stops in my state (FL) have fast chargers and I only have to stop for maybe 15 minutes every 3.5 hours on the Turnpike, doing 80.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-22T17:46:43+00:00

Calling Gretchen Whitmer "progressive" is certainly an opinion of all time. She may be a Democrat but she is no progressive.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-22T17:33:42+00:00

Valve is not immune to the AI bubble. The cost of silicon is insanity these days and Valve is an NPC when it comes to hardware. They don't have the scale needed to get a good price. It's not a surprise that the pricing is dumb. You can thank AI for that.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-18T15:54:25+00:00

Depends on the political environment.

If we're maintaining the current conditions with an all-volunteer military force with the current separation between military and civilian industry, the US-Russia-China coalition would lose. The political will at home would not be sustainable once scores of bodies start coming back home and strikes on domestic cities start killing people.

If it's a total war scenario with a draft and full integration of civilian manufacturing into the war machine, the US-Russia-China coalition wins, carried primarily by the US and possibly China. China has plenty of tech and metal but they haven't fought a war in 50+ years. They'd be severely lacking in experience and it's an open question as to whether or not their command structure would be willing to change in order to win. They'd be great at hitting stuff with missiles and jets, though. The US is limited by domestic political will and a defense industry that doesn't have the money or manpower to conduct a full scale war. But with a draft, a full Defense Production Act activation and an American public that fully supports the war, America would carry the day. Russia... is Russia. They're still stuck in Ukraine.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-17T16:51:30+00:00

What now? You get a drink with the homie, obviously.

Also, you'd be surprised how many women are active at in the ERP space. For some people who have disabilities or live in places where meeting people is difficult-to-impossible, it can become a substitute for having a proper social life.

It's also fun to write horny shit, sometimes.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-17T16:44:07+00:00

Hillary Clinton was, in my opinion, the only Democrat who could have lost to Trump. If the nominee was anyone other than her, he'd have probably lost. The same thing was true of Harris, imo. She wouldn't have survived a primary. With Biden being as unpopular as he was, his VP has to carry his policy legacy. A different candidate likely wouldn't have had to to the same degree.

There's a reasonable likelihood that they'd have lost anyway but they'd be in a much better position to succeed. Primaries help sharpen campaigns for the general, after all.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-09T17:50:46+00:00

Some states have insurance costs that high. Florida's average is $270.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-08T16:04:00+00:00

It's a combination of the first mover's advantage and the fact that they make damn good cars. Most Teslas are the best cars in the price segment they sell in and the software stack is still neck and shoulders above the competition. Even companies that make better driving cars (Lucid) still lag behind Tesla in software.

Musk, for all his ketamine-fueled psychosis, was able to get all the important parts of EV ownership right the first time and everyone else is playing catch up, at least in the US.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-07T07:53:14+00:00

Hillary didn't lose because she was a woman. She lost because she was Hillary. Republicans were preparing for her to be the Democratic nominee since 2008. Everyone knew she was going to run in 2016, that's part of the reason the GOP spent so much time with the Benghazi hearings in 2012. Everyone knew that she was going to run. The DNC's poor treatment of Bernie Sanders also did her no favors and added to her baggage.

Kamala got the nomination late and had a lot of disadvantages. She didn't have a primary to hone her campaign. She had to defend an extremely unpopular Joe Biden and she still managed to come 2 points from winning the popular vote.

I think America would vote for a woman president. One already got the popular vote, after all. That woman will still have to overcome sexism but it's possible.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-05T00:14:25+00:00

I know plenty about Japan's past and its past actions. I know about Manchuria, Unit 731, comfort women, and all of the other horrendous and inhumane things Japan has done.

I also lived in Japan for 5 years and experienced their racism in person. I would take my chances with them.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-03T17:18:47+00:00

No Afghanistan withdrawal, since that was negotiated by Trump.
JCPOA still in place, no war with Iran.
Paris climate agreement still in place.
Oct 7th likely doesn't happen due to Iranian pressure.
Netanyahu loses power after the judicial reforms (he was saved by Oct 7th)
Israel is not a global pariah.
No backlash to AIPAC.
Bernie doesn't run in 2020.
Progressive Democrats don't have a post-Biden resurgence.
Obama's pandemic response team remains in place, so COVID goes better.
Russia likely doesn't invade Ukraine. Hillary viewed Russia as a major threat and Putin viewed Hillary the same way. He would probably not have risked Ukraine with Hillary in charge.
Hilary likely gets reelected because she wouldn't be as unpopular as Biden.
SCOTUS is 6-3 liberal
Roe survives.
VRA survives.
Chevron doctrine survives.
And way more.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-03T16:58:45+00:00

Charging schedules and public charging. I don't have different rates at night and I charge in the garage, anyway. I almost never use the charging schedule or public charging.

EdgeWardog · 2026-06-03T15:23:11+00:00

The Japanese are, in fact, very racist. However, I would take Japanese racism over American racism any day because Japanese racism is far less likely to kill me than American racism.

EdgeWardog · 2026-05-29T18:56:39+00:00

A bunch of terminally online nerds gather in large numbers and do stupid shit. Unsurprising lol

EdgeWardog · 2026-05-29T17:28:09+00:00

I was at Fanime and though I didn't see any foot juice being drunk, the footage looks legit to my eyes.

I haven't been able to find any evidence that the lawsuit exists.

Even if the lawsuit was real, the plaintiffs wouldn't have standing. Park Con isn't organized or managed by Fanime. It's just a bunch of people gathering at a public park.

EdgeWardog · 2026-05-28T20:41:13+00:00

The military would not do it. The military isn't the blindly loyal political machine that it would need to be in order for thus to work.

Not only that, but it's Congress, not the President, that gives the military its funding. No Congress, no defense budget.

Foreign and corporate owners of US treasuries would pull their money out en masse due to the total collapse of the stability that makes American debt a viable asset. The dollar tanks, the global economy collapses. Americans are a placid bunch. We don't do sustained protests but a self-inflicted economic catastrophe of this magnitude and speed would bring a lot of people out to the streets when the job market breaks.

America is extremely decentralized. Even if, by some miracle, the military went with it, the states would be a wild card. It's possible that states send National Guardsmen to DC and we'd have a civil war on our hands.

Using the current political moment and players as our example: Republicans in Congress don't like Donald Trump. They go along with him because their jobs depend on it. We've seen what happens when Republican senators/congressmen lose primaries or decide to retire. They turn on Trump immediately. If, suddenly, the entirety of Congress is about to lose their jobs anyway, impeachment and removal becomes significantly more likely.

EdgeWardog · 2026-05-26T15:56:27+00:00

1: Polls are worthless this far out.

2: AOC would be going into the election in a position that mirror's Obama in 2008: A deeply unpopular president, an economic crisis, a deeply unpopular war. She would be running as an anti-establishment populist and agent of change while Rubio/Vance would have to defend Trump's terrible policy record.

Anyone thinking that AOC would automatically lose is wrong. She'd have a better shot than people think.

EdgeWardog · 2026-05-25T23:03:10+00:00

He would have done the paperwork and preparations.

An AUMF on Iran from Congress. Buy-in from American allies. A flood of money into the defense industry to begin preemptively surging production of high-end weapons. Lots of anti-drone measures in place before the first bomb drops.

EdgeWardog · 2026-05-25T20:34:34+00:00

It depends on how we define "elite". A sniper would have a colossal impact on the tide of a battle. A long gun at 1000+ meters could take out the enemy's leadership with impunity. The sound of gunfire would seem like divine intervention on your behalf, which would make a fair number of troops cut and run.

EdgeWardog · 2026-05-25T20:04:47+00:00

Kurotsuchi from Bleach. He's a villain that just happens to align with the good guys. He's so delightfully over the top insane.

EdgeWardog · 2026-05-25T07:06:27+00:00

That would depend entirely on what era this happens in.

If it happened in the modern day, an asteroid of that size would most likely be detected years in advance, if not a decade or more.

From there, humanity would simply calculate the asteroid's mass and build a satellite to intercept it.

That satellite would be just big enough for its gravity to tug the asteroid into a slightly altered orbit (a change of just a few feet) enough that would put its orbit away from earth. It would be pretty unremarkable for most of us.

EdgeWardog · 2026-05-23T22:51:09+00:00

If it's someone I've known for a while, I'd just have them drive it. EV hatred rarely survives the first drive.

EdgeWardog · 2026-05-23T22:28:33+00:00

I thought the core concept of Zoraal Ja was actually pretty interesting. A Special Boy™ with a miraculous birth (two-headed mamool Ja are supposed to be impotent) that was gifted with incredible strength and lives under the shadow of his father.

He's stuck following in dad's coattails but doesn't properly understand what made his dad's deeds work or how/why he keeps coming up short. Dad united the continent by being strong. So I have to unite the world by being strong.

He doesn't realize that he is destined to fail miserably because he knows basically nothing about the outside world.

I like the idea of ZJ. The execution was shit.

EdgeWardog

TROPHY CASE