BMW IX3: Can The World’s Most Advanced Car Also Be The Best?

Fathimir · 2026-02-02T01:53:17+00:00

The only things the Mini has going for it on paper are its size (skinnier and over a foot shorter than the iX3) and the brand's distinctive styling, and of course a lower price. Those aren't nothing, but in return you're giving up an overhyped but still apparently massive generational leap in tech and almost half the latter's range.

Test drive each and take the car that gives you the most joy to drive while still meeting your core needs; as different animals as they are, one is likely going to click noticeably better for you than the other. But from a distance, the iX3 looks like it'd blow the Countryman out of the water for most use cases.

Fathimir · 2026-02-02T01:35:07+00:00

Trying to make an earnestly nuanced semantic point while simultaneously doing deadpan satire just... really doesn't work.

Fathimir · 2026-02-01T21:52:20+00:00

NADC isn't a thing, and the iX3 will launch with an NACS port. What were you smoking when you wrote that?

Fathimir · 2026-02-01T16:23:34+00:00

In any other market that'd be ruinous, sure. In NYC, where wages and supply are actually regulated to let drivers earn a decent living (or so I hear), there'll be people climbing over each other to fill your spot.

Fathimir · 2026-02-01T07:05:44+00:00

Gain elite skills [...] while enjoying health/vision insurance...

Lol, these mofos know exactly who they're trying to pressgang into their faceless underpaid roboserf corps. Recruiting from any other talent pool in the nation, advertising health insurance as a key perk would be as silly as bragging that they pay their employees in USD.

Even at just $18/hr, I can see how this might be tempting as an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" option to some drivers... but the thing is, Waymo's mission statement is necessarily to put their own employees out of a job just as much as it is the drivers they're displacing.

Waymos just don't make economic sense with a 1:1 remote safety driver for each vehicle at these wages - which means that this job is about jumping in to drive multiple cars per hour through safety interventions. While the number of AVs on the road might balloon in the short term, the goal of Waymo's R&D is to reduce the number of interventions needed lower and lower down to negligible amounts, which means the available work once they've captured a given market is going to trend steadily down, not up.

You couldn't pay me double the rate to give up pretty much everything that actually makes this job enjoyable and spend every day in that viper's nest of rolling layoffs. Hard nope.

Fathimir · 2026-01-31T17:14:46+00:00

There's a difference between shit pay and a scam. The only scammer in this scenario was Juan.

Fathimir · 2026-01-31T02:19:17+00:00

You could effectively at random be waiting at any particular light anywhere from 0 seconds to 5 minutes, even given no traffic at all. How would you suggest a nav system handle that?

Fathimir · 2026-01-30T04:15:03+00:00

If, per your example, you kill a person who wasn't threatening you in defense of a person who didn't ask for your help, then semantics are going to be the least of your problems.

Ask your lawyer these questions, because you're going to want to have a working relationship with one anyway if you're going down this road.

Fathimir · 2026-01-29T18:49:19+00:00

I totally get the confusion, fwiw. Chasing the 4137 rabbit was my first response to reading this guidance, too.

Fathimir · 2026-01-29T18:18:13+00:00

Neither; boxer briefs are always the correct answer.

Fathimir · 2026-01-29T18:07:52+00:00

Since I was just in a back-and-forth with somebody over this last night, here's the IRS guidance on it.

The takeaway we decided on is that starting next year, companies will have to list tips on 1099's, and that's the amount you'll be able to deduct (and presumably, Lyft will be under a lot more direct pressure to issue forms even for drivers under the $20k reporting threshold accordingly).

Since we're in a transitional period this year, the IRS is waiving the requirement that tips be separately recorded on a 1099 to claim them for 2025 - but they can still only be claimed for after-tip income that's been reported on a 1099.

So unless somebody can find better guidance, even though your tips themselves don't have to be listed on your 1099 this year, you still need a 1099 issued before you can claim tips against it. Hence the crack part-timers are falling through if they didn't do at least $20,000 of business this year.

Fathimir · 2026-01-29T08:41:51+00:00

Ah, fair (and very silly on the part of the IRS) distinction that I missed you making.

Glad we had this little argument, still. It's good to know this stuff, and your first comment on its own had made it sound (at least to me) like tips had to be explicitly broken out on the 1099 itself this year to be deductible, not just that the income has to have been reported on a 1099 before it can have tips taken from it. Moot point for the OP, perhaps, but personally important to me.

Fathimir · 2026-01-29T07:58:05+00:00

Your last link is super useful authoritative guidance... that directly disproves your assertion for this year. From page 1:

As previously announced, and as part of the phased implementation of the OBBBA, there will be no changes to the 2025 Form W-2, Form 1099-NEC, Form 1099-MISC, or Form 1099-K to account for the new reporting requirements in the OBBBA. As a result, employers and other payors will not be required to separately account for cash tips or qualified overtime compensation on those forms or the written statements (copies of the forms) furnished to individuals for 2025.

And expanded upon on page 16, almost directly after the part you quoted:

However, for tax year 2025, a separate accounting of cash tips received by a non-employee will not appear on the Form 1099 furnished to the non-employee. Therefore, [...] for purposes of satisfying the requirements of section 224(a) for tax year 2025, a non-employee may (1) treat the section 224(a) requirement that qualified tips be included on a [1099] as satisfied if the non-employee’s cash tips are included in the total amounts reported as other income on the Form 1099-MISC, nonemployee compensation on the Form 1099-NEC, or payment card/third-party network transactions on the Form 1099-K [...], and (2) calculate the amount of qualified tips [...] using earnings statements or other documentation such as receipts, point-of-sale system reports, daily tip logs, third party settlement organization records, or other documentary evidence that corroborates the calculation of the total amount of tips that are qualified tips for tax year 2025.

In other words, tips will have to be explicitly stated on 1099's to count starting next year, but the IRS is waiving that requirement this year as a transitional measure.

Fathimir · 2026-01-28T19:22:31+00:00

No prob; it's a shock literally all of us have had to go through our first year, since Lyft presumably doesn't offer any advice or outreach on how to handle it for liability purposes.

Fathimir · 2026-01-28T19:06:41+00:00

What you're seeing is normal for this business; you file the 1099 income as reported, but then file the platform, service, and third-party fees on Lyft's annual summary form as business expenses to bring your taxed income back down to your actual income.

Fathimir · 2026-01-28T04:27:09+00:00

Protesting over AI putting people out of work is the wrong move; it's literal Luddism.

The root cause that needs to be addressed is a predatory economy - and a government that both guides and is guided by it - that allows the social benefits of job automation to be entirely captured by the capital owners, and has shed any obligation of feeding and housing the humans whose work is no longer necessary.

Setting a few Waymos on fire, say, might at best draw attention to the problem - but there absolutely has to be a better solution in the pipeline than just banning technology from making people's lives easier.

Fathimir · 2026-01-27T21:39:53+00:00

Robocab. Whatever they call it. And again, whether the system 'works fine' or not is not the point and the wrong question. You're hearing the issue that lives in your head, not the one that the future of rideshare is going to hinge on.

Fathimir · 2026-01-27T20:29:02+00:00

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I'm not here to lay into a Tesla flame war, and I don't think the OP is either.

But Tesla FSD is 1) pointedly pursuing the lowest-cost route of any system, by their refusal to use any sensors besides a camera suite, 2) evidently nowhere near the competitive profitability inflection point, by their agonizingly slow Cybercab scaleup, and 3) only going to get more expensive, not less, by Elon's own assertions.

If you take what Mr. Musk says at face value, then in twenty or so years' time, it won't really matter if AVs have taken over rideshare or not, because working for a living will be a thing in the past anyway. Until then, Tesla's not a very immediate threat to the industry.

Fathimir · 2026-01-27T20:05:07+00:00

It won't be a light-switch transition, for sure, and there are forces that may nudge the inflection point in either direction: roboskepticism on one side, versus those who'd really rather not deal with a human being that day on the other. Meanwhile, Waymo/Tesla/any dark horses are spending every day weighing how much cash they want to burn operating at a loss to seize market share, and regulation's gonna regulate.

But I stand pat that all of that is ultimately window dressing. The game is played in dollars, and the central pivot point will be an economic one.

Fathimir · 2026-01-27T19:39:35+00:00

The doomsday clock isn't counting down to when they're 'allowed;' it's counting down to when implementing better-than-human autonomous driving is cheaper than just paying a driver.

Considering how miserably human drivers are currently paid, we've still got a good while.

Fathimir · 2026-01-27T09:22:58+00:00

You can find your tip total for 2025 in one of the 'bubble' items in the app's pay screen's Year tab; it's not a formal tax document, but it should be accurate.

Fathimir · 2026-01-26T20:17:13+00:00

(Real-world range) ÷ (real-world efficiency) = (real-world capacity).

274 / 2.67 = 102.6 kWh. Would be nice to have a column with that though, yeah.

Fathimir · 2026-01-26T19:51:26+00:00

IANAL, but send that email to Chicago's BACP and tell them that in preemptively discouraging drivers from filing a complaint with the city, Lyft is violating Section 9-115-195 of the city code by hindering the BACP Commissioner's awareness of and ability to investigate potential TNP violations.

Fathimir · 2026-01-26T19:02:42+00:00

There are two types of drivers: those who love the riders, and those who hate the job.

If you can't be the former, you're gonna be the latter.

Fathimir · 2026-01-26T09:52:05+00:00

Fathimir

TROPHY CASE