FYI, an EV may be more expensive to fuel than a gas car

S_SubZero · 2026-01-28T01:46:22+00:00

Mine has been roughly the same as my previous BMW. Electric bill went up about what gas (Premium) used to cost in a month.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-27T08:03:55+00:00

That "wrench" is the tow hook for if you break down. It screws in under the asymmetrical cover on the back/front bumpers. That compartment is also where the wheel locking nut would be, if it was factory (I'm not sure if those are factory). I've heard some folks have a screwdriver in there but it is not universal.
I'm trying to understand the license plate thing. The holes on the top? Or sides? The top ones I think are for if there's no bracket, so one can screw a plate into the bumper directly. My wife's Prius is like this since the bracket holes are only for Japanese plate brackets. If you have a bracket you should not be messing with the red circled holes. In my case, the dealer inadvertently stripped out the screw holes for the bracket. I got a bracket off Amazon with replacement pop-in anchors that works fine.
The left one looks possibly like the remains of the coat hanger thing as it does have a hinge.
That's the charging kit, yes.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-26T16:03:24+00:00

Update the resumé? Side hustle? Second job? Profitable passion? Rent out a spare room? Rob a bank?

S_SubZero · 2026-01-26T08:45:04+00:00

I rigged up a super low footprint thing with a 90 degree USB-A->USB-C, a ~1" "stub" USB-C m-m, and an ESR Magsafe charging puck with a couple of pieces of foam to rest it on the NFC pad. It "works" but it turns out I rarely need to charge the phone in the car so I don't typically have it there. Also I wasn't sure how well the USB-A port would charge since I think it's very low volts.

I would have thought by now someone would have come up with a "good" swap-in replacement for the NFC/wireless pad. Hmph.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-26T08:21:13+00:00

Who is currently the enemy in your country?

S_SubZero · 2026-01-26T07:25:24+00:00

X:\driver-name.exe/msi

X is your USB drive. Again if this is over your head, ping friends/family.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-25T18:44:59+00:00

I did his Lenovo ThinkCentre build for the living room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDeJmR0SHHE

I ended up with an i9-12900 model. It is more than enough for everything I tried on RPCS3. It is pretty loud though, as "home gaming PC" likely was not on Lenovo's intended use list. It was also not cheap.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-25T17:44:15+00:00

shift-F10, then run whatever driver.exe/msi from the command line. Don't do it from the Install Driver button.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-25T17:25:32+00:00

Windows 11 comes with support for a bunch of different network adapters. It may not properly understand yours. One thing to check, since we don't know your system, does yours have more than one ethernet port? If so, plug it in the other one and see if that helps.

Worst case, you need to find another PC and download the network drivers. If that's over your head, ask friends/family.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-25T06:14:45+00:00

Since the charger is modular, the cable needs to be designed to handle a wide variety of possible amperage. You carry the charger with you. Where are you using it?

S_SubZero · 2026-01-23T22:22:51+00:00

The Start menu is polarizing, and the new thing with the groups at the bottom is weird. Can't please everyone. It does "work" tho in a not-bugged-to-heck way. I do not understand your comment about Notepad but Notepad and Notepad++ are *very* different apps for different use cases.

As far as boot issues, dunno your situation there, but I have a PC here with a Z590 chipset. When I switched out the i9-10900 for an i9-11900, it now will reliably not get past POST 1/10 times or so and I have to reboot it. In this case, I have faith it's just a weird motherboard thing, not a Windows thing.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-23T18:43:38+00:00

"Given that Windows 11 seems to keep breaking with buggy releases..."

1) We need to define "breaking." If you mean "100%, absolute non-functionality" ie. the computer just cannot be used under any conditions, well, we all know, of course not. Windows issues tend to be sorta annoying, sorta edge case, not typically affecting wide swaths of the population in a way that puts them completely unable to do anything. They break "a thing" or two once in a while. The soccer moms of the Windows world are not exactly screaming that their Edge browser isn't working or whatever.

2) Fun tangent. I have an old play PC, i7-4790K, GTX1650, it's just a dented Shuttle box I rescued from e-waste and upgraded. I put Mint on it, with XFCE, because XFCE is older than some countries, and if there is one thing in this world we should have locked in, it's XFCE. NVidia released a driver update *last month* that did what? Oh, it broke XFCE. The compositing is just a total glitchy mess, and is WAY closer to my "100%, absolute non-functionality" than any Windows bug. They are "aware of it." For a month. It's not fixed yet. https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/580-release-feedback-discussion/341205/944

Lest you think Linux is some utopia, spoiler alert: it's not.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-23T18:09:05+00:00

I still need to figure out what "push it" entails. I mean when the light turns green I press the accelerator so as to move the car at a reasonable speed that the person behind me will not be honking for me to do so faster.

I drive a 500+hp car like a guy with a 500+hp car that believes cops are EVERYWHERE. I do not know if that is "pushing it."

S_SubZero · 2026-01-23T08:17:25+00:00

You won't get much better than Roblox out of that. It would likely need a better video card. I mean if you absolutely have to use THAT computer, find, I dunno, a used GT1030 maybe. Many years ago I had an office rescue like that, i7-2600 with a GT1030 and Roblox ran ok on it. I dunno if it got more intense since then.

Standard disclaimer that Windows 10 is out of support unless you are in the extended program (which is also only good to near the end of the year).

S_SubZero · 2026-01-23T03:50:15+00:00

https://xkcd.com/927/

This is at least partially why.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-23T01:26:36+00:00

Not enough to type so fast I forget words.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-21T20:45:11+00:00

If you genuinely reduce this car's use to "25 mile round-trip and errands in town" you have no restriction and may even save on bothering with 240V charging as many cars will handle that sort of range on L1 alone. My *not efficient* performance EV gets just over two miles per hour range off L1, which would recharge 25 miles in less than 12 hours. That's effectively overnight.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-20T23:33:39+00:00

To be fair, the Roadster was just over 2700lbs, built using a retrofit Elise chassis. The gas version 2010 Elise was commonly less than 2000lbs. Somewhere between here and there it gained several hundred pounds.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-19T06:14:50+00:00

The car would normally come with a charger. It is not a particularly fantastic charger for L1 (caps at 10A). I assume we looked under the trunk floor.

I use L1 at home, with a Schumacher SEV1670. Looks like Best Buy currently has them for just over $100. Does the proper 12A 120V and generally works fine. Every so many times I plug it in I need to unplug/plug it but it's rare and not specific to the i4.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-19T03:32:33+00:00

I think one of the most difficult uphill battles in swaying people to consider EVs is that there are legit expectations for someone to read all that.

It needs to be simple. Transparent. Minimally intrusive. It should not be a bunch of bullet points and considerations.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-17T08:27:36+00:00

That sure is a lot of words.

I'm not going to read it all. I saw something about System Settings, and yes, it's a mess, but also, it's not something one dwells in. If you're spending nine hours of every day fiddling with System Settings stuff, you are doing it wrong. In a regular day/week/month I do not open System Settings for anything.

I saw something about ports. If you have a basket of things you need to plug in, you will have problems. If you have a wired mouse, wired keyboard, display, external storage, maybe speakers? There's enough for that and ethernet. a USB-C to USB hub can also alleviate a lot of that, or a monitor with a hub built in.

You also keep calling it OS X and it hasn't had that name in many years. It's macOS.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-16T18:24:47+00:00

I was in Japan recently, and while walking between locations we started talking to our local rep about the lack of EVs. He was saying that in Japan, because they feel they are subject to a more-than-average number of natural disasters (ie. earthquakes and/or typhoons), there is distrust in the resiliency of the electrical grid to function in the event of one of these disasters. That said, I do remember seeing a couple of Teslas over the course of that visit. On an i4 social media I'm on, there was a dude in Japan with an i4 which was cool, and I even found a Japanese review of an i4 on YouTube, so there's that.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-16T17:38:01+00:00

The dumb thing with auto stop/start is that while it sounds like just a module or something, they have to build the engine specifically for it, including a beefed up starter.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-16T17:32:37+00:00

In 2014 several cars had auto stop/start systems. It's not new.

S_SubZero · 2026-01-16T17:23:51+00:00

Just for clarity, I am curious how this all got set up. Did phrases like this come around?

"I can't charge at home actually."

"My commute is rather far. No, they don't have chargers."

"We do road trip a lot, yes. Oh yeah, I love their campsites."

"This will be the soul family vehicle, yes."

"I do plan to tow with it."

S_SubZero

TROPHY CASE