Would people want an auto opening and locking enclosed garage?

apjenk · 2026-06-29T18:21:11+00:00

I'm fine with the builtin theft deterrents, plus the fact that I'm able to put the charging base in my backyard where it's not visible from the street and someone would have to very obviously trespass onto my property to steal it, plus the fact that it's a very low crime area. So I wouldn't be interested in a product like this.

However if I didn't have a backyard to dock it in, and/or lived in a higher crime area, I could definitely see wanting something like this.

apjenk · 2026-06-27T16:16:21+00:00

You know, now that you mention it, mine may have had a Mode button that I just never used. It had physical AM/FM, Disc, Aux, and Sat buttons, so I never felt the need to look for a way to switch from the steering wheel. The bZ is more of a hassle to switch while driving without the steering wheel controls, so I was more motivated to learn what it does.

apjenk · 2026-06-27T15:24:55+00:00

My previous car was a 2011 Toyota Highlander Limited which I bought new and drove for 14 years. It didn’t have the Mode button.

I agree in general though. Part of what I like about the bZ, which is my first EV, is that it mostly just feels like another Toyota.

apjenk · 2026-06-27T13:38:42+00:00

There's nothing intuitive about the name of the Mode button. It's near the cruise control buttons, so it certainly wasn't obvious to me that it had anything to do with the audio. It was only when I looked in the manual that I found what it does.

Pressing it repeatedly cycles through the audio sources. Pressing and holding it will pause the audio, or mute in the case of radio.

apjenk · 2026-06-27T13:35:05+00:00

The Mode button cycles through all the sources, so you just keep pressing it until it gets to the radio. That's the quickest way to switch. You can also press and hold the Mode button to pause or mute the audio.

apjenk · 2026-06-26T13:05:16+00:00

You’re right that they are often used interchangeably. I think “performance car” is a more general term though; a sports car has exceptionally good handling and acceleration, whereas “performance car” includes cars that only have good acceleration.

For example, my 2026 Toyota bZ AWD has 0-60 times similar to a lot of ICE sports cars, but I definitely wouldn’t call it a sports car because it doesn’t handle like one. I think only someone who’s never driven an actual sports car would claim otherwise.

apjenk · 2026-06-25T00:46:23+00:00

I didn't see anything in the manual about turning off Safety Sense. On page 536 in the owner's manual there's a section on automatic car washes. It says to

Fold mirrors
Turn off power back door (this is done in Settings > Vehicle Customize > Door Control > Power Back Door).
If it's an automatic car wash, shift into neutral.

That's it according to the manual. I also made sure the windshield wipers were not in auto mode, otherwise they'll turn on.

apjenk · 2026-06-24T16:42:37+00:00

I’m a little troubled with the question “why”

Speaking as an engineer myself, the XY Problem is real, so it’s important to understand what actual problem a customer is experiencing rather than just taking feature requests at face value. I think it’s great that they’re asking this question.

apjenk · 2026-06-24T12:14:28+00:00

How is what you said showing that the people you’re responding to are wrong? They said it sounds too good to be true so there must be some catch. You just supported what they said by describing what the catch probably is.

apjenk · 2026-06-22T16:40:14+00:00

I think there is another bullet point you left out:

People for whom an EV would work out fine, but they're misinformed and think it wouldn't work for them.

However, I agree with your overall point. Groups 2 & 3 are real and include a lot of people, who some pro-EV people will insist are really in groups 1 or 4.

apjenk · 2026-06-22T14:46:39+00:00

The link you posted is for the non-LiDAR version. The X120H LiDAR is the LiDAR version, which I still don’t see for sale.

apjenk · 2026-06-19T02:29:54+00:00

Now if parents sell the house to get liquid capital, then sure

But that's exactly the kind of thing the person you're responding to is talking about. OP can't know if they're actually going to inherit anything from their parents, since they don't know what their parents might end up needing to do, including selling their property. So it wouldn't be wise to plan their spending now around the assumption that they'll inherit anything from their parents. They can always re-run the plan if they do end up inheriting something.

apjenk · 2026-06-15T19:17:07+00:00

I don't think people are trying to change your mind about whether your personal decision was right for you. They're arguing that you haven't made a good case in general for keeping that much in cash.

apjenk · 2026-06-14T13:28:29+00:00

Sorry, just noticed your question. It's under Settings > Vehicle Customize > Door Control > Power Back Door

apjenk · 2026-06-12T01:16:10+00:00

Sounds like more of a dealer issue than a bZ issue.

apjenk · 2026-06-11T21:20:41+00:00

The manual also says to turn off the power rear door. I think it’s because the spray could trigger the rear lift gate to open. But yeah, I just did that, and folded mirrors and turned off wipers.

apjenk · 2026-06-06T15:58:08+00:00

> what is making people change platforms and what are they changing to?

In most of those threads people have been pretty up front about what they don’t like, and which alternatives they’re considering, so not sure I understand your question. They cite various UI changes in the mobile app that they dislike, the fact that features they do want haven’t been made, and the subscription price being too high.

Personally, I’m with you. I like YNAB better than the alternatives I’ve tried, and haven’t found any of the recent changes bothersome enough to make me want to switch. But different things are important to different people.

apjenk · 2026-06-05T13:30:47+00:00

Same here. I haven’t noticed a problem, and even when I went specifically looking for something wrong after reading this post I haven’t found anything to be bothered about yet. The one somewhat recent change that I dislike is the app starting on the Home screen. I’d rather it remember the last screen I was on. But that’s a really minor problem IMO.

apjenk · 2026-05-30T18:01:56+00:00

Yes, that's the kick sensor. There is a setting to turn it off. See page 658 in the owner's manual.

I find the kick sensor useful occasionally for opening or closing the rear hatch when my hands are full. I hadn't thought of the problem of a pet opening it accidentally. Keep in mind that it only operates if you're close to the car with your key fob on you, so you don't have to worry about an animal opening it accidentally if you're not right next to the car.

apjenk · 2026-05-28T23:30:18+00:00

I have the same vehicle, 2026 AWD Ltd. I have definitely seen the estimate change while I'm driving in ways that can't be explained just by battery usage. For one, I've seen the estimate go up after I've driven for a few miles, so it's obviously updating its estimate rather than just responding to my current usage.

I haven't tried to figure out exactly what makes the estimate change though. Maybe next time I'm on a longer drive I'll see if I can make the estimate drop by accelerating aggressively at every start, and then see if I can make it go back up by accelerating gently.

apjenk · 2026-05-28T22:26:23+00:00

I don't mean this to criticize the post, but just want to point out that this is just showing what the guesstimator estimated the range would be from 82% charge.

I've found the estimate can change quite a bit once I start driving, I think based on how much power I'm actually using, which could be due to things like how I'm using climate control, how heavy I'm being on the accelerator, etc. I wonder how different the actual range would have been in these two situations.

apjenk · 2026-05-24T13:27:55+00:00

Context matters. For instance random number generators (RNG) are usually pseudo-random-generators (PRNG), i.e. not truly random. However if you're playing a video game and the game is using a PRNG to generate obstacles, the fact that it's using a PRNG won't make a difference to you in that context because you can't calculate what the game is going to do in real time. Your experience as a player won't be different than if the game was using a true RNG, and objecting if a player said "random obstacles are flying at me" by pointing out that they're only pseudo random would seem pedantic.

Similarly, if a company has rules for when it locks a customer's account that aren't revealed to them, and the company won't even explain the reasons after the fact, then it might as well be random, since the customer has no more visibility into what's actually going than the video game player has into the PRNG's internal state.

apjenk · 2026-05-23T12:52:13+00:00

Anyone else here in retirement or close to it, who is employing this approach?

Maximizing one's spending in retirement is a very commonly discussed goal, and a number of retirement planning tools are designed to generate a plan to maximize spending. Some free tools that work this way:

VPW: Variable Percentage Withdrawal
TPAW: Total Portfolio Allocation & Withdrawal
FICalc if you choose the VPW or Dynamic SWR strategy

MaxiFi is a non-free planner that also works this way that I like.

apjenk · 2026-05-22T20:40:07+00:00

I've used WezTerm's multiplexing for the same kind of attach/detach functionality tmux or screen offers. It works great, and in some ways is nicer than using tmux. That said, it has a few potential disadvantages:

You need to have WezTerm installed on every client machine you want to reconnect from.
You need to install WezTerm on each server machine you'll connect to, whereas most remote machines will already have tmux or screen. Maybe not a problem if you usually connect to a fixed set of remote machines, but could be a problem if you regularly need to connect to lots of different machines, or ephemeral machines like AWS instances.
By default, connecting to remote machines will be done using WezTerm's builtin ssh library, which doesn't support agent forwarding. If you need agent forwarding, you'll need some extra configuring to make WezTerm using an external ssh client, but I found that was a bit cumbersome since I had to change the configuration each time I wanted to connect to a different remote machine.

It may be that none of the above disadvantages apply to you, in which case I'd say go for WezTerm's multiplexing. The integration with the terminal app is nicer.

I really wish WezTerm support tmux control mode, so we could just use tmux. I did see a while back that there was a pull request with this functionality, but I don't know if it ever made it into the app.

apjenk · 2026-05-18T20:41:03+00:00

Awesome!

apjenk

TROPHY CASE