Mercedes Benz is debuting some Level 3 driving automation on a few of their cars for 2024. These systems are full hands off and legal for use in Nevada and California. Mercedes Benz stands by the systems and are on the hook if something goes "wrong".

10/13/2023 9:07:32 AM

That's not what I mean though.

When driving, or for most things, I think personal accountability is a necessity.

corporations are corporations

we should build tech around humans, not in spite of

10/13/2023 11:18:02 PM

A "Made in China" crisis awaits Big Auto

https://m.economictimes.com/small-biz/trade/exports/insights/a-made-in-china-crisis-awaits-big-auto/articleshow/116959322.cms

The future is Chinese cars, EVs specifically.

1/6/2025 3:02:16 AM

I spent some time with chinese evs last year. They blow away every new car available in america under 40k in terms of value and quality. protective tariffs are the only thing holding off the blood bath you're seeing in japan and europe. when the cars are already built with unfair wages and then the govt subsidizes them further, its impossible to compete, especially with western labor protections in place. what kills me is all the free market rhetoric espoused by gop clowns, but they're the last people to argue for letting these cars enter the market.

I think if you're going to give these american/european/japanese companies a stay of execution, you need to put in protections for the american consumer base to prevent coasting on shit product offerings. Something like there must be X offerings at Y price by Z date or efficiency targets. Miss the numbers and the tariffs start falling.

1/6/2025 6:53:33 AM

I mean its not free market when the competition is subsidized by a communist government.

But it is entertaining to watch Europe support and encourage pissing away their automotive prestige

1/6/2025 3:13:26 PM

As someone now working in automotive, that's kind of horrifying.

1/7/2025 8:46:04 AM

Pretty soon we'll all be living in a Chinese van down by the river

1/7/2025 9:06:42 PM

a Chinese van built by slave labor

1/20/2025 2:05:01 PM

https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ford-150-lightning-ev-decision-89dc0d84?st=CREJMM&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Ford Considers Scrapping Electric Version of F-150 Truck

11/6/2025 2:56:41 PM

https://waymo.com/safety/impact/

https://www.tesla.com/fsd/safety

Think using these as we age will be a huge boon to lowering pedestrian fatalities and reducing chance of driving deaths for old people . Think these new models developed in the AI boom have it licked.

11/21/2025 8:31:37 AM

anyone who has ridden in a tesla HW4 running FSD 14.x will tell you it's impressive - i'm running HW3 still on FSD 12.6.4 and while it's good the improvements on 14.x are incredible

waymo is as well but only within the confines of roads that they have pre-mapped

11/21/2025 8:58:34 AM

^ Yeah I did a demo this week on HW4 14 and I was blown away. Especially shit show parking lots and busy roads where it had to do a u-turn. Didn't disengage in 40 min and it had lots of edge cases.

11/21/2025 10:55:15 AM

Yeah, I wonder when/if Tesla will ever make good on upgrading HW3 cars?

That said, I really like a lot of stuff about my M3P, but some of the material quality issues are causing me to really lose patience with it.

-steering wheel peeling severely, have a replacement eBay one on order

-carbon fiber spoiler finish peeled up. Replaced

-underbody front aero cover broke while driving down the interstate. Replaced

-driver headrest fake leather material deteriorating. Have a replacement once I figure out how to remove the old one

-sensor in door died and caused windows to go ape shit

-**biggest problem, it bends and cracks wheels like you fucking read about. I replaced my entire set of OEM wheels with an aftermarket set after finding 3 of them bent. I've then since replaced 2 of those aftermarket wheels (one bent, one cracked). Now I have another one bent, and another one leaking (which I haven't determined if it's a nail in the tire or another cracked wheel).

So that's, like 6-7 wheels in the 2 years I've owned it. Granted, 3 of those might have been bent when I bought it, but still, we're talking a MINUMUM of 3 and possibly 4 wheels in the last year or so.

It's bad enough that I'm starting to look for other cars. Haven't done anything because I'm not sure what I want.

11/22/2025 12:54:25 AM

^ I remember when I spent 4 years agonizing over buying a Model S the fake leather in most of the ones I looked at looked real shitty. In particular the ones in the showrooms looked like they’d been sand blasted along the edges of the seats where people got in and out repeatedly. Sad they haven’t fixed that. Even sadder they haven't fixed the door handles: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-21/tesla-sued-over-another-fatal-crash-in-growing-scrutiny-of-doors

My only issues in the S were the screen kinda developed a yellow haze and the headliner became detached in spots and one of the rear seatbelts stopped working. They fixed all of them pretty quickly.

I generally still like them, but my family size is too large for a Y and probably an X. Also the handle issues kind of make me apprehensive. Will probably end up with an F150 next.

[Edited on November 22, 2025 at 8:13 AM. Reason : a]

11/22/2025 7:59:56 AM

an F150 Lightning won't fit in my garage, unfortunately.

Also, it's like 1/3 of the efficiency of an M3P. A truck bed would be nice, but just the ability to tow a decent sized trailer would be a 90% solution for me.

11/22/2025 9:23:23 AM

^^^ oh, I forgot. Add a taillight to that list.

Vastly more stuff than I had covering in my beater DD Honda Insight from 60k-355k miles.

11/24/2025 10:25:19 PM