7 (and a half) Controversial Auto Industry Opinions That May Get Me Cancelled 

Maverick is a midsize, not small. Small is a chevy luv type pickup. People are just brainwashed now because pickups are ridiculously, unnecessarily large.

In the so-called, "Land of the Free," we are denied a multitude of viable marketplace options.

My experience with the switch to SUVs was that when Minivans were introduced I found myself in traffic surrounded by taller vehicles. This impacted my ability to see the road ahead. The only option to overcome this was a truck or SUV. The introduction and adoption of the Minivan is when I began noticing the shift towards SUVs. On the EVs you’re correct about time and overcoming the shortfalls. The people that are against EVs are less against the EVs and more against being forced into the EVs before time has overcome the obstacles.

Electric cars would be great if they would stop putting in so much unnecessary technology. Just make a simple car without the giant screens in the dash. Backup cameras are mandatory but they can put the screen in the rear view mirror. The dash can have regular buttons, switches and knobs. Simple climate controls. Use the 70s economy car model. Small, simple and straightforward. Nothing that doesn't need to be in it

In the Us there are no longer any small pickups on offer, just midsized and full sized.

While SUV's were not forced on us, the auto manufacturers---especially the US domestic Big 3---have denied us access to Sedans and Station Wagons. As for the US Government's CAFE and EPA rules, throw them out and do NOT start over. Plus, eliminate the "Chicken Tax".

The Kei cars have a speed limit because of safety issues when at high speed. Japan has much lower speed limits, so it’s easier to lower safety standards without too much affecting the safety of the driver. So I think the Kei cars needs to be modified a bit to be sold in the US. But yeah, imagine if the US is able to buy 5000 dollar brand new Kei trucks. I feel the US needs to be more flexible to imports, especially the Japanese imports and those from ally countries. And the Delica Mini is also one of my favorite Kei cars too.

You are definitely right about the size of the compact trucks of 30 years ago being so much smaller. I had forgotten how small they were until I was on the interstate recently heading to work amd saw a really clean 90's square body S10 2 wheel drive short bed in the middle lane and compared to everything around it, the thing looked tiny! I didn't remember them being so small back in the day but things have certainly changed.

Australia just introduced a "ute tax" to try to reduce the number of large pickups & trucks, like Rangers & Hiluxes etc. They & big SUVs are reaching plague proportions. Not soon enough & not high enough imho. Cheers.

My controversial takes: 1 - Grand Tourers/Performance packages should be 2-door body styles and true “sports cars” (things designed from the ground-up to perform well regardless of practicality) should be 2-seaters. 2 - Roadsters should always be manual and either RWD or AWD. They may be luxury grand tourers, but a roadster is by design a drivers car 3 - Rally Sport packages should be AWD and have raised ground-clearance and thick-sidewall tires. 4 - Diesel engines should use Bosch K-Jetronic MFI. 5 - Timing chains should always be used over belts.

There is an interesting elements to SUVs of today, which is that the basic dimensions are roughly the same as those of American pre ww2 passenger cars, essentially somewhat short of 200 in long and about 65-70 in tall. The difference is that back then you could have on those same package (and proportions) a four door sedan, which kinda look like today's SUV's, but also two door short greenhouse, long tail coupes (1937 Lincoln Zephyr coupe) or even rakish fastback designs (think Buick Sedanets or Chevy's Aerosedans), and convertibles too. Today the SUV package comes in one flavour, with at most the pointless variation of a more sloped roofline but with the "mega tall chopped tail" side effect.

While I agree with many of your points here, when talking about foreign makes, and especially Chinese cars, you seem to forget that there are laws in place since the 70s that only allow manufacturers to import a certain number of cars per year. This was put into place specifically to slow the flood, or the perceived flood of "cheap" Japanese cars coming into America, and theoretically to "protect" the American auto worker. This actually caused a backlash effect where Japan refused to accept American cars into their country, then those automakers ended up building factories in the US to get around the quotas. This, along with the differing regulations you mention, have kept some incredible cars out of our hands for decades.

Very interesting video Jon. We keep coming back to Chicken tax and regulations of that sort, and I agree they should be removed, for cars made in US ally countries at least. The US can’t have the Mitsubishi Triton, Toyota Hilux, Isuzu D-Max, and Mazda BT50 that I know for sure would be popular in the US. It’s a shame “land of the free” has more regulations when it comes to cars than “land of the rising sun”. A lot of these regulations are ridiculous too. I think lawmakers should have some common sense when they put these regulations into effect. Great video by the way.

The society of which you speak .. I sincerely hope it comes to pass .. I used to import JDM cars when the time limit was 15 years (in Canada) .. We were bringing in and fixing up cars for $7k-$10k that blew the doors off of what you could get for that price "in" North America .. Finding out that a state will not even register a legally imported Kei truck is the more ridiculously protectionist thing I might have ever heard

Jon you are my spirit animal. I agree with everything you've said here.

The segment about Chinese cars is VERY unpopular but I have to agree with your stance. We need more competition to bring prices down but the government will likely terrif them out of reasonable price

My parents bought a Honda Ridgeline because they liked the car like ride, suv interior, luxury extras. They have an older Silverado Truck for heavy duty use !! And they have an Acura sedan that basically my mom drives!!! But they LOVE the Honda Ridgeline because it’s not too big nor too small!!!! It is like a family car / suv in a pickup and they use as a family vehicle, picking up the grandchildren from school and use it for a few Home Depot runs to the garden center!!! I would totally buy a Ridgeline!!!! Of course the Ridgeline is much larger and more expensive than the Maverick

100% on the global standards, and you are also right that it will never happen. TPP and its European equivalent (whose name escapes me at the moment) had a lot of what you mentioned, particularly the European one. The global political winds however are not blowing in that direction.

Keep the Rant-pinion’s coming Jon!

I'm still driving my 1997 Toyota Tacoma. I won't buy a new truck until manufacturers offer one that is truly small.

Jon, I appreciate and respect your willingness to do your research and state your opinions, even if they are controversial. That said, I’ll agree with another comment here, I don’t see the Maverick as being particularly controversial. It and the similar Ridgeline meet the need for a segment of consumers, and could for more people if they’d just take a look. Doesn’t matter what you label them. I understand your desire to shake up the US Auto industry, and something needs to happen there. But I don’t think bringing in Chinese cars is the answer. You mentioned the previous influx of Japanese imports, but I’m not sure the comparison is valid. If the Chinese government is providing massive subsidies to their auto industry, allowing their vehicles to be artificially cheap instead of reflecting the true cost of developing and manufacturing them, I don’t think they are a fair addition to any marketplace. Last, 100% agree with you. Cooperation to create international design standards for safety and efficiency would be greatly beneficial. Unfortunately, we’ve proven that we can’t solve smaller problems than this right now, so I’m not optimistic. Thanks for your work, Jon. Will be interested to read some of your responses to the comments on this video. Hint, hint.

I'm a German who's lived in the US for a year as a student and then spend smaller periods of time there, up to months, for the next decades. I've also lived and worked in dense cities as well as more rural areas on both sides of the Atlantic, had to manage four kids for a while, with not just daily commutes but being a "football dad" on the side, but am now basically back to home-office and mostly driving for groceries. I prefer driving 150mp/h for 2-6 hours to visit family in one take than try to make a self-driving EV work for the same distance at 65mp/h, even if I could sleep at the wheel. I'm seriously considering a tiny EV for the groceries, especially if I were to move back downtown. Now here are my opinions to match or complement yours: 1. The four-way-stop is the worst environmental disaster ever. I've always wondered why US cars have such big engines when they are going so slow. My current Ford Mondeo only has a 2l engine with 200hp. It will run 150mp/h sustained for hours (which traffic rarely permits), but you have to trade the extra fuel vs. paying for an overnight stay. The ability to cover all "typical" distances within 6-8 hours was and remains very important, expecially with the kids because of travel costs and logistics. And those typical long distance trips were typically between 100-400 miles (I've only driven once to Málaga, but then I stayed for months). So why do Americans insist on V8 with twice the power even for sedans very near the same size? That finally dawned on me during my last stay in Texas (two months, mostly Dallas, but also the greater central area), where of course I rented a nice big V8 SUV on corporate expenses: It's because of how Americans have built roads. German roads (I know it's not exclusive!) are designed much like blood vessels in a body. There is high speed arteries, slow capillaries at the opposite end and then all the various size and speed ranges between them. Priority is typically assigned to the bigger flows and coordinated sensor driven traffic signs try very hard to optimize throughput, punishing cars too fast or too slow with a red light. Of course cities, rivers, hills, railroads and many other things came into existence long before cars were introduced, but generally road construction has tried very hard to have roads fit and adapt into their environment, constantly rebuilding for flow optimiziation with by- or over- or underpasses, adding lanes or somewhat more recently round-abouts, although not quite yet at the scale of the UK. The goal is to avoid the need for acceleration and breaking, because that's noisy (especially with small high-revving engines), expensive, polluting and simply quite generally bad. For every road except the smallest ones, great care is taken to match the road to the car in terms of horizontal and vertical angles, scaping the land to fit the flow, because in the formative years of road building (post WWII) both cars and trucks took ages to bring up to speed and roads were narrow. In Texas (and in much of the US) the vast majority of intersections are 4-way stops. And you actually have to stop and wait your turn. While in Germany cars on priority roads never need to and waiting cars from the lesser roads then move together in groups of priority (not sequence) into traffic breaks. So US traffic is binary, people stomp on their brakes and they stomp on the accelerator, trying to minimize the interruption to max-speed, wasting an extraordinary amount of energy--unless they drive an EV. And the roads generally go straight, until the climb/descend angles truly become impossible, the straight line always has priority, very likely because nobody wants to give up even an inch of their property to accomodate an easier flow for a public road (ok, seems in central Texas another issue is that all these seemingly soft flowing hills actually are granite and require Dynamite for terraforming, not just shifting a diluvial sand deposit) Where after some hours of driving in the UK I tend to get quite dizzy from all the round-abouts, in Texas my neck started to hurt from all that acceleration/breaking, but mostly it just resulting in much more mental effort just to keep track of each and every intersection and what was going on there: I can see why people want autonomous driving there, because doing this for hours every day it's such a pain in the bud! US drivers also seem to take driving very much as a secondary job to being on their phones or chatting with their passengers. They also drive them like tanks with next to zero interaction between drivers. In Europe most cars had such thin metal skins they drove them like bycicles, because fear in the other guy's eyes meant both were going to get hurt. The 4-way stop must have been a natural thing to do in the good old days when two horse carts rarely ever met at an intersection and then drivers actually welcomed the opportunity to have a chat. And one might argue that "priority" came much more naturally to Europeans, who after all lived in a largely feudal society when personal transport emerged. But for me the much higher fuel taxes, the noise complaints from people living more closely together and perhaps even the much greater ease by which property owners could be forced to put up with the "greater good", are very decisive factors, that have developed in a very different road and transport network layout for decades. Changing that again is going to require much greater effort and much more time than going from gas to electric and it is going to require a high political force and will to move that along, for many, many election cycles. In that sense Europe and many other places might have actually had an advantage, because these decisions were made before everbody had equal rights and few could ever agree. These days getting things done with common sense for the common good in one of the biggest democracies is getting very difficult, because the neo-feudals who these days steer public opinion or its representatives only have their bottom line, not the common good as motive. As an IT guy I've actually worked in a home-office setup most decades of my professioncal career. Sometimes that got mixed with periods in high-density cities and offices, which had so much greater public transport than car accomodations (e.g. Paris, but also Berlin or Brussels), that I simply wouldn't even consider using a car. But even in my current suburban setup, I'd say the best car is quite simply the one you don't have to use. And the Internet is the biggest blessing for making that ever more possible. Now let's just not burn the planet via crypto or AI instead!

You hit on the head around 21:30. The people who take our money do not want downward pressure in the market. I really agree that Chinese EV's are not the enemy, it's our lack of planning thats the enemy.

100% agree with you on the need for China cars / competition & global standards! Mostly agree with all your other points as well, but these ones I’ve also been thinking about for a while now.

I would also like to see a change in license registration for trucks. In California and other states “weight fees” are added to pickups. Granted they can haul cargo but i am not operating a commercial business. I used my HD pickup to tow a fifth wheel. It’s for recreation, not commercial purposes. Let the weight fees, commercial fees apply to actual business and industrial uses.

EVs real problem is the batteries. Batteries need major advancements still.

Thumbs Up Jon. This information needs spread around.

Thank you for your interesting viewpoints as an engineer. I'm not an engineer but a lot of your viewpoints make excellent sense

The thing with China is, we're not exactly on good terms with them. I'm more comfortable trading with countries that are allies, or are at least on good terms with us. So, we need to make sure that trading with China is not to our detriment, especially with our national security, and our jobs. We also shouldn't be letting MBA's and Wall Street run so much of the show.

There's plenty of challenges that need to be resolved before EV's can stand with or exceed ICE's. Weather extremes should not severely impact the battery range or motor performance. The range should equal that of ICE vehicles, if not exceed it. We need charging stations nationwide to sustain EV's, and the charging time needs to be every bit as efficient as gas pumps are. They should also be just as capable of handling extreme usage, such as towing and hauling, without negatively affecting battery range or life, and what about "braking" while going downhill? What can function like a low gear in an ICE vehicle to have the engine-as-a-brake affect in an EV, to save brake wear? And weight! How do we get the weight down, and is any organization working on a reusable and recyclable battery? What about the rest of the car? How much can be made recyclable so our landfills won't fill up? What about more plentiful and safer alternatives to cobalt and lithium? Do they exist? I'm rambling here, but we need time to work out all these concerns. Also, we need to get the federal government out of the way, and let capitalism and our Yankee ingenuity determine the markets' winners and losers. I don't want EV's forced on me by the government. That's the biggest issue I have right there, these unreasonable and unrealistic EV government mandates.

The thing about EVs is, people say EVs would improve over time, so why do I have to buy one now? The EVangelists really push the idea of buying an EV right away, but I’d rather get a perfected one years later than buy an overpriced one right now.

it's so rare to see the automotive youtuber who's in favor of evs and that is part of the reason why i am subscribed to your channel. car enthusiasts are often very close minded and tend to rush out on anyone who shows even a tiny bit of support for electric vehicles, with their "knowledge" a.k.a random stats that they found on twitter that's been circulating on the internet since 2012. i appreciate this video and i loved hearing something that's actually controversial.

Thank you for the video. It is well thought out and stated.

I have a first gen Tundra...most people think it's a Tacoma because of the size of today's Tacoma.

You've nailed it!

Jon, love the video. Too much to comment on each... Maverick is wonderful. Some people just get offended if other people want something that they don't really like. EVs are the future. Not everyone can use one now as the infrastructure exists. Also, gas engines will be available for decades.... there's no need for people to panic as if the govt will take away their gas vehicles.

Jon. Love your channel. Watch u all the time. In an unrelated topic, what happened to the small van in America? The only one for sale in the US now is the MB Metris. As far as I know, no other van that fits in an average garage is for sale in the US anymore. Would love your expertise review on this. Keep up the good work !! You’re the best !

26:37 lots of rich people in my family, I am not, but they all get a new $100,000 truck/SUV each year for the write off only....cars do not qualify...it must have a GVWR of 6,000+ lbs...

there's still some cars over 200 in long Mercedes Benz S Class for example is between 208 and 215 in long or a Lexus LS 206 in long similar to a Cadillac Seville around 17 ft long the height of a Lexus LS is 58 in 4 ft 10 in the longest Toyota sedan is the Crown 196 in long as for Sport Utility Vehicles they've been around since after world war II but started having a big surge in popularity in the late 80s and 90s including the introduction of your first American Luxury SUVs Oldsmobile Bravada Lincoln Navigator and Cadillac Escalade some others came later like Buick Enclave Envision the Cadillac XT series etc.

Did you get a new mic? The sound quality is top tier!

Automakers got themselves in a pickle. Example. Crossovers were car based(some are still) but the outlander was lancer based and now it's rogue based which is still car based. Hrv was fit based fit went away and now it's civic based same as the crv. Which doesn't make sense selling 2 xovers nearly the same size. They are getting rid of cars and now have to make a crossover specific platform. Making them more expensive.

Thanks for sharing, it was a lot to absorb but I’m pretty much with you. Especially in the area of government/EPA regulations where many are overly complex and nonsensical.

The midsized truck market has been getting a lot of love lately. Everyone has a hot new midsized off-road machine right now.

EVs are only good when the electricity is not produced by burning coal or natural gas. Otherwise hybrids are a better compromise. A different fuel for ICE is maybe the best solution. I only disagreed with your Regulation section, the fly in the ointment is that the companies found a way around the regulations and that changed the outcome of the regulations. The last point was very good. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.

@Jon : Dude, you rock. Keep it up.

Here in Alaska K trucks are everywhere, I wonder if it's because we have different regulations here, thus people here love the Maverick, Ridgeline, and Santa Cruz...and there are Baja's EVERYWHERE. Alaska really is different from the lower 48 in so many ways lol.

One way to make sedans favorable is to give preferential treatment. Make the 2 and 3 lane sedans only.

Jon should be appointed the dual role of Transportation and Energy Secretary. But I do have some reservations about his China policy, so I'll withhold my nomination for Secretary of Commerce for now.

CUVs should've been called "tall wagons" from the start, so we could just call them "wagons" now and use "low wagon" as a retornym for the sedan-height survivors.

I mostly agree with you on everything you said here. I'm not against electric automobiles in theory. We've all been fed a ton of BS on them. The worst talking point is that they are emissions free and have little impact on the environment. They ignore where the lithium and electricity comes from. Your idea of "time" is probably correct. Over time, battery technology (manufacture, recycling, life, capacity, charge rate, etc.) will improve. I'm just not sure anyone living today will ever see the point where an electric car is better than internal combustion for most people. The lack of availability of small vehicles in the US is maddening. It seems CAFE is doing the opposite of their goal by making it difficult to offer smaller more fuel efficient vehicles. I've said for years that a new Nissan Hardbody, Chevy S-10, Toyota Hilux, Isuzu P'up type truck would sell like hotcakes. There is a huge untapped market for "real" small pickups and Suzuki Jimny type vehicles. I think the Maverick kinda proved that people are looking for cheaper cars and trucks, but Ford raised the prices once they realized the popularity of the "pickup". There's one thing I think of that you didn't touch on, but the smaller inexpensive vehicles makes me think of it. You used to be able to buy stripped down vehicles. You know, the ones with manual windows, an AM radio, no AC, rubber flooring, and vinyl seats. You can still get rubber floors, but you have to be a fleet manager to order them. Where are those offerings? You can't even buy a regular cab pickup unless you go to the Ford dealer or want a ton and a half chassis cab and frame. I'm also glad to know that I'm not crazy. I told my dad that his Maverick is considerably larger than the old 1991 Mazda B2200 he bought new. He thinks my memory of that Mazda is warped.

I agree that the midsized trucks are like what was a full-size truck 30 years ago, and I have pointed that out to friends. My midsized truck is more capable than my old Chevy K series pickup from the 80s.

We hear we can't do it, hear from EVS to health care. Long term electric cars are the future

Wow, lots to unpack here. Fantastic video as always. Where to start.....MAVERICK ("small trucks") - The Maverick is in no way a small truck. Not even close. Its a mid-size. When I think of small trucks, I think of the 1980 Toyota single-cab pickup my parents had. It had a bench seat with barely enough room for three. That was a small truck. These don't exist in our marketplace. SUVS - In a capitalistic marketplace, the consumer dictates when manufacturers build. Consumers vote with their wallets. The manufacturers who are paying attention to the market will respond accordingly. Ford is a fantastic example of that when they cancelled all cars with the exception of the Mustang. BMW - When did BMW become the standard of the sport luxo market? They may have started that genre of the automobile industry but I don't think of them as the benchmark brand. In my area I see a lot of Beemers and to a lesser degree Mercedes. People who drive these vehicles are going for status. To me, I wouldn't buy any of them. They are too expensive to purchase and maintain. If you are buying one to impress me, it ain't working. EVs - I agree with Jon, EVs are here to stay. However, they are far from being the "perfect mode of travel that will solve the earth's environmental challenges". My issue with them is that the government is ramming them down our throats without fully fleshing out the battery tech and solving the issues with that. This coming from someone who drives an Amazon electric delivery vehicle produced by Rivian. CHINESE CARS - It think marketplace competition is a good thing. Having more choices in any one marketplace is good though I do agree with Jon on the spyware concerns in their vehicles. REGS AND STANDARDS - Our vehicle safety and CAFE rules are like a quilt blanket of regulations brought on by many decades of changes. An overhaul needs to be done. Times have changed and a lot of the rules and regs are outdated and do not make sense in today's world. I like the idea of global standardization but trying to get a group of countries to agree on something like that would be a monumental challenge. Thanks Jon for a thought-provoking video.

Jon for president! 2024! I agree whole heatedly on everyone.

I think we need to *START* with redoing the emissions regulations. Stop alienating the people who like their bigger motors and diesels. If they don't feel as boxed in, then maybe they'll be more agreeable with the rest of it.

Good. Thanks.

I don't think they ever sold the Jimney here

I love what you're saying about Chinese cars. It would be a huge undertaking, but if they are able to enter the market and undercut on price and prove reliability I think a lot of people would put their "HUR DUR 'MURICA" attitudes on mute while sitting in a Chinese manufacturers dealership, just like what happened with Japanese cars. They might have to be willing to play the long game like Hyundai/Kia did. The Chinese car market is several levels more exciting than then US market right now too, so much variety.

Yeah, but Jon, it was different when the Japanese took over the US market. The Japanese have a highly organized and respectable culture and they are all about perfection quality, ethics, and efficiency. There was no harm in the Japanese taking over the US car industry because Japan is one of the US closest allies and it was easier to get the Japanese to cooperate with whatever the US wanted them to do. Japan was also very pro-America so they wanted to westernize their economy. But China is a communist country with completely different views, which is government should control everything. It becomes more of a national security issue when it comes to Chinese cars, as opposed to when the Japanese took over the US car market. The Chinese just want to dominate every industry sector, and it just sours them that they don’t have the global car industry to themselves . The expansion of China’s car industry is part of China’s propaganda to take over the world, and I think the US needs to stop that. So that’s why I would always be leery of Chinese EVs. Once they have the US market, they would have the consumer’s allegiance.

It takes a lot of courage to say things that are unpopular. As a person who expresses such opinions frequently, I salute you. I disagree about allowing Chinese cars given the dangers of CCP. I agree with changing the regulations. The move to crossovers has knocked down the EPA ratings for Ford to what their cars were roughly in the '90s. It erased all the potential fuel economy gains with having twice as many gears in the transmission, going with smaller engine displacement, all the technological advancements towards fuel economy and other things just to end up and roughly the same location. More complexity, more expense, More potential for failure, just so someone can sit high. Not worth it for me. I disagree with the idea that they are safer in all scenarios. Imagine being t-boned at high speed, it's more likely to roll than a sedan is. If I have to have the complexity, I at least want the benefits from it instead of having a vehicle that looks like a minivan without the minivans room, without the minivans functional space, for twice the price of a minivan, for off-roading capabilities that are implied but are probably not there for most of them that I don't even need anyhow. For the EVs, you have to remember that a significant portion of the society doesn't agree with this and are resentful that it's being forced on them. For us to be able to do amazing things we have to be able to agree that it needs to be done. I don't want to say to myself besides that. I want to stay away from politics as much as I can. I agree 100% on the not everything needs to be a BMW. I hope in time the automotive manufacturer start to figure this out. BMW has its following and clearly That's The only thing certain people will buy and will not be dissuaded by better offerings in that segment. Some things like Jeep and Land Rover become synonymous with a certain segment and even if something better comes along from a competitor, it doesn't matter because it's not a Jeep or Land Rover. Same thing applies to BMW. I think Lincoln would be more successful if they would lean harder into the soft luxury. The models I've been in by default are better than most, but they're not what I would call comfortable. I think it becomes indisputable how comfortable they are that's whenever people are willing to overlook Lincoln's flaws. I have no opinion about the truck stuff I don't have a horse in the fight.

time? in 1910 Edison said that EVs would soon take over and at that time EVs were more competitive ag/ ICE vehicles than today Musk stated that EVs are a NICHE and @6% of the market EVs are not being adopted by choice, they are pushed gov mandates and subsidies Battery tech is making small incremental advances, no actual commercially viable "breakthroughs" according to investigative reporting from the WSJ that examined all the false reporting on "breakthroughs" Batteries are merely very inefficient gas tanks, they do not make energy, they store it and the best can only store a fraction of the energy of a gas tank. The environmental damage of rare earth mineral mining for EV batteries is epic The prices of ICE cars and trucks are being inflated to make up for the HUGE LOSSES caused by EVs - BILLIONS. Ford is losing over $100,000 on every EV they produce and they can only survive by making it up on vehicles people want, ICE vehicles. The grid cannot accommodate the demands of widespread EV adoption - that would require thousands of new plants which gov has no plans for and would take decades to achieve even if the gov had such plans

What is it about hearing someone rant that's so entertaining? I can't do it. I'm not articulate enough but you're killer! I don't know what people mean when they say, "EV's aren't there yet." There for what? 100% penetration of the US fleet?? If every car built and sold in the US were electric starting tomorrow (roughly 15 million sales/yr) it'd take nearly 20 years to replace every car! We don't have the manufacturing, let alone range or infrastructure or grid capacity, to get everyone driving EV's. I had this conversation at work the other day. My friend said, EV's aren't there yet and he won't buy one until they are. I told him that, without exception, for every single person at work they are "there." All anyone does is drive 20-50mi round trip and take the kids to soccer practice. In the 5yrs I've worked there only one person ever goes on the occasional road trip for vacation...ME...and I do it in a Model 3!

I believe we MUST be able to buy fully ICE cars until we get better battery technology. EVs work if you have the money to replace them every 8-10 years, but many people need cars to last longer than that. This applies to hybrids too.

Chinese cars are a bad idea due to the patent infringement many Chinese companies have directed towards American companies. The aftermarket world is rife with this, no need to reward bad behavior by unlocking massive financial rewards.

Big cars cause of safety isn't true. A smart car has an amazing safety rating. It's an engineering task

BASED BASED BASED

As Eminem said: "Now, this looks like a job for me So everybody, just follow me 'Cause we need a little controversy 'Cause it feels so empty without me I said this looks like a job for me So everybody, just follow me 'Cause we need a little controversy 'Cause it feels so empty without me"

The problem with China's prices is that they are artificially deflated by the CCP. Chinese manufacturers are refunded export taxes and the Chinese government accepts that short-term loss because they know that long-term, those low prices will attract western buyers, which slowly suffocates domestic production that cannot sustain a price match within the market. This eventually increases China's profit by adding market shares and global reliance on its exports. It's a genius way for the Chinese government to slowly take global financial domination.

Some things make little sense no matter what kind of spin one can contrive. BEV’s only function well in a very limited environment, which equates to small urban runabouts. Attempting to make a BEV exceed the overall performance of an ICE vehicle at long distance travel at high speeds or as a truck towing a trailer is a fool’s errand. Not to mention the diminished performance of electric vehicles in extreme cold. Hybrid is a better way to improve mpg and reduce emissions without the compromises of owning a BEV. However I am old school owning two ICE vehicles that are normally aspirated and have rudimentary controls, no touch screens or self driving nonsense. Some of these car ads drive me crazy anymore. They show the driver smiling as they take their hands off of the steering wheel at highway speed. Who ever thought that was a good idea?

Irrespective of opinions on EVs I do not support the coercion by government mandate. If the EV is the future let the market determine without the bureaucracy jamming its thumb on the scale by artificially price spiking fuel, taxes, etc. to make gas-powered cars unaffordable. Look at the environmental footprint of EV manufacture and battery management/disposal. Look into battery life issues in midwinter and midsummer as well as range. I distrust a lot of the information out there unfortunately. Too much strikes me as being driven by one agenda or another.

There hasn't been a car made since the 90s that I would buy. I only want cars from the 60s to 80s

Eight minutes spent on the Maverick's size is about seven minutes too much.

Get rid of the cafe standards completely. NHTSA needs deleted as well. International standards? No thanks.

Maverick is not a truck because a truck cannot be unibody construction!

I'm sorry, Jon. I can't agree with you on EVs. I consider them as niche products. They are not capable of being mainstream products. EVs as the future? That looks like a bleak future to me. I will stick with ICE vehicles, thank you. Easier to deal with.

Time? Really? Europe wants to ban gas cars in 2035. Thats in 10 years bub. 10 years ago we had the model 3 400 mile range come out. The market and technology is oversaturated as-is and stagnating fast.

Come on man, even Ford admitted the Maverick was stupid and cancelled it near immediately. It's even dumber than the little bit more usable-as-an-actual-truck Sport Trac was. I'm getting real sick of these SUV's having delusions of grandeur posing as a pickup in drag