My mechanic said Toyota made a stripped down bare bones truck but they banned it in NA for concerns it would steal too much business from NA auto manufacturers.
If true, that doesn’t really sound like a free market to me. Maybe the domestic market would adapt to follow suit and we’d all benefit. But nah. Follow the big easy bucks.
I am no fan of data centers, but natural gas is very clean, even cleaner than burning wood. So yes, natural gas does meet most jurisdictional regulations.Texas also has the most wind turbines of any state.
Texas is a backwards ass state when it comes to its politics, but their energy grid is pretty good.
it is literally the most decrepit energy grid in North America. Mexico's is better, unironically.
They deliberately removed themselves from the national grid so the could have lower standards and do less maintenance - and then it paid off for them when it failed in mild winter weather and killed people.
And has failed totaly again at least twice more since then.
Maybe try living in the real world with the rest of us.
Yeah absolutely bizarre take. I am all about green energy, but this 'everything Texas bad' take just makes people look ignorant.
Texas is right behind California on green energy in gross Twh, and South Dakota has the largest percentage of green energy. Two distinctly red states with some of the more modern grids in the country.
You seem to be talking about green energy. I wonder if the comment you’re responding to is referring to the actual reliability of the infrastructure rather than green energy specifically.
The above poster, doesn’t get it or has a home generator, which, parts of Texas make mandatory, due to hurricanes.
Either way, I remember, no AC, for three weeks after Ike, and another three weeks after the most recent hurricane, while the Governor sat on his ass in Austin waiting to pay people his rate, instead of getting power on. Not the standard rate, his rate.
I doubted that claim on natural gas and now I'm disinclined to look it up because you discredit yourself with your claim that Texas' energy grid is "pretty good". It's famously dysfunctional and Ted Cruz notoriously flees to Cancun whenever it goes down in the middle of winter.
Every single person actually interested in the environment, will tell you that any fossil fuel is bad. Any amount is bad. More is worse. As far as I know, resource consumption, water and energy, is one of the top complaints about data centers.
So the variable conviction is on the side of the people making the rules, not on the side of the people who actually have convictions.
Idk why people online love making stuff up about the Hilux. It’s about the same size as the Tacoma and only a little cheaper. It has some features that make it a better work truck, iirc it’s tow rating is way better and you can still get it in a diesel. But it’s not that good.
You always have to be careful that just because they use the same body shell doesn't mean they use the same internal safety structure or other parts.
The US has a lot of safety rules that may or not make sense, but ultimately mean a car that's legally sold in mexico or romania but uses the same basic body shell as a US one isn't necessarily the same car from all the hidden bits.
Alpine talked about this with their A110, model years 2018-2026, (which you can sort of drive in the US in roundabout ways via French Guiana, but you can't buy it). It meets French/EU crash safety standards, and it's a sports car, so you'd think... why can't it meet US safety standards? Because the US still has rules around assuming the occupant is in a high speed crash while not wearing a seat belt, which the EU doesn't have. And Alpine couldn't spend the 10s of millions of dollars it would have taken to re-engineer the car for the US market assuming it would be a small number of sales.
And going the other way, the cybertruck appears to be unable to meet most European country rules on pedestrian collisions (whatever you think of Elon, you'd imagine they would at least prefer to be able to sell the bloody things in Europe, but they also didn't engineer it to meet EU rules).
Same with infotainment systems, you can plop a 720p screen on there with a 10 year old CPU for a developing world market, but the average US consumer wants their maps to be responsive and look good. Brakes, suspension, etc.
There's a lot in a car that's hidden from the user that add cost but keep you, or people you run into alive. Weirdly, the US is also in sort of an arms race with itself, that if you're going to make a vehicle safe for the roads in the US, it has to be able to survive a crash with the unnecessarily large trucks they like driving around in, which tends to favour unnecessarily large vehicles which can survive the impact.
My ‘08 Toyota Tundra is fairly barebones and I love it. I just need it to haul and tow shit, no need for a surround sound media experience or whatever. They lost the plot with the new ones and make me hesitant to buy anything new from them.
Most of the reason we have the 25 year old import rule (can’t import cars less than 25 years old unless they were federalized for US sale) is because Mercedes dealers got pissed people were importing Euro market MBs instead of buying them here either because it was cheaper or had unavailable features.
This grey market ate into the US profits, leading to lobbying, and the 25 year rule, of which that Toyota (Hilux) was affected. EPA is usually given as the main scapegoat, but then if emissions were that important they wouldn’t allow you to drive around in old smoggy shitboxes once they’re 25 years old.
Ironically, Bill Gates got the show and display exemption passed so that he could import and drive a non-US legal Porsche 959, provided he drives it less than 2500 miles/year.
I miss sanely sized trucks. Had a ford ranger when I first started driving, and recently saw a small truck (didn't catch the make/model) and was like "oh yeah trucks used to be sane and not 12 feet tall with low beams that blast directly into your rearview mirror...)
Two words: Chicken Tax. Toyota would have to build in North America under the CUSM agreement to avoid it. This would wipe out any profit at the reduced price point, so might as well sell people Tacomas.
Slate is advertising all they offer is a bare bones truck that can be converted to an SUV. Low 20k asking for the lowest trim model. We will see if people want a grocery getter truck that can't tow better than a Hyundai Venue.
Edit: Slate price is now 24995$ starting cost. The Venue is 20550$ so I guess it's less of a comparison these days from the initial pitch
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u/TransparentMastering 9h ago
My mechanic said Toyota made a stripped down bare bones truck but they banned it in NA for concerns it would steal too much business from NA auto manufacturers.
If true, that doesn’t really sound like a free market to me. Maybe the domestic market would adapt to follow suit and we’d all benefit. But nah. Follow the big easy bucks.