Who are these 17% of dealers who do want the Feds to mandate EVs? I figure they’re either (1) lying because they want to be politically correct or (2) they sunk a bunch of money into EV charging infrastructure, etc. at their dealerships and their competitors did not, so they want an EV mandate to drive up costs for competing dealerships. Maybe a few of them are in extremely wealthy lefty locations where it’s easy to sell everyone an EV.
I'm beyond ready for the EV wave to die, but there's too much money behind it. The govt will force whatever it wants, whenever it wants to whomever it wants. Even if it kills themselves in the process. Every new vehicle release anymore that I manage to get excited about is either ungodly butchered (Bronco) or is set to release as EV only (Jeep Recon). All I want to do is replace this stupid Escape with something less pleb that hopefully wont rust as bad and has a touch of "fun" sprinkled in.
Apple watches really accentuate arm fat like a rubber band over a sausage. Its an extra feature that makes me hate seeing them more. Not only do you look like a nerd but you look like an out of shape one to boot. My wife has one. I call her "Lames Bond" when she's wearing it.
Looking forward to more of the guest articles. Its always fun to read and you can never have too much content.
Look under most if not all Ford Lightnings and you’ll usually find the catalytic converter is missing. Further more, most dealers and auto part retailers can’t even get you one let alone even quote you a price! So with that in mind I’d say 499 to protect such a rare and desirable part is well worth it!
Dealer networks prove their worth. At long last. When I first started reading you, I was selling Nissan, Cadillac, GMC, Buick, Pontiac (briefly), Mitsubishi, Lincoln, and Mercury (briefly) cars and trucks. I really liked teaching normies and the other sales guys about the cars. Those bump stickers always pissed me off. Our store only put them on very rare pieces - EVO, GTR, CTS-V... that kinda thing. Everything else went out the door around invoice.
Seeing catalytic converter etching on a lightning is sad. But often, the folks ordering and pricing the cars know even less about them than the average salesman. I could see customers actually paying that.
On phones - I've developed an unhealthy habit with mine. But I tend not to even touch my work phone over the weekend. I'm trying...
As a second-to-early adopter, I would be interested in purchasing something along the lines of the Rabbit device when i see someone intelligent and capable - someone of Sherman' McCoy's caliber - using one in public.
As a note on the apple watch, most people I have spoken with say it engenders a virtuous cycle where they now use their iPhones LESS after purchasing one. It's somethign they attest to and I can't comment, but it's worth noting.
Also worth noting is that *among all wristwatches*, the most commonly-worn wristwatch among my friends in the 200k-to-1M of W2 or partnership income earning band is the apple watch, and it's not even close. I couldn't hazard a guess but would interest me to know what direction the correlation/causation/??? is flowing here
I'm pretty sure my 20-something kids use their iPhones (naturally) less than I use my Google Pixel. But neither is a social media kind of guy.
I'm not understanding what those devices you're talking about are supposed to actually do. Are they for wearing so the phone stays home? Or a redundant device?
My lawyer cohort in the 1% earnings level is largely immune to the Apple watch thing. More Rolexy. Associates wear the Apple thingies.
It seems EVs are so popular one of my local Ford dealers (Southern Nevada) sent me a letter offering retail for my car in trade and the promise of an additional 7K if my new car choice is a Mach E Mustang. Good luck with that.
Throwing this up for discussion this week - some people talked to Adweek on background about Hodinkee's post-pandemic slump. Excerpts from the piece:
"Neither Hodinkee nor Crown & Caliber were profitable when they merged in 2021, according to five people familiar with the companies' finances. But the combined operation generated more than $100 million in revenue that year as the new and pre-owned watch markets surged during the pandemic.
Hodinkee brought in money from its affiliate marketing, advertising and insurance operations, but between 50% and 66% of its total revenue came from Crown & Caliber, which had thinner margins, those people said.
[...]
The downturn, in combination with cuts to the overall business, led revenues at the combined company to decline, from around $85 million in 2022 to roughly $60 million in 2023, according to one of those people.
Other expenses further weighed on its balance sheet. In 2019, Hodinkee signed a 10-year lease on a brick-and-mortar outpost in the SoHo neighborhood of New York--the location of the original Supreme store, according to two people familiar with the strategy. But more than five years later, the store has yet to open.
The company was unprofitable in 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to Hodinkee founder and executive chairman Benjamin Clymer."
I have an Apple Watch, but I much prefer a 60$ casio g shock, they don’t need to know my heart rate or my ten thousand steps. The government is going to force car buyers into ev’s by mandating insane policies regarding emissions, which won’t do bunk for the actual atmosphere, automakers are already subsidizing the engineering and build costs with pricing their gas equivalents with much higher prices, glad I am old and don’t need to buy anything!
"Those of us who grew up without smartphones likely can’t quite understand the antipathy young people often have to the devices."
I disagree; I feel that those who grew up without them knew what was like before, and somewhat wish that we could go back. I personally hardly use a phone at all, and I remember even the damage to public spaces that happened when most students started carrying around dumb phones, then iPods, so I wish that we could go back before that.
Also, I liked using computers as tools for work, not as an attention-suck and time suck, and try to recreate that as much as possible, e.g., blocking YouTube in /etc/hosts.
I was kind of itrigued by that Rabbit R1 thing, then read this on their site:
"rabbit OS operates apps on our secured cloud, so you don’t have to. Log into the apps you’d like rabbit to use on your system through the rabbit hole to relay control. You only need to do this once per app."
This sounds like (to me) that rabbit-corp has the data mining built in. At least with a de-googled phone OS, you can tailor how much or how little you are tracked/etc.
A large part of my summer internship with Ford was about the dealers and the floorpan financing. The system is so broken, but somehow keeps working! Maybe things have changed, but the dealers couldn't choose their inventory. A truck would show up with mix of crap and they'd prey for pickup trucks and well optioned mustangs depending on the state. The cool part was all the data. I had access to Ford's inventory and it was awesome! But it was pretty obvious that many people I spoke with had ever looked at it or received any reports from it, because I would get questions like "how do you know that?" Well see right here... these are the models on dealer lots that have exceeded their floorpan financing... Which led to us recommending three trim levels because it was a mess! like almost impossible to go through the data there were do many variations on each car. Actually I need to go find our presentation. Im pretty sure we suggested Platinum for one of the trims.. huh. I always wondered if one exec in the huge auditorium was like this makes sense and used our summer road map to guide their career... haha. I doubt it. But our report made a lot of sense. When did ford start using Platinum?
It's also wild how the dealers use different strategies depending on their size and location. Some dump the low profit models as fast as possible and keep the floorpan financing. Others use the time to wait for a higher profit sale. Ohhh I assume it still works this way. Ford sell the car to the dealer at a discount with 6 months(?) of floorplan financing taken off the top. Sell the car day one and thats your profit. Wait 6 months and its financing cost.
The one that was consistent was "no more crown Vics, I have a pile of them in the corner of the lot" I need to find my report, but they stayed on dealers lots for like 9 months on average or something crazy until someone asked about it and they would practically give it away! Soooo I told Ford to stop putting them on the trucks to retail dealers and focus on fleet sales and cashflow until they can't be used anymore. You would suprised how many old Ford guys hated that. I was like its just a shitty old model guys. Your grandfather will find something else to drive.
I wish had taken that job at Ford. Fast track management thing. Guaranteed division head in like 2 years with a $100mm P&L or something(20 years ago). But I was kind of young and didnt get it. I was more excited about a little racetrack I could use at lunch If I wanted. And no one said a word if I wanted to drift a king ranch dually around the thing with the sprinklers on. Although we were interns so maybe that changes when you can get fired fired.
Also more emails please! are there articles I missed? I only read when I get the email..
CPU clock speeds aren't the best example because they have for the past few years started increasing again. High-end desktop CPUs are currently at or above 6GHz and high-end mobile CPUs 5GHz.
On an unrelated subject, the upcoming Ram 1500 Ramcharger's gas engine is used solely to power the hybrid system and the wheels are driven entirely by electric motors. Isn't such a system a perfect application for gas turbine power?
OT 1: 2018 G310R, low miles, for sale
OT2: Tonight PBS airs installment #2 of Mr. Bates vs The Post Office (pairs well with this article: https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/03/26/fujitsu_id_card_scheme/)
i like being notified of all acf posts regardless of content
also the electronic fleshlight things terrify me
all it takes is a solar flare to flip a bit and suddenly its jorking your shit like its trying to drive a masonry bolt
i trust the china ev about as much
I'm actually grateful you send the email, it's my primary way of reading new posts.
Who are these 17% of dealers who do want the Feds to mandate EVs? I figure they’re either (1) lying because they want to be politically correct or (2) they sunk a bunch of money into EV charging infrastructure, etc. at their dealerships and their competitors did not, so they want an EV mandate to drive up costs for competing dealerships. Maybe a few of them are in extremely wealthy lefty locations where it’s easy to sell everyone an EV.
I'm beyond ready for the EV wave to die, but there's too much money behind it. The govt will force whatever it wants, whenever it wants to whomever it wants. Even if it kills themselves in the process. Every new vehicle release anymore that I manage to get excited about is either ungodly butchered (Bronco) or is set to release as EV only (Jeep Recon). All I want to do is replace this stupid Escape with something less pleb that hopefully wont rust as bad and has a touch of "fun" sprinkled in.
Apple watches really accentuate arm fat like a rubber band over a sausage. Its an extra feature that makes me hate seeing them more. Not only do you look like a nerd but you look like an out of shape one to boot. My wife has one. I call her "Lames Bond" when she's wearing it.
Looking forward to more of the guest articles. Its always fun to read and you can never have too much content.
Look under most if not all Ford Lightnings and you’ll usually find the catalytic converter is missing. Further more, most dealers and auto part retailers can’t even get you one let alone even quote you a price! So with that in mind I’d say 499 to protect such a rare and desirable part is well worth it!
Dealer networks prove their worth. At long last. When I first started reading you, I was selling Nissan, Cadillac, GMC, Buick, Pontiac (briefly), Mitsubishi, Lincoln, and Mercury (briefly) cars and trucks. I really liked teaching normies and the other sales guys about the cars. Those bump stickers always pissed me off. Our store only put them on very rare pieces - EVO, GTR, CTS-V... that kinda thing. Everything else went out the door around invoice.
Seeing catalytic converter etching on a lightning is sad. But often, the folks ordering and pricing the cars know even less about them than the average salesman. I could see customers actually paying that.
On phones - I've developed an unhealthy habit with mine. But I tend not to even touch my work phone over the weekend. I'm trying...
As a second-to-early adopter, I would be interested in purchasing something along the lines of the Rabbit device when i see someone intelligent and capable - someone of Sherman' McCoy's caliber - using one in public.
As a note on the apple watch, most people I have spoken with say it engenders a virtuous cycle where they now use their iPhones LESS after purchasing one. It's somethign they attest to and I can't comment, but it's worth noting.
Also worth noting is that *among all wristwatches*, the most commonly-worn wristwatch among my friends in the 200k-to-1M of W2 or partnership income earning band is the apple watch, and it's not even close. I couldn't hazard a guess but would interest me to know what direction the correlation/causation/??? is flowing here
I'm pretty sure my 20-something kids use their iPhones (naturally) less than I use my Google Pixel. But neither is a social media kind of guy.
I'm not understanding what those devices you're talking about are supposed to actually do. Are they for wearing so the phone stays home? Or a redundant device?
My lawyer cohort in the 1% earnings level is largely immune to the Apple watch thing. More Rolexy. Associates wear the Apple thingies.
It seems EVs are so popular one of my local Ford dealers (Southern Nevada) sent me a letter offering retail for my car in trade and the promise of an additional 7K if my new car choice is a Mach E Mustang. Good luck with that.
Throwing this up for discussion this week - some people talked to Adweek on background about Hodinkee's post-pandemic slump. Excerpts from the piece:
"Neither Hodinkee nor Crown & Caliber were profitable when they merged in 2021, according to five people familiar with the companies' finances. But the combined operation generated more than $100 million in revenue that year as the new and pre-owned watch markets surged during the pandemic.
Hodinkee brought in money from its affiliate marketing, advertising and insurance operations, but between 50% and 66% of its total revenue came from Crown & Caliber, which had thinner margins, those people said.
[...]
The downturn, in combination with cuts to the overall business, led revenues at the combined company to decline, from around $85 million in 2022 to roughly $60 million in 2023, according to one of those people.
Other expenses further weighed on its balance sheet. In 2019, Hodinkee signed a 10-year lease on a brick-and-mortar outpost in the SoHo neighborhood of New York--the location of the original Supreme store, according to two people familiar with the strategy. But more than five years later, the store has yet to open.
The company was unprofitable in 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to Hodinkee founder and executive chairman Benjamin Clymer."
https://www.adweek.com/media/hodinkee-crown-caliber/
I have an Apple Watch, but I much prefer a 60$ casio g shock, they don’t need to know my heart rate or my ten thousand steps. The government is going to force car buyers into ev’s by mandating insane policies regarding emissions, which won’t do bunk for the actual atmosphere, automakers are already subsidizing the engineering and build costs with pricing their gas equivalents with much higher prices, glad I am old and don’t need to buy anything!
"Those of us who grew up without smartphones likely can’t quite understand the antipathy young people often have to the devices."
I disagree; I feel that those who grew up without them knew what was like before, and somewhat wish that we could go back. I personally hardly use a phone at all, and I remember even the damage to public spaces that happened when most students started carrying around dumb phones, then iPods, so I wish that we could go back before that.
Also, I liked using computers as tools for work, not as an attention-suck and time suck, and try to recreate that as much as possible, e.g., blocking YouTube in /etc/hosts.
I was kind of itrigued by that Rabbit R1 thing, then read this on their site:
"rabbit OS operates apps on our secured cloud, so you don’t have to. Log into the apps you’d like rabbit to use on your system through the rabbit hole to relay control. You only need to do this once per app."
This sounds like (to me) that rabbit-corp has the data mining built in. At least with a de-googled phone OS, you can tailor how much or how little you are tracked/etc.
A large part of my summer internship with Ford was about the dealers and the floorpan financing. The system is so broken, but somehow keeps working! Maybe things have changed, but the dealers couldn't choose their inventory. A truck would show up with mix of crap and they'd prey for pickup trucks and well optioned mustangs depending on the state. The cool part was all the data. I had access to Ford's inventory and it was awesome! But it was pretty obvious that many people I spoke with had ever looked at it or received any reports from it, because I would get questions like "how do you know that?" Well see right here... these are the models on dealer lots that have exceeded their floorpan financing... Which led to us recommending three trim levels because it was a mess! like almost impossible to go through the data there were do many variations on each car. Actually I need to go find our presentation. Im pretty sure we suggested Platinum for one of the trims.. huh. I always wondered if one exec in the huge auditorium was like this makes sense and used our summer road map to guide their career... haha. I doubt it. But our report made a lot of sense. When did ford start using Platinum?
It's also wild how the dealers use different strategies depending on their size and location. Some dump the low profit models as fast as possible and keep the floorpan financing. Others use the time to wait for a higher profit sale. Ohhh I assume it still works this way. Ford sell the car to the dealer at a discount with 6 months(?) of floorplan financing taken off the top. Sell the car day one and thats your profit. Wait 6 months and its financing cost.
The one that was consistent was "no more crown Vics, I have a pile of them in the corner of the lot" I need to find my report, but they stayed on dealers lots for like 9 months on average or something crazy until someone asked about it and they would practically give it away! Soooo I told Ford to stop putting them on the trucks to retail dealers and focus on fleet sales and cashflow until they can't be used anymore. You would suprised how many old Ford guys hated that. I was like its just a shitty old model guys. Your grandfather will find something else to drive.
I wish had taken that job at Ford. Fast track management thing. Guaranteed division head in like 2 years with a $100mm P&L or something(20 years ago). But I was kind of young and didnt get it. I was more excited about a little racetrack I could use at lunch If I wanted. And no one said a word if I wanted to drift a king ranch dually around the thing with the sprinklers on. Although we were interns so maybe that changes when you can get fired fired.
Also more emails please! are there articles I missed? I only read when I get the email..
CPU clock speeds aren't the best example because they have for the past few years started increasing again. High-end desktop CPUs are currently at or above 6GHz and high-end mobile CPUs 5GHz.
On an unrelated subject, the upcoming Ram 1500 Ramcharger's gas engine is used solely to power the hybrid system and the wheels are driven entirely by electric motors. Isn't such a system a perfect application for gas turbine power?