Thing is, modern headlights have very sharp cutoffs on the low beams and low beams are to be aimed down with a 1% decline. Old school ( I mean pre-projector) halogens often don’t have any cutoff and just shine everywhere. A properly aimed modern light doesn’t blind you significantly.

Multibeam LEDs are even cooler, the other car can have high beams on and still not blind you.

The USA has yet to kill the UAW which they must do to be competitive. It’s not an end-all be-all solution (wages are only like 30% of the cost of a car), but a good start. It also needs an entirely local battery supply chain, buying from China isn’t an option. And they need to pay for every EV that is manufactured, no matter where it’s sold to.

But the US won’t take it seriously so they’ll never compete for real. Maybe they’ll kill UAW but only to increase shareholder value, not to compete for real.

Volkswagen has made a ton of dumb mistakes, but among the worst are paying union wages and not getting super cheap lithium batteries from being located in a country that has a well integrated supply chain.

We don’t want to mine or refine lithium as much in the EU because “boohoo muh environment” but really, if we want to compete with China we can’t let the environment be a deciding factor. Mine and refine all the resources we need instead of buying them from China and letting them dictate the prices. China doesn’t give a fuck about small issues standing in its way and neither should we.

Plastic oil pans save weight, who even uses metal anymore?

The only time I ever got a hole in an oil pan was a metal one and it was my ex who somehow hit a rock and hid it from me. The one car I had with a plastic pan never had any issues, but it also had a skid plate that makes a larger difference than the material of the oil pan itself, since loose debris would just bounce off. Plus the skid plate helps reduce wind resistance so it’s a necessity in this day and age anyway.

There’s a lot of protectionism going on in China, most western manufacturers aren’t allowed to sell their own cars without a Chinese company owning the majority of the partnership. Most countries don’t really have rules like that, China is kinda unique.

The Chinese actually LOVE big cars. Every other European manufacturer makes long wheelbase versions of their midrange sedans for China exclusively. Space in the back is a status symbol more than comfort up front apparently. And there are a ton of big Chinese crossovers out now. I won’t call them SUVs because they’re not really off road capable, much like most western “SUVs” aren’t these days.

They were only high-end EVs because the EV market was dogshit then. They’ve never competed with high-end cars in general.

Unfortunately it’s a race to the bottom and high-end cars are doing the same Tesla bullshit of a minimalist interior with a huge display instead of physical buttons with heft like they used to.

They pretty much do the same in China. Tesla I believe is or was the only foreign manufacturer allowed to own their Chinese business. Everyone else had to set up a Chinese subsidiary majority owned by a Chinese automaker.

Nothing stopping Xiaomi from doing the same with Ford or GM in the US as far as I know?

The entire world was doing lockdowns though. Not just the US.

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iPhones were getting 6-7 years of software support when top of the line Androids got up to 3 and bottom end was getting 1 at most. It took YEARS for Android to catch up on this.

You were already told that the number that wants the war to end doesn’t all want to surrender 🤡 there’s a difference between wanting the war over and wanting to live (and die) under Russian rule.

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I haven’t. They have.

Why do YOU want them to die so bad?

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Better to die fighting than to be shoved into a concentration camp, no? That’s what Russia has historically done to people it has annexed.

I hate those. People always send them when I’m in public or something so I’ll listen hours later, maybe the next day. If it’s a call I’ll take it right away if I can