Category: Cars, including self-driving

What could Honda do to pull out of its tailspin?

by philg

In case you were wondering whether to take investment advice from me, 15-20 years I confidently predicted that Honda and Toyota would jump in and take the EV market away from Tesla as soon as Tesla had run out of early adopters. Honda and Toyota were so much more experienced and better at making cars than Tesla that of course they’d be able to make better electrically-powered cars. (Honda is, apparently, able to design a better electric car than what Ferrari is offering, but that’s like being a dwarf among midgets.)

Honda, the maker of our beloved Odyssey that hasn’t been updated since the 2018 model year, is doing especially poorly. “Honda Posts First-Ever Annual Loss After Pullback From E.V.s” (NYT):

The automaker reported a net loss of $2.7 billion for the fiscal year that ended March 31. Earnings were weighed down by more than $9 billion in restructuring charges and write-downs after a retrenchment of its E.V. strategy. It is the first loss that the 77-year-old company has reported since listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1957.

“The business environment and customer demand have changed beyond our expectations,” Toshihiro Mibe, Honda’s chief executive, said in a news conference in Tokyo on Thursday. “We were not able to respond flexibly enough.”

Is there a comic-book villain who can be blamed?

On Thursday, Mr. Mibe said the company would nix its 2040 target of selling only electric and hydrogen-powered cars. That target was based on the Biden administration’s environmental policies in the United States, the company’s biggest market, he said.

“A year ago, there was a drastic change. We have seen a shift from a focus on the environment to the opposite,” Mr. Mibe said. Honda’s previous target, he added, “is now not realistic.”

Hmm… if Joe Biden was virtuous and wise who might be “the opposite” in terms of virtue and wisdom levels?

Greta Thunberg (pre-Queers for Palestine version) won’t be happy with the recovery plan:

For now, Honda said, it will double down on gasoline-electric hybrids, introducing 15 next-generation, high-efficiency models, including larger vehicles in North America, by 2030. Combined with plans to cut costs and accelerate development, this push is intended to restore Honda to record profits by the end of the decade, Mr. Mibe said. The company is also forecasting a return to profitability this year.

If Tesla is close to cracking self-driving and Honda hasn’t even begun to try (the 2026 Odyssey has the same feeble driver assistance features as the 2018 Odyssey), how could Honda conceivably compete? Maybe some sort of monster pseudo-military vehicle like the G-Wagen? Here’s one in military green at the Stuart, Florida airport:

People have demonstrated a willingness to pay huge $$ for this truly terrible car. Speaking of huge $$, one of our neighbors apparently bought a Maybach EV:

Imagine being rich enough to spend $200,000 on an EV that can’t drive itself and will be worth $30,000 after a year or two. (See Mercedes EQE review for my own attempt at living with a Mercedes EV.)

Will it truly be possible for Honda to muddle through to profitability and significance with slight improvements on the Accord, Civic, CR-V, etc.? The stock market doesn’t seem to think so. Tesla is worth more than 10X what Honda is worth (and at least 6X Toyota’s market cap).

Our own Honda seems to be giving up. At five years of age and 62,000 miles, the dealer said that the rubber boots on the lower control arms, which protect the ball joints, are cracked and should be replaced soon ($1100 plus $130 for an alignment that is necessary after the replacement). They also want $70 to replace the pollen filter for the ventilation system, $160 to cleaning the A/C evaporator (is that a thing?), and $230 for “Platinum Fuel Induction Service (GDI). ChatGPT says that the filter should be regularly replaced, but it is a $20 part that can be replaced with no tools (behind glove box) last three suggestions are fraud. ChatGPT says that the second two suggestions are fraud:

Yes, “A/C evaporator cleaning” is a real thing, but I would do it only if you have symptoms.

It usually means spraying a foaming cleaner or disinfectant into the evaporator case or intake area to reduce mold/mildew smell. It can help if the A/C smells musty, especially at startup or after the car sits.

But if your Odyssey’s A/C smells fine and drains normally, this is not a routine “must do at 62,000 miles” service.

Verdict: Real service, but mostly for odor/mildew complaints. I’d skip unless the vents smell musty.

Your Odyssey’s V6 is direct-injected, so in theory intake-valve carbon buildup can be an issue on GDI engines because gasoline does not wash over the back of the intake valves the way it does in port-injected engines. But a dealer “fuel induction service” can mean a lot of things:

  • Fuel-tank additive
  • Throttle-body cleaning
  • Intake cleaner misted through the intake
  • More involved intake-valve cleaning

For $230, it is probably not a true walnut-blast intake-valve cleaning. It is likely a chemical cleaning package. If the van starts smoothly, idles smoothly, has no check-engine light, no misfires, and fuel economy is normal, I would not consider this urgent.

Verdict: Plausible but likely optional upsell. I’d skip unless there are drivability symptoms, or unless Honda’s maintenance schedule specifically calls for it, which I do not think it does as a routine 62k service.

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Are air-conditioned cars the reason that we tolerate America’s jammed roads?

by philg

My April/May sojourn in Boston was plagued by traffic jams far worse than anything I remember from our pre-coronapanic life there. Mobility for the Righteous is seriously compromised by a road network that was substantially completed circa 1970 for a population of 4 million and is now being used by a population of 5 million, each of whom is more likely to own a car (registered motor vehicles per 1000 Americans has gone from 534 to about 875 today) and each of whom is more likely to use a car than to ride public transit (MBTA ridership among people who call themselves environmentalists remains roughly 25 percent below 2019 levels). I didn’t do any trips during traditional rush hour, but still was slowed to a crawl except after 8:30 pm.

Here’s a 7:14 pm 3.6-mile route that Google expects will take 27 minutes, i.e., less than 8 miles per hour.

I wasted more time in traffic during this 10-day trip that I do in a year in and around Jupiter, Florida (that includes West Palm Beach, a reasonable-sized city, and Stuart, a small city). Bostonians who experience this every day remain passionate supporters of open borders and, thus, of population growth (growth without regard for available resources is usually called “cancer”!).

I’m wonder if Americans in general and Bostonians in particular have been lulled into complacency regarding traffic jams because their cars are so much more comfortable than cars in 1970, when traffic flowed much more freely:

I couldn’t rise to the local level of traffic jam tolerance, unfortunately, because I had borrowed my neighbor’s 12-year-old Mini, which lacked functional air-conditioning. I was literally stewing while sitting in long lines at red lights. The manual transmission was occasionally fun, but was mostly an annoyance in stop-and-go 3 mph traffic.

(I don’t think traffic in Boston will be solved by robot cars. Unlike in Florida, the typical intersection lacks dedicated left and right turn lanes. Unlike in Florida, the major roads can’t be widened. Unlike in Florida, the typical urban street in Boston/Cambridge is actually getting narrower over time as four-lane roads turn into two-lane-plus-two-bike-lanes roads.)

Loosely related, people who live in Cambridge want their local government to “fight the Trump administration” rather than try to reduce traffic congestion:

Also, the MBTA is adding elevators to a subway station. It will take three years:

Three years is how long it took the Chinese to build an 800-mile 200 mph train from Beijing to Shanghai. This includes the world’s longest bridge. Up to 800,000 people per day use the train.

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Tesla full-self-driving tackles the bikes, pedestrians, and general chaos of Cambridge

by philg

My April trip to Maskachusetts included a couple of trips within Cambridge in a new Tesla Y with FSD (see The Trump- and Elon-hater leases a Tesla Model Y). After lunch at Happy Lamb Hot Pot in Central Square, the owner, a mutual friend (pilot, $5 million townhouse owner), and I piled into the miracle vehicle for a trip to Micro Center, an Ohio-based chain that is one of the things I miss about Cambridge (the closest store to Jupiter is in Miami, which is to say… not close). The Tesla was almost immediately faced with the challenge of a one-lane one-way road with parked cars on both sides and a cyclist on a non-e-bike. An impatient human might have squeezed past the bicycle, but the Tesla wisely waited until there was a gap in the parked cars on the right and the cyclist moved over.

The Tesla navigated around a couple of delivery trucks that were stopped in right lanes.

The car navigated to a bizarrely back corner entrance to the Micro Center parking lot, drove behind the Trade Joe’s, and then found itself a parking space with empty spots on either side. Thus ensued the apparently mandatory 2-minute denunciation of Elon Musk as a person, e.g., for allowing non-compliant speech on X, tempered with praise for the engineering achievement of FSD.

On the way to my old condo, the Tesla got flummoxed by an SUV that was parked almost in the middle of the (standard Maskachusetts practice). There actually was enough space to squeeze by in the opposite-direction lane, but the owner had to take the wheel and press on the accelerator. Tesla’s software had dealt beautifully with pedestrians in crosswalks, but trying to turn right from Harvard St. there was a confusing situation. A guy in a wheelchair was waiting to cross the side street. The Tesla, just like a human, was waiting for him to cross. I envisioned the Tesla and the wheelchair attendant getting tired of standing still at the same time and a collision enusing. The attendant waved us through and the Tesla FSD seemed to undestand the hand gesture (not my imagination, apparently). The car tried to park in the driveway to the right of the condo, which has three unmarked angle parking spots. That seemed like a recipe for disaster so the owner selected a curbside dropoff instead.

Overall impression: very impressive, but also rather terrifying not knowing whether the machine was going to run over the wheelchair user. Maybe there needs to be a soothing voice repeating “trust the process”?

Speaking of what happens when our AI overlords meet the Boston-area roads… a friend here who drives a late-model Kia gets frequent alerts from the car about his drunkenness. When he swerves around the numerous potholes, the car thinks that he’s impaired. Google AI:

A 2021 federal law (HALT Drunk Driving Act) mandates that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) require new passenger vehicles to be equipped with advanced, passive drunk and impaired driving prevention technology by roughly 2027–2028. The technology will detect impairment—via alcohol sensors or behavioral monitoring—and prevent vehicle operation, though the final rule is delayed due to technology readiness, privacy, and accuracy concerns

Kia is ahead of the mandate!

In other driving news, I broke into my neighbor’s apartment and took the keys to her 2014 Mini, which she leaves sitting for months at a time while she’s in California. The car has 90,000 miles on it and won’t die, though many important systems have failed and the check engine light was lit. BMW’s engineering is rather impressive in that the car is virtually impossible to stall no matter how incompetent one is at driving a manual transmission. Backup cameras became mandatory in the U.S. in 2018 and it was alarming not to have one in the Mini. As compensation for this tech loss, I was treated to a continuous diet of NPR news while driving the car. What did I learn?

  • high gas prices have reduced consumer sentiment to the lowest it has ever been since 1952. This was a 20-minute segment on the ills of high gasoline prices without a single mention of how the end-of-April prices are actually lower in both real and nominal dollars than what Americans were paying in 2022 and no mention of NPR’s previous climate change alarmist and calls for carbon taxation to make fossil fuels more expensive. (Separately, are the University of Michigan geniuses behind the poll confident that, from a consumer perspective, things are worse than after the 2008 collapse? Than during the 22 percent misery index (inflation+unemployment) during the Jimmy Carter administration?)
  • when Democrats are back in power they need to force companies to continue to pay health insurance when workers go on strike. But really we need universal health care and universal taxpayer-funded child care so that union workers can strike for months or years if necessary to get what they’re owed as a consequence of AI.
  • there is an important a PBS series about the “often-overlooked history of Muslims in the United States” (“19 young Muslims went out for plane rides in beautiful weather on September 11, 2001”?)
  • Trump wasn’t being attacked for political reasons at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, but rather because there has been a rise in the amount of “gun violence” overall in the U.S.; Democrats and Republicans are equally likely to resort to violence, but the Democrats are generally shooting while the Republicans have subjected Democrats to “verbal violence”.
  • climate change is bad, but the muscular intelligent government of Maskachusetts is ready, e.g., with doors that will seal off the Blue Line MBTA tunnel from the airport (“If the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 were to happen today, AccuWeather experts estimate the total damage and economic loss would reach $440 billion”; maybe this is why my friend with the townhouse pays $20,000 per year for insurance and rates are yet much higher on Cape Cod?)
  • Michael Tilson Thomas, a symphony conductor who had just died, was a “pioneer in the gay rights movement” because, after moving to San Francisco, he was open about having a male partner (Thomas moved to San Francisco in 1995)

[What were gas prices at the time of the NPR Boston broadcast vs. in 2022? CBS: “The current average in the state is $4.16 for a gallon of regular gas, AAA said on Thursday. … The record high for Massachusetts is $5.05 back in June of 2022”. What if we adjust $5.05 June 2022 dollars to today’s mini-dollars? Gas cost about $5.95 April 2026 dollars in Maskachusetts during the Paradise Years (TM) of the Biden-Harris administration.]

With the withdrawal of federal tax dollars and substitution of money from rich progressive Democrats (example), the content of NPR seems exactly the same!

Loosely related… what if you hate Elon Musk and Donald Trump so much that you’re willing to drive yourself (“manually”!) while saving the planet via purchasing an EV of epic expense? A friend in Cambridge did just that. His Lucid Gravity has some nice features, but it can’t be parked next to a standard-height Maskachusetts curb without severe door damage on opening. Every time he parks and someone in sitting on the right side, he must use the touch screen to tell the car to jack itself up to maximum suspension height. After that, a door will just barely clear the curb:

I assume the idea is that those who save the planet are so elite that they never have to park on the street.

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Barrett-Jackson Palm Beach car auction

by philg

2026 was my first time at a fun Palm Beach County event: the Barrett-Jackson car auction. It’s a three-day event and I attended on Day 2. The crummiest cars are auctioned on Day 1. By Day 2 there are still a lot of nice cars in tents on the South Florida Fairgrounds (just west of PBI/DJT airport) and some reasonably interesting cars are being auctioned. Day 3 is a Saturday and presumably jammed because the local authorities had everything in place for dealing with a massive traffic snarl.

Prep: You won’t need sunscreen because almost everything is under either a tent or inside a building. There were no biting insects, despite recent wet weather, so you don’t need insect repellant either. General admission tickets were readily available at the gate, with no waiting mid-morning, for about $50. Consistent with Florida norms, children 12 and younger are free (1 kid per adult admission; both parents need to show up if it’s a welfare-or-super-rich-sized family). there is supposedly a “clear bag policy”, though women were carrying sizable conventional (non-clear) purses. Expect to spend about four hours if you’re not a professional/bidder.

Gemini says that Scottsdale is the biggest auction, with the most people and the most cars. Palm Beach has about 1/3rd as many cars and is second for “high-profile, high-dollar sales”. Las Vegas is similar in size to Palm Beach and the Columbus event is “focusing on custom cars and hot rods”.

Here’s what the main auction looks like:

The seats in the center seem to be reserved for those who’ve registered as bidders.

Here’s what it sounds like:

I would love to interface recordings of this guy to Indians who call us up trying to sell us insurance, home improvement, etc. How about an app that would instantly connect a call to auction audio?

You walk into the event through a vendor area. Chevrolet and Dodge have big areas, but a company that makes 80 cars per year, Orlando-based Revology, also shows up:

A German company was pitching $500+ heavy foam blocks on which to park one’s car, claiming that the softer-than-concrete material extends tire life:

ChatGPT begs to differ:

Tire pressure (e.g., 32–40 psi) dominates the contact behavior

The deformation happens inside the tire, not at the surface interface

If your goal is tire longevity, these are far more impactful: (1) Keep tires properly inflated (or even +3–5 psi for storage), (2) Move the car occasionally, (3) Avoid long-term parking in heat + sun, (4) Use jack stands for very long storage.

For long-term storage (months): some benefit, but minor compared to inflation and movement

ChatGPT says “curved tire cradles are actually better than flat foam” for avoiding flat spots during long-term storage. For most of us, any flat spots will be temporary and the permanent damage is being done by aging. For collector cars that are driven only a few thousand miles per year, ChatGPT says that rubber gets harder as it ages, thus reducing performance noticeably after five years and that manufacturers say to replace tires 6-8 years after manufacturing date (sooner if not garaged). The last four digits of the DOT code might be 1022, which means the 10th week of 2022.

(Claude generally concurs.)

A complete range of home decor was available for the motorhead Deplorable. Imagine being rich enough to permanently park a Carroll Shelby engine in one’s living room as part of a table:

The building behind the main auction building is home to the local model railroad club, which graciously showed up to run their layout.

That same building is home to a lot of high-end cars and trucks that get auctioned on the last day:

Here’s an exotic Pagani with a twin-turbocharged V-12 that produces 730 hp, just slightly more than the Corvette C8 Z06s that one sees every day in Publix parking lots around here and the Corvette does it with a normally aspirated V-8. (Of course, 730 hp is almost nothing compared to what’s in the ZR1X Corvette, above.) Despite the lack of sliding doors and seats for 8 (Honda Odyssey always wins!), the Pagani sold for $3.2 million, including buyer’s premium.

Cars that cost less than $200,000-ish are underneath tents, which was fortunate considering that there was moderate rain for a couple of hours. Occasionally one would hear cars being started. This is part of the caveat emptor inspection done by bidders. It wasn’t hot enough, however, to truly verify A/C capacity.

If you’re in the free parking areas it could be 10,000 steps to go into the event, wander through all of the tents and return to your own car through the main auction building. The pro move:

I’m still high on the idea that we need the Chevy El Camino and Ford Ranchero brought back for people who want to carry bicycles conveniently in low-crime areas such as our part of Florida and without guzzling gas like a standard pickup. Hard pass on this one, though, due to lack of factory A/C or Vintage Air.

ChatGPT says that it would be $1,500-$3,500 for labor to install a $2,330+ A/C kit, plus additional money for refrigerant. (If Greta Thunberg and Ayatollah Mamdani become co-presidents, the Vintage Air system could be rendered useless due to its reliance on R-134a refrigerant, banned for new cars starting in 2021).

If carrying the latest generation of e-bikes, maybe what is needed is an extra axle on a full-size pickup:

The rap sheet for this 6×6 says that it suffered “severe structural damage/structural alteration”. I hope that was the conversion and not an accident!

A 1963 Chevrolet Corvair, from the pre-1965 suspension redesign, for Ralph Nader fans. The engine is truly tiny 80 hp affair, mated to a two-speed(!) automatic transmission.

If one registers at the Barrett-Jackson web site, it is possible to learn that this Lot 604 sold on Day 3 for $30,000.

For older Maskachusetts residents who can’t abandon their loyalty to Volvo, a 1972 1800ES that sold for $22,000 (it actually cost the buyer an additional 10% in “buyer’s premium” to Barrett-Jackson; bidders literally give 110%). Less than half the horsepower of our Honda Odyssey and more than half the weight for Volvo’s version of a “sports car” (admittedly, other “sports cars” of the era were also absurdly feeble by today’s standards). The result was a 0-60 time of 11.3 seconds vs. 6.4 seconds for the latest-generation Odyssey (2018-; Car and Driver).

Here’s an $11,000 1950 Oldsmobile that runs at least well enough to make it from tent to auction venue and back. Ideal for shipping up to its likely birth home in the Islamic Republic of Michigan where the black paint and lack of A/C won’t be a serious liability:

For about the same price, one can bask in the glory of British engineering and craftsmanship in this 1983 Rolls-Royce (original cost over $110,000, equivalent to $365,000 in today’s mini-dollars), with brand-new A/C compressor:

(British cars seem to be the depreciation champs. A Jaguar XJ Portfolio from 2012 that likely cost $90,000 with tax sold for $10,000. In 2026 dollars, that car could have cost the buyer $130,000 new.)

In other British items, a 1964 Lotus Seven that has been upgraded with disc brakes and an engine that was made by diligent precise Japanese people (Toyota), in place of the original British drum brakes and English Ford engine:

The car was painted to reference this TV show:

Imagine a reboot of The Prisoner today. Half of the pedestrians in London would be wearing burqas. The iconoclast’s car would be a Tesla Cybertruck?

The Chick-fil-A is next to where they’re prepping cars for entry to the auction:

On the way out, one couldn’t spit in the inner parking lots without hitting a Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, or G-Wagen:

Everyone there was super friendly and answered my questions, no matter how dumb. I would definitely go again.

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Tiger Woods and Tesla

by philg

Our sort-of-neighbor Tiger Woods (he’s about 15 minutes from Abacoa (in Jupiter) on Jupiter Island (not in Jupiter)) is in the news lately for having come to grief in a Range Rover.

This reminds me of Why don’t heavy drinkers get Tesla FSD? (Tiger was charged with DUI, but denies having been drinking.)

The leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran preferred to gather in person and take the risk of being killed by a bomb (which they were, on February 28, 2026) rather than use Microsoft Teams. Maybe the same logic can be used to explain Tiger Woods and Britney Spears refusing to adopt the Tesla FSD lifestyle. I.e., Teslas are so ugly and uncool (because of the insufferable people who’ve historically owned them) that people would rather be arrested for DUI than be seen in a Tesla.

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12 Hours of Sebring and a car show in Jupiter

by philg

A car weekend in Florida… (last weekend)

I took the 10-year-old to the 12 Hours of Sebring IMSA race, conveniently located right next to the Sebring airport.

Chevy, whose team finished just behind the Porsche 911 team, brought the latest Corvette ZR1X to the event:

I’m not sure who needs 1,250 horsepower to get to Publix, especially given that the nearest curve on a public road is in Georgia. The sacrifice of the front trunk space seriously compromises the ZR1X’s utility as a car. Chevy also brought the “Stars and Steel” 250th anniversary of the U.S. edition Corvette (a car that is made out of plastic (body) and engine (aluminum)):

GM unveiled the Grand Sport version of the Corvette at the event, but few details were provided.

Consistent with the quantities of alcohol previously consumed at Sebring, a drunken 4-day experience for many, Ford brought a Mustang tipped on its side:

Access to the elevated viewing deck is limited to Mustang owners and, presumably, their friends, so try to show up with a Mustang owner. Here’s the view from the top:

There’s a small museum next door. Reflect on the fact that today’s Islamic Republic of Great Britain was once sufficiently mighty to engineer and manufacture cars that could run continuously for 12 hours:

(See also 12 Hours of Sebring 2025 and 12 Hours of Sebring, a perfect Florida fly-in destination)

The next car event for the weekend was Cars and Coffee in Boca Raton at the office park in which the IBM PC was developed 44.5 years ago. I’ll cover that when the PC turns 45.

The final car event was a show here in Jupiter at the Double Roads Tavern. This show was heavier on antiques than the usual South Florida event. Here’s a 1946 Ford cab-over-engine (COE) truck:

A Lincoln Continental next to a 1955 Thunderbird (the first year for a car that lasted until 1997 and then had a retro version from 2002-2005) next to a 1957 DeSoto:

A lot of old pickup truck action:

This Chevy 3100 was a work of art:

Maybe the El Camino (1968) should be brought back for those who want to transport bicycles rather than the heavy cargo for which the Ford F-150 is spec’d:

What happens to all of these collectibles when Americans are no longer able to drive because robots have taken over? Will it be fun to sit in the passenger seats while the Optimus robot does the driving of a classic car? If not, do the ones that aren’t in museums get scrapped?

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The Trump- and Elon-hater leases a Tesla Model Y

by philg

A friend with an incandescent hatred of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Republicans in general bought a Tesla Y at the end of 2025 because he wanted to relax with FSD on regular trips from Boston to Manhattan. A base model RWD Tesla Y leased here in Florida, as of December 22, 2025:

With a subsidy from the working class in Maskachusetts:

(It’s a $3,500 subsidy from state taxpayers, but the lease is $3,888 cheaper over 36 months, presumably due to the time value of the $3,500 paid immediately. Note that the low price from Tesla is no longer available. As of right now, the price is up more than $100/month compared to three months ago.)

How’s he enjoying the machine, which has now gone about 4,000 miles, 94% of them on FSD? “I give it an A-,” he said, and compared it to a high-quality aircraft autopilot (he’s a rare example of a private aircraft owner/pilot who is also a loyal Democrat). The only consistent shortcoming that he has identified is that the car doesn’t get in and out of parking lots very well. He hates paying Elon Musk $110 per month ($100 for the FSD subscription plus $10/month for a required communication subscription) because he hates Elon Musk for being Trump-adjacent. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to return to manual driving. The car hasn’t been nearly as reliable as our Hondas. He has had some intermittent computer/camera problems and a rear side window actually cracked due to stress (maybe Boston’s cold weather contributed, but Tesla covered it under warranty).

Another friend in Maskachusetts is a dentist who drives about two hours round-trip every day to her practice (Medicaid is the path to max income for a dentist in MA, but most dentists don’t want to live in a Medicaid-heavy neighborhood). She also got a Tesla Y towards the end of 2025. Queried in March: “Loving fsd. Even did it in the snow.” I respect her opinion more than that of my tech friends because she’s not interested in tech.

My own experience with FSD:

Tesla FSD meets South Florida: I got an Uber ride home from the art museum in West Palm Beach to our house in Jupiter, a 20-mile trip. The machine was a 2021 Model 3 with 103,000 miles, owned by the driver since mid-2025. He had it set for “Hurry”. Tesla’s software was cautious when a cyclist appeared from the left and might conceivably have come into our lane. The machine handled the 6-lane local roads reasonably well, but stayed in the left lane longer than a human would have given the impending need to turn right onto a ramp (the human can override this behavior via the turn signal). FSD handled the traffic circles near our house perfectly. It came to hard stops at 4-way intersections in the neighborhood that a human driver would have turned into rolling stops. It got a little confused at the very end and tried to go into an alley next to our house (MacArthur Foundation laid out Abacoa with garages in the back). The Uber driver said that FSD is almost perfect from his point of view except that it doesn’t do well in the rain if it sees puddles. He estimates a 4:1 fatigue ratio of manual vs FSD. (Others I have talked to have said 3:1 or less.)

The car seemed to be in near-new condition despite its age and 100,000+ miles. Not sure the white fake leather seats would survive our kids…

(The puddle issue might be his car having HW3 rather than the current HW4 or the glorious HW5 that we were supposed to have now but won’t until mid-2027. Maybe this Rembrandt “scholar” is what Elon will look like when HW5/“AI5” finally ships?)

From a friend with an old Tesla 3 and a new-ish Cybertruck:

Today I tried the new new new Tesla update that almost no one has. 14.2.2.1. It was flawless [on the Cybertruck]. I forgot to worry about it as if another human was driving.

My response: “We know that it isn’t a cult because each release is “flawless” or “perfect” and then the next release is “more flawless” and “more perfect”. (Even my friends have learned to hate me, in case you were curious.) Tesla Fanboi:

No. I have told you many times FSD sucked and that is why I didn’t buy it. I have owned my Tesla for 6 years and the first time I ever said FSD was kinda good was in October, and I was today years old the first time I said it was really good.

My personal plan was to wait for HW5 or “AI5” before getting a Tesla, but now it seems that I probably won’t live to see the AI5 era. The latest slip:

A friend who lives in Switzerland owns a Model Y. The government there forced Tesla to roll back everyone’s software to 2019 and FSD is strictly illegal almost everywhere in Europe (it’s not hazardous to import tens of millions of humans from the world’s most violent and dysfunctional societies, but Tesla’s binary code is a civilization-ending threat). He recently rented a Cybertruck on Turo in Fort Lauderdale ($200+/day; pickup and return to FLL garage). He’s spent 3-4 hours per day on FSD while looking at various places to relocate his family to (he was born in the U.S.). He says There was one “phantom braking” incident on a local street where the system got confused by a shadow and braked moderately hard (he overrode this decision with the accelerator). “It probably wouldn’t have done that if there had been a car in front of me,” he noted. “Overall, it’s a game-changer for South Florida commuting and I’m sure it won’t be long before the last bugs are worked out and the system is approved for fully autonomous Cybercabs.”

In other news, my dream of a self-driving minivan might be arriving at around the same time as Tesla’s AI5 hardware. Mercedes is going to bring a pimped minivan EV, a format popular in China, to the US (Car and Driver). Unlike Tesla, Mercedes has no Nazi history, of course, so it can be purchased with qualms. The German minivan is interesting because Nazi-free Mercedes is working with NVIDIA to compete with Tesla in “full self-driving” (i.e., not self-driving because a human has to be constantly monitoring). Car and Driver tested this in January and it seems promising. Minivan leaders Honda and Toyota, by contrast, aren’t even beginning to think about a Tesla-style system. They would rather lose 100 percent of their customers than sell anything below Level 3 (full autonomy). Here’s the beautiful Mercedes minivan, showing what a luxury car company can do:

Who agrees with me that it needs a larger grille?

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Why don’t heavy drinkers get Tesla FSD?

by philg

Here’s a bit of sad news from everyone’s favorite semiconductor physicist:

If Britney Spears had enough money to buy the depicted non-self-driving BMW why didn’t she instead choose a self-driving Tesla? In that case, there wouldn’t have been any possibility of the police noticing erratic driving. She might have been breaking the law and failing to be prudent, but she wouldn’t have been pulled over so long as the Tesla software wasn’t also impaired by alcohol.

Loosely related, Britney Spears’s tutorial on semiconductors:

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Are used car prices falling now that immigrants are leaving the U.S.?

by philg

Used car prices went up to insane levels during the Biden-Harris open borders period. The Washington Post reports Brookings calculations that immigrants are now departing:

Are used car prices coming down? “Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index: December 2025 Trends”:

The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index (MUVVI) rose to 205.5, reflecting a 0.4% increase for wholesale used-vehicle prices (adjusted for mix, mileage, and seasonality) compared to December 2024. The December index is up 0.1% month over month. The long-term average monthly move for December is flat, showing no change from month to month.

Prices actually went up in the past year? Not if you adjust for inflation. Up 0.4% is the new down once you subtract roughly 3% inflation. So the correlation with migration seems to exist, but isn’t 1.

Rents are falling, according to this industry source that takes the landlords’ perspective of higher rents = “improvement”…. “US apartment rents drop in steepest November decline in more than 15 years”:

Related:

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Self-driving cars will make piston-powered aviation even more ridiculous?

by philg

It’s International Civil Aviation Day (an odd day to choose when you consider what else aviation accomplished on December 7…). Let’s look at whether self-driving cars will make piston-powered aviation even less defensible as a transportation tool.

Last month I embarked on a day trip to Orlando for Free Play Florida. It’s a 2:15 drive from our house, nearly all of which is on roads that GM Super Cruise or Ford BlueCruise could handle as well as, of course, any of Elon Musk’s creations.

Much to my surprise, I was able to do this 150-mile trip via Cirrus SR20 in only a little more time than it would have taken, door-to-door, by car. The Cirrus was more fun, I guess, and saved me from the monotony of staying in a lane on Florida’s Turnpike for two hours (the autopilot handled nearly all of the enroute flying). Let’s look at the cost. Driving:

  • 300 miles round-trip at IRS rate of 70 cents/mile = $210 (and that’s the marginal cost for someone who already owns a car; day trips aren’t for the working class anymore, thanks to the miracle of coronapanic shutdowns that made cars cost more than $50,000 and the open borders that keep their wages low)

Flying:

  • I drove 50 miles round trip to the airport so that’s $35 at IRS rates
  • Two hours of Hobbs time in the old Cirrus round-trip at flight school rates (which include fuel) is about $1,000.
  • Three $20 tips, one at each FBO encounter: $60 (not required, but I enjoy saying the no-longer-ironic “This will pay for half of your next Starbucks” and, also, I like to reward people who go to work every day in what has become a work-optional society)
  • Rental car in Kissimmee (KISM) plus gas = $130. (Would presumably have been cheaper at MCO, but the general aviation fees there are higher.)

Piston GA is thus slower and about 6X the cost ($1,225 total). It was more fun because I interacted with some nice people at both Stuart and Kissimmee (other pilots, line guys, front deskers, the Go Rentals gal). Tesla FSD users say that they find the fatigue level from monitoring the self-driving system is only about one third of what is when actually driving. So the trip could have been done via FSD at the same fatigue level as a 50-mile-each-way excursion. Also, most Americans love to consume alcohol. More or less everyone at the Columbia restaurant in Celebration (Disney’s New Urbanism community) was drinking sangria and I could have indulged in a glass if I hadn’t needed to fly back later that evening (Grok says that I could have three drinks before getting close to the legal limit, but I’m a lightweight so my practical limit is one drink).

(Maybe alcohol will ultimately be banned in Celebration, though? In a 15-minute walk around the lake I observed at least three burqa-clad Muslims and I don’t know why they’d want their kids to see women in halter tops drinking margaritas at outdoor tables. There are plenty of dry towns in Maskachusetts. It would be tougher to implement this in Florida according to Gemini because FL Section 562.45(2)(c) prevents a locality from stepping on the state’s regulatory toes.)

Separately, I want to give a small shout-out to Signature (formerly “The Evil Empire”) for mostly keeping piston GA alive by waiving nearly all fees with the purchase of a minimal amount of 100LL at nearly all of its locations (not KTEB!). It’s an unwelcome economic event, I’m sure, when a piston aircraft shows up but Signature does a good job of hiding its disappointment.

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