Category: Cars, including self-driving

Let’s check in with minivans for 2026 as it is long past time for us to retire our faithful 2021 Odyssey. For readers who worship at the Church of the Sliding Doors I will be grateful to get your advice. Nearly all of the driving will happen in Florida, a state with average gasoline prices (about $3/gallon most of the time in recent years). We expect to drive 10,000 miles per year and, therefore, would burn up $1500/year of gasoline at 20 mpg. Unlimited electric car charging at home is $31/month from Florida Power and Light, but it would be a bit cumbersome because we don’t park our minivan in the garage.

2026 Honda Odyssey: Exactly the same as the 2025 Honda Odyssey, which was almost exactly the same as the 2018 Honda Odyssey. Honda imposed a slight price increase in nominal dollars, which might translate to a slight price reduction in real dollars (adjusted for inflation). If Greta Thunberg hadn’t switched to pro-Hamas advocacy she would shed tears for the continued lack of a hybrid powertrain (admittedly the Toyota Sienna’s feels strained; see Toyota Sienna vs Honda Odyssey).

2026 Toyota Sienna: Would be tough to distinguish from the 2020 original. No improvements for 2026. Not as sporty or nimble as the Odyssey, but the dark green color matches much of the foliage in our neighborhood nicely and the optional captain’s chairs in the middle row would likely appeal to our spoiled kids (reduces seating capacity from 8 to 7). Hybrid powertrain approved by pre-Hamas-Edition-Greta Thunberg. Like seafaring blockade-running Greta, the Sienna isn’t afraid of danger. It comes with Toyota Safety Sense 2.0, an obsolete suite of feeble tech assistance from 2018. TSS 2.0 was superseded by TSS 2.5 (2021 Camry) and then by TSS 3.0 (2023 Corolla; 2025 Camry), but Sienna buyers are doomed to live in 2018.

2026 Chrysler Pacifica: Maybe the oldest platform in the group, dating to the 2017 model year? Zero improvements for 2026. The only plug-in hybrid minivan.

2026 Kia Carnival: minimal changes to this supposedly great 2020 minivan that is styled like an SUV (why not just get a Chevy Tahoe if the SUV image is desired?).

A heartbreaking time, in other words, for those of us who appreciate the genius of Lee Iacocca (first-generation Chrysler minivan below, introduced for 1984):

The Nazi-free all-electric minivan introduced to the U.S. in 2025 turned out to be an epic failure. “How Volkswagen’s Electric Bus Went From American Flagship to Flop” (WSJ):

The German auto giant was bringing back the bus as an electric vehicle, albeit one with a boxy design and two-tone paint job reminiscent of the original. The reboot was more than two decades in the making, and the company said the vehicle would soon be available in the U.S.

In the 1960s, the bus and the Beetle helped Volkswagen enjoy rapid growth. U.S. sales peaked at almost 570,000 in 1970, more than a third of the brand’s global total. At the time, the van was priced at the equivalent of around $20,000, less expensive than most cars.

With a battery range of less than 250 miles per charge, the ID.Buzz doesn’t compare favorably with other new EVs. The German-led design also failed to account for some uniquely American tastes: It often needs to be fitted with extra cupholders at U.S. ports.

The commercial-vehicle business is also based at a plant in Hanover that is among the company’s most expensive. The labor cost of producing a vehicle in Germany was roughly $3,307 last year, compared with $1,341 in the U.S., according to a recent report by consultants at Oliver Wyman.

When Diess showed an ID.Buzz prototype in 2017, he promised EVs that would be “affordable for millions, not just to millionaires.” The company prepared its Hanover factory to produce up to 130,000 units a year, and executives hinted that they could in time manufacture it in the U.S. as well.

Only around 30,000 units were sold last year, hurt in Europe by key markets including Germany and Sweden rolling back EV subsidies.

In April, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warned that the vehicle showed the international brake-warning sign in amber rather than the word “brake” in red capital letters, which is the requirement in the U.S. A few weeks later, the body said the third-row seat was too wide because it could accommodate three people even though it only had two seat belts. The company is fitting plastic parts to cover the sides of the seats in the roughly 5,600 vehicles affected.

Floridians love exotic new cars and yet I’ve seen only a handful of ID. Buzz minivans in the wild down here. One mom at a school event said that she loved hers, but noted that the range was short (officially 230 miles; Car and Driver highway test: 190 miles) and access to Tesla superchargers was “coming soon”. The exterior was snazzy while the interior looked like it had recently been the site of a birthday party, with lots of cake and snacks, for 17 preschoolers.

For those who can stomach the Nazi heritage, a Tesla minivan with FSD could be awesome!

(Is Tesla currently suffering from Osborne effect? They told all of their customers 1.5 years ago that HW4 is too feeble for self-driving and that HW5 has 5X the mental power (i.e., HW5 is like a Democrat from California with a Gender Science degree while HW4 is like a Red State HVAC tech) and that HW4 cars can’t be upgraded to HW5. Tesla said in June 2024 that HW5 would be delivered to consumers in January 2026, but now it looks like HW5 will show up in 2027.)

I hate to keep driving our venerable 2021 Odyssey with over 50,000 miles on the odometer, but I can’t see the value in switching to any of the above. People in Florida are careful about opening their doors so we have no door dings. Florida curbs are lovingly molded from concrete instead of being made from rough-hewn granite as in Maskachusetts. Therefore, we have no wheel rash. Since we don’t garage the car, however, I fear that the sun is taking its toll on the paint and interior and soon we will be getting notes from the G-Wagon-owning neighbors asking if we’re in financial distress. A few photos from the local strip malls just in the last week (an alien might infer from our parking lots that humans come in radically different sizes, which is why some can get around in small toys such as the Lambo while others need massive SUVs and pickup trucks):

One funny thing about our current Odyssey that I would miss: on a two-lane local road, it reads a sign about the Brightline train potentially exceeding 100 mph as a “speed limit is 100 mph” indication.

A fair number of my friends are Tesla owners. Most of them live in the Northeast or California so cue the apologetic stickers, e.g.,

Existing owners are a car company’s best customers, typically accounting for more than 50 percent of purchases. Tesla has killed upgrade demand among my friends by announcing HW5/AI5 in June 2024. At the time, Tesla promised delivery in late 2025, but now they’re saying that AI5 has slipped at least one year to “late 2026”. This is the classic company-killing Osborne effect.

I wonder if Tesla could undo some of this self-inflicted damage by offering an “Osborne effect lease”. A consumer would sign up today for a 3-year lease but if AI5 makes it out the door within those three years the consumer is guaranteed either (a) a retrofit of AI5 to his/her/zir/their car, or (b) a swap-out of the HW4 car for an AI5 car within 3 months of AI5 mass production and at a price that is set today, e.g., $200/month extra (some of the extra money going toward the wonderfulness of AI5 and some because the swapped-in car is newer than the originally leased car).

Separately, my friend with a 2025 Tesla Y made it from southern New Jersey to Cambridge, Maskachusetts the other day via FSD and touched the steering wheel only twice. Once was to park at a charger and once was to park in Harvard Square. Given the chaotic nature of road markings in Cambridge and in NYC this seems like more of an achievement than my neighbor’s regular Gainesville-Jupiter drives on FSD.

I spent a few days traveling around Mount Desert Island, Maine in a Lucid Air Touring. The back seat of this machine is truly palatial. The ride is solid and comfortable. Every hospital that profits from treating traumatic brain injuries should love this design because the dimensions are optimized for hitting one’s head while getting in and out (a common issue noted on the Interweb; example). It’s far easier to get in and out of a C8 Corvette without hitting one’s head than in/out of a Lucid, front seat or back.

Folks in Maine love Lucid so much that we parked next to two Lucids in the same color. Here’s one:

When it was my turn to drive, some of the limitations of the EV-smartphone integration became apparent. There apparently isn’t a way for an owner to authorize a friend as a temporary driver of the machine. I wasn’t able to register and log in for a Lucid account because there isn’t a vehicle registered to me. There is no “share this car” option in the Lucid app. I had to get my friend’s username and password and log in on the app on my phone. After that, we spent about five minutes trying to pair the car with my phone and finally succeeded after turning off Bluetooth on his phone. The car isn’t smart about whether it has been started with a phone or a key. If you have no key with you, but only your phone, it reminds you to take the non-existent key after parking:

My trip in the vehicle was on paved roads in what Mainers call “summer” (cloudy with light rain). We were rich in error messages. One concerned the failure of the LIDAR system with instructions to clean the lens:

This disappeared for no apparent reason (we neither found nor cleaned any sensor). Another error message concerned the stability control and regeneration systems. This cleared itself.

The driver assistance features are similar to those on a modern gas-powered car. The driver is warned about lane departure, cars in blind spots (the A and B pillars are huge!), and obstacles nearby when parking. Lucid doesn’t seem to be competing in the self-driving world so this is a car for the EV-lover who wants to drive him/her/zir/themself.

How would Mindy the Crippler like this vehicle? It’s a few button presses to get into “Creative Comfort Mode”, similar to Tesla’s Dog Mode:

I agree with my owner-friend (see below) that is a great car from the driver’s perspective, at least assuming that he/she/ze/they has recovered from the skull-roof impact. Loyal readers familiar with my passion for reducing inequality in American society won’t be surprised that my favorite moments with the Lucid were parked at a taxpayer-funded city-run charger. Here are photos documenting the transfer of wealth from peasants driving 20-year-old pickups to the person fortunate enough to own a $90,000 Lucid:

Here’s a sign posted at a pottery shop in nearby Islesford, Maine:

I haven’t figured out which of the above things that we must do covers “pay taxes so that owners of $90,000 SUVs can charge for free.”

Related:

• Lucid Air Touring versus Tesla X and S (the owner’s perspective)

Here’s a report on two days of driving an $80,000 Mercedes EQE SUV rented from Budget in Dayton, Ohio. What does it look like when parked in front of the kind of house that Mercedes owners deserve?

The FBO gave me a lift to the main terminal to pick up the vehicle. “It’s impossible to hire anyone competent,” said the line guy, “so the rental car companies are extremely short-handed these days and can’t drop off cars with us anymore.”

(Dayton is rich in immigrants and getting richer every year so the line guy’s lived experience is not consistent with economic truth regarding open borders being a surefire path to an ample labor supply. City of Dayton: “Between 2014 and 2019, the total population in the City of Dayton decreased by 0.2% while the immigrant population increased by +25.9% during the same time period.” (remember that a falling population of the native-born and a growing population of migrants is not a “replacement”))

There was a Fall of Saigon scene in the terminal. All of the companies except Avis/Budget were out of cars. Those with Avis/Budget reservations were told they’d need to wait several hours beyond their reservation time due to a shortage of vehicles. My electric reservation, however, bumped me towards the front of the queue.

I was admonished to return the vehicle with at least 80 percent charge or face a $75 failure-to-charge penalty. I discovered later that this would have been a challenge due to the fact that the car was set up to stop charging at precisely 80 percent (i.e., you’d have to tow it or push it from the charging station to the airport in order to achieve the 80 percent charge return goal). The vehicle was delivered to me with a 79 percent charge:

The fancy electronics immediately disappointed. There is a navigation system with points of interest, but it couldn’t find the long-established FBO. Fortunately, unlike with a Nazi-tainted Tesla, the entirely Nazi-free Mercedes supports Apple CarPlay.

The driving experience is very different than in a Tesla. There are instruments directly in front of the driver, rather than off to the side on an iPad stapled to the center of the dash. The EQE feels solid and quiet. It doesn’t accelerate any faster than our Honda Odyssey minivan (0-60 in 6+ seconds), but why would anyone in the U.S. (population headed toward 600 million sharing roads designed for a nation of 150 million) need blistering acceleration in a family car?

Charging infrastructure proved to be a challenge. We were in a brand-new hotel with a brand-new parking structure, shared with an office building, and I didn’t see any chargers. The USAF museum has a parking lot that can hold perhaps 600 cars. It has 4 chargers, all of them free (thanks for paying your taxes!), 2 of which were broken. Over a 48-hour period we never went anywhere else that had chargers. Near the end of the rental experience we finally waded deep enough into the menus to find the “eco” setting was preventing a full charge:

Keeping your $80,000 investment from being destroyed is as simple as following the rules on these two full screens of text:

At every startup we were prompted to download a Mercedes USA app and sync it to the car. Here’s what Mercedes USA shows as typical customers:

Here’s the EQE, at the forefront of ground transportation, in front of a building in the neighborhood where the Wright Brothers did their work at the forefront of air transportation (before they figured out that patent litigation made more sense than engineering!).

Conclusion: Although it feels like a better car than any Tesla if what you want to do is drive yourself Point A to Point B, I would rather have a Tesla than an EQE. Tesla seems to be getting its FSD act in gear (so to speak) and Tesla offers Dog Mode as well as cabin overheat protection so that Mindy the Crippler and her canine brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters can be kept safe (also good for infants and toddlers who might be sleeping back there, sometimes forgotten). Based on our experience in not finding chargers I wouldn’t want to own any electric car unless I had a charger and home and owned a gas-powered car for actual trips.

(I returned the car at about 70% charge to the FBO. It took Budget a couple of days to pick it up, presumably due to their short-staffing. They didn’t charge me a “failure to charge” penalty, but they did charge for one day more of rental than I actually used (I had reserved three days and used two).)

A friend from the Northeast is getting his son settled as a freshman at the University of Florida in beautiful Gainesville. The program starts in the middle of the Florida summer for no reason that I can understand (if kids are smart enough to get into UF, ranked #30 by US News, you’d think they’d be smart enough to run away from July in Florida). His teenage daughter accompanied him. He rented a 2023 Tesla Model 3 “long range dual motor” with 52,000 miles from Avis in Orlando for the trip. Here are some of his messages to a group chat that includes a couple of Tesla owners.

• Oh so my rental doesn’t have the famous FSD. Or EAP [Tesla Enhanced Autopilot]. Took 62% of the charge to get to Gainesville from Orlando. I am at 22% now and have range anxiety.
• Wood veneer is coming off. Leather on the steering wheel too.
• The car wobbles at 70-80 mph.
• Some sort of a noise in the cabin – my guess something came loose.
• UI is cool and looks Apple-y
• The key card situation is kind of [Trigger Warning!] retarded. Mercedes keyless go is more ergonomic in the sense that it opens the car when you grab the handle. The concept of affordance.
• The EV acceleration is cool, probably matches most sport cars 5x its price. One pedal braking feels pretty stupid.
• Anyway I have two more days, but so far it is nothing to write home about and I am perplexed why you guys are SO in love with it. In terms of positives, its UI is certainly better than that of most cars, but it is changing. [Editor: I would vehemently disagree with this. A screen in the middle of the dashboard isn’t the right UI for a car! The driver shouldn’t have to turn his/her/zir/their head.]
• [responding to the Tesla owners who tell him to use the automation] I am 100% engaging AutoSteer. It is what nearly every new gas car has today. I suspected based on description that this is what it was and it turned out to be exactly that. I had that in a Mercedes GLS since February 2017. It is utterly just meh. I drive around and I don’t feel a difference between it and other rental cars except excellent acceleration.
• [responding to a Tesla owner who says he loves his new Tesla (HW4) with FSD] this reminds me of how Apple people speak about apple products. Irrational excitement about things available in other forms. “You should absolutely get it. It is simply the best and next level.” Then I look at it and go “this????” I am getting a [Toyota] Grand Highlander. [Response from a Tesla fanboy: You are like the people who argued for horses after the automobile came out.]
• Right now there are two chargers in Gainesville. So many hot moms at UF. Not that many but infinitely more than in Boston because the number there is around zero.
• There are douchebags like me sitting for half an hour here at the supercharger waiting for their cars to charge. 122 miles are 63% [the “long range” Tesla lost 63% battery over 122 miles; it starting charging at 467 miles/hr and once over 80% slowed down to 186 miles/hr]
• [in response to my question about whether the charging station was somewhere convenient] No it is nowhere I wanted to be. I drove specifically there
• My car performed at 1.9 miles per % charge. That is 95 mile radius with 0% charge upon arrival. 90 miles with 5% reserve. Basically if you remove fanboyism, it is very limited. Not a real car. However, this also says charge limit 85%. Why is it there, why is it set to this value and most importantly, why are we calculating ranges based on 100%. Let us assume a 5% reserve and 85% max. This leaves us with 80% battery which implies a 76 mile [round-trip] range.
• [daughter] just got into the car and asked how come this car has constant weird noises. Something is clicking something is wiggling
• it was in the worst shape of any rental car i got in the last two years or more
• Tesla key card only works on the driver side and not on the passenger side. I know I’m using it wrong. I should be using an app like the enlightened people. So I had to go around the car to lock it.
• We got into the car this morning. The car was hot because it was black. I reached out to turn the vent to blow on my face for some time and discovered that its vents aren’t adjustable.
• Navigation is seriously flawed [Tesla does not supply CarPlay and Android Auto like every other car]. It says turn right on west X road while the signs show turn left on west and turn right on east. I have never seen this happen on Waze.
• Its vehicle detection has a ton of mistakes. It detects big electronic signs as cars. Sees objects on the road that aren’t there. So if FSD relies on this stuff, I am not sure it works as advertised.
• [the tall son] just said – “Back seat is terrible. I had to get out and stretch because everything hurt”; These people are used to driving for 4-5 hours in the back of a car non-stop to NYC.
• I will have to add 30 minutes to my travel time because I have to return the car charged to Avis. Or I will be charged at crazy rates (similar to not filling up your tank).
• Tesla shackles me and adds hours of tax on my freedom.

One of the Tesla owners in the chat, whose Tesla Y is just three months old (latest AI hardware), posted a video of his drive home on FSD. “Dark, rain, lane changes, stop lights, merge onto highway, passing other cars, sharp curves.”

Question: If Full Self-Driving is great and Tesla knows that it is great why wouldn’t Tesla enable it on all rental Teslas so as to promote sales of the machines?

Also, why doesn’t Tesla have support for rentals in its app whereby Avis or Hertz can conveniently authorize a renter temporarily to use the Tesla app instead of the key card? Tesla actually does have support for authorizing additional drivers who will use the app, but it appears to be a facility more for family members who are going to be long-term authorized drivers.

He included a photo of what might be intended to appeal to white cisgender heterosexuals who claim to be “allies” of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community:

My own story: I rented a beater Chevy Malibu from Avis in Idaho (about 50,000 miles and smelled like a “bustling Gaza shisha cafe”). It had more than 500 miles of range forecast and delivered. Drove about 800 miles and spent maybe 6 minutes at two charging stations. We couldn’t have done our trip in the above-described rental Tesla without significant planning. Craters of the Moon is in a no-charger desert as well as a no-water desert (energy.gov):

We drove 154 miles from Sun Valley (Ketchum) to Twin Falls by way of Craters of the Moon:

If we’d been delivered a rental Tesla 3 at 85 percent and didn’t use Dog Mode or cabin overheat protection we would have perhaps made it into Twin Falls on fumes and with bitten nails.

Happy National Corvette Day to those who celebrate.

Here’s a heart-warming example of Americans with different perspectives coming together and finding common ground (Road & Track):

“Florida Highway Patrol Adds C8 Chevy Corvette to Patrol Car Fleet”

The C8 Corvette was seized from a drug dealer, and now will be used for community outreach — as well as enforcing traffic laws.

(Photo from the FHP’s Facebook post.)

In the same spirit, let me post some rainbow images that I hope everyone can celebrate for the end of Pride (until Omnisexual Visibility Day on July 6). These are from yesterday at Shoshone Falls in Idaho:

Happy National Insurance Awareness Day to those who celebrate. (And Happy Pride to everyone else.)

From a friend in the Boston suburbs:

My kids got hit by a Haitian immigrant. The car is totaled. I am talking to his insurance company and they tell me, yeah so he is only insured up to $10,000 (damage to third parties).

(His teenagers were driving a minivan and weren’t hurt, fortunately. The migrant hit them from behind so his car would have needed to go through two empty rows of seats before reaching the children in the front seats.)

It turns out that the noble enricher was overinsured by Maskachusetts standards:

State governments love to regulate. They have a structure in place for requiring car insurance. Why are these limits set ridiculously low? It would be almost impossible to crash into someone else’s car and do less than $5,000 in damage. Things are complicated to some extent by the “no-fault” idea, but wouldn’t it make more sense to have minimum insurance set at the average cost of a car, e.g., if a driver hits a parked car and there is no doubt whose fault it is, or at the average cost of repairing a house after a car hits it?

How much damage was done by the Haitian whose presence in the U.S. makes all of us better off?

Progressive said they would pay $11k for the totaled [2012] Sienna and said they would arrange for me to come and sign papers. They called back and said that MA law requires that they run a check on me before issuing me any checks to make sure I don’t have any outstanding child support. It would then be deducted from my settlement

Even hitting a 13-year-old car did damage more than 2X the minimum! Separately, note that the tragic car destruction could have been a welcome payday for a family court entrepreneur. Finally, note the astounding value of a 13-year-old minivan!

Related:

• Progressive Insurance is Progressive (2022)
• Progressive Insurance abandons its Progressive Values (2023; I switched to State Farm that year)

From Chevrolet:

A regular C8 Corvette will get you to Publix with 495 horsepower. A Z06 Corvette has 670 horsepower and, thus, about the same power-to-weight ratio as an IMSA GTD Pro race car. What is the use case for the ZR1X in a country that has 342 million people (Census; perhaps 350-360 million if we believe Yale) trying to use roads designed for a nation of 150 million?

The heaviest Ferrari 308 was 255 hp and only a little lighter than the 495 hp Corvette. Nobody said that was an underpowered sports car. What balance of engineering considerations resulted in a 4,000 lb. car having more horsepower than a 10,500 lb. Pilatus PC-12 11-seat aircraft?

Also, in a country where the average IQ falls every year who is going to service this complicated machine? It’s awesome to own what will no doubt be a collector’s item, but will anyone have the skills to fix it 20 or 30 years from now?

Here’s a Facebook post about a 30-day repair to find an electrical problem in a Corvette with the base engine supplemented by an electric motor:

This is an aviation level of maintenance hassle for an in-production car where everyone at the dealer and everyone at GM should have fresh knowledge of how the E-Ray is supposed to work.

I guess I have to admit being in awe of the engineers who built a machine with this much horsepower that can also be sold with a 5-year powertrain warranty and the offer of an extended warranty!