What will it take to make you seriously consider an EV?

conveniently as others are folding up shop or scaling back.

that rivian R2 is gonna sell I think. good size and if they can get it to $45K with good range...i am down.
can swap the wife's Macan for it.

 

Took the Mach-E down to San Francisco last week. No issues at all. Going over mountain passes does suck the juice, but there are now enough rapid chargers around that the worries we had a few years ago are non-existent now. It does take longer to charge up than fill up an ICE rig, but it's not that much longer if you get out, walk around, use the bathroom, grab some snacks, etc. Also, very easy to charge up while you're getting lunch at a nearby taco place. Sure, it takes some planning, but we're retired and don't have to be anywhere too fast.

It's also cheaper. Even using over-priced California chargers, we went almost 800 miles on $112, which saved us $75-90 versus gasoline for our Tundra. (NorCal average is $4.575 per gallon.) Bonus: no gasoline smell on your hands or clothes.

 

Unfortunately, I don't think they'll be releasing the $45k version for another year or so... or at least not until the initial release which will probably be the one with all the bells and whistles and power. Or so I've been reading.

 

How many R2s will Rivian build each year?

 

I think they start production in March this year (?) and won't ramp up until the latter half of the year. I believe they said they'd deliver 20k or something.

 

enough to be a warranty nightmare.

 

EVs still blow for that application. For the day to day Houston 15-35 mile commute they are way more practical than most realize. You don't need 50 amp service to make up 30 miles a night. Tesla Model Y can do that on 115 volt 15 amp. Mach E is a mounter deal after the recall and stop sale. If it wasn't named mustang it would have sold much better.

 

https://electrek.co/2026/02/16/tesla-robotaxi-status-check-8-months-in/

Look how sad Robotaxi is doing.

-Shuts down when it rains
-Crashes 9x more than a human driver
-Only available 20% of the time.


Tesla launched its “Robotaxi” service in Austin eight months ago. In that time, Elon Musk promised 500 cars in Austin, coverage for half the US population, fully unsupervised rides, and expansion to 8-10 cities, all by the end of 2025. None of it happened.

Today, the service has roughly 42 cars in Austin, availability below 20%, a crash rate 9 times worse than human drivers, and the “unsupervised” rides Musk hyped before earnings have vanished from the tracker. Here’s the full status check.

 

Can't tell if it's Musk or Trump running Tesla with so many lies..

 

This is actually two months earlier than Elon Musk announced, but the rest of 2026 will tell us more. He also said the initial ramp would be painfully slow due to this line being the first of Tesla's new "unboxed" production method.

One of my questions has been will the first run of cybercabs be AI4 or AI5. That question seems answered.

 

Full self-driving tech is 25-35 years away for all companies.

 

Why are they hiding it?

 

Good catch.

Everything is smoke and mirrors for Tesla. That's why they hide detailed crash information for their Robotaxis. Way more accidents than Waymo, no one knows why or what happened. Waymo shares all of this crash data btw.

 

he recently said AI5 is for optimus.

 

Nice to see you still have his **** in your mouth.

 

He said AI6 is for optimus and AI5 basically finishes the job for autonomous vehicles.

Also, if you think about the timelines tossed out so far (and what is likely to happen), AI5 will be at least 2-3 years ahead of optimus and ~6-12 months behind cybercab. Right now, it seems clear the small, early batches of cybercabs this year will be AI4 before switching to AI5 when it begins production (supposedly late this year). In other words, actual production of both cybercab and AI5 is legit tangible now and their timelines overlap.

Production of optimus and AI6 remains smoke and mirrors and putting any date or timeline on either is silly.

 

well they did leave space for it..lol

 

Sidenote: Is Tesla a DEI company?

Spoiler

 

Asians (including Indians) are big Tesla fans. No surprise they work there. Probably volunteering.

 

Since Asian manufacturers are already making respectable Electric Vehicles, Modi and Xi Jinping probably didn't send those people in to do industrial espionage against Tesla.