you make it sound easy lol. Wasn't aware there are free Tesla chargers. There may be available chargers now, but the more EV owners the less there will be available. So I hope the growth of chargers increases as much as EV growth does. My worry in our capitalistic world is more charging stations will be coming online but its not going to be cheap to charge. My current apartment which is considered "Luxury" have 2 EV chargers....I have never checked if its free though, just complaints in the app for residence of people parking there and not charging lol. There is a Fiat 500e that the owner plugs into a regular outlet in the garage parking. My brother apartment has zero chargers.

It really depends on where you are. Even superchargers can be hard to find in certain stretches of the country. I've noticed a more L2 chargers coming to areas like shopping malls where L3 supercharging isn't needed. Future parking lot builds will also take EVs into account. At the Newark Airport, our new Terminal has a ton of L2 chargers in the new lot while the older terminals have 4-5

No tactile vents is something I thought I'd hate but in reality it's way better! With manual vents I fiddle and put them in exactly the same position anyway.
I've never purchased any Apple product lol.

Why is CarPlay so coveted it's nothing special.

I find carplay/android auto great for rentals and cars with bad or old UIs. I like to use it in the Ody because the maps and stock experience in general stink. I prefer the Tesla & Rivian UIs overall

Nope, not easy, just possible

It allows you to control your iPhone from the screen. I've rented more cars than I can count, and most infotainment systems suck, so most people just connect their phones to it, it makes things like streaming from your phone or making or receiving calls easy

Yep, CarPlay is consistent from vehicle to vehicle. That's the benefit. It is also increasingly EV-centric, it now factors my actual state of charge into navigation routing and will set up charging stops at your preferred networks.

well i sold most of my tesla and rivian (ugh) stock, so there's that. and that's not because of the u.s., it's more because things are really slowing in china too and i think it's going to be a bloodbath between tesla and byd.

yes i use it in my hyundai and lexus vehicles and don't care about the stock nav/audio stuff. i also use siri on both for commands.

If I was smart, I would of sold back when the stock was almost $300 and stick it in Nvidia.... but here we are . Now I really have no choice but to ride it out. A large majority is around $190. So that's that

Savagegeese just dropped this video. With its shortcomings, building an EV ground up just makes a better car

Lucid Air vs BMW i5 | Battle of Electric RWD Sedans

I used to think BMW had the right idea with platform sharing, but I've become convinced I was wrong about that. The "i" range cars should be their own range. They could be made to look the same as the ICE cars but have dedicated platforms.

Just as long as they don't follow the Mercedes route. Good lord those are some ugly *** EV's.

Lol Mercedes is changing the look and name of their EVs to look less hideous, and wants to make them look like more mainstream ICE Mercedes. I think they learned their lesson the hard way. I think it's hilarious, and predicted.

https://www.autoblog.com/2024/02/12/...fAVlkfB8VZ2PL1

I probably don't have to tell this to you, but BMW is just trying to make it easier for their existing customers to make the switch with a much less learning curve and a feeling of "sameness". I understand why they are going this route, but it has it's pros and cons. Sharing an ICE architecture has it's compromises, like space, and efficiency. They have to compensate by using a bigger battery pack, which adds weight and expense. Also, they have to write different software for each platform. But if you are someone just looking for a smooth ride for your commute, are familiar with BMW's, than it works out.

They are a smart company, they will figure it out

having ev's look the 'same as ice cars' makes NO sense to me. ev's necessarily need to be a bit taller to accommodate the battery pack in the floor, and don't need a huge *** hood section to contain the ice.

lol. while the eq sedan design is obviously not popular, i think the suv's look good.

i think bmw is doing it to save money. bmw is not a huge company.

sharing a platform across ev and ice is a very difficult compromise. yes it is done, but as consumers see the big loss of space vs a full ev, they're going to say why would i want to get one of those? and yes i know you have your polestar which is very nice, but you have a fleet of cars for when you need something with more space.

If this is a true statement, then the only automakers that may be considered huge companies are VW and Toyota, as those are the only two auto manufacturers that are significantly larger. BMW has a much higher market cap than either Ford or GM, and at $163B in annual revenue, is only about $10B behind them. It has 155k employees, about 10k less than GM, and 20k less than Ford.