Timely ask given this article posted today from a well known NPR contributor: https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...

I was a big fan of NPR and built one of the most popular NPR apps at the dawn of the iPhone. Now, I rarely listen anymore. I'm looking for news news and all that is available today is opinion news.

I think Breaking Points YouTube channel started off right. Unfortunately, they have veered off course recently, with each host presenting a one-sided opinion about the topics they are passionate about.

These days, I basically browse the explore option on Substack and hope to find interesting articles. https://substack.com/browse/business

After getting past the lightning rod "orange man bad" and "laptop gate" preamble, I found that npr oped to be mostly spot on unfortunately. This from a life long npr listener who leans left.

That he is orange is just a fact. What makes him a bad man is everything else he does.

Yeah I liked breaking points when it was just the two original hosts even though it was still opinionated. Honestly the podcast scene has just turned into cable news

Her entire statement doesn't make any sense. GM spends four years developing a vehicle iteration. Is she saying they are going to sell the old Bolt iteration, which was already old when canceled? I'm guessing they are just re-badging something else already in development.

They're bringing the bolt format to their new ultium platform, meaning it'll reduce the cost and complexity of building this vehicle. It'll be like alongside the equinox and blazer, same platform for a smaller shell.

What I found most interesting about this is that even back in the year 2000 Elon was already in the mode of promising magical software "Next year", while ignoring the complexity of the system which would obviously make it impossible.

Are you talking about Rivian?

They are using BOSCH motors and Samsung batteries. At least until their new dual motor config comes out with their own motors. I'd say this is neither poor or great since these are mostly industry standard options.

Munro has done a very detailed teardown of both the Rivian and the Lightning. The main complaint of the Rivian was that it was overbuilt and they are spending too much money. Otherwise, it's been given very high reviews for quality.

I suppose you could argue that the quad motor config is maybe something other OEMs wouldn't take up for many reasons, but it's not a "Poor" choice. It's resulted in one of the most unique vehicles to ever exist, which was probably a very good brand building strategy. The problem with Rivian now is that they haven't been able to pivot to mass market vehicles quickly enough.

the point i am trying to make is about 'vehicle integration' most of the oems don't make their own emotors. they 'engineer' vehicle attributes and provide the suppliers like Bosch with system level targets. this process is generally referred to as target cascading. if i want motor to sound xdB at driver ear, my vehicle needs to provide ydB isolation and then source needs to be at zdB, if this process is not hashed out well, you end up with poor isolation. you also have to consider variability in source and your manufacturing. This is the area where an automaker shines or crumbles, doing this poorly results in poor experience and hence poor reliability/quality. most of major oems think rivian is struggling in this area and just now laid of most of the sme's lol

Actually, the only one of those "Wing-Doors" Teslas that can compete with the Rivian would be the Plaid at 150k+. Same with Porsche, the Rivian would blow the doors off any Porsche at the 100k price point. You'd need a high spec Taycan at 150k to compete. Obviously, outside of straight line performance, the Taycan has other capabilities that are superior to the Rivian. Overall though, the Rivian is not only faster in general but it has a great deal more utility and is better suited to daily driving tasks.

[Edited to add] The F150 Lightning might out-compete the Rivian on utility. but can't compare performance wise. That's probably the closest comparison vehicle.

Are people really choosing a car based on straight-line acceleration? If you were truly buying because “I want a faster car” then some type of lap time would be a better proxy for that.

And even more than that - a truck! If one cares about performance for God's sake - don't buy a truck.