I’d ride in this 2024 Lexus LM any day of the week. Full lay down seats, widescreen TV? It’s about as close to a rolling living room as I’ve ever seen – or maybe it’s a rolling movie thee-aye-tur.
Ever want to buy a $100,000+ Porsche, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, or other semi-super car in Portland? Or maybe you just want to look at how the richer half lives.
If so, you might look at Grand Prix Motors in Portland. They have tons of interesting expensive cars to browse through on their website. They actually have what appears to be decent prices and move a good quantity of inventory so it’s always fun to browse through things you might never afford or want to actually spend your money on.
They also have some pretty wild cars that randomly migrate through their consignment sales section too for additional spice.
Mercedes added a ‘jumping’ mode to help you get out of sand and mud, but it turns out it’s pretty fly when pulling into your high end neighborhood too.
In case you’re curious the song is a slowed version of Jordan Burns – Weekend
This page has a great rundown of the 2015 Crosstrek maintenance schedule.
If you have a 2015, 2016, 2017 Subaru Crosstrek and need to pull/replace your window switches – this is a good video on how to do it. You have to unscrew the door panel screw in the inside handle recess and pull the door panel off to access the 2 screws and the wire harness you’ll need to access to remove the trim piece and associated windows controls.
This is a great video on the various issues that led to the hacking of the original XBox.
It turns out, a similar method by causing a processor fault has recently been used to hack Tesla cars recently.
This crazy motorcycle chase from São Paulo, Brazil looks like something out of a recent James Bond movie.
My favorite part is when the cop catches up to them and just laughs. Darn kids!
BMW demoed a black and white e-ink paneled body at CES in 2022.
In 2023, they upped the game by creating a colored e-ink version:
I ran into this guy a few times on the Last Thursday Alberta street festivals around 2010. Part DJ, part spinner, he went by the moniker of Spinnaface. He had a good schtick going:
Sadly, he wasn’t exactly the best DJ and I never really saw him again in later years. Still, it was an interesting time in Portland’s history of good natured keeping it weird before the city’s sharp decline in the 2020’s.
It’s no longer Tesla – it’s BYD from China. BYD sold 1.86 million cars in 2022 which surpassed Tesla’s 1.3 million cars. This wasn’t unexpected – back in the financial crisis of 2008’s, Berkshire Hathaway invested a hefty $230 million in BYD stock. How has that gone? Charlie Munger of Berkshire has said the investment was one of his best investments and is doing ridiculously better than Tesla. (paywall free) That outlay has ballooned more than 1,570%, and even after the most recent selldown of it’s holdings in late 2022/early 2023, Berkshire’s remaining stake is still worth around $4.5 billion. BYD is looking to expand it’s reach in Japan and Europe.
BYD has made batteries for commercial and industrial purposes for years – and now they have developed their Blade Battery that seems to handle puncture and temperature tests much better than current EV batteries that have a bad tendency to catch fire and explode in accidents. Tesla plans on using a blade battery in its car in upcoming models.
BYD hasn’t come to the US, but are (obviously) selling quite well in China and Europe. Middle class Chinese customers are flocking to the $14,500 and $29,000 price tag instead of Tesla and other EV makers. So what do these cars look like? Their more recent dual motor flagship model the BYD Han is quite nice. It sells for $42,000 in China and 70,000 Euros in the EU. The interiors and ride is about as nice as the fact it can do 0-60 in 3.9 seconds.
Some of the other offerings from BYD, and a whole host of other makers if you’re curious: