Well, it is running, going on 20 years.
Having trouble getting your auto insurance customers to embrace UBI (Usage-Based-Insurance)? Why not just bury it deep in the Terms and Conditions and automate it anyway?
General Motors are one of the chief culprits (gifted link) -
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The Autopian (not the Disney attraction of similar name) online has a bit on rear trunk latches.
In the comments someone noted that the Prius has the 12V battery in the back, and you cannot open the back door if the 12V battery fails, because the latch is electronic (story is how back latches have become standardized) and not manually mechanical. Yes, this happened to me when my son left home to work away from our area and left his Prius for me to maintain (drive a few miles per week – that wasn’t enough).
So, need to jumper the car (there are terminals under the front hood), wait for enough juice to be able to open the back door, open the back door, then replace the battery, which in itself is not that easy, being tucked into a side pocket. Oh, and when you jumper the car, keep the driver door ajar somehow. The first thing the Prius does upon getting electricity is to lock the doors! His Prius requires the key fob to be manually inserted into the dash in order to start it.
I had a bad experience on Saturday.
The short version of the story is this. A dealer had a vehicle on its website list like this:
Clearly, X was less than Y. And clearly, I expected to also pay tax, title and license fees. The car was and is an unsold 2023 model that had 4000 miles on it, so it was a vehicle the dealership has had for many months and had been using as a loaner or perhaps a manager’s car.
I made a paper print out of the listing. There’s no room for misinterpretation on my part.
I went there, test drove it, spent an hour looking at all the bells and whistles.
Then they said that the price was $X + $3,997 dollars because the car had paint protection as a dealer add-on.
I did not react well. I told them they couldn’t do that. I told them that was immoral and potentially illegal. I called it “Bait and Switch.” I told them they should be ashamed for false advertising.
The sales manager came over. I got nothing but the response of “So what” and “X + 3997 is still less than Y so DeepPurple should be a happy camper.”
I whipped out my cell phone and asked if they could say that on camera so I could put them on you tube. The sales manager was gone inside of 5 seconds. All he said when my camera was out was “We’re done here. Thankyou for your time” and then all I saw was his ass and his elbows.
TLDR: Dealer advertised a price on a vehicle that they did not honor.
AITA? I thought the phone thing was more evolved than my usual tactic of yelling and swearing at him.
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NTA, I’d be equally pissed off if this happened to me.
Apparently, my wife’s hybrid has a well-known gasket issue, baked in to the manufacturing. Since the ICE goes off and on over the course of a trip, the head gasket gets compromised. Might take a picture later today of it. Only certain years are affected. Prius and this Lexus CT200h. Not sure what they did in later years. Guessing an electric water pump instead of one connected to the belt?
Ok, car back to normal. No shuddering
But. The MPG it showed was way off. 15, then up to 20 after a fashion.
Then filled it up, made it to Vegas with only two pit stops. No fuel.
Now, the Range upon fillup is usually around 400m or so. This time it popped to 550!! Still shows over 200 with about a quarter tank left!! Unreliable electronics will do that.
I assume that it will adjust over time.
My cars will do that on highway trips. I assume the unreliable electronics use some average over the recent x minutes or miles to use in the range calculation. If I spend a lot of time in downtown city driving on a trip to see the folks, the range usually stays flat or increases for the first hour or so of driving out of town on the highway.
Someone doesn’t like manual transmissions, gets paid some amount of money to write a column about it on cnn.com:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/opinions/automatic-vs-manual-cars-electric-pollution-hockenos/index.html
A gearhead’s response to put him in his place:
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lol, I read the CNN article yesterday and thought WTF. Note, I am on MT car #4.
Still on #3, but probably have to switch to a coffin for the next one – well, I’d drive my wife’s hybrid occasionally while she commutes a whopping two miles each way to work (and whenever we go on short trips) on all-electricity.
The author of the MT bashing article might lose his mind reading Twig’s posts in the EV thread.
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Bump, for latest 20+ year-old car issues.
My driveway is a bit uphill. A few months ago I was having issues starting the car on the driveway, so I started parking it on the street, which is a slight downhill. No more problems!
But, lately (about a month, or 300 miles or so), the car has been hesitating randomly though consistently. engine light turns on when this happens. Took it to my shop. Codes said it was missing on all cylinders. He put in some Octane Boost and sent me on my way. It helped a bit, but not enough. I put in more after a fill-up. Still not helpful.
So, looked up what it could be, found out it might be the fuel pump or fuel filter. So I asked shop guy to replace them. Not too expensive, as the FF and FP are under a rear seat. Will pick up later and see if it helped. Mainly, I hope the compartment doesn’t smell too much like gasoline.
At least it won’t smell like electricity.
har!!
Working as a good as new!
And I’ll be able to get out of it if I drive into a lake.
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Oh, too soon?
Assuming you don’t blow 0.23 wine boy.
Well, I try not to. And I keep my ingestion down when I plan to drive.
And if I were a multi-millionaire, I’d hire someone to drive me, even if it was just around the corner to my other house. Shit, that is what golf carts are for.
I was surprised at the cost ($250), as I was seeing upwards of $1000 “average”. But my car’s FF and FP are pretty easy to get to, cuz Toyota (and older). I would have done it myself but there were electronics close to gas fumes. Someone else with their life on the line was better for me.
So, is Stellantis’s strategy basically to markup the 
out of their cars and hope that enough people buy them who don’t notice/don’t know how to negotiate?
Um, maybe?
I am not in the market for a car, and if I were, I would not look at any Stellantis car.