People Will Do What's Best for Themselves

From January: EVs pile up in China (Globe and Mail)

5½ years ago we bought the Toyota RAV4 hybrid. We're very happy with its reliability and fuel economy, as well as its 400-mile range on a full tank. The car's emissions are not zero as they are with EV's (this is not the time to get into the debate about lifetime pollution, which includes manufacturing and disposal); let's just say that the hybrid trade-offs were optimal for this consumer.

Apparently many other consumers feel the same way. The production of electric vehicles has far outstripped demand. EVs are piling up on dealers' lots.

As recently as a year ago, automakers were struggling to meet the hot demand for electric vehicles. In a span of months, though, the dynamic flipped, leaving them hitting the brakes on what for many had been an all-out push toward an electric transformation.

A confluence of factors had led many auto executives to see the potential for a dramatic societal shift to electric cars: government regulations, corporate climate goals, the rise of Chinese EV makers, and Tesla’s stock valuation, which, at roughly $600 billion, still towers over the legacy car companies.

But the push overlooked an important constituency: the consumer.

The last laugh goes to Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda, who has repeatedly said that hybrids are superior to EVs.

“People are finally seeing reality,” said Toyota Motor Chairman Akio Toyoda. For years, Toyota and other EV-cautious carmakers had been touting hybrids as a consumer-friendly way to reduce carbon emissions.

Fortunately, America is not yet a command economy like the late lamentable Soviet Union, which produced a glut of low-quality shoes and cars. Eventually consumer preferences win out.

Worn Out

While shopping in San Bruno, I was ticketed for an unreadable license plate (picture, right). The plate is perfectly decipherable to human eyes, but traffic scanners have trouble discerning it.

I wrote a letter contesting the $50 fine. Not only did I point out that I didn't see(!) the problem, I also noted that the Camry had been parked outdoors for 16 years.

Any degradation in the license plate had to be due to wear and tear from exposure to the elements, and surely the law didn't mean to fine us folks who couldn't afford a garage or car port. The pity-me social-justice-y argument didn't work, and a harshly worded notice for $50 arrived four months later.

So I paid up.
1) Saving $50 wasn't worth pursuing the matter.
2) I did feel sorry for San Bruno. The plague of homelessness, drug use, and property crime has spread south from San Francisco, and SB is feeling financial pressure.

Later a Foster City cop pulled me over with a warning that the license plate was unreadable. At the DMV the cost of replacement plates was $22, under the condition that I give the old ones back.

The only advice I have after all this is to pick your fights with City Hall, because most of them aren't worth the price.

Junk Thoughts

The odometer at 27 years--220,044 miles

Although I posted about it in 2018, today is the fifth anniversary of scrapping our 1990 Toyota Camry Wagon (that's September 27, 2017 for the chronologically challenged). The car had given us 27 years of service and 220,000 miles.

The Camry was breaking down every week, and repairs couldn't be justified under any set of cost-benefit assumptions. Luckily, California's clunker buy-back program was paying owners to take old cars off the road.

The requirements were that the car be operating, be at least 22 years old, and pass a visual inspection (for example, minimum of one headlight, one taillight and one brake light). Provided I could drive it to the Buyback scrapyard, the BAAQMD [Bay Area Air Quality Management District] would pay me $1,000.

Just behind the stacks of tires and rusted autos.

The junkyard had been there for decades. It was adjacent to East Palo Alto marsh land, land once considered hostile to development.

Now the land would be worth many millions of dollars to home builders because of the Bay setting and proximity to tech employers.

The marsh land was now an open space preserve and will, along with the junkyard, likely remain unchanged.

Based on past patters of ownership, I'll be back around 2045 when it comes time to scrap our two cars (mfg 2018 and 2019). Governor Newsom, who banned the sale of gas-powered automobiles after 2034, will undoubtedly be disappointed in us bitter-clingers, but since there's no room in my retirement fund for a Tesla I'll have to live with his disapproval.

Inconvenient Encounter

She said that all her damage was new. I was
skeptical, but it was irrelevant to our case.

Yesterday I got into a very minor fender bender. A 72-year-old lady backed into my car as I was driving by her Toyota sedan in a parking lot. No one was hurt.

She seemed more rattled than I, so I hid my disgust (not at her, but at the situation), and described what we should do. We took pictures of each other’s driver’s licenses, insurance cards, and damage and exchanged phone numbers. Her car (top) fared worse than mine (bottom).

Two hours later she texted me that her insurance company judged that she was 100% at fault and that she would pay for everything. I reported the accident to my own company, which agreed with the assessment.

My car: paint came off.

Not long ago the two parties would have looked at the damage and likely settled off the books. She would have claimed responsibility, and if she gave me $200 cash that would have been the end of it. Neither of us would tell our insurance companies. I probably wouldn't even have bothered to take the car in, just buy some paint and touch up the black spots to prevent rust down the line. It would be up to her to take care of her own car.

In our hyper legalistic society we have a fear of deviating from procedures, and we were both stuck doing it the long way. It will be a hassle to take the car to a body shop, get an estimate, report back to her insurance company, then get the scratches repaired.

This is precisely the sort of incident that will upset my lizard brain for weeks. Rationally, this is just an inconvenience that should be dismissed as immaterial. Let's hope rationality wins.

OK, Don't Listen to the Car Guy Who 's in the Top Two

Green enough: our 2018 RAV4 hybrid has a range of 400 mi.

In a largely overlooked speech from last December Toyota President Akio Toyoda derided the"excessive hype" over electric vehicles: [bold added]

advocates failed to consider the carbon emitted by generating electricity and the costs of an EV transition.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda said Japan would run out of electricity in the summer if all cars were running on electric power. The infrastructure needed to support a fleet consisting entirely of EVs would cost Japan between ¥14 trillion and ¥37 trillion, the equivalent of $135 billion to $358 billion, he said...

In a country such as Japan that gets most of its electricity from burning coal and natural gas, EVs don’t help the environment, Mr. Toyoda said. “The more EVs we build, the worse carbon dioxide gets,” he said.

He said he feared government regulations would make cars a “flower on a high summit”—out of reach for the average person.

With models like the Prius, Toyota is a leader in hybrid cars, which combine a gasoline engine with an electric motor and can be refueled at traditional gas stations. It doesn’t sell pure battery EVs for the mass market in the U.S. or Japan, although it does have a model that runs on a hydrogen-powered fuel cell.

California has banned the sale of gasoline-powered cars after 2035. Also, California EV's will charge overnight using electricity from renewable sources, which are planned to power 100% of the grid by 2045. Therefore, the thinking goes, that unlike Japan recharging car batteries overnight will not cause CO2 emissions to spike.

Your humble blogger believes that 100% dependence on solar and wind power is nuts. Single sourcing of electricity and transportation systems should not be on notoriously unsteady renewable energy, especially during extreme weather events that knocked out power during the California wildfires and the Texas freeze.

Battery technology is improving rapidly, but it's not at the point where we can pull the plug on the oil and gas that run the vast majority of our cars and power plants. (For an example of how well government predicts construction of technologically advanced infrastructure, see California's high-speed rail fiasco.)

Well, there's no need for me to get worked up. When the conversion happens, I'll either be dead, too old to drive, or too addled to care.

Deferred Gratification: One Key to Happiness

My lifelong cheapness frugality, besides helping augment the retirement nest egg, has another benefit, as noted in 2013 when the 35-year-old furnace was replaced.

technology is advancing at such a rapid rate that the replacement unit, even one with just average features, is leaps and bounds ahead of the unit that it replaced. The new system is cleaner, quieter, and much more energy efficient. It has an electronic ignition, i.e., no pilot light.

We've encountered the replacement-is-so-much-better-than-the-original phenomenon when we junked our 18-year-old unfixable car in favor of a hybrid.

Even small items like electrical outlets (pictured) are much improved. The replacement to a 30-year part that had become loose had more secure grounding screws, an LED power-detection light, and USB-A and USB-C slots to charge cellphones and tablets.

Today's wisdom: there is happiness in being able to fix things oneself and, when replacement is finally necessary, happiness in marveling at how the new one is so much better. (Note: this does NOT apply to relationships.)

Fool's Gold

Virtue Signaling:

To take a conspicuous but essentially useless action ostensibly to support a good cause but actually to show off how much more moral you are than everybody else.

The opposite of the Biblical admonition to be virtuous in secret, virtue-signalers crave social approbation by being visible: [bold added]

In 2011, the economists behind Freakonomics ran a story about the research of Steve and Alison Sexton. They wondered why it was that the Toyota Prius was designed to be such a distinctive-looking automobile. As it turns out, the unique look was no accident. The Sextons found that, in particularly conservation-conscious areas of the country, people were willing to pay as much as $4200 more for a recognizably “green” car.

"Hybrid"; barely noticeable

When we were shopping for a fuel-efficient vehicle last year, we did look at the Prius. It was too small for our needs, but the negative deciding factor was that being seen in one is strongly suggestive of agreeing with the dominant group's politics in the Bay Area.

We settled on a RAV4 Hybrid, which looks the same as a regular RAV4 save for the small sign in the rear. We're averaging 30+ MPG overall and are very happy with the purchase.

While I was working, it was sometimes necessary to make purchases solely to keep up appearances. No longer--trying to win others' approval through their notions of virtuosity is Fool's Gold.

Good to Go

An uprooted metal bolt in a parking lot tore the splash shield under the 2004 Camry. I reported the damage to the attendant, but it was obvious that being able to recover repair costs would take a long time, if I were lucky.

When fixing a car worth a few thousand dollars, one has to take into account not only the instant cost but the probability of future repairs as well as the remaining useful life of the car.

The splash shield isn't as critical as the engine or transmission, but dragging the splash shield until it fell off didn't appear safe.

This is admittedly a personal failing: I refuse to spend a couple of hundred dollars on labor to replace a $40 part on a car that's good for maybe another two years. So I spent the afternoon under the engine, duct-taping the splash shields together. The tape should hold for a few months.

It's not pretty, but no one's looking under the vehicle. We're good to go.

Friday in San Bruno

Dropping off the Car
Having disposed of the 1997 Dodge Caravan in 2015, I hadn't seen Jack, our trustworthy mechanic, for at least three years. When I drove up in the 2004 Camry, he instantly placed me: "How's the van?" Well, I had to junk it because problems were occurring nearly every month. Re the Camry: he wouldn't be able to get to it till the late afternoon, even for routine maintenance. No problem, I could hang out at the mall.

The Wait for Plates
The dealer where we bought a Toyota RAV4 was a quarter-mile away, and it was my first stop after Jack's repair shop. After two months we still had not gotten the license plates. We had bought four new cars over the years, and the wait for plates had always been less than 30 days. Of course, those experiences were all in the previous century. The dealer told us that receiving the plates from the Department of Motor Vehicles can now take up to 90 days. As we've written before, if the DMV is an example of our government at work, why in the world are so many people eager to embrace socialism, where we would have DMV-like grocery stores, hospitals, farms, airlines, etc.?

The Panhandlers
The female panhandler was ensconced at the median strip by a stoplight on El Camino Real. She was of indeterminate age; years of hard living on the streets wore her body down. She darted across the street, trying unsuccessfully to avoid a police van. The two officers grabbed her brown paper bag, and after sniffing its contents, poured the liquid on to the sidewalk. They continued to talk to her as I walked past; my guess is that they weren't going to arrest her but try to chase her out of San Bruno.

Two other panhandlers were seated by the freeway exit ramp by the shopping center. Both middle-aged, the Asian man and the Caucasian woman did not appear to be a couple but chatted like they knew each other. They were dressed neatly but inexpensively and appeared to practice better hygiene than most homeless whom I have observed (indeed, they may not have been homeless). In fact, in my worn jeans, flannel shirt, and Nikes I could have fit right in with them. We avoided eye contact, and they didn't approach during the four minutes it took the light to change. When the walk signal came on, I handed them each $20, much to their surprise. I like giving money to non-aggressive panhandlers and do enjoy confounding expectations.

The shopping center was built on the Tanforan Park racetrack.

At the Mall
Several homeless people wandered the Food Court. One went upstairs and, after shouting for a while, assaulted a worker at Burger King. Three security officers eventually subdued and carried him from the building.

A pretty blond girl sat at a nearby table and was engrossed in her phone. A non-white man (I could be but won't be more specific) approached her and asked if she would come with him. She politely declined, and he went away. A few minutes later, she got up and left, too.

Picking Up the Car
The Camry was ready at 4 o'clock. Jack looked tired. I asked him how long he planned to keep the business going. This stretch of San Bruno Avenue is pretty run down, I said, and given the development occurring all over the Peninsula the whole area could change in the next ten years. Everything's so expensive, he said, the taxes and regulations are killing him, and two houses on his block sold for over $1.2 million! Are you thinking of leaving the Bay Area? Not just the Bay Area, California.

Plenty Luxurious

After eleven months (see yesterday's post) the experiment had run its course. The scheduling conflicts with only one car became too demanding, especially with more frequent solo overnight trips to the Central Valley and Southland.

We bought a compact SUV, a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid. With 400,000 sold last year in the U.S. and with the base model priced under $25,000, the RAV4 isn't a luxury car. But it was plenty luxurious enough for me.

Most of these optional features didn't exist anywhere
when we bought our Toyota Camry wagon in 1990.

We selected most of the available options (we've reached an age where deferred gratification is not of paramount importance). Not knowing what most of the options actually were, we just didn't want to take the chance that we'd need them later.

Hybrid drivers I've spoken to like the lower carbon emissions and energy costs that accompany fuel efficiency. I like the increased range, i.e., not having to stop for gas on a trip to LA or a round trip to Sacramento.

It may be a subconscious attempt to avoid post-purchase cognitive dissonance, but after only a few days I'm happy we got this car.

The old car's dashboard was lit up while driving--one reason to get rid of it.

The new car's dashboard is lit up on purpose

[Update - 8/25]: Farewell to the Family Sedan

Sedans, long a symbol of the American open road, are fading in the rearview mirror. In an industry-altering shift, millions of drivers have made what seems to be a complete embrace of sport-utility vehicles...

Owners are less concerned with the shape of the sheet metal or what’s under the hood than they are with how many people their vehicles can transport, or how much sports gear or home-remodeling supplies they can put into the rear hatch. “It’s all about activity today, rather than elegance or performance.”

...parents are putting new drivers in SUVs for safety reasons. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has said that “bigger, heavier vehicles are safer” because they “protect better in a crash.” In recent years, the nonprofit group has advised parents against putting their teens in small cars, long the predominant first set of wheels for young drivers.

All Systems Fail

Still looks OK, but appearances are deceiving.

Last September, like they do with people, multiple systems failed on the 1990 Toyota Camry Wagon. The rack-and-pinion steering made a clunking sound, the battery drained whether or not the car was running (I had to disconnect the battery every night and plug in the recharger), and horsepower was off noticeably.

The car's value was only a few hundred dollars, and it would cost $thousands to fix. It was time to take it to the scrapyard.

The Peninsula's buyback location.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has a Vehicle BuyBack Program to get polluting cars off the road. The requirements were that the car be operating, be at least 22 years old, and pass a visual inspection (for example, minimum of one headlight, one taillight and one brake light). Provided I could drive it to the Buyback scrapyard, the BAAQMD would pay me $1,000.

I did, and they did.

Now that I'm retired, this was a good time to find out whether and how long our two-car family can downsize to one vehicle. (We went nearly a year but finally had to obtain a second car this month.)

Overblown

The WSJ’s influential tech columnist, Walt Mossberg, gives a qualified endorsement to the iPhone 4 after a six-week personal testing period. Excerpts:

After my six weeks of constant use of two iPhone 4s, I still believe it is, overall, the best device in its class, for reasons including its ultra high-resolution screen; easy, integrated video calling; slick software; strong battery life; a remarkably thin body; and a world-beating selection of 225,000 third-party apps.

…touching the hot spot doesn't always ruin the call, even if it lowers the number of bars. In several cases, when I was already on a call with three or four bars showing, I deliberately covered the hot spot with my hand, and the call continued normally, strong and clear, even though the bars dropped to one or two.

I also spent a few days testing the "bumper" case Apple is now giving away to every iPhone 4 user. It greatly reduced what call problems I experienced, even in weak areas, though it didn't entirely eliminate dropped calls, which occur even in good coverage.

A key reason Apple moved most of the antenna to the outside of the phone was to free up room inside for a larger battery, while keeping the phone thin. In my six weeks of experience, the battery life has been outstanding. I have never run out of battery in a day's use, despite constant, heavy email traffic, lots of Web surfing and app usage, and frequent checking of social networks.

So that's my six-week, real-world report. Despite the hot-spot issue and the exposed antenna, the iPhone 4 does better than the 3GS for me in decent coverage. But I still wouldn't advise adopting it as your primary phone if you live, work or travel in areas with poor AT&T reception, or if you prefer a network under less stress.

Walt Mossberg’s assessment seems consistent with that of four other iPhone 4 users whom I’ve spoken to. The whole antenna-attenuation controversy now appears grossly overblown, as was the unintended acceleration of Toyotas and even (can it really be true?) the damage from the BP oil spill.

Were I suspicious and not the trusting soul that I am, I might attribute the media piling-on to: 1) lawyers in search of big payoffs from class-action lawsuits; 2) those who want more government control or oversight (which term one uses betrays one’s philosophical leanings) of the economy; 3) reporters in search of the next bleeding lede. Because I know from TV crime shows that businessmen are the bad guys (but not public-interest lawyers, regulators, and newspeople) there must be another explanation for all this emotion-stirring. Not to worry, I am sure reporters will ferret out the truth. © 2010 Stephen Yuen

[Afterthought: if the oil-spill turns out to be not so bad, that might help President Obama, who had been severely criticized for his inaction. He's a deliberator, not a ditherer! On the other hand, why continue the moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf? It's a puzzlement.]