The Democrat Utopia

[BigRedBuster]

6 minutes ago, DevoHusker said:

 

I agree we will have to wait to see how it shakes out. But it is still news. Here are some alternative sources. 

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/10/politics/fani-willis-divorce-supoena/index.html

 

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/lawyer-hired-to-prosecute-trump-in-georgia-scrutinized-over-relationship-with-fani-willis-7ba211de

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/10/fani-willis-subpoenaed-divorce-case-wade-special-prosecutor-trump

 

https://nypost.com/2024/01/10/news/nathan-wade-left-ex-wife-to-struggle-financially-while-he-allegedly-splurged-on-lavish-trips-with-fani-willis-court-docs/

 

 

I have no clue if any of this is true.  But, for argument's sake, let's assume that it is true.

 

How does this negatively affect their case against Trump?

[ZRod]

Just now, BigRedBuster said:

I have no clue if any of this is true.  But, for argument's sake, let's assume that it is true.

 

How does this negatively affect their case against Trump?

It doesn't. It's just bad optics.

[DevoHusker]

45 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

I have no clue if any of this is true.  But, for argument's sake, let's assume that it is true.

 

How does this negatively affect their case against Trump?

I agree with @ZRod

Impropriety isn't against the law, but doesn't help their case 

[nic]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/business/hertz-tesla-selling/index.html

 

Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it’s time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

[RedDenver]

2 hours ago, nic said:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/business/hertz-tesla-selling/index.html

 

Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it’s time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

This is Democrat Utopia or did you put this in the wrong thread?

[ZRod]

2 hours ago, RedDenver said:

This is Democrat Utopia or did you put this in the wrong thread?

Because them stupid librards EVs are failing!!! 

 

 

5 hours ago, nic said:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/business/hertz-tesla-selling/index.html

 

Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it’s time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

The issue isn't EVs, it's that Hertz is still run by idiots and the majority of their EV fleet are Teslas. Tesla is also run by an idiot. Their cars are notoriously expensive to maintain and repair because papa Elon hasn't figured out how to make spair parts for service like a real OEM, and he will only let Tesla certified shops work on the vehicles. Also, Tesla quality is notoriously bad. They pulled out of the JD Powers survey a year or 2 ago because they were going to be dead last in initial quality.

 

Hertz tried to corner a niche market for Tesla fanbois and it failed. It wasn't a smart business move to begin with, but it made for good publicity right out of bankruptcy with Tommy in the commercials.

 

Bonus edit: I also forgot to mention that Tesla is, or is about to be, under investigation by NHTSA for failure of their front control arms and other suspension components. They issued recalls in China, but not the US, and the federal government wants to know why.

[RedDenver]

18 hours ago, ZRod said:

Because them stupid librards EVs are failing!!! 

 

 

The issue isn't EVs, it's that Hertz is still run by idiots and the majority of their EV fleet are Teslas. Tesla is also run by an idiot. Their cars are notoriously expensive to maintain and repair because papa Elon hasn't figured out how to make spair parts for service like a real OEM, and he will only let Tesla certified shops work on the vehicles.

Agreed. Tesla's lack of third-party shops doing repairs is a giant issue.

 

As for Hertz, it's also simply that rental cars are regularly turned over. Hertz is just selling off cars it bought a few years ago. It's interesting that they aren't buying more EV's to replace the ones they are selling but not really much of an indicator of anything.

 

18 hours ago, ZRod said:

Also, Tesla quality is notoriously bad. They pulled out of the JD Powers survey a year or 2 ago because they were going to be dead last in initial quality.

I see this sentiment on the internet a lot, and as an owner of a Tesla I have to push back on it. I have a 2021 Model Y and it's just as high quality as the Honda and Toyota vehicles I've owned. Maybe I just got lucky, but IMO the Tesla quality issues seem overblown. And JD Powers is nonsense and no one should bother with it.

[ZRod]

3 hours ago, RedDenver said:

Agreed. Tesla's lack of third-party shops doing repairs is a giant issue.

 

As for Hertz, it's also simply that rental cars are regularly turned over. Hertz is just selling off cars it bought a few years ago. It's interesting that they aren't buying more EV's to replace the ones they are selling but not really much of an indicator of anything.

 

I see this sentiment on the internet a lot, and as an owner of a Tesla I have to push back on it. I have a 2021 Model Y and it's just as high quality as the Honda and Toyota vehicles I've owned. Maybe I just got lucky, but IMO the Tesla quality issues seem overblown. And JD Powers is nonsense and no one should bother with it.

Even the worst manufacturers still build good cars on their assembly lines, they just build more turds per thousand than the other guys. JD Powers is the industry standard, so not really nonsense. Every OEM in the US referencs it for how they are performing and what needs to improve. To finish dead last is f#&%ing awful. Usually you find Jaguar and Range Rover towards the bottom and your Asian OEMs closer to the top for a reason.

[RedDenver]

Just now, ZRod said:

Even the worst manufacturers still build good cars on their assembly lines, they just build more turds than the other guys. JD Powers is the industry standard, so not really nonsense. Every OEM in the US referencs it for how they are performing and what needs to improve. To finish dead last is f#&%ing awful. Usually you find Jaguar and Range Rover towards the bottom and your Asian OEMs closer to the top for a reason.

JD Power makes its money from the same companies they are rating. There's a not too surprising correlation between the brands that pay them and the top brands on their lists. Plus the awards are based on customer surveys, so how JD Power defines "quality" and the way they ask the questions has a huge influence on what the results look like. I searched around a bit and couldn't find the questions for the Initial Quality Survey, which makes it very hard to judge the value of the questions even before considering the segment of people surveyed.

[ZRod]

3 hours ago, RedDenver said:

JD Power makes its money from the same companies they are rating. There's a not too surprising correlation between the brands that pay them and the top brands on their lists. Plus the awards are based on customer surveys, so how JD Power defines "quality" and the way they ask the questions has a huge influence on what the results look like. I searched around a bit and couldn't find the questions for the Initial Quality Survey, which makes it very hard to judge the value of the questions even before considering the segment of people surveyed.

So, as a consumer who doesn't have access to the data I understand why you might be skeptical; but as someone who works in the industry and sees a detailed breakdown of the results each year it's not just some pay for play scheme. It's real data with legitimate customer complaints and problems. Everything from factory defects to designs that the customer doesn't like (inside and out).

 

Almost every known OEM sold in the US participates. There is no favoritism as American OEMs are routinely blasted by customers when they're bad, and everyone uses the data ad benchmarking to show where they need to focus their efforts going forward.

[RedDenver]

4 hours ago, ZRod said:

So, as a consumer who doesn't have access to the data I understand why you might be skeptical; but as someone who works in the industry and sees a detailed breakdown of the results each year it's not just some pay for play scheme. It's real data with legitimate customer complaints and problems. Everything from factory defects to designs that the customer doesn't like (inside and out).

 

Almost every known OEM sold in the US participates. There is no favoritism as American OEMs are routinely blasted by customers when they're bad, and everyone uses the data ad benchmarking to show where they need to focus their efforts going forward.

None of that makes the JD Power rankings any more believable or unbiased. Their surveys can both be useful for improving your product while also having biased rankings based on the surveys. Never trust any ranking where the people making the list have a vested interest in the result. JD Power isn't going to lose money when they can tweak the questions, the weighting, the included survey takers, etc to make more money.

[ZRod]

10 hours ago, RedDenver said:

None of that makes the JD Power rankings any more believable or unbiased. Their surveys can both be useful for improving your product while also having biased rankings based on the surveys. Never trust any ranking where the people making the list have a vested interest in the result. JD Power isn't going to lose money when they can tweak the questions, the weighting, the included survey takers, etc to make more money.

 The only bias would be customers having problems with their vehicles or not liking certain aspects of it. There is no weighting or tweaking, it's problems reported per thousand. The people are selected at random, it's a standardized survey form, and there needs to be at least (I think) 100 surveys return to evaluate the product.

 

It's not some pay to play or pay to win scheme. The OEMs only pay to see the data, and if they win an award they pay to be able to "display" the award in their adds.

[RedDenver]

4 hours ago, ZRod said:

 The only bias would be customers having problems with their vehicles or not liking certain aspects of it. There is no weighting or tweaking, it's problems reported per thousand. The people are selected at random, it's a standardized survey form, and there needs to be at least (I think) 100 surveys return to evaluate the product.

There are tons of ways to bias surveys. One example is question dilution where you ask a lot of questions in a category if you know/suspect one of them will get low marks and the other questions will do better. Another is question elimination where you drop a question from the final results if you don't like the responses. Another is question modification where you ask the question in several ways and then use the one that performs they way you want in the final survey. Another is weighting the impact of the questions when combining them to create the ranking. Etc., etc.

 

And you just have to trust JD Power that the people are selected randomly, which given the lack of transparency and invested interest in the results is pretty naive.

 

4 hours ago, ZRod said:

It's not some pay to play or pay to win scheme. The OEMs only pay to see the data, and if they win an award they pay to be able to "display" the award in their adds.

So what happens if JD Power ranks a company highly that doesn't pay to market the award - like Tesla? JD Power loses money they would have gotten. That's the most obvious conflict of interest. There's also the indirect one where they don't want to piss off the OEMs paying for their data. If you don't think conflicts of interests affect business decisions and therefore work product, I don't know what to tell you. Believe what you want.

[teachercd]

This is why you should not put any stock into polls.  lots of manipulation from everyone.  

 

Polls and surveys were clickbait before clickbait.  

[ZRod]

1 hour ago, RedDenver said:

There are tons of ways to bias surveys. One example is question dilution where you ask a lot of questions in a category if you know/suspect one of them will get low marks and the other questions will do better. Another is question elimination where you drop a question from the final results if you don't like the responses. Another is question modification where you ask the question in several ways and then use the one that performs they way you want in the final survey. Another is weighting the impact of the questions when combining them to create the ranking. Etc., etc.

 

And you just have to trust JD Power that the people are selected randomly, which given the lack of transparency and invested interest in the results is pretty naive.

 

So what happens if JD Power ranks a company highly that doesn't pay to market the award - like Tesla? JD Power loses money they would have gotten. That's the most obvious conflict of interest. There's also the indirect one where they don't want to piss off the OEMs paying for their data. If you don't think conflicts of interests affect business decisions and therefore work product, I don't know what to tell you. Believe what you want.

You're literally talking out your a$$. The quality numbers are plane and simple the number of issues reported by the customer. That's it. There's no weighting and no bias. I see the data every year as part of my job.

 

It's pretty obvious there's no fudging the data. Ford got hammered sometime back when they had a bunch of new vehicle launches. Jeep got their a$$ kicked with the new Grand Cherokee. Dodge and Ram end up being tops last year because they have some extremely old products that have had a decade to work out problems. Foreign companies routinely end up at the top and have been toping luxury segments too as if late.

 

Not sure why you're so distrustful. If there were funny businesses you'd see people dropping out left and right as well as lawsuits.