I was surprised to read the headline because this is going in a different direction than most car companies. For example, VW, Ford, GM, and others have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago. They discovered that most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them, and the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
Then I read the key quote and realized that Toyota isn't transforming the Corolla into an electric vehicle. They're simply going to offer an electric option. That's much less of an interesting headline, which explains why it wasn't chosen.
> “Whether it’s a battery EV, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, or internal combustion engine vehicle―whatever the power source―let’s make good-looking cars that everyone will want to drive!” Toyota’s CEO said at the Japan Mobility Show.
> For example, VW, Ford, GM, and others have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago. They discovered that most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them, and the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
I don't think that's a fair assessment of the EV market, which continues to grow, albeit slowly, in the US and much faster elsewhere. At best it is constrained to the US car market where the government has been yanking incentives, tariffs, and emissions requirements back and forth recently, providing an unstable market for manufacturers to invest in.
Some brands put together EV models that were inherently unprofitable, and hoped that incentives and scale would save them, mainly Ford. Ford is currently investing a lot into building their next-gen EV platforms which should be both more affordable and profitable. GM has not cancelled any EV models that I'm aware of, except the Bolt which is planned to be replaced by a new affordable EV model in a similar market slot.
VW is introducing a lot of new EV models in Europe and other markets, but not so much in the US where policy has us a less favorable market for them.
Toyota + Subaru have introduced multiple refreshed or brand new EV-only models over the last year including in the US.
And of course China is going crazy for EVs with many competing domestic manufacturers, a full battery supply chain, and many affordable models to pick from.
And the last criticism is particularly silly. Do you need several hours to charge an electric car? Yes you do. Do cars spend most of their time parked in one place? You bet they do!
Like most people, my car is used for not just my regular trips around town, which I can certainly charge overnight no problem and be fine. My car is also used for the longer road trips.
It is 300 miles to my mom's house. Some electric cars could just make that in perfect conditions but give me a headwind or a cold day both of which happen once in a while and I can't make 300 miles on a charge and I will have to stop in the middle. At that point a fast charge is required. It is not acceptable to say I have to stop somewhere that I don't want to be for many hours to charge my car to get it the rest of the way. That is a trip where, if you have to make it, there isn't a better option. Flying would be even longer than driving by the time I get to the airport and rent a car on the far end, not to mention a lot more expensive.
At least in the U.S. it is very common for people to make a one or two thousand mile trip once a year for vacation. Particularly if you have a family, flying is not a reasonable cost and so you'll take those several days of driving to save money. Those road trips also let you stop someplace and see some weird small-town exhibit which is fun in its own way
> Do you need several hours to charge an electric car? Yes you do.
No you don't. 20 minutes at a DCFC will get you to at least 80% for most EVs.
You need several hours to charge it at home, but it's gonna be at home for several hours anyways. With an L2 charger, you can go from 0-100% overnight.
But some people here claim that you don't need a charger at home to have an electric vehicle. That's equally silly, but in the opposite direction. If you don't have a charger at home or work, your experience with an EV will generally be quite subpar.
> let’s make good-looking cars that everyone will want to drive!
This is a very unfortunate goal for Toyota specifically to have. I am extremely loyal to driving late 90s/early 2000s toyotas (I have owned at various points a 1997 corolla, a 1999 camry, and a 2000 tundra, and my daily driver today is such a car as well), due to them being extremely cost effective and also extremely reliable. A well-maintained, or even moderately maintained, late 90s/early 2000s Toyota car is, in my experience, almost as reliable as a new car that costs 4x+ the price, and it has the benefit of much less DRM, spyware, and other software bullshit, as well as being much easier to repair. I am also unaware of any modern car that is remotely like this, as well as unaware of any electric car that is remotely like this, except maybe Slate (though this is not available yet, so I am withholding judgement until I can see 3rd party reviews and maybe try one).
But, to summarize, I really like some of Toyota's old work for intensely practical reasons, and I think that this is a gap in the market of cars manufactured today (someone please tell me I am wrong by pointing to a good option on these criteria, preferably an EV!), and I couldn't give a rat's ass about the car being "good-looking", so it's unfortunate (though not surprising) that Toyota is deeming that their goal.
Toyota, like many companies that succeed based on merits beyond the aesthetic, secretly dreams of being an aesthetics-first company like, say, Porche or Ferrari, and always tries their hardest to reject reality so that they can do the sexy-but-awful thing instead of the amazing-but-ugly thing.
You see this recently over the last couple years in tech where everyone is "an AI company" even when they make something totally unrelated - same impulse, different industry.
The problem with our economy is basically wealth concentration, partly funded by central banks and partly by lack of billionaire taxation. In a traditional economy, money was meant to always flow circularly, throughout the whole economy. Rich people could exist, but they could only exist by commanding a large upward flow of money from poor/middle people, so they had to offer something really good in return. These days the money mostly circulates between different rich people with only some loss back down to the poorer classes, so to get money they have to impress other rich people instead of poorer people. Companies who go full AI don't attract customers (unless B2B), they attract investors because the investors have all the money and the customers don't.
Yep, the only thing I love about newer cars are dynamic cruise/lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring, and memory seats. Cars from 20 years ago had better controls and were likely cheaper to repair in most cases.
> For example, VW, … have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago
> most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them
You should really reconsider where you get your information from.
“Volkswagen reported more than 70,000 orders for its new Electric Urban Car Family within just a few weeks, while European BEV orders increased by more than 50% in Q2.”
America, where they are pulling models. I have PHEVs and enjoy them, but I am aware that many people are not going to buy EVs with their current specs. Either they live somewhere cold, where range will fluctuate and not be sufficient at times of the year, or they live somewhere that has power outages frequently enough (or at times of emergency) that they do not consider pure EVs. This is especially true for people with only one car. Families that have multiple cars are obviously more open to having one car that's an EV.
EVs are actually great during power outages. Many have power outlets so you can run your fridge, charge devices, etc. while the power is out. Any gas station without its own backup generator will be unable to pump gas during an outage.
If you have home charging, it's more likely that you'll have a mostly full battery than that the power outage will occur when you have a mostly full tank of gas.
It's a bit more work and expense but some EVs can even act as automatic or manual whole-home power backups.
Unless you live somewhere that regularly loses power for a week+, an EV might actually be a net benefit.
I looked into this and discovered that most EVs don't support it, and the ones that do require even more electrical retrofitting to make it possible.
The people I know who are afraid of outages/EV usage are ones in CA, where an earthquake could knock out power, and they'd need to go a very long distance to get somewhere safe/stable.
Norway is a small country and most people are not making long distance trips there. Despite being far and far north, they're also close to water and so large parts of the country have a much milder climate than you would expect for their latitude.
Don't get me wrong. The electric cars work just fine in cold weather. As long as your trip isn't too long. I however discovered the hard way last winter about a week after I got my electric car that when the weather is below zero Fahrenheit it gets about half the expected range and I had a trip that was just a little bit over half the expected range - I'm lucky there was a slow charger along that trip, there were no fast chargers anywhere along the route. (An hour charge over lunch got me the 10 extra miles I needed to get home - I didn't eat at my first choice but it worked)
Various OEMs have sort of soft-exited the US EV market, but that doesn't mean they're not offering the cars or stop development of them in other markets.
It just means the US market is too unattractive and low-volume for EVs that aren't a Tesla.
You are forgetting the elephant in the room: the charger at home and all the implications that brings in between costs and actual possibility of installation at all.
You don't need a home charger to enjoy driving an EV. A home charger is a bonus to driving an EV. Do you know anyone who has ever had a "home gas pump"?
Not to mention how many people sleep on Level 1 and Level 2 charging, which are cheap or cheap as free in many homes. (Garages have had electric outlets for a long time. Some have had "dryer plugs" for nearly as long, due to power tools one might own.) Trickle charging doesn't get you to 100% overnight, but no one drives on a 100% full gas tank every morning either.
>Do you know anyone who has ever had a "home gas pump"?'
You know that's a bad faith argument. Facts are, EVs have friction and that holds back a lot of adoption, and pretending it isn't there isn't going to make it go away.
It's not a bad faith argument, it is comparing like for like. (Saying that it isn't like for like seems to me to be the more bad faith argument in 2026.) If I have a gas car with 300 miles of range I go about 297 miles safely between fill ups. If I have an EV car with 300 miles of range I can go about 297 miles safely between charges. Those are the same characteristics.
The part that isn't like for like sure is that there is an increased friction that even a "fast charger" can take a magnitude more time than a gas pump. But fast chargers are much safer and can be parallel tasked (running other errands while a charge happens) whereas gas is an explosive and requires diligent observation while refueling (despite how many people seem oblivious to all the warnings not to leave a refueling car unobserved and a long history of explosion statistics).
In my experience, fast charging time and lack of home charging ability (and under-estimation of Level 1/2 charging utility) feel like red herrings rather than actual issues. These things get talked about a lot, but the real world experience of them isn't the friction people believe it is. The biggest issues seem to be far more sociopolitical than technical to me. People have invested too much of their identities in gas. Entire political parties seem devoted to propping up gas sales for as long as possible.
It is definitely a bad faith argument. That is no friction point really that anyone considers a friction point. The charger situation though is real friction. Take yourself out of your own shoes. I will give you anecdata. I have a friend who bought a tesla with no way to charge it in their apartment. It just seems like such a pain in the ass. So many times they are on like 18% charge and wondering if the car is going to actually make it home. Or they will be about to go somewhere and realize the car isn't going to be charged enough so they call an uber. It is unreliable transport without having a home charger. A new chore you have to remember to do. A bit more mental load making that extra calculation every time you want to leave. Having to actually consider where there might be chargers that you can use and if you'd be able to reach them on your present charge.
Take all of that anecdata and replace a gas car and it is the exact same with the same mental load: I've been on 18% fuel tank and wondering if my car will actually make it home or stall out on the road. I've been about to go somewhere and realized my car isn't fueled and and called a taxi or a Lyft as faster than the detour to refuel my car.
"It's an unreliable transport without having a gas pump at home." That just sounds silly. Funnily enough that was exactly one of the early complaints of gas cars when electric cars were preferred in the very early days of cars. It was a complaint when gas pumps were rare and hard to find, or didn't exist at all yet and you were pulling gas canisters from the back of a pharmacy.
It's a more reliable transport than a gas car because I can charge at home. (I can't do that at all with gas.) It's a more reliable transport than a gas car because in a pinch I can find an outlet on the outside of my hotel and trickle charge enough to get me to the next charger. (When was the last time a hotel had canisters of gas just in case?) It's a more reliable transport than a gas car because I can find RV plugs in national parks and state parks and campgrounds far away from chargers and gas stations. (You ever see what you might get charged for a tow from a remote national park, even if that tow is just dropping off a canister of gas?)
The impression of the charger situation being more inconvenient than gas stations is already flipping and has room to flip a lot more, possibly surprisingly quickly, as gas prices rise and low margin gas pumps go out of business.
> I've been on 18% fuel tank and wondering if my car will actually make it home or stall out on the road. I've been about to go somewhere and realized my car isn't fueled and and called a taxi or a Lyft as faster than the detour to refuel my car.
Ridiculous, since there are gas stations all over and you can get 50 miles of range in 30 seconds, or 350 miles of range in 120 seconds. Even the fastest EVs (which are expensive and therefore not likely purchases for people who are on the fence about EVs in general) do not even come close.
The fastest are maybe 18 minutes from 10-80%, but most are 30-45 minutes (and that's only for 70% of the total range of the vehicle, whereas an ICE can be fully tanked up in 2 minutes.
That's the assumption, though. There aren't. There is an illusion of it, sure. I gave that anecdata from personal experience. It isn't "ridiculous", it's called having lived (and learned to drive) in rural Ohio.
Well, I've lived for several decades in several different states/regions, and in my experience, gas stations are all over. They even have signs on the highway when there's no gas for x miles ahead.
While there may be electricity everywhere, there certainly are not high-speed chargers in places where gas is even close to scarce.
Can you install it in your garage? Sure, if you've got the panel for it. But that's beside the point when we're talking about refueling on trips. That is, and will be for the foreseeable future, faster in an ICE. That's why we have PHEVs. Maintenance may be higher than an EV, but they're much better on road trips.
But electricity is not nonexistent. It's easier to run an EV in rural Ohio than a gas car because you can install a real nice charger in that huge garage you have or outside your big barn next to your gravel lot, whatever, you've got space and a grid connection. That's not currently the average mentality, but that returns us to the sociopolitics of rural Ohio and EV adoption in the US in general more than any of the technicalities.
I found some data from an auto insurance association.
In US urban areas the average car is only driven 6000 miles a year. That's 115 miles a week. Someone in an urban city would only need to charge every two weeks. Friend has a Chevy Bolt in SF he parks on the street. He says it's not a problem.
I also repeat myself but I've measured how long it take to gas up a car on road trips. It's usually around 10-15 minutes. Oh sure actually filling the car is quick. But you have to drive to the gas station, fill the car, drive away from the gas station.
>But you have to drive to the gas station, fill the car, drive away from the gas station.
Costs you also pay driving to the EV charging station. 10-15 mins really? Maybe if you are taking a poop or buying a sandwich. Usually on road trips gas stations are immediately off the freeway or at major crossroads of state or county roads. You aren't really detouring to get to them.
> You don't need a home charger to enjoy driving an EV. A home charger is a bonus to driving an EV.
I know precisely zero people who have EVs and do not charge them at home. The cost differential is enormous and completely changes the economics of cost per mile.
> Trickle charging doesn't get you to 100% overnight, but no one drives on a 100% full gas tank every morning either.
Sure, but a full gas tank gets you further than a full battery. We have friends with a long range Tesla that takes them days to charge on 120. Despite living in a city with many Teslas, and having an expensive home, apparently it would have cost too much for them to upgrade their panel to be able to charge faster. They are retired so can make do (and they have other cars that use gas).
I have an EV and can't charge at home (condo where cost to add a charger would be obscene). In 3 years there's been maybe 5 times where it's been a mild inconvenience. Which isn't nothing but a few hours of hassle is a pretty good price to pay for the thousands of dollars I've saved on fuel.
> I know precisely zero people who have EVs and do not charge them at home. The cost differential is enormous and completely changes the economics of cost per mile.
I know multiple people who have EVs and don't have a home charger, so do 90%+ of their charging at work. You're there 8+ hours a day anyway, and many workplaces provide free charging, so it ends up even cheaper than charging at home.
If you have a free work charger, that's almost as good as having charging at home. Most people do not have this, and even if you do then you would be SOL if you switch jobs.
> The cost differential is enormous and completely changes the economics of cost per mile.
Which is exactly the point and why it is a bonus. You can't do that with a gas car effectively or cheaply. You won't pay someone to come and install a gas service in your home or apartment with the express reason for fueling your car. That you can with an EV and would get a game changing efficiency and cost reduction is an incredible bonus.
> Sure, but a full gas tank gets you further than a full battery.
That seems to be less of a factor today. Most batteries have hit the same or more range as comparable gas vehicles.
Some EV models already have ~600 mile range which is double their gas counterparts.
> We have friends with a long range Tesla that takes them days to charge on 120.
Sure, but that's to 100%. You can drive a car with less than 100% battery. A 120v charge can add as much as 40-60 miles range overnight. That's an average person's regular commute. The car might "never" be at 100% if the 120v charge is all it ever gets, but for some people they might never need a fast charge in an average week or even month.
Ya that’s the big issues with EVs. It’s overblown in a lot of ways - it is, ultimately, just getting electricity where you park your car - but power at your overnight parking spot is a massive component of happy EV ownership and we’ve done almost nothing to help or even encourage that for apartment dwellers
Here in Norway condominiums and similar got incentives to install chargers at the shared parking areas.
Harder downtown where there's only street parking, some feaction has been converted to street charging spots by the municipality, but nit that many and pricing sucjs since you have to pay parking fee in addition to charging fee which is considerably higher than proper home charging would be.
From my coworker who had a BEV downtown, it cost about as much to charge per mile as gas, do became a wash.
For me that can charge at home it's a no-brainer, I pay like 15% per mile with pre-Hormuz gas prices, less than 10% per mile now.
Some people have to park on the street and therefore do not have anywhere to plug in anything. Also, some people park in apartment buildings where there are no outlets near many of the spots.
> the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
Would love a Toyota EV but usually for significantly less I can get a Toyota hybrid with more space. Both my partner's and my vehicles are Toyota hybrid crossovers but we looked for an EV first and realized we simply couldn't justify the extreme price difference for how little our cars are driven. Really hoping when our time for a new vehicle comes we can trade in both for one reasonably priced EV crossover - so hopefully the rest of the planet can continue pushing the EV market forward while the US lags way behind.
Yeah Toyota's PHEVs are quite nice, but the price premium is too much. It basically makes no sense unless you can charge for free at work, and even then you'd have to drive 50,000 miles before it pays off. If you're like most of us and you pay for electricity at home, the inflection point is even further out. How many people even keep cars for that long anymore?
I think the US is still pretty far from saturating the potential market of garage-owning car buyers with EVs, but that is a major hurdle for people who rent or street park and might be interested in saving gas money.
My electric panel is full. If I want to add an EV charger to my garage, I first have to replace the electric panel with a larger one. That’s minimum $5000 before I even get to the EV charger.
There are potentially options that could work for you, including:
1) Just charge from an existing 120V outlet. If you average under 50 miles of driving per day this might work just fine.
2) Reshuffle existing circuits to get even a 20A 240V circuit for charging. This provides more than double the charging you can get from a 15A 120V outlet and may be possible by combining some existing circuits with tandem breakers. A lot of electricians will just quote you on going straight to a 50A or 60A circuit, but most chargers are configurable to lower levels and it can save you a lot of money to stick to a smaller circuit.
3) Share a circuit with a dryer using a device that automatically switches power off to the car while the dryer is running, there are a few brands of these.
4) Get an EV charger that supports load management, using a current sensor on your main breaker. These can dynamically adjust how much current the car draws to avoid exceeding the max current of your panel.
5) Electric meter socket adapter, these connect between your utility's electric meter and its socket and provides an EV charging port that doesn't go through your household panel at all.
Can't you charge it from a wall outlet but slower (tier 1 charging)? If you have a dryer in your garage you can get a charger that plugs into that, taking turns with your dryer.
Technology Connections did a video essay on this and concluded that for most people, you get plenty of range for everyday use just by leaving it plugged into a normal socket overnight, and just occasionally using a supercharger when you're doing long trips. Of course if your commute is particularly long maybe this doesn't apply to you.
Range anxiety is definitely a real concern about switching to EV but apparently most people don't find it that bad once they actually get one. Besides, there won't be any gas soon anyway.
Depending on how much you drive per week, a 120V charger might be viable. My new house has the same problem (I'd have to upgrade the electric panel for my car due to its age), but I've been using the normal 120V charger to charge it, and haven't yet run into a case where I couldn't charge it enough.
Assuming you have a 200A service, you don’t need to replace your panel. You can remove two single pole breakers or one two pole breaker, install a 100A two pole breaker in the empty space, buy some 3/#1 copper SER cable (two hots and one neutral for 240/120V) and use it to feed a $125 100A load center without a main breaker.
You need to use #1 copper for a 100A subpanel, you can use 3/#2 aluminum cable for a 100A service entrance but there’s an exception that allows using wire rated at 83% of its ampacity for a service entrance conductor which does not apply for subpanels.
Refeed the two removed breakers out of the load center and add a 60A two pole breaker to feed the EV charger, if it’s a cord and plug charger that you plug into a NEMA 14-50R you’ll need a GFCI breaker, if it’s hardwired you don’t need a GFCI breaker.
The material can be purchased for less than $500 for this project, if you have to hire out the labor it’ll be considerably more expensive, I’d estimate one day for an electrician or around $1200-1800 depending on where you live.
I'm not sure why you got downvoted as I think you are mostly correct.
We've had an EV for 1.5 years and love it. In fact any time I'm in a gas-powered car it feels downright primitive with all the noises and smells and sluggish performance. The range anxiety we experienced at first has completely given way to it being awesome that I never have to stop at gas stations and don't have to waste time/money on oil changes.
But if we couldn't charge at home it would likely be more expensive to fuel than a gas car instead of being much cheaper (but this depends on your local electricity and gas prices).
However, I do think there is still a big pool in the US who haven't even ridden in one to know what they are missing. Americans have never let poor gas mileage stop them from buying a car (or truck) that is bigger or faster or somehow "better" than the economical choice.
It axed the F150 Lightning. They might have later announced that they're going to bring it back as an EREV (pretty much PHEV), but that seemed like a separate decision. If it were the same decision, they would have announced it at the time of the cancellation announcement, to make it seem more like a pivot.
The US does though. The f series is a very practical vehicle for a lot of people since it can do so much. It is a compromise but the negatives are not that great.
That’s actually old news they just announced the Ford Fathom, which is all electric and supposedly significantly cheaper than even the base model lightning.
Well, when they announced the Ford 150 Lightning, it was supposedly going to be quite inexpensive as well. Of course, by the time it actually came out, it was 2x or 3x the price that they had originally announced.
Historically most of these "Whether it’s a battery EV, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, or internal combustion engine vehicle―whatever the power source" platforms have been utter ICE-first EV-distant-fourth-priority shit shows. Most of the exceptions are rather expensive.
True, and it's especially interesting since Toyota I think offers some vehicles only as hybrids/PHEVs. For example, the Camry and RAV4 fall into this category, I think. It's deceptive because it makes it look like the RAV4 PHEV isn't that much more than the base model. But since the base model is already more expensive than an ICE would have been because it's a hybrid, this isn't the true differential between ICE and PHEV.
In general, they've been pretty uninspired. That said, the Hyundai Kona/Kia Niro cousins were pretty much just "replace the engine with a motor and bolt the battery to the bottom" and those were perfectly reasonable cars for the vast majority of actual needs.
Given the national debt (and the state debts in many cases), I do not feel comfortable assuming that tax rates will not change drastically. I wouldn't be surprised if Roth IRAs became taxable, at least for certain people. And there could be straight-up wealth taxes on "the millionaires" (which you pretty much have to be in order to FIRE.
I would love to see sales taxes removed and a wealth tax to replace it. Would obviously have to be a graduated roll out. We (USA) need a big changes in these rules; hope we don't need (another) cival war for it.
> The bill also permits a vast array of discounting practices while requiring increased transparency around discounts and placing some limitations on how consumers can be profiled.
The issue isn't "hey, you gave me a custom price that was disadvantageous". The issue is that "you gave me the regular price for some item but gave discounts to other people". That's trickier to outlaw because the "bad price" is the regular price, not a special discounted price.
If businesses are behaving badly, what they're doing is setting high regular prices and then discounting items that they don't think you'd otherwise buy. For items that you buy all the time, they're giving you minimal or no discounts.
But if you tell them they can't do this profiling, then they'll presumably resort to some mix of (1) no discounts with slightly lower overall pricing or (2) some loss leaders but otherwise regular pricing.
It's not especially clear to me that in the long run this is much better for consumers. They might get slightly more consumer surplus, but I doubt it will make that much of a difference. People in a given area probably have fairly similar buying patterns, plus they can still use loyalty programs, student/senior discounts/etc., as well as traditional coupons, to let customers sort themselves into "I'm generally price conscious" and "my time is worth more than my money".
It can never be better for consumers. The only way a business would adopt this practice is if it leads to greater revenues. On average, that necessarily means worse prices for the average consumer.
> But if you tell them they can't do this profiling, then they'll presumably resort to some mix of (1) no discounts with slightly lower overall pricing or (2) some loss leaders but otherwise regular pricing.
That's not true. Competition with other market participants should in theory (assuming competition) be sufficient. The firms are in general already charging the profit-maximizing price. They could, however, increase profits with more information.
But there is the additional problem that they will also monetize this information by selling it into advertising markets. The whole point of this business model is to capture previously uncaptured value that would otherwise have been shared in the commons.
> It can never be better for consumers. The only way a business would adopt this practice is if it leads to greater revenues. On average, that necessarily means worse prices for the average consumer.
That depends on the distribution of consumer incomes. Price discrimination (charging people more who can afford more) can be good for low-income customers.
> Price discrimination (charging people more who can afford more) can be good for low-income customers.
Unfortunately it doesn't work out that way. Consider banks, for example. As a relatively wealthy person, I don't pay fees for practically anything. On the contrary, banks pay me in the form of new-account signup bonuses, interest-bearing checking accounts, ATM fee reimbursements, etc.
Poorer bank customers, on the other hand, are continuously getting nickeled-and-dimed by banks in the form of monthly account fees, foreign ATM fees, NSF charges, etc.
Likewise, poorer customers are less able to avoid this kind of price discrimination at the grocery store.
If you walk or take the bus to the grocery store, you have fewer grocery stores to shop around for a deal at. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're less able to stock up on, say, cold medicine, when you see a good deal (and more likely to pay the "we know you're sick" price). And if you're time-poor (because you're working two jobs, and neither are the kind you can browse the Internet at while your code is compiling), you're less able to do comparison shopping, or notice that the price of what you need is always more expensive than when you don't.
If you somehow arrange for a redistributive effect. But in practice, the firms are likely to charge each consumer the maximum that consumer can afford. These firms are not engaging in some philanthropic process here.
If you want redistribution, implement a wealth tax.
Are there any examples of markets where price discrimination is good for the average consumer? Airline travel is the one that pops to mind - first class customers pay well above marginal cost and effectively subsidize the cattle class, right?
If this was the case and the cattle class would cause airlines to lose money you would definitely see airlines flying smaller planes just for the first class.
Most likely what happens is that cattle class pays for the plane to fly, and airlines make more from first class.
In the long run it would be strange for this to be the case, no? What are the economic forces that give rise to this? Maybe sometimes recessions affect poorer people more, and first class tickets smooth out revenues?
But in the long run, we've seen a steady worsening of the economy experience as airlines have invested in improved first class experiences. In the long run it's simply impossible for a firm to serve poor people (they have no money), absent interventions that allocate buying power to the poor person, or others that force the firm to do so.
I think the worsening economy class situation is simply consumer choice. Discount carriers offer worse service for a (sometimes minimally) lower price. People pick that, so other airlines do the same (or they would loose customers).
>It can never be better for consumers. The only way a business would adopt this practice is if it leads to greater revenues. On average, that necessarily means worse prices for the average consumer.
Not necessarily. Look at airlines for example, which make heavy use of price discrimination. This allows them to offer a lower economy price to people who have less money, while subsidizing the flight by charging a higher price to business or luxury travelers.
If they were only allowed to offer one type of ticket at one price, it would mostly benefit richer passengers while pricing the poorest passengers out of air travel.
Stores already have that in the form of having cheaper and more expensive products in the same category (for example, 5 different brands of tomato sauce).
The practice that needs to be outlawed is invisible and per customer pricing. It would be the airline for the same class of seat charging different amounts because, for example, their profile of the flier shows they recently searched for "casket" and so they are likely heading to a family funeral.
It would be as if the airline for their economy class offered the flight for $1000 if you don't play, $600 to attract customers into buying, and $800 if they find their customer is desperate. All for the same seat.
They already do charge different prices for the same seat, based on their assessment of the type of passenger you are.
You've picked an "evil" example, but what price discrimination really tends to look like is charging richer people more.
Prices are generally lowered for poor people because they'd rather have your $300 than have an empty seat. If you don't have $800, no amount of desperation will make you pay it - you'll just miss the funeral.
Nobody is saying you can’t have different classes of service or product offerings. But if I’m buying a banana or you’re buying it, it’s the still a banana.
Different air travelers can pay very different prices for the same seat.
Airlines can't directly tell how much money a customer has, so they find indirect proxies.
Business travelers (reimbursed by their employer and thus not very price-sensitive) have identifiable patterns. They prefer particular flights on particular days of the week, tend to buy tickets close to date of travel, etc. Airlines exploit this to charge them higher prices.
If two consumers purchase the same item at the same time, it should be the same price. That's what we're debating. If an airline raises prices closer to departure, then that's not a violation of privacy, nor discriminatory in the sense we're discussing here.
I do, however, object to firms aggregating any individual's purchases across different interactions. That data should belong solely to the individual and it should be illegal to retain enough information to aggregate interactions across interactions with the same customer.
> If they were only allowed to offer one type of ticket at one price, it would mostly benefit richer passengers while pricing the poorest passengers out of air travel.
I have a club card account with a fake name on it. While they may track the purchase I make and know that a single person made them all, it's not attached to anything that is linked to me. My understanding is that they can't link credit card numbers to purchases, they can only use the number to run the transaction.
It's not great they track purchasing, but if it's not linked to me I don't really care that much.
It's lousy that you can't turn off the badge notifications for the Settings app, which is where they push this garbage. I'm still on iOS 18, and I just have to live with a red '1' on my Settings app because I haven't updated my OS. It also pokes me every week or two to update.
It's not Microsoft-level annoyance, but it's not the way Apple used to be, either.
And the b0rked that with the new Siri - I had to turn Siri off today because I literally couldn't get to an app unless I knew its location on the Home Screen.
> LinkedIn will bury any relevant career news between the opinion of complete strangers. It is surely just a coincidence that those strangers happen to be shilling whatever Microsoft is invested in at the moment.
The browser extension LinkOff makes the feed much more bearable, even useful. [1]
Also, though I dislike the posts that LI pushes into my feed, I've never gotten the sense that this was motivated by a desire to boost Microsoft's investments. Perhaps I just wasn't paying attention, or am not cynical enough?
It's a bummer that these unethical tactics continue to work. They should offer a bounty for people who report cases that are successfully pursued, like for tax evasion or whistleblowing more generally.
That would lead to a slew of possible cases and a greater fear of getting caught. If people are willing to go on the record saying they're not worried about it, then they are really not worried about it.
Good to know, but is it ever punished, either by the FTC or by consumer backlash? As long as the expected value is positive, companies will keep doing it.
I don't think so. I think the reddit posts are essentially complaining into the void. Instead of posting them on reddit I guess people should be submitting to the FTC etc!
I worry that reading too much LLM output will make me tend to write more like an LLM. Seems like it would be inevitable, to some extent. (Here's why it works)
> If the other party is away, and you leave before they come back, they can still answer your question, instead of just staring at a "Hello" and wondering what they missed.
Well, you can also just send a second message if your first one doesn't get a quick response:
Hey quick question
Just wondering when project X is due
Would this be slightly better as one message? Maybe in some situations. But some people would find it to be self-centered to jump right into "what can you do for me?".
Appreciate the point about multiple notifications. I fine-tune mine so that when I'm away I don't get notifications by default. Regarding self-centeredness, reasonable minds can differ on this. Some people prefer a bit of chit-chat before getting down to brass tacks. Others want to get in and get out as quickly as possible. My point was that this is not one-size-fits-all advice.
I would refer someone I'm friends with if I know them well, understand what they would be like to work with, and understand the job/company well enough.
After all, I've lived with some people that I never worked with. Surely I know them well enough to recommend them for jobs, even though I have not ever worked alongside them.
Then I read the key quote and realized that Toyota isn't transforming the Corolla into an electric vehicle. They're simply going to offer an electric option. That's much less of an interesting headline, which explains why it wasn't chosen.
> “Whether it’s a battery EV, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, or internal combustion engine vehicle―whatever the power source―let’s make good-looking cars that everyone will want to drive!” Toyota’s CEO said at the Japan Mobility Show.
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