[poconopundit]

Thanks for your posts on this thread.  Life-long Toyota buyer here.  I don't understand all the technical discussion you gave, but I appreciate your ability to poke holes in weak arguments with your authoritative knowledge and clarity.

For the past two years the wife and I have lived in Japan.  Don't own a car anymore: the trains are good enough for us now as retirees.  But we have a pickleball friend here who is a test driver for Honda which has a big R&D facility and NASCAR-style test track on the outskirts of our north-of-Tokyo city.

We traveled with this friend and his wife on a weekend with his Honda CRV Hybrid and the performance of that car was really great as we rode a winding path through the mountains.

Half the cars on the road here are small, under-powered EVs with small tires, but they are perfect for everyday life in the city and for passing through often very narrow residential streets.  Yearly car inspections are expensive in Japan, but the government gives a break to EV owners.

Invariably a family here will have an EV for taking the kids to school, grocery shopping etc., and then a stylish hybrid for intercity or highway driving.

[Tell It Right]

Thanks for your insight into life with a lot of public transportation and less need for a car. Of course, I'm assuming that public transportation in Japan isn't like public transportation here. In my fairly rural suburban area public transportation is non-existent. So my research on EV's and solar are based on optimizing for my kind of area.