Corporate Average Fuel Economy. It’s the US Federal Regulation that establishes required fuel economy standards for vehicle fleets in the US. For instance, by 2026 the average fuel economy for a vehicle fleet, based on number of vehicles sold, must be 49 miles per gallon.

For manufacturers that sell a lot of trucks, that’s a problem. The #1 selling vehicle in the US for 50+ years has been the Ford F-150. So they split consumer vehicles into 2 major categories: passenger vehicles and light trucks, which had less-strict standards and an adjusted mpg-rating. After all, a truck designed for low-end torque for hauling gear and pulling trailers isn’t gonna be able to compete with a Civic for fuel economy.

To game the system, the manufacturers started pushing vehicles they could classify as light trucks. The classification was supposed to be reserved for cargo vehicles, vehicles rated for 12 or more passengers, or off-road vehicles. So the manufacturers started making everything “off-road.” Remember how the minivan disappeared and suddenly all the manufacturers had SUVs instead? Light Truck classification is the reason.

The final straw was the Chrysler PT Cruiser being classified as a light truck.

So in 2008 the feds announced that, starting in 2012, more weight would be given to a vehicle’s footprint in calculating an adjusted mpg to discourage the manufacturers simply raising a car a few inches and calling it an off-road vehicle to game the numbers. But the unintended consequence was a system where they just have to make trucks a little bigger every few years to stay ahead of the increasingly-strict mileage standards.

It’s about to get worse, too. Starting soon, manufacturers won’t be able to use the improved mileage of Hybrids to improve their CAFE numbers (it’ll only use traditional ICE for calculations), so I expect a lot of hybrids and plug-in hybrid models to be discontinued, including the Maverick.

The Maverick is the cheapest truck on the market AND it comes standard with a hybrid. That’s not because Ford is generous.

It exists almost exclusively to sell enough fuel-efficient vehicles to improve the CAFE numbers for the rest of the truck fleet to avoid fines, and when the hybrid engine no longer gives Ford a bonus in the numbers I doubt they’ll keep making it, or at least not as cheaply with the hybrid engine as the standard.

Screenshot from Ford showing it’s relative size to other trucks on the market. It’s significantly smaller, and making it any smaller would get it killed by CAFE. This is the rare case where regulation really, truly is the enemy of progress.

The automakers fucked around classifying everything as trucks to get around CAFE, and the well-meaning regulation designed to fix that loophole accidentally outlawed small cargo-haulers and encouraged automakers to just keep making things bigger instead of improving efficiency.

The little truck isn’t legal to build and sell in the US. Truck sizes have exploded since 2012 because that’s when the CAFE standards changed to be based on vehicle footprint instead of vehicle classification.

Suddenly small trucks were required to have the same fuel economy as a hybrid sedan. So small trucks are out and instead of making them more fuel efficient they just make them bigger every refresh to keep up with increasing fuel economy standards.

That’s also why think the Dakota, Ranger, and S10 all suddenly disappeared at that time. The Ranger came back, but it’s larger than the F150 used to be.

It’s also why small cargo vans just stopped being a thing. Ib the last 3 years the Transit Connect, ProMaster City, and NV200 were all discontinued because they couldn’t keep that size and meet CAFE standards.

Of course, none of this applies to the Cybertruck. Fuck that thing.

The Ford Maverick. It’s a 4-seater small truck with a short bed and a standard hybrid engine that starts at $24,000.

When I use Uber Eats, I’m not really buying food. I’m buying stress relief.

I frequently have to get up at 4am and don’t get home until 8-9pm on days where I go to my main job then teach night classes at the University. I’m busy that entire time and simply don’t have the time at home to make a lunch or time at work for a lunch break.

Yeah, I could meal-prep on the weekend, but the last thing I want to do with my precious time I’m not working, traveling to work, or sleeping is prep for the work week.

“Women are very nice to have fun with and their kids are going to be really excellent with me so I can attach them to the group and see if they can get a chance to go to the store for some maker projects.”

As an Ace dude befriending women and participating in hobby projects with their children sounds pretty cool.

They’re opening an investigation on the crew.

The knowledge that they received cloaks from Galadriel that can hide them was pretty important in the second film when they do just that. For people who hadn’t seen the extended edition of the first film it was very confusing when they turned into rocks suddenly.

You’d better not expect a satisfying conclusion. They ran out of money and couldn’t make the final episodes, so it’s still images of characters on white backgrounds with no real closure.

They could have gone with a smaller 7200RPM drive.

That 5400 HDD was a bad place to try and cut the budget.

Of you watched season 1 they can already do it.

“Water is sink” will make the water and the rock disappear when they collide.

SDDDSSAAWASSSSSSSDDWWWDSSSAAAWWWWWWWWDD

They absolutely had the tech to point a big antenna at the moon and listen in on communications and watch the video broadcasts.

I’ve used them in a pinch to run a circuit on a generator, but it can be really dangerous in several ways.

You flip the breaker off and plug the generator into one of the outlets on the circuit using one of these and it’ll power the rest of the circuit.

But pretty often the generator will put out a lot more amps than the wire in the wall is designed for, and you’ve bypassed the breaker. If you hook up too many devices you can draw too much current for the wires and start a fire.

How did that scene not make it into Hamilton?

Because the electoral college is what needs to have a majority, not the general election.

The problem there is that the Constitution says the state legislators get to pick how electors are selected. They don’t even have to hold popular elections, even though all 50 states currently do. In fact, the Supreme Court hinted in its decision in Bush v Gore that state legislature can change the rules between the November elections and the actual election in December.

That is: Republican legislatures can decide to ignore the election results and send Republican electors if they don’t like the results.

Texas already passed a law allowing the Texas Secretary of State to overturn elections in Harris County (Houston).

A registered party member is just someone who voted in the primary.

The Democratic primaries in my area had a bunch of uncontested seats or I was comfortable with all the candidates, so I registered Republican to vote against Trump.

I’m a registered Republican, but I am not a supporter of the GOP.