Hell the TSA doesn’t do much to prevent that on commercial flights, but requiring private flights to start going through commercial security would be completely pointless

There’s other good roadtrip friendly options out there too, but ya with monthly drives like that you’re really limiting your options and ICE cars still make a lot of sense

More interestingly (to me): did it have a local interface or was the only way to update it tied to the internet?

In both cases the control system is physically in your house. It sounds like the sprinkler system did work completely offline (though it's not clear if you'd actually be able to change anything without internet - that would be a problem if not), they didn't set up an account so the system was in "offline" mode and dutifully ran the sprinklers on the last known schedule.

For the thermostat the example was physically removing the control system, which is typically not connected to the furnace through any sort of internet connection, and expecting the furnace to know what to do.

Certainly, the standard smart thermostat set up is that your ecobee is connected to the Internet, but controls the furnace using good old-fashioned signal wires

A standard furnace and thermostat won’t even know if you pull the thermostat off the wall, much less have any way to handle it beyond “full blast heat 24/7”

More challenging: you expected the sprinkler setup to do the opposite. Instead of following its last-known plan (the schedule) it should stop doing anything (possibly killing the plants it’s watering)

Good off-line only mode in a reasonable plan for what to do without the Internet makes a lot of sense, but at some point, there’s a control system and you need to change it (or even just have one in the thermostat example)

But, even if you did it would still help tremendously and possibly still be sufficient. There’s diminishing returns where lower income people get a higher percentage of their income as a social security benefit. As long as that policy is maintained the ultra high wage earners would be contributing far in excess of the benefit they get paid back out

Towing range is an issue with all EVs and the battery on this one isn't that big, but if you're regularly doing long distance towing I'm not sure why you'd start with a city truck

But honestly... at 8' I'm not sure why you're bothering with anything (unless you're getting a lot of them), i usually just threw 8 footers in my Honda Fit and closed the hatch.

They were absolutely not the only make with unintentional accretion reports/issues at that time; nor presumably today, but I haven’t seen recent numbers

That doesn’t mean they’re perfect: cars are incredibly complex machines and mistakes are inevitable. But the airbag issue was a vendor (used by many companies) and IIRC the acceleration issue wasn’t that much bigger in Toyotas than other makes

They are all interesting in their own way (especially Tesla), but certainly not quality/reliability-first organizations.

If you’re suggesting it wouldn’t work in a garage, that’s obviously true (and another factor in whether car solar makes sense) but many (most?) people park their cars outside during the day anyway. I for one can’t remember the last time I parked under cover