My favorite part of these Pro Bowl events are the hilariously intentional bull shit interviews the players give. Like Davante Adams: "Uh, well, we had to deal with some adverse weather, which is unfortunate..." The interviewer does a great job setting the players up, with her tongue-in-cheek use of sports cliches and faux-dramatic tone.
My boss at work is a big car guy like me, and we had a little debate yesterday about electric cars. At the end of it, I was like "give me a reason to care." All of the energy around these things is, "how many billions of more investment do they need before they're even on basic parity with internal combustion cars"-- what's the point? "Hey look, I invented this loaf of bread that's 25% more expensive and 25% less bread", and expecting me to be excited for it. Even if it was the same, what's the point? Electric cars are a hammer in search of a nail.
That said, he did get me on one point: if you're shopping for a BMW, why not buy a Tesla Model 3, which is actually cheaper and has roughly equal performance overall to something like a 3-Series? But to me, that's more of an indictment of how expensive BMWs are than how "practical" electric cars are: it's more like, "your cars are so overpriced that an electric car is cheaper? Hah, you blew it big time!"
Speaking of car prices, the median price of a new car is now $36k! Considering the median wage earner in America makes $32k per year, how the heck are they supposed to even afford an automobile these days? That's why the average age of cars on the road is over 12 years now. By the time the car makers are done satisfying the regulatory goons in the State, and bolting on all of those obnoxious "lane keep 'assist'" BS, it's no wonder only rich people can afford a car.
To put it into perspective, in 1985 the median car price was $15k-- after adjusted for inflation! He showed me a render of what is apparently the new Z (sounds like it actually might be real this time), which apparently will be a twin-turbo V6 with a manual transmission option-- but you just know the thing is going to be well North of $40k: way out of my price range! To me, $40k is entering exotic car territory, no way I could justify that kind of money on a Nissan that's not called "GT-R".
Remember: Nissan killed the 300ZX because the twin turbo made it too expensive-- but this time, the CAFE mandates mean they aren't allowed to learn from that lesson.
Given all of this, I bet when the next recession hits around 2021, half of the car industry literally just goes bankrupt.