Oh yeah, people get really mad about it and there are lawsuits. It just seems difficult to gauge how common or significant these kinds of problems are. On one hand, the manufacturers cannot be trusted. On the other hand, it seems like consumers making the claims aren’t always bringing solid evidence. I’ve noticed on forums that there seems to be a mass hysteria effect. Some have gone through the trouble to install an aftermarket device to disable it (with unknown consequences).
After nine months of searching I was finally able to close on an RX 350 that met my criteria. I was really starting to question whether I’d find any gems in this market at a reasonable price. It’s a one-owner car, no accidents reported, below average miles for year, trade-in to original dealership (not an auction car), and an impeccable service history that includes every scheduled maintenance performed by the dealership. All routine stuff, no gaps in service, no mechanical issues or anything even slightly weird. Visual inspection and test drive were clean. The real pot sweetener was that it has nearly $20,000 in packages and installed options that weren’t correctly specified in the listing. I’d have been perfectly happy without them but consider it a finder’s fee paid to myself. The search process was exhausting and the market is currently flooded with bad cars that have huge red flags.
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The review is out and yikes. 
Parallel parking isn’t part of the California driver’s test! That was definitely the most stressful item when I got my license in Massachusetts back in the day.
Neither is any element of freeway driving whatsoever, but I already knew that.
Is freeway driving ever part of a DMV road test?
No, probably not. But that’s pretty insane, in LA at least.
Should be against the law to make a new car with those shameful fuel numbers just so some idiots can have more horsepower than is safe for them to fully use
The corvette Z06 mileage seems to get lower each year and the 2023 is now at 12/20.
Way back in the day, I took actual driving lessons from a local place. One day the car they took me out in just happened to have a tachometer that, for whatever strange reason, was x100 instead of x1000, meaning the gauge read 10, 20, 30, etc…you can see why this is bad design especially when it’s right next to the speedometer. Even the instructor was confused when at one point I was going 50ish on a side street, she was like “are you sure you’re not speeding?” and glanced at the same gauge I was watching, and just shrugged.
Thankfully I figured it out quick enough and didn’t say anything, but for a minute I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why I had to keep giving it more and more gas to stay at the same “speed” and why it felt scary as hell for 25mph, lol.
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The CX-90 is an enormous automobile that weighs nearly 5,000 pounds, so that 340 HP isn’t quite as outlandish as it sounds, just higher than most things in its class (3rd row SUV). It would be totally ridiculous on a much smaller car which means it’s probably in the next Miata. Did you look at the review I posted? Not that I expect you to because it’s technical and long and boring, but he points out something interesting: the CX-90 has an absolutely miniscule electric motor to slightly improve fuel efficiency / emissions. The thing that caught my eye was that those mileage splits seemed really high for a gargantuan 6-cylinder vehicle. After learning that it’s aided by an electric toothbrush motor it all makes perfect sense.
Meanwhile, the technocratic wonks (lololol) have, through unnecessary formulas, made it not worthwhile for companies to produce them for people who want/need pickups to get anything new that’s smaller than a house
Which is a lot of people. You see people in the trades who are lucky enough, driving 30-year old S10s and Toyota T100s and stuff, because they don’t need the monster pickups and save so much on gas
I’ll probably read it later, because I do have a lot of interest in cars. I was just letting myself have a purely emotional WAAF reaction
I actually like the CX-90 lmao
Lately I for some reason feel this yearning for a 3rd-row vehicle despite having no kids or even partner, and that’s probably my favorite of the currently available new ones
My current vehicle is the other way. It doesn’t really have even 2 rows. It has one jump seat behind the front bench, not even 2! I love it to death though. 2001 Chevy S10. I just feel happy and content whenever I get into it. I know it’s irrationally based on stuff like the simplicity and nostalgia of having roll up windows, manual transmission, no power locks, no infotainment screen, etc. But whatever. I’m learning to take peace where I can find it, instead of scrutinizing/rejecting
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Both owners before me clearly took great care of it. The 4-cylinder does not get me to 60mph in single digit seconds, but it is in great shape and seems like it will be for another 100k miles as I plan to take care of it as well or better
It’s a video by a Toyota Master Diagnostic Technician. Whenever I watch car review videos, I only watch ones by mechanics. My uncle and grandfather were mechanics and they’d just sit around reading service manuals at night while drinking Scotch and talking about design flaws of certain cars or how they were eventually going to break. Probably 99% of the car review idiots never mention reliability. “This BMW I drove for 20 minutes feels zippy and really hugs the corners.” Alright great does it cost $2,000 or $3,000 when they have to drop the entire fucking engine out to change a timing belt at 60,000 miles? Crickets.
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Yeah I watch a lot of car mechanic videos too 
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I would never buy a CX-90 for some of the reasons I just stated: It’s turbo, it has the added complication of an electric motor with minimal benefits, and it appears that easy maintenance procedures will be incredibly difficult. It’s all adding up to things that will cost a fortune if you hold too long. Ironically, several of the superficial reviewers (can I call them drive-by media?) who had it for a week compared it favorably to BMW. It’s the antithesis of the CX-5 which has old but proven mechanical systems with high reliability and relatively easy / affordable maintenance.
The third row vehicles have insane market premiums right now that seem impossible to justify without kids. I’m not really into all of the new technology except some of the safety features that I now find indispensable. Blind spot monitor, rear cross traffic, and the cameras yeah I love that stuff and hate driving without it. This RX I’m driving has almost every installed option and it’s overkill but some of it I find useful (cornering lamps), and at least it has a CD player and spare tire. Those are becoming tougher finds on newer cars. I’d snap call a CD player and spare over panoramic moon roof, heated and cooled seats, heated steering wheel, headlamp washers, and some of this other bullshit.
Oh for sure. CX-90 is in my mind when I’m fantasizing about infinite money
This last time car shopping I only looked at naturally aspirated engines, and tried to maximize the amount of work I’d be able to do myself if needed
I am not able to make myself trust it, however irrational that is, so it’s only distraction to me
Large(r than the tiniest) fleets of big rigs all have that technology now, and I can’t even count the number of times it’s been wrong. In either direction, either not spotting something, or spotting a phantom. Maybe personal vehicles are better at this tech?
I never use it in place of safe driving behavior. It’s just a secondary check that can alert you to things without having to take your eyes off the road or have mutant eyes in the back of your head. For example, if you’re driving in a complicated and congested freeway situation, it’s nice having an alert that something entered your blind spot without having to take your eyes off the road. I can’t recall any situations where it was wrong about blind spot vehicles, and the rear cross traffic saved me once in a parking lot where I thought I was clear visually but a car was approaching way too quickly from a weird angle I couldn’t see.
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