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Cars First World Problems

Oops, I did it again

As the prophet Britney Spears once said: Oops, I did it again. And by “I,” I mean in this case the car. And by “did it again,” I mean in this case lost all communications with the outside world. Let’s be frank here: communications with the outside world, on-board maps and routing, and Internet access […]

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Cars First World Problems

Radios

The car took a trip to Austin without me. The reason? The TCAM, which is Polestar-speak for “the radios”. A few days before that, I upgraded the car over-the-air to Polestar’s 2.0 software, based on Android 11. Android 11 is over a year old; Google released 12 and is working on 13 now, but in […]

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Cars First World Problems Personal

Things working

Yet Another Entry in the Electric Car series. It’s easy to write complaints and nitpick stuff that’s clearly wrong. It’s also relatively easy to make that kind or writing funny, enjoyable, or both. It helps me vent as well, which makes it enjoyable to write. Nitpicks and complaints have focal points that anchor the piece. […]

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Cars First World Problems Personal

Healing

Part 11 in my Electric Car series (“The Electrilliad“) I’m a scientist and I firmly believe in a rational world, where most -not all, mind you, but most- phenomena can be explained rationally. Murphy’s Law, though, is difficult to ignore. It is, of course, Murphy’s Law that’s on my mind, because after a week of […]

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Cars Commentary First World Problems Personal

Buying a Polestar be like

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Cars First World Problems Personal

[Sigh] Support

Part 10 of the Electric Car series. The Electrilliad, if you will. I spoke to a Polestar Support person on Wednesday who promised I’d receive a call within two days to arrange a tech’s visit to diagnose and potentially fix the car. Today, at the 1.5-day mark, and knowing that if they didn’t call me […]

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Cars First World Problems Personal

Various updates and a story

Part 9 of the Electric Car series (“The Electrilliad“) The radios Sadly, as expected, my car’s radios haven’t healed. However, I’m less sure that the hardware is fried. It’s time to entertain a different possibility: somewhere, something in the bowels of the car is disconnected. Either physically, i.e. a cable got loose, or logically, as […]

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Cars First World Problems Personal

Software woes and more pics

Part 8 of the Electric Car saga. Polestar’s software is a work in progress. The one running on the car looks generally good, and is stable in general use, but has issues and annoyances lurking under the surface. Just to be very clear, I love driving the car, and it’s fun. So before we get […]

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Cars First World Problems Personal

Polestar ][

Part 7 in my Electric Car series. The car is great! It has quirks and new company problems and controversial design choices, and I am sure it’s not and won’t be for everyone. But I really like it so far, and I suspect I’ll continue to like it for a long, long time. Or until […]

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Cars First World Problems Personal

Polestar

I traveled to Austin on Monday, and picked up my new Polestar 2. Hooray! It’s part 6 in my Electric Car series. This is going to be such a long one, I split it in two more pieces. Travel I needed to get there without driving, and public transportation in Texas isn’t great. The usual […]