

Yeah, that’s been true for a while. I have a Tesla model 3 and it’s the first American car I’ve bought in 30 years. If it weren’t for the surveillance capitalism, I’d say it’s an an exceptional car.
The whole car world has changed though. Honda used to be great, but they’re kinda shit now. Toyota and Lexus are still pretty great for long term reliability. Comfort is great, but driving dynamics are mid. BMW and Mercedes (some of them anyway) drive very nice, but you don’t want to own them out of warranty. Most American cars are somewhere in the middle. They’ve improved a lot since the 80s and 90s, but so has everything else.







The APU and taxi rules would likely help a lot, but would likely require a lot of change to infrastructure and airline and ATC SOPs. The electrification bit is beginning to happen where it makes sense, but that part will likely be slow to make a difference, and a small difference at that.
I agree that having transportation alternatives like rail could help reduce demand for commercial air transport, but we would be a generation away from useful intrastate rail service if we were serious about building it now, which we’re not. So there’s no good reason to not do these things while we faff about on “high speed” rail.