In my opinion this is nearly as perfect of a vehicle as it is possible to get.
The 1.5 liter engine is small and efficient which means your gas bill is nice and tiny compared to the average vehicle I see on the road. It also has this weird quirk of FEELING really fast and exciting while driving while actually being rather pedestrian. A year after this vehicle was released motortrend came out with an article about the slowest cars they have ever tested: The Toyota Yaris was the 5th slowest. Probably due to the manual gear box, the sharp and agile steering, and the noise it makes, it simply feels a LOT faster than it really is. THIS IS A POSITIVE. It means you can have a good time and enjoy driving it but unless you are trying REALLY hard you won’t be speeding all that often and even with your foot to the floor you won’t be ripping away from traffic and drawing attention to yourself. That doesn’t mean you can’t red-line the engine, drop the clutch , and rip a nicely satisfying burnout, because you can… And I have.
Oh BTW… if you want to have some fun you can buy a ready to install everything included SUPERCHARGER kit for the Yaris. It’s on my bucketlist.
The cargo space is MASSIVE! because the rear seats fold flat and it’s a hatchback with a wide trunk opening and a flat-ish roof (instead of aggressively raked back) the amount of stuff you can fit in it is kind of insane. Several hundred pounds of firewood? Check. Two fully assembled kitchen cabinets to be turned into a kitchen island? Check. 55" TV in box? Check. 6.5’ Christmas tree? Check. Just look at that cavernous space! https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/eb4e1182-4386-4294-b731-1def6307dd1d.jpeg
Shoot, my wife and I regularly go car camping out of the Yaris. If you push the front seats as far forward as they go you can fit an inflatable mattress in the back with only a slight bend in it. It’s remarkably comfortable and unless you need to sleep perfectly straight as a log it serves very well as a mini RV. Back when I commuted 26 miles to my full time job and then another further 55 miles to my full time schooling I would often sleep in the back of the Yaris between the two and have very restful and replenishing sleep.
At first having the gauges in the center of the dash was a bit weird but it comes with two bonuses. The first one took me a while to notice: You feel more connected to the road and your journey. Putting the dashboard gauges directly in front of the driver actually puts a barrier between the driver and the road ahead of them. It’s a wall of information density that permanently exists between you and the world ahead and you have to go through it before you can experience what’s before you. It might be a borderline subconscious thing but not having something that constantly wants your attention in front of you really lets your mind focus on the road ahead of you and the journey you are on. If you NEED the information, it’s still there, just politely sitting off to the side waiting to tell you whatever you need to know.
The second bonus to the center gauges? MOTHER FUCKING GLOVEBOXES BABY! THIS CAR HAS THREE! There is the standard glove box around the knees of the passenger but there is also one above that and a THIRD one above the steering column on the driver’s side. I never would have guessed how excited a grown man could be (me) about the discovery of multiple GLOVEBOXES in a car. https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/50261100-fb13-4925-b402-cd179c56b0db.jpeg
Almost nearly as much as I enjoy the gloveboxes I really am impressed by the setup of the cup holders. You have your standard 2 cup holders down by the hand brake in the center console but the really awesome ones are seamlessly folded into the dashboard near the doors. These aren’t your tiny popout cupholders you find in most cars that break the second time you put a big gulp in one. No… these are chunky, heavy duty cup holders that make an audible ca-thunk when deployed. The amount of times I’ve deployed the cup holder at a driver through and had the teller make a visible reaction or even stop to say something is significant. My words probably do not do them justice so look at these pictures of their location and diagram from the manual and tell me that they don’t inspire confidence.
There are only TWO things I would like changes about this car. Give me a Bluetooth enabled head unit with better speakers and a good place to put a chi charger for my phone. That is all.
I could go on for hours about this car but my last point about how epic this vehicle is and how we don’t deserve it is this: It’s a Toyota. A proper old fashioned bulletproof, reliable, affordable Toyota. Parts are dirt cheap and easy to replace.I’ve got 266,000 miles on mine and let me tell you, they have not been kind miles. We regularly take this on off road trails bouncing off of rocks and occasionally trees. I’ve torn the O2 sensor clean off of the car a couple of times and got it stuck up to the bottom of the door in deep snow while driving a dirt road pass in the Rockies. I have treated it like dirt and only done basic maintenance far less than it deserves. I’ve only had to replace the clutch once and this next summer will be the first time ever that I need to do anything even approaching major service. It’s got a water pump leak and a front timing cover leak. Neither of these stop the car from functioning at all but as long as I keep an eye on the fluid levels we are good to go.
All this and it takes it like an absolute champ. It trucks along being the best little car it can be. The snow, dirt, and mud, and neverending miles of cross country journeys this car has never failed me. I will not part with my beautiful little car for anything less then total destruction. The day that happens I will remove the logo from it’s sad lifeless carcass, frame it and hang it on my wall for all to know what an amazing being was part of our lives for so long and yet not nearly long enough.
I’m going to try and say this without sounding excessively depressing but… There are few things in my life that bring me joy or excitement so when I find something that does I latch on to it and don’t let it go. Even if it’s a small relatively inconsequential thing let it bring joy into your life no matter how little the amount.
I’ve got a 1/2 cube made of tungsten that is just satisfying to hold onto and it’s one of my favorite things.
Excellent read. I now want to go camping in a tiny but huge hatchback. Your car sounds amazing, I hope you have many thousands of kilometres before retiring it.
I like it! For those who do not have municipal compost bins, is it possible to compost leftovers indoors? Perhaps on a balcony (without attracting pests)?
I’ve done it on a balcony before. You need to be careful about it but it’s possible. I took a plastic bin and drilled holes in the sides/ bottom for air circulation. Then put it up on 2 bricks on top of another bin lid to make sure anything that leaks doesn’t do so on my neighbors. Then you have to make sure to turn it often to prevent it from stinking or getting too hot. And that’s it! It’s not enough for a large garden, but it was enough to restock my large balcony planter every year and made great tomatoes and herbs!
It’s always hard to know what kind of outdoor space you’re working with when it comes to rentals. There are indoor composters like Lomi which can do it indoors but the cost of the unit is out of reach for most. Composting yourself will always attract pests. It’s not fun when those pests make it inside your place. Reach out to local community gardens and see if they have recommendations for composting your food scraps. I’m fortunate enough to have my compost picked up every week. I pay for this privilege and again, I know it’s not affordable for many but I glad I’m able to make the investment. I probably empty my normal trash bag once every 2 weeks.
i was asking because i can explain the methodology, and it is dubious.
if you total all the inputs that go into a product (the water, the carbon emissions, the land use, etc), then you can see what it would cost to produce it if you made no other products. but that’s not actually the environment in which meat dairy and eggs are produced.
the most illustrative example is cotton. cotton is not a food. it is grown for textiles. it wrecks the soil and it is THIRSTY. after you harvest the cotton and separate the fiber from the stalk and seed, you have seed left over. way more seed than you need to replant. cottonseed can be and is pressed for oil, but it takes much less processing to mix it into cattle fodder. why should the water used to grow cotton count against the water inputs for beef and milk? it’s actually a conservation of resources. these industries are all interconnected, and trying to just put a singular value on every product in the absence of the context of its production is not actually useful in determining what would be ecologically responsible.
To be fair, meat requires tens of thousands of pounds of plants used as feed over the lifetime of the animal (in this case, a cow), which also requires transporting the feed, pumping water to the crops for feed and for the animals to drink, etc. Unfortunately, there simply isn’t enough land on earth for all animals to be free range.
a lot of what we give to animals as feed is parts of plants we can’t or won’t eat,like silage. if we grow and use the part of the plant we want,and we can reclaim some more of the resources through animals,that’s good.
As anybody who has spent time working on a farm can attest, whole corn and soybean are some of the primary cattle feed. The majority of all soybean grown in North America is used as cattle feed and corn is a large market segment. The reality is that meat production uses far more land than plant-based alternatives, even adjusted for caloric output. You don’t need to believe me as this is a well researched topic and you can find reputable sources for yourself.
whole corn and soybean are some of the primary cattle feed. The majority of all soybean grown in North America is used as cattle feed and corn is a large market segment.
most cows mostly eat grass for most of their lives. whole corn is fed as a treat to entice them to eat the rest of the silage it’s sprinkled on (in my experience).
looks to me like cattle get very little of the global soy crop, and most of what is fed to livestock is, as i said, the parts of the plant left over after we’ve taken what we want for ourselves.
You just shared an infographic which showed that animal feed accounts for 76% of global soy production vs only 20% for direct human food. The point we were discussing was that eating meat is a less efficient use of land which appears to be supported by what you shared.
Judging by the other comments and profile, it’s clear that you’re not trying to have a discussion in good faith and may be a troll. I’m not going to engage further.
that graphic shows that the feed that is given to animals is almost entirely the industrial waste from oil production. it’s called “soy meal” or “soy cake”
I drive a metal bike. It’s a bit heavy but for €200 it’s good and I save on gym and stuff. I regret not getting the front basket. Please don’t repeat the same mistake I did, it’s not worth it when you go for groceries.
OK. I hear you but for the record I meant the trunk space of my small car, not the whole car. They make bike trailers in different sizes and some fold up.
I got a front tray thingy, strongly recommend. It means my cargo volume is limited only by my own ingenuity with my elastic cords, i.e. still quite a lot but a bit less than with a basket.
You can do a lot but it depends on how much you can get away with in your apartment. I was lucky enough to have a landlord who didn’t give a shit about the property or what you did to it as long as you paid your rent and didn’t make trouble. This was an appartment building that was over 100 years old and renovated sometimes in the 90s. So when my husband and I moved in we did a whole lot of stuff. We took out all the lightbulbs and replaced them with LEDs and put the old bulbs back in the boxes for when we moved out. We replaced the broken halogen light fixtures with LED fixtures. We replaced the thermostat with one that has timed settings. We removed the broken crumbling plastic window fixtures and replaced them with blackout fixtures and double hung curtains. We added sealant to the windows which didn’t have any for some reason. We replaced one of the door seals and would fill window cracks with paper in the winter. I’m guessing a lot of this stuff you couldn’t get away with in a strict apartment and some people wouldn’t want to do all that or know how to. The only reason we did is because we could and we intended on being long-term renters. In the 5 years we were there he never cared and never raised our rent. But all of those things saved us money on gas and electric over those years. Obviously if you own a place, you can do more things that are even more effective and permanent, but this is a rental we’re talking about. Just make sure you know what you can get away with before you do it.
It’s a substitute for chemical fertilizers which would otherwise go to landfill. It also improves soil quality rather than producing dead “dirt” that is dependant on chemical fertilizers. Plus, no more transportation involved in disposing of the food scraps to landfill, producing and packaging fertilizers, etc.
You can use it for any kind of gardening really, including growing your own veggies and herbs.
Finally, it reduces food waste by recycling food scraps rather than sending them to landfill when they could be used to produce more food or replace more energy-intensive fertilizers.
I’m on android so I used ReVanced, though I recently deleted the YouTube app and installed LibreTube which has no YouTube algorithm and no shorts tab. (I use the IzzyOnDroid repo with F-Droid)
Libretube is fine but it crashed a lot on my phone i’m now using" newpipe xsponsorblock" it took me a long time to import all my subscriptions but it works really great. The only alternative I would considered is freetube for android
There is a critical bug in the F-droid release, but the maintainers seem to have a bit of an internal conflict about publishing the app on F-Droid, the IzzyOnDroid/GitHub release is pretty stable.
For starters you can ask why your apartment management charged you 104 dollars for heat a month even though you use the gym showers at work, and it was never cold enough to turn on the heater. That’s one way
Pro: good gas mileage, manual transmission, cheap maintenance, comfy seats. I can go ~700mi on a tank. Costs me $40 to fill. I fill it maybe 8-10 times a year assuming no road trips. It’s about 60-70MPG.
Cons: slowest car I have ever driven so I have to plan merging onto highways/motorways very precisely. Literally my only complaint.
Another con: it only has two seats. Doesn’t hurt my use cases where I generally drive solo, or at most with my love, but for some that may pose an issue. (Think about it, though, most people who drive only drive themselves, generally to and from work.)
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