Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire - Elon Blows Up the Internet

If you’ve been on the internet this week, or maybe listened to the news, or just caught the end of your Victorian village’s town crier’s update, you’ll know that a certain executive from an automotive company smoked a joint this week. And I’m sure you don’t have to guess which one. And I’ll spare you the incrimination of someone smoking weed because, let’s be honest, it shouldn’t be that big a deal. It’s decriminalized in California just like it should be everywhere despite the fact that it’s still illegal officially nationwide.

But when your company is on the ropes trying to break into a notoriously difficult industry, when you hold interviews with the New York times where you complain about working so hard and not having time with your kids, where you also offer to give up the keys to the office to anyone who thinks they can do better, and when you bitch about how fickle investors are for short-selling your stock, just about the last thing you should be doing as a CEO is going on a live web show and toking a big old joint while sipping on some whiskey. Yet that’s exactly what Elon Musk did this week.

The same week when the company’s “chief people guy” decided he isn’t returning to the company and when the chief accountant decided to quit after less than a month on the job. The same week when Tesla bonds hit a record low and when the stock had officially lost a quarter of its value since Musk himself tweeted about taking the company private. And the same week that Musk engaged in an expletive-filled email battle with a BuzzFeed writer whom the CEO called a “fucking asshole” after reaffirming his claims that the Thai cave rescue hero was a child rapist while refusing to cite any actual facts or sources.

What you probably didn’t hear about this week was that Jerome Guillen, who has been with Tesla for eight years, was promoted to the head of automotive operations, where he would handle all production, program and supply chain management. Leaving aside that that’s almost certainly all too much for one man to master, it shows that the company is rewarding people for doing well and potentially taking work off Elon’s plate even though Jerome will report to Musk, rather than the Board of Directors.

Also overshadowed this week was the fact that the Model 3 outsold all passenger sedans in BMW’s lineup - combined! If you factor in the SUVs and crossovers, it’s a different story, but the Model 3 is actually crushing it with sales right now and the production is humming right along. Plus a near production-ready second generation Tesla Roadster popped up at the Grand Basel looking amazing.

Instead of those beacons of hope for a fledgling automotive company, we are hearing very little about the actual cars, and very much about their problem-riddled CEO. In the absence of new hype to distract from the company’s problems, Elon has himself become the distraction despite the fact that that the company doesn’t need distractions since it’s not doing super super poorly right now. The morning after the weed smoking, Tesla’s stock dropped ten percent, recovering to close down about five percent from the previous day. Recall that Elon’s compensation is tied to the company reaching specific stock price goals, so he is in fact shooting himself in the wallet and through that wallet into his ass with every misstep. And it just seems like he can’t help himself. For his sake and for the company’s sake, I hope Elon either grows up or gets out, because having a glorified frat boy at the helm of a company is not a recipe for sustained success.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Ford Finding it Hard to Figure it All Out

I’ve been talking about the stock market in my podcast recently, and it’s not because I’m some obnoxious MBA who loves illustrating the fact that I know what financial terms mean, in fact I don’t even own any stock outside of my 401k. But when car companies are publicly-owned, the products they make - the vehicles we get - are often a consequence of profit seeking for the sake of shareholder satisfaction. Now I’m going to try to not get too far into the weeds, but Moody’s, a service for investors, downgraded Ford from Baa2 to Baa3, which actually means like it sounds - baaaaaad. It’s a step above junk bond status, which may be a term you’ve heard that basically means if you invest in this stock, you are investing in junk and you should not expect to see a return.

So why, you’re saying, is this happening now, mere months after Ford made the decision to kill off all its cars and focus on more profitable vehicle segments in a transparent attempt to appease shareholders? Well, according to Moody’s, because of an “erosion in the company’s global business position and the challenges it will face implementing its Fitness Redesign program,” which is a nicer, fancier way of saying that Moody’s doesn’t believe Ford knows what they’re doing to right the ship. And there’s been a lot of news this week that might lead you to believe that Moody’s is exactly right.

If you’ll recall, when Ford announced that the U.S. would no longer receive any cars, they did qualify that by promising us a new Focus Active, which would be a jacked up hatchback similar to the Subaru XV Crosstrek. Well, what Ford didn’t count on when they made that announcement, was that Donald Trump was going to come in and slap a 25% tariff on cars made in China, which the Focus Active is. So guess what, America, no Focus Active for you, leaving the EcoSport as the most entry-level vehicles for U.S. consumers. The company says that it doesn’t think it’s going to be a huge deal because they were only likely to sell about 50,000 of them a year, which is still a lot. Considering that, through July, Ford has already sold more than 114,000 Focuses and Fiestas this year, I think maybe their target was a little low and that Ford may be seriously shooting themselves in the foot by giving up that many sales to GM, Honda, Toyota, Kia, Hyundai and basically every other car maker that has a vehicle in the compact and sub-compact segment.

Then the company came out and said they’ve reversed course on the Mondeo, which is the same car as the Fusion here in the U.S., saying they are not going to kill it off, but rather revamp it later this year because it’s a “core part” of their lineup. Uh, it wasn’t so core that just a few months ago you were ready to scrap it and move on to baby Broncos and Ranger Raptors! And if it’s important enough to get new powertrains, interior and exterior upgrades and enhancements to the hybrid range in Europe, why the hell would it not be worth trying that here, especially if they’re using the same basic car with the same basic safety features?! As of Monday, Ford has sold 97,800 Fusions in the U.S. this year, and I refuse to accept that there isn’t a way for the company to make more money with a mid-sized sedan that sells that many copies.

And then there’s the Mustang. Poor, sweet, simple Mustang. You’re the best ever version of yourself right now and, if the rumors are true, this is how I want to remember you. That’s because the rumors say that, in order to cull the number of platforms to just five, the next Mustang might share the same chassis as the Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator mid-sized crossovers. You know what other sports cars share their platform with crossovers? None! Ford, while not going far enough to confirm the rumors, did say that they would not “bastardize” the Mustang and that the next generation car would be just as Mustang-y as all previous generations, but let’s be clear: when you compromise on a vehicle’s platform for cost-cutting, you change the inherent character of the vehicle. No matter how much additional bracing you add, no matter what suspension bits you tack on, you’re still driving an Explorer that has been modified to become a Mustang. Add to that the fact that the next Shelby GT500 is allegedly not going to be available in a manual transmission and you can probably hear, if you listen closely enough, Mustang purists crying tears of pure 10W-30.

Finally, Ford announced, with much fanfare this week, the creation of the Enterprise Product Line Management group, a special committee that has been tasked with studying what customers want and then turning that information into creating more profitable, competitive vehicles. Uh, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that just what the entire freaking company should be doing? What is the purpose of a company if not to be making products that people want and then making money from that? Like what have you people been doing until this group was created? Was there an actual plan behind the killing off of all the passenger cars, and will this group have the ability to resurrect those vehicles if their market research indicates there’s a market for them? This team is apparently split into ten divisions: family utilities, urban utilities, rugged utilities, performance vehicles, luxury vehicles, compact trucks, F-Series, commercial vehicles, electric vehicles, and emerging market vehicles. You’ll notice that none of those categories is “passenger vehicles,” which leads me to believe that, no matter what these guys decide, we’re not getting the Focus, Fiesta or Fusion back.

But the pressure on these groups is going to be crazy. They are not only supposed to be in charge of creating new vehicles and bringing them to the market and achieving a specific level of profitability, but they’re meant to ensure consumers are “engaged” with Ford offerings, whatever that means. I like a good challenge in my work, but I don’t like no-win scenarios, and this sort of sounds like a game of automotive survivor, where the last remaining head of one of these divisions gets to be the next CEO and face scrutiny on investor calls for why their profit margins still suck.

And they really, really suck right now. Ford’s global profit margin is just 3% and in North America, it’s down to 7.4%. Which again points to why Moody’s has a pretty negative outlook on Ford’s future. Yet Ford has come out and said it plans to spend $740 million on revamping Michigan Central Station, the old train station in Corktown in Detroit that it recently bought. One really has to wonder where the company’s priorities are.

The overwhelming sense I get from this collection of stories is that Ford lacks a strategic direction and doesn’t really have any idea what customers want. They hear analysts say “well SUVs are the big hot thing right now” and decide “okay, we’re all in on SUVs!” without ever giving much thought to what that means for their overall product line or to what the customer journey might be. I said this after they first announced they were killing off cars, but by completely lacking an entry-level car, Ford is essentially telling first-time buyers or customers without much money to spend that they don’t care about them. And for a non-luxury car company, that’s a mistake, because it’s not like kids grow up with big posters of a Ford Edge on their walls as something to aspire to. Instead they’ll get a Hyundai, and stick with a Hyundai because it’s what they know and are comfortable with.

For so long, Ford looked like they had it figured out by avoiding bankruptcy during the big recession bailout and by hitting home runs with the Mustang, Focus and others. But the more news that comes out, the less it seems like they are going to be able to keep up with GM, who has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to sedans, or with any number of foreign manufacturers. Maybe this Enterprise Product Line Management group will figure it out and become what the company should have been all along - listeners to the consumers they serve rather than the shareholders.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of August 20th, 2018

Tesla to Stay Public, Crazy

Changing your mind isn’t inherently a problem, in fact I do it all the time. Whether it’s where to go to dinner, if I think I can get away with buying a new camera or what home project to tackle next, when I change my mind, it’s mostly innocuous, but the same cannot be said for Elon Musk. This week, he changed his mind, roughly three weeks after floating the idea of taking Tesla private using money he had not secured, despite a tweet indicating so. His public reasons for reversal include giving up too much control to large investors, losing too many small investors who believed in the company and becoming a distraction to the company while it strives to meet production goals. Well, a little too late on that last one, but the others I guess make sense.

It came out this week that the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which Musk cited as being the source of his secured funding, may have wanted Tesla to start producing cars in Saudi Arabia, which Musk objected to. Instead then, they’re going to dump some cash on Tesla competitor Lucid Motors, going quickly from friend to foe for Elon. The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, another source of potential funding, dropped a sick burn this week indicating that they had no intention of investing in Tesla because, “we want to be invested in companies that make money.” Damn, Norway, you ice cold.

Coming out and saying “well, just kidding,” however, doesn’t get Elon off the hook from the SEC investigation that launched in the wake of his tweet that sent the company’s stock into chaos. Which makes it all a pretty bad time for Tesla’s communications chief to quit, which she has. It’s allegedly been planned for a while now, which I could understand because Elon has been tweeting for a while and, as a communications professional, I would find it incredibly frustrating to have my efforts continually undermined by my boss’s incessant unapproved social media activity.

On top of all of this, investment bank UBS published the details of their tear-down of a Model 3, which concluded that, for every $35,000 model Tesla sells, they will be losing almost $6,000. Bearing in mind that that base model car isn’t being produced yet because the company is focusing on more profitable models, it’s unclear how UBS came to this conclusion, but the rest of their report wasn’t exactly glowing either. They found the car scored below average on fit and finish quality and stated the car would be very difficult to work on if something went wrong because of part inaccessibility.

Finally, according to documents obtained by Business Insider, during the last week in June when Tesla built 5,000 Model 3s, only 14 percent of the cars made it off the line without a problem that needed fixing afterwards. That means that Tesla had to rework 4,300 of those 5,000 cars to get them in shape enough to deliver to buyers. Compared with an industry average of 20-35% rework, an 85% rework rate is absolutely unsustainable for a company still yet to turn a profit. The only positive here is that the company spent only an average of 37 minutes making the necessary fixes to each car, but do the math with me here: 37 minutes times 4,300 cars is 2,651 hours of extra work. That’s 110.5 DAYS, meaning 3.7 people had to work every hour of every day of June just to fix the problems in the cars coming off the line. I’m sure Elon would agree that those 3.7 employees’ time could be put to better use, even if, as the company stated in a reply to the documents, Model 3 labor hours have decreased 30% since last quarter. Maybe increase those just a bit and see if you can make more than 700 complete cars?

Ride Sharing Takes Another Hit

A survey of 1,250 consumers by Cox Automotive this week found that the cost of owning or leasing a vehicle was becoming too high and fully 57% of respondents said they didn’t think they needed to own a vehicle to get where they wanted to go anymore. Vice President of Research at Cox Isabelle Helms said that they are predicting a 40% reduction in consumer vehicle sales as people start to use ride sharing, ride hailing and rental services more often, highlighting the need for fleet-owned vehicles. Survey respondents highlighted Uber and Lyft as propelling the movement away from private vehicle ownership and ride hailing even in suburbia was up 21% compared with 2015, being up in cities 18%.

And everybody is feeling the effects of ride sharing. Whether you’re in New York, whose City Council voted to cap the number of ride share drivers, or in Seattle, where the local Department of Transportation found that an additional 94 million miles were driven on local roads last year because of ride sharing services. Whereas the most common refrain is that ride hailing services encourage people to drive less, they are actually making traffic worse, compelling people who might otherwise walk, stay home or take public transit to instead clog the street with a driver who has to come get them, drive them somewhere, then come back, get them and drop them off later.

And if you think we’ve reached “peak car” and that ride sharing and hailing services are going to take over, please allow AAA to change your mind with their recent study that found that replacing your car with those services is a tremendously bad idea. According to the survey, the average urban person drives about 11,000 miles per year, and using a ride hailing service to cover that distance would cost urbanites more than $20,000 annually on average. In expensive cities like Boston, that rises to around $27,500, or more than the cost of buying my GTI outright. The survey found that even if you owned a gas-guzzling pickup and covered the same distance, you’d spend just $7,321, or almost a third of what you’d spend on Uber. Even factoring in parking only adds around $2,700 to the annual cost of ownership. The caveat here is that people without a car might not always go out or travel as much or may not use Uber or Lyft for each journey. But you’d have to sacrifice a lot of trips in order to break even with what a car costs to own and run. Put more simply, always drive.

Dealerships in Dire Shape for New Hires

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that car dealerships are having a tough time finding people in their 20s and 30s who want to work long shifts and on the weekends to haggle with people to try to get a sales commission. According to the article, “Many millennials say car dealers have an outdated approach to selling that doesn’t always fit their values, even if the jobs have the potential to pay well.” People of my generation also want more stable pay, rather than commissions because of student debt. They cite the bait-and-switch advertising and confrontational haggling as reasons to quit, which a staggering number of them are doing. While nearly 60% of dealership hires are millennials, more than half of them quit within a year. It’s so bad that Nissan reported a 100% turnover rate at its dealerships last year. While that doesn’t mean everyone quit their job, it does mean that multiple people quit the same job within the same year to make up for those old “company men” who wouldn’t leave and just want to know what they can do to get you into the car of your dreams today. Guess what? It isn’t a versa of Murano, Cliff. Sorry.

Used Car Prices Defy Economics, Keep Rising

You may recall earlier this year I advised on waiting to buy a used car because there was a glut of vehicles hitting the market and that huge supply was going to mean some tremendous steals to be had, especially on slow-selling sedans. Well, maybe there’s a reason this podcast isn’t your #1 source for solid consumer advice. Turns out, whereas used vehicle prices usually peak in March and April, 2018 is proving to be a different beast, with used car prices actually increasing this summer, and there are a variety of reasons for this. First, consumers are scared of tariffs increasing the prices of new cars, so they’re shopping used instead. Second, incentives for new cars are flat, so buyers aren’t finding too many good deals there, so they’re resorting to used cars, driving up demand. Also, since the great recession meant so few cars sold from 2008 to 2011, there aren’t many cars from those years available on the used market, meaning most used cars for sale are newer, and thus commanding a higher price. This is actually producing a historic difference, with July’s Used Vehicle Value Index ending at its highest point ever, up 1.5% over June and a full 5% over July 2017. So you want more consumer advice? Just panic. Cause a pure, unadulterated panic because Trade Wars are hard to win and easy to lose.

Auto Average Age Advances in America

In keeping with the news that cars are getting more expensive is a study by the Energy Information Administration that found that owners are now hanging onto their cars longer than ever before. In fact, the average age of “in-use” vehicles last year climbed to 10.5 years, up from 9.3 years in 2009. The increase in age actually took place across all vehicle categories too, with pickups seeing the highest increase, from an average age of 11.2 years in 2009 to 13.6 years as of last year. Also correlating with this is the fact that consumers are now spending more on vehicle repairs and maintenance, since it’s often cheaper to keep a used car running than it is to pay for a new one. What doesn’t help is that these old cars are much less fuel efficient than newer vehicles, also costing owners more.

Survey Says Fuel Economy Matters

To that point, a survey by Autolist of 1,132 current car shoppers found that 41% of respondents disagreed with Donald Trump’s proposal to freeze fuel economy standards, with a further 30% being on the fence about it. Half of respondents also wanted California to retain its authority to set its own emissions standards. So despite the current trend toward SUVs and trucks, apparently people like the idea of fuel economy, but maybe it’s just not for them.

Keep a Cool Head While Riding

The news that I’m planning on selling my motorcycle won’t be new to any long-time listeners, but part of the reason I’m selling is because this time of year is the absolute worst to get out and have a hot engine between your legs. I’m one of those “all the gear, all the time” guys who doesn’t care to have my skin peeled off by the road surface if something goes wrong, which means I’m wearing Kevlar jeans and body armor, which gets really, really hot when it’s 90 degrees, sunny and humid out. Well for whiny people like me, a company called Feher has come along and just unveiled their new ACH-1, which they call the world’s first self-contained air-conditioned motorcycle helmet. It’s a full-face model that actually plugs into the battery on your bike via a long cord that you can snake down your jacket or via a battery pack. It uses the same sort of tech that car makers use to make cooled seats, delivering filtered, cooled air throughout the helmet without somehow giving you brain freeze. The company says it can keep your head 10-15 degrees cooler than the ambient air temperature, which is pretty significant. Comfort doesn’t come cheap though, and at $600, a moderately cooler skull is not going to persuade me to keep my Triumph.

Missing Mustang Found After Fifty Years

Way back in 1967, Ford built a Mustang Shelby GT500 EXP prototype to serve as the model for the 1968 Mustang California Special. This one-off prototype was the only GT500 hardtop coupe ever built by Shelby and factory-equipped with dual quad carburetors. The car, nicknamed “Little Red,” was mysteriously lost after production and only resurfaced this week in North Texas after being missing for 50 years. Intrepid researchers managed to track down the car using its Ford VIN rather than the Shelby serial number and found the current owner, who had kept it on a lot for 20 years. Now the guys who want to restore the car want to piece together the rest of the car’s history and just how it managed to go missing for so long. They’ve even started a website, shelbyprototypecoupes.com to help crowd source information, so if you happen to know anything, go contribute.

Automotive Bounty Hunters, Your Time is Now

In other lost car news, a vintage car dealer is claiming that his customized 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing was stolen from a parking lot near the Nürburgring recently, and it’s worth more than $1.9 million. The dealer isn’t just sitting around, he’s offering almost $300,000 in reward money to motivate people to go out and find the car for him. This could include the thief, who could make a cool $300,000 just by saying they found it somewhere along the Autobahn. Unfortunately, this thing has probably already been chopped and parted out because we can’t have nice things in this world.

VW Shoots for the Stars, Hits Hail

If you’ve watched any documentary about World War II, you’ll probably know that Hitler was a pretty innovative guy and was constantly looking for crazy new ways to kill lots of people. One of these things the Nazis looked into was weather control, which, along with many other things, didn’t really pan out for them. Here we are, 80 or so years later and Volkswagen are at it again, trying to control the weather around their plant in Puebla, Mexico. The company has been using anti-hail cannons that fire off loud shockwaves that theoretically break up hail stones before they can form, which would prevent the cars leaving the factory from getting damaged. Now, there’s absolutely no evidence to support that these things actually do anything more than just make obnoxious booming sounds whenever there are clouds, but that hasn’t stopped neighboring farms from suing Volkswagen, claiming that the cannons are stopping rain from reaching their fields. Either fed up with the lawsuit or with the fact that these things are bogus and useless, VW has stopped using them to protect their precious Jettas. Here’s an idea, it sounds like you’re getting a lot of sun; install some solar panels over the parking lots to protect the cars and generate some extra power for the plant. That one is free, but I usually charge by the idea.

Asshats Arrested in Bay Bridge Burnout Bust

Good things to do in San Francisco include riding the trolley, eating some sourdough bread, visiting Lombard Street and buying a sweatshirt because you didn’t think someplace could be so incredibly cold in the summertime. Bad things to do include getting your buddies to shut down traffic on the Bay Bridge so you and your homies could rip some burnouts and donuts on the closed highway. For inconsiderately wasting a ton of people’s time on Sunday morning last week, one man in a white Mustang (of course) was arrested while another Mustang driver and a MkIII Supra driver miraculously got away. How? Oh, maybe because they were blocking traffic preventing cops from getting to them? What’s more curious is how the Mustang driver managed to get caught. How long do you have to be doing donuts on a closed highway in a major city before the cops show up?

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Last Week at The Quail

This week was Monterey Car Week and the Concours d’Elegance in California, where the weather is beautiful except for when it’s on fire, which part of it is, but fortunately not along the central coast where there were hundreds of immaculate cars showcased. I’m going to have to make it out there sometime, but since I haven’t, go check out Autoblog or any other number of sites with massive galleries of all the amazing old cars on display this week. One of which was the 1970 Ferrari 512S Modulo Concept which looks just about as close to a space ship as a car ever has. In addition to the classics, several automakers brought along some new cars or concepts which I thought deserved their own special feature this week.

First was Infiniti’s Prototype 10, which follows the more classically styled Prototype 9 that the company brought to Pebble Beach last year. This one is also a single seat racer in the style of 1950s-era race cars, but with Infiniti’s current styling language applied. Not only that, it’s apparently sat upon the new rigid, adaptable electric vehicle chassis that may underpin future Infiniti EVs, giving it much greater relevance than your run-of-the-mill concept. Of course this will never see production, and we don’t know exactly what drives it anyway, but man is it pretty to look at.

Another pretty silver single-seat electric racing vehicle showed off was the Mercedes-Benz EQ Silver Arrow, which, like the Infiniti, is a modern take on a classic race car. Unlike the Infiniti, it’s a modern take on a specific race car, the 80 year-old Silver Arrow, a Mercedes that set a public road speed record of 269 miles per hour in Germany way back in 1938. Also unlike the Infiniti, we have performance figures for the EQ Silver Arrow, which lays down 738 horsepower, 80 kilowatt-hour battery that gives the car a respectable range of 249 miles. But I doubt you’d get that far with instant torque and more than 700 horsepower on tap. While the Infiniti will never see the light of day through a dealership’s windows, the drivetrain in this car could very easily slot into an AMG performance car like in the EQ range. Sort of like a rival to the Porsche Taycan or forthcoming Tesla Roadster.

Audi was like Electric Vehicles? Oh ja, we do that too, so they brought out their PB 18 e-tron concept which, while having the worst name of the three electric concepts, also had the worst looking style. Not to say it’s bad, but the Peanut Butter 18 just didn’t quite reach the high bar set by the Infiniti and Mercedes. It’s not a single seat racer, but rather a shooting-brake style two seat wagon-y hatchback thing that still features Audi’s recent trend of the front of their cars being 100% grill despite the fact that electric cars do not need grills. It also beats the Infiniti by having a real powertrain, with a 95 kilowatt-hour battery powering three electric motors putting out a combined 671 horsepower and 612 pound-feet of torque, accelerating the car to sixty in just over two seconds. It’s apparently good for a range of 310 miles on a single charge. This thing looks like it’s straight out of Blade Runner of Minority Report. It’s very, very futuristic and I think we’re in for a very exciting time in car design if these new looks are actually implemented in future production cars.

It wasn’t all electric cars though, as Lamborghini, who haven’t found an electric motor violent enough to put in their cars yet, unveiled the Aventador Superveloce Jota or SVJ. While only 30 horsepower more powerful than the Aventador S, how much more power do you need than the SVJ’s 759 and 531 foot-pounds of torque. It comes from a no-doubt throaty 6.5-litre V12 and drives all four wheels, which also feature four-wheel steering, combining with active aerodynamics to make the car especially agile. Of course it has set a Nurburgring record at some time faster than other people that is totally meaningless. It’s lower, it’s stiffer, it has more downforce and it’s faster than the Aventador S, which means it will be absolute hell to drive around anywhere that isn’t an immaculate race track, but I’m sure that isn’t going to stop some pharma bro or tech entrepreneur from trying. After all, they can afford the chiropractic work this car would create the need for.

Not to be outdone, Ferrari brought along a new car, or rather, a convertible version of a car we’ve previously seen, the 488 Pista. It’s the same as the coupe, with a twin-turbo 3.9-litre V8 engine churning out 711 horsepower and 568 foot-pounds of torque. But with the top down, the car is 0.4 seconds slower to 124 miles per hour than the coupe, taking a whole eight seconds, which I know will probably be a deal breaker for so many people.

On the more affordable end of the spectrum, the new BMW Z4 M40i was unveiled with a sharp “frozen orange metallic” paint job and it’s quite a dashing looking vehicle. Of course we’ve seen virtually every part of this car by now, so the complete package isn’t really a surprise, but what will be a surprise are performance figures, because they have embargoed those until September 2018, which is obnoxious. It’s apparently quick though, getting to sixty in less than four seconds, so draw your own conclusions about the car and its Toyota Supra sibling from there.

Back to the extreme end of the spectrum, Shelby Supercar, one time makers of the fastest car in the world, surprised everyone by bringing a new car to Pebble Beach this year. Called the Tuatara, SSC has worked with Nelson Racing Engines to build a 5.9-litre flat-plane crank twin-turbo V8 flex fuel engine, and this is where it gets a little special. If you run this car on E85 gasoline, it will make 1,750 horsepower. If you only have access to 91-octane dino juice, it will “only” make 1,350 horsepower. While we have no idea how fast it will actually go when those ponies kick in, it does apparently have a super low drag coefficient of just 0.279, which slightly worries me that it doesn’t have enough downforce, which you might want when your car is approaching 2,000 horsepower. The car is not desperately pretty and it is painted in a sort of matte primer color, but the point of this car is that number. The reason you would buy one of the 100 they are supposedly going to make, and have been saying they are going to make for seven years now, is that number. And the reason the police report will cite when it finds your body in three different locations in two different counties will also be that number.

Finally debuting this week was the Bugatti Divo, for which we’ve been getting so many teasers, it just seemed like Bugatti wanted to whip a dead horse, and they whipped it real good. But for good reason, the Divo, based on the Chiron, is a beautiful car and was shown with very fetching teal color accents. It’s 77 pounds lighter than the Chiron, generates almost 200 more pounds of downforce and will touch 236 miles per hour if you have a place where doing that is possible. Instead of just raw speed, this car was built with cornering in mind and was named after French racing driver Albert Divo, who raced a Bugatti to two Targa Florio wins back in the 1920s. It’s much more attractive than the Chiron, which is saying something, and probably worth all of the $5.8 million it would take to buy one because it’s only going to appreciate in value. Oh and if you’re thinking of saving up for one, don’t bother because they’re all already sold because there are way too many rich people in the world and I’m not one of them.

Which brings us to the auctions. No Monterey Car Week is complete without a few ridiculous vehicle sales, and this year was no different. One of the special cars that went up for sale was a 1987 Porsche 959 Komfort, which is one of those “homologation specials” we talk about; basically a car that was produced in road-going form just so the company could make a race car version of it and dominate, which Porsche did in Group B racing. There were only 249,959 Komforts ever made, so this was always going to bring a lot of money. Unfortunately for the owner of this vehicle, the trailer carrying it disconnected from the car towing it and the 959 plowed straight into a tree, and the owner just decided to sell it that way. So yeah, there was a very, very totalled-looking Porsche 959 auctioned off, and you know how much it sold for? $467,500. Amazing. I’m sure the buyer has some plans for it that don’t include leaving the tree-shaped damage to the front end.

But the real star of the auctions was a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO being sold by Greg Whitten, an early Microsoft employee who invested very, very wisely. Only 36 of this vehicle were ever made and this particular 250 GTO, one of four upgraded by Scaglietti and one of only seven to have a more aggressive coachbuilt body designed by Pininfarina, making it lower, wider and shorter than other 250s. So you can imagine that this sold for a bit more than the $467k the crashed Porsche fetched. And yeah, it did okay. $48.8 million worth of okay, making it the most expensive car ever to sell at auction. Amazingly, that’s not even the most expensive Ferrari 250 GTO ever sold, as last year, a 1963 model sold in a private sale for $70 million, with another one going in 2013 for $52 million. So it just goes to show, you can get a better deal at an auto auction. You just may have to widen your definition of “deal.”

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of August 13, 2018

Faraday Future Still a Thing, Promises Millions of Cars

Tesla isn’t the only electric car company in the news recently - you guys remember Faraday Future? The company behind the FF91, an apparent Model S killer that wouldn’t launch with less than an exorbitant 1,000 horsepower? Yeah, they’re still around. As a refresher, this is an American company funded by the guy behind China’s Netflix equivalent, but which recently had a 45% stake in it bought by Evergrande Health Industry Group because electric cars and healthcare are such a perfect fit or something. Well go figure, the American company isn’t very American anymore, as the firm announced the headquarters has been moved to China, where five R&D and production facilities will be built over the next decade. They’re promising an annual production capacity of 5,000,000 vehicles within ten years across both entry-level and premium segments to be shipped across the world. This, from a company that has yet to show a single finished example of their first car. Meanwhile Tesla, which makes real cars, is settling in at a tenth of that production capacity. So sure, 5,000,000. Right.

Germany to Force Diesel Fixes for VW Owners

While most Volkswagen diesel owners are probably decent human beings who reluctantly handed over their cheating cars for the good of humanity since they did really increase cancer risks, there are apparently a bunch of Germans who couldn’t really care about the state of your lungs, and who have kept their cheating diesel cars long after the fix has been available for their cars. Germany is going to start exercising some tough love with these jerks though, effectively giving them automotive time-out by refusing to renew registrations for vehicles that have not had their cheating software fixed. The German motor vehicle authority says only about five percent of Volkswagen TDIs have not been fixed, but it’s still enough that those drivers aren’t going to be able to fly under the radar anymore. I think it’s totally fair to say, “I’ve been too busy to take care of something,” but in two years, everyone has had some free time. Unless you’re Elon Musk, I guess.

South Korea Banning BMWs for Flambéing Themselves

Photo by BBC News

While the German government cracks down on some German cars, the South Korean government is cracking down on also some German cars. Namely BMWs because apparently 28 new Bimmers have caught fire in the country in the first half of this year which yes, seems like a lot. But the country is using this as an excuse to ban 20,000 BMWs from the roads until their engines have been fixed under a recall. BMW of South Korea is scrambling to issue a recall and organize a fix for about 106,000 diesel-powered cars including the 520d, which accounts for 20 of the fires alone. As of a couple of weeks ago, engineers still weren’t sure what was causing the problem, but the government’s action has lit a fire under them to identify and fix the issue. Yes, that was a pun.

VW’s Electrify America Promotes not VWs

Speaking of those cheating diesel Volkswagens though, VW has kicked off its Electric For All advertising campaign in the US, which is part of a $45 million public awareness campaign mandated by the settlement against the company for violating clean air rules. You might expect an ad paid for by Volkswagen to prominently feature Volkswagen vehicles, but instead the star here is a Chevy Bolt, with the next most prominent being a Hyundai Ionic. The Honda Clarity, BMW i3, Nissan Leaf are all also featured, as is, finally, the Volkswagen eGolf. The company says the ad is meant to be brand-neutral and seeks only to advance the public perception of electric vehicles, rather than of VW’s electric vehicles, which is very fair of them. That said, it’s rare for a company to be punished by effectively having to help sell other companies’ vehicles. 

Swedish Vehicles Vandalized by Incendiary Immigrants?

Photo by CNN

Meanwhile over in Sweden, the automotive market is also heating up, and by that I mean dozens of vehicles were set on fire this week by masked youths who were apparently unsatisfied with the heat of the Swedish summertime. The coordinated attacks on vehicles took place across several cities across the country, prompting a mature response from the Prime Minister, who asked, and I quote, “What the heck are you doing?” According to several outlets, the perpetrators are immigrants protesting recent anti-immigration rhetoric, which seems like a strange way to protest. Maybe they hadn’t heard the old saying “you catch more flies with honey than you do with Molotov cocktails hurled at motor vehicles belonging to private citizens who likely have nothing to do with vitriol being targeted at the influx of immigration to previously homogeneous cultures.” I dunno, maybe that one doesn’t translate to Swedish.

Subaru Replacing Recalled Ascents Outright

While South Korea forces BMW to recall 106,000 vehicles, Subaru is forcing themselves to recall just 293 2019 Ascent models because the robot in charge of welding the SUV’s B-pillar started hanging out with the wrong crowd, came in late, smelling of booze and weed and decided that doing a shitty job of welding a fairly important structural component wasn’t really required. Turns out, for safety, it absolutely is required, so the company is recalling fewer than 300 vehicles produced in an 8-day window in July when the robot was on its bender. Only nine of those cars had been sold, and instead of going without their car while the repairs are being made, customers are simply being handed the keys to a brand new vehicle instead. Subaru says that the welds were so critical and so deep within the car that repairing them didn’t make sense. This from a company that decided including 19 freaking cup holders in an 8-passenger car did make sense. 

Hertz 100th Birthday Makes a Great Vetteversary

While a hundred or so drivers in Sweden will be in need of rental cars for a while, they might want to check out Hertz, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary of being a company, which is legitimately an achievement. Who knew rental cars had been around since before the Dixie Flyer? In any case, while the poor Swedes don’t get this, we Americans will have the opportunity to rent one of a hundred Corvette Z06 models, which are painted in the company’s black and yellow colors and fitted with a bunch of obnoxious Hertz logos which really get in the way of convincing the cougars at the wineries that it is indeed your car. Who knows though, the 650 horsepower and same foot pounds of torque may even compel you to forego chasing tail for chasing down some twisty roads or stoplight drag races, but only for 75 miles, because thereafter, you’ll have to pay 75¢ per mile, as well as need to return it with a full tank of gas, which, with a supercharger, is going to go pretty quickly. You can find these in a number of major cities across the country for $199 per day without taxes or fees or the optional insurance or care package or navigation unit or pre-pay for gas or spare set of keys or whatever the hell they try to up-sell you with next. 

Formula E Racers Coming Up for Sale

While you may still be waiting a while for Elon Musk to personally deliver your Model 3, there’s an exciting new opportunity to buy some other electric vehicles that are a little more interesting and a lot less practical. Since Formula E will be debuting all-new cars when racing begins in December of this year, the old cars aren’t needed anymore, so the racing body will be selling off the 40 old model electric racers for prices roughly between $200,000 to $300,000. Yes, that’s a lot more than your $35,000 entry-level people’s electric car, but it is so incredibly much cooler to have an electric race car! But we all know these are going to be purchased by rich jackasses who probably won’t even drive them and will strip out the battery cells and mount them on the walls of their homes in Malibu, because apparently rich people have no taste, but really, really strong walls.

One week to @FIAWEC 6h of Silverstone!!! who’s coming for an awesome weekend? 17th-19th August See you all there!!!!!!! ✊️@Toyota_Hybrid #wec #silverstone6hrs pic.twitter.com/6riYZmYPIt

— Fernando Alonso (@alo_oficial) August 11, 2018

Fernando Alonso Retires

In other racing news, after 17 years behind the wheel, Fernando Alonso is retiring from Formula 1, which definitely totally did not have anything to do with him driving for McLaren who consistently fail to field reliable, competitive cars that frequently incur engine failure. Already this season, he’s splitting his time with the Toyota team at the World Endurance Championship, and speculation is rife that he will join IndyCar. He’s only 37 and has won the Formula 1 championship twice, being regarded one of the best F1 drivers in the history of the sport, so it’s sad to see him go, but it’d be like if Gordon Ramsay were forced by contract to work at Burger King. It’s just not going to last.

Porsche Sets Track Records with Panamera Hybrid

Long-time listeners and friends will know that my full-time job is in marketing, and I am no stranger to firing up the old hype machine or being able to put a positive spin on virtually anything, but there are some things even I will never understand. One of those is the unrelenting pursuit of race track lap records by cars that will never ever ever be driven on race tracks. Which brings us to Porsche, makers of many vehicles that are plenty capable of performing admirably on race tracks. They announced this week that they had set lap records at six FIA-certified racing circuits. The qualification here is that they set the records with the four-door Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid, and that the records are all for the “fastest luxury four door hybrid sedan.” The obvious question here is who gives a shit, and I really honestly can’t figure it out. What buyers are out there cross-shopping the Panamera with the Mercedes-AMG GT53 four door or Tesla Model S or BMW 750 and are like, “well, the others were nice, but the Mercedes only held five track records for fastest hybrid four-door sedan, so I guess we should probably get the Porsche because that will be super relevant when we’re parking it at the fancy outlet mall or in the Starbucks drive-thru."

Bottoms-up Booze for Bimmers?

A few years ago, Anheuser-Busch debuted their bottoms-up beer service at Cardinals games, which I then tried because it was a fun novelty that the company said was meant to cut down on the head in beers and make for a more even pour. Sure, guys. Anyway, this concept - a magnet at the bottom of the glass that is popped up by a filler which then squirts the drink into the glass - has found its way into the automotive community via a patent application by BMW. Before you get any ideas that this is going to only make your Diet Coke addiction more accessible in your 335i, remember that BMW owns Rolls-Royce and that the patent specifically features champagne flutes in the drawings, so it’s definitely meant for the same types of people who are being driven around Santa Barbara by Jeeves while filthy hourly workers mount Formula E cars on their walls because they didn’t want to interact with “the help.” 

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Tesla’s Troubling Twitterer-In-Chief

Photo by The New York Times

Our top story last week concerned Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweet about taking the company private and my assessment was that it would solve all the company’s problems. I should have qualified that a little bit in that it would solve all the problems except the one sitting in the company’s fanciest chair - Elon himself. While it’s a great move for him to continue to exert more control over the company he founded, his control is pretty much the last thing the company needs to be successful. Which makes it all the more strange that he gave a long, winding interview to the New York Times this week where he was described as both laughing and crying and where he invited anyone to take over the company if they thought they were better suited to do the job. Let’s review the qualifications for how some other CEO might do something different then.

First, another CEO probably wouldn’t work 120 hours a week, neglecting his kids and setting an unhealthy and unreasonable example for the working environment for his colleagues. They probably shouldn’t take Ambien in order to fall asleep or go on drug-induced social media rants as some investors suspect he’s doing instead of sleeping. 

Second, a replacement CEO might consider consulting board members, attorneys, accountants or any other department before casually tweeting out a threat to buy out the company, which Musk did to the shock of his Board of Directors and to the displeasure of shareholders and the SEC. Not only has the company been subpoenaed for information related to the claims made in the tweet, there have also now been four lawsuits seeking class action status against Musk and Tesla because of the instability rocking the company’s stock price in the wake of the tweet. As it turns out, when you tweet out financially relevant information saying “funding secured,” you actually really must have your funding secured instead of only having some vague interest from a shady Saudi fund that, according to multiple reports, is not capable of financing the funding that you are meant to have secured. 

Finally, another CEO might focus less on investors short selling stock and more on the actual vehicles being produced to ensure that company is succeeding and fulfilling the promises the CEO sets for it. CNBC reports that Model 3 production is humming along at more than 5,000 units a week, which is the benchmark Musk set for the company, but Carscoops also reported that a $78,000 Model 3 was sent to a buyer kitted with three white door trim panels and one brown one. It seems unlikely that the buyer would’ve specified something like that and for nearly $80,000, you might hope that a company could look at its finished product to ensure that all the boxes were ticked before shipping it off to a buyer. There were multiple occasions during the production and shipment process where this problem might’ve been spotted but wasn’t, and a CEO should make it a priority to ensure that quality control on luxury vehicles is a little tighter than that.

So the invitation stands, if you think you can do a better job than Elon Musk, he’ll hand you the keys himself. Unless, of course, it turns out this is another one of those promises he come up just a bit short on.
 

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

TariffWatch Continues: Harley Woes Edition

As TariffWatch continues, I had 16 browser tabs opened to different reports about the effects of proposed tariffs on companies just from this past week! On Tuesday, Donald Trump tweeted, "We are finishing our study of Tariffs on cars from the E.U. in that they have long taken advantage of the U.S. in the form of Trade Barriers and Tariffs. In the end it will all even out - and it won’t take very long!" What exactly “even out” means is very much under debate, but what isn’t being debated is the fact that nobody outside the Oval Office wants any sort of tariffs to happen, and that all projections suggest a really bad outcome for everyone.

Having previously threatened as much as a 25% tariff on vehicles assembled outside the United States, Trump changed his mind a bit again last Monday, saying maybe just 20% will do. What it will actually do is raise prices, by quite a lot. Assuming the 25% tariff, consumers, to whom the additional cost would be passed, would face an average of $5,800 added to every car, totaling about $45 billion in extra taxes paid every year. This is applied to all vehicles considering the steel and aluminum tariffs and anticipated tariffs applied to auto parts used to assemble cars within the U.S.

German luxury vehicles would be the models hit the hardest, since their high prices mean the tariffs would drive their costs to consumers to truly untenable levels. This not only means fewer sales, it means we could start seeing manufacturers start withholding their cars from the American market. According to Reuters, the tariffs would destroy the business case for niche market vehicles like convertibles and sports cars, which are sold in low volumes and for high prices. If companies can’t sell them and can’t make money on them, why produce them? Or at least why send them to America? Hell, even the very American Toyota Camry, the best selling car in the country, would see its price increase $1,800.

Ostensibly, these tariffs are meant to harm German manufacturers, which they would, to the tune of around $5.24 billion, according to analysts at Evercore ISI. But it’ll hurt other manufacturers, including American ones, especially FiatChrysler, whose profits would take an $886 million hit if the 25% tariff is enacted.

But it’ll create jobs, right? Well, the Council on Foreign Relations estimates that the 25% tariff will actually cost the country between 18,000 and 40,000 auto industry jobs just by the end of next year as companies look for ways to lose less money. And that’s the most conservative study! The American Action Forum estimates a net decrease of 157,000 jobs while the Peterson Institute for International Economics is even more dire, suggesting 195,000 industry jobs will be cut. And that study goes on to suggest if other nations retaliate with tariffs, as is expected, the total industry loss would be around 624,000 jobs.

While this tariff isn’t yet in place and may not be enacted if anyone can talk any sense into Trump and his advisers, the tariffs placed on aluminum and steel are already wreaking havoc on American companies. After their metals were taxed, the European Union responded with tariffs of their own on blue jeans and Harley-Davidson motorcycles. They probably would’ve taxed apple pie too, if that were feasible.

Unfortunately, Europe is Harley’s second biggest market, where they sold more than 40,000 bikes last year, and an increase of between 6 and 31 percent in Europe means their bikes are going to run on average $2,200 more expensive, which is a tough sell. They were already hurting from the steel and aluminum tariffs, which caused costs to rise $15-20 million and the tariff is added an additional $35-40 million to that just this year. Next year they expect to lose more like $80-100 million.

To counteract this, Harley announced that they would move some manufacturing to Europe to avoid the tariffs, which is sort of the exact opposite effect I think Trump was hoping these taxes would have. Previously having called Harley a true American icon, Trump engaged in one of his wildly incoherent tweetstorms, ending with a threat that the company would lose their aura and be hit with taxes like never before. Well, they already are, and it’s your fault, buddy.

Honestly the most terrifying part of all of this is the fact that, while we’re over here slamming doors and storming off to build walls, China announced this week that after July 28th, they will roll back foreign ownership restrictions on joint ventures in the country. After decades of requiring companies from other countries to find a Chinese company to take the lead when they wanted to sell their cars in China, the country is saying, “Hey Tesla, BMW, everyone else! I know you’re getting a raw deal over there in America, why don’t you have a seat over here. We’re keeping it nice and warm for you.”

When even Toyota has to issue a public comment stating that its 137,000 employees in the U.S. don’t pose a national security risk, you know something is backwards, and what that is, is progress. What, I think in many people’s mind, made America great was its role as the guiding force in international commerce, politics, and trade. Now we’re seeing China step up and challenge us for that role and instead of forging forward as we have, we’re stepping back and saying, “Hey, do whatever you want, we’re fine on our own.” The problem is, in this situation, we're not fine on our own and it’s we the people who pay the price, whether through increased costs or restricted choices. Trade wars are the true enemies of automotive enthusiasts and consumers in general.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

24 Heurs du Mans Round-Up

The annual 24 Hours of Le Mans race occurred last weekend and, after years of trying and failing, through breakdowns and superior competition, Toyota finally won the thing, becoming only the second Japanese manufacturer in history to win, the other being Mazda, who used to have freaking awesome race cars. It certainly helped Toyota this year that Porsche and Audi no longer competed in the LMP1 class, leaving them as the only factory team in the World Endurance Championship. It’s awfully easy to come in first when you have the fastest car in the fastest class without any other competitors. Regardless, they didn’t breakdown, which itself is a feat in endurance racing. Porsche meanwhile dominated the LMGTE Pro and Amateur classes with its 911 RSRs, with the number 92 Pink Pig Porsche winning the pro class. You can clearly see why it was called the pink pig, and appreciate that fans were calling the car’s pit stops “pigstops.”

Overall, the race was pretty uneventful, which makes for pretty boring watching. Part of that comes from the fact that new rules meant that no team was allowed to run more than 14 laps per stint and that there was a per-stint fuel limit that was, in many cases, less fuel than the cars were capable of holding, making for some headaches in the pits and a few mistakes that cost drivers time. Another part is because the rules have stifled competition so much that racing has become too expensive for many manufacturers to take part. Thus, Porsche and Audi’s departure for Formula E.

Fortunately, things will be changing in a couple years, as the FIA announced shortly before the race some exciting changes that are coming to the World Endurance Championship. The LMP1 class which currently consists only of Toyota, will be scrapped entirely, being replaced instead with a hypercar-type class that will impose limits on car power, weight, weight distribution, aerodynamics and downforce, but with more freedom to design the cars more closely to road-going hypercars and supercars. This not only gives the race a bit more relevance to real-world drivers, it gives companies a chance to test technology they may be actually able to use on the roads in their hypercars. The class will still mandate a hybrid drivetrain, but internal combustion engines can be up to the manufacturer, so long as they’re limited to 697 horsepower, which is still a lot, especially when paired with a standard 268 horsepower hybrid electric motor. Race commissioners say they want to move the series to the point where “manufacturers can win at Le Mans on a limited budget,” and I’m sure that’s relative, but still a good sign that may invite more competition moving forward. The new rules will be introduced in 2020 and we’ll apparently get to vote on the name of the class, so I look forward to watching the hypercars compete in the racy mcrace-face class in the not-too-distant future.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week for June 18th, 2018

Flying Cars to Take Off in Ingolstadt

Long time listeners may remember a few months ago I mentioned Audi’s partnership with Airbus to start developing flying cars. As a refresher, these were very loosely termed cars. Basically it’s a three-part design, with a quadcopter, passenger pod and electric skateboard-like platform. The pod can be transported by either the quadcopter or wheeled platform, making it either flying or car, but not really “flying car.” I said at the time that the idea was pretty neat and more likely to succeed than any other system I’d seen and, sure enough, Audi has just received approval from the German government to start testing these in their headquarter city in Bavaria, Ingolstadt. Now, this is a long way from being like “oh my God, we are all going to be catching flying car taxis from the airports within five years,” but it’s a lot closer than I thought we’d see in my lifetime, so I’m hoping this actually goes somewhere. Onward and upward, Audi.

Volvo’s New US Plant feat. Dig @ Trump

In a time when automotive manufacturing jobs can be hard to come by in the US, who can we trust to bring back those jobs? Yep, the Chinese and Swedes! Volvo, which is owned by Chinese company Geely, formally opened their new factory in South Carolina, which will build the new S60 we’ll get to later. In addition to providing Volvo the chance to suck up to American buyers by focusing on the $1.1 billion investment in America and the 4,000 jobs the factory will host when construction is complete, the event gave Volvo execs the chance to cast some serious shade at Donald Trump and his supporters Nikki Haley and Governor Henry McMaster. Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson said “If you have trade barriers and restrictions, we cannot create as many jobs as we are planning to. We want to export and if suddenly China and Europe have very high barriers, it would be impossible. Then you have to build the cars there. And then all cars will be more expensive, you have to invest more tooling and have every model in every country. That’s against all the logic of modern economies that trade with each other.” It seems there’s a lot of commentary about our trade policy being against all logic, and yet here we are, threatening a 25% tariff on imported vehicles and auto parts. It’s almost like logic doesn’t factor into decisions at all, but what do I know, I’m only a master of business with a degree in political science who happens to like his cars cheap and fast.

Audi CEO Arrested, Thrown in Slammer

^Criminal

The fallout from the Dieselgate scandal continues still in Germany where this week Audi CEO Rupert Stadler was arrested based on concealment of evidence relating to the defeat devices on Volkswagen Auto Group vehicles. He’s actually remaining in custody because the prosecution thinks he’s a flight risk. Audi has had to scramble to name an interim CEO while their boss remains a jailbird, but this just continues to look bad. If the CEO of one of your major brands was aware of the effort to deceive authorities, former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn is probably shaking in his boots because you can bet he knew about it too. It’s a serious problem when a culture of corruption comes straight from the top, and you would’ve thought Volkswagen had learned its very expensive lesson, but by keeping Stadler as Audi CEO this long after the scandal came to light, maybe they need a couple more billion dollar settlements before the root out all the corrupt jerks. I’ll take my settlement in the form of a V10 R8, thank you.

Teslupdate #1,000,000,000

This will again not be the week when we have no Tesla news, because there was some wild shit going on with Elon Musk’s company this week. First, the not-so-wild: tesla completed the setup of a third production line over the weekend...in their parking lot. Yes, the new line is underneath temporary tents outside because the space is needed that badly to ramp up production to meet goals. Back when the factory was a combined General Motors and Toyota venture, they managed to crank out 8,200 cars per week from the inside of the place, so if Tesla needs to move outdoors just to reach 5,000, I think you can imagine how much more complicated those production lines must be and how much more space they take up.

Amazing work by Tesla team. Built entire new general assembly line in 3 weeks w minimal resources. Love u guys so much! Pic of 1st Model 3 dual motor performance coming off the line … pic.twitter.com/Xr55P3fmGd

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 16, 2018

Next came some serious shade thrown from General Motors. Actress Mary McCormack who you may remember from some sort of television shows somewhere, tweeted out a video of her husband’s Tesla Model S, which apparently just started catching fire while he was driving it and burst into flames in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard. Tesla has no idea what happened or why, but GM jumped at the opportunity, offering the actress a free Chevy Bolt as a more dependable loaner car. Nicely done, GM communications guy Ray Wert.

Okay now we get to the crazy shit - on Sunday, Elon Musk sent out an email accusing a former employee of sabotage and intellectual property theft, as well as leaking sensitive information to third parties and the press. He followed that email up with another about someone potentially trying to sabotage a production line by starting a fire. Then on Tuesday Tesla filed a lawsuit against a former employee for allegedly having stolen confidential information and making false claims to the media. Then on Thursday, someone claiming to be a friend of Martin Tripp, the guy Tesla sued, called the Gigafactory to warn that Tripp was coming in to shoot up the place, causing a minor panic and for beefed up security until the county sheriff found there was no credibility to the threat. Then AFTER THAT, Tripp posted to Twitter an email exchange that he had with Musk about the lawsuit wherein they both called each other horrible human beings and generally behaved like children.

We’re not yet sure if the Sunday email and Tuesday lawsuit are connected, but if not, that means there are several people trying their darndest to mess up Elon’s life. And jeez, people if you like constant dramabombs being dropped, no need to watch daytime television, just follow Elon Musk on Twitter. This is ridiculous.

J.D. Power Initial Quality Honors Hyundai

The annual list of J.D. Power rankings for initial quality were released this week and, if you’ve been listening to this show and looking at their recent cars, you won’t be surprised to learn that Genesis, Kia and Hyundai are the top three brands. All of them being owned by Hyundai. Even Porsche comes in at just fourth spot and Ford in a somewhat unbelievable fifth. The trick is, the initial power rankings count the number of problems experienced per hundred vehicles in the first 90 days of ownership. If things are going wrong within 90 days, that’s generally not a great sign for future reliability, but certainly not a sign that cars with good initial quality will last longer, as may be the case with Ford. They also don’t measure the severity of problems, so a busted transmission is effectively the same weight as a windshield wiper motor squeaking, which is pretty misleading. Furthermore, as I’ve discussed before, automakers pay JD Power for the right to use their awards in marketing materials, so these sort of non-firsthand user reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, Hyundai definitely deserves a look as they do make some pretty nice cars. Just, as with everything else, QUESTION EVERYTHING.

RC-6 Corvette

While I’ve never driven one, It’s my understanding that Corvettes are very fun cars to drive. But in the Netherlands, where people decided they’d rather have land where the sea was so they built a complex series of windmills to drive the sea back into the ocean, one man has gone and made his Corvette a bit more complex as well. Specifically, he modified his C6 Corvette to be remote controlled. We’ve seen full-sized R/C cars before, but doing so to a Corvette is an entirely different scale; one that cost about $4,000. It’s honestly really impressive that someone could pull this off, but I still think I’d rather be behind the wheel of that V8 rather than just puttering it around a parking lot. But that’s the Dutch for you - defying convention, and the ocean.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Header image: When your GTI is the least athletic member of your automotive family tree.

Why Can’t We Be Friends: Automotive Partnerships Pick Up

The automotive landscape is in a pretty significant state of flux right now, with sales down, tariffs up, and a trade war looming around the corner. But, driven by the ever-increasing pressure to generate value for their shareholders, automakers can’t just sit back, shrug and say, “hey, shit happens, guys.” So what we’re seeing is a dramatic uptick in the number of partnerships between automakers and investment by automakers in technology companies. The largest of these is undoubtedly Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi partnership, heralded by Carlos Ghosn, which is an alliance, but not a single company like the Volkswagen Automotive Group, which holds Audi, Porsche, Bugatti, Skoda and others. Just by cooperating, Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi saved a collective $6.6 billion last year alone. This is by sharing development costs of new platforms, technologies, parts, components and by their increased purchasing power, being able to buy more in bulk at a cheaper price. The alliance is basically like a membership to automotive Costco. There's been talk about this alliance becoming a merger, but Ghosn squashed those rumours this week.

And when someone says their alliance saved them almost $7 billion in a year, people start paying attention, specifically that same Volkswagen Automotive Group announced a strategic alliance this week with Ford. The details of the Memorandum of Understanding signed are pretty vague, but it sounds from the statements made like it’s an awful lot like Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi, where they will share development costs and technology, apparently primarily for commercial vehicles. I’d say this is a win for both companies since Ford has been ahead in the hybrid game for a while and Volkswagen’s infotainment system is one of the best I’ve used in a long time, but how necessary those are for commercial vehicles is another question. I’ll go ahead and take credit for the partnership since my household has been a Ford-VW garage since February.

Volkswagen isn’t stopping with Ford though. Through their Audi brand, they are partnering with Hyundai to co-develop fuel cell vehicles. Audi has apparently been tasked with developing fuel cells for the rest of the Volkswagen Automotive Group while VW works on battery cars. Audi will start working with Hyundai’s ix35 fuel cell SUV and the forthcoming Nexo and leverage collective R&D to take their fuel cell tech to the next level. The next level, of course, being a level at which someone might want to purchase a fuel cell vehicle, which I think is probably more a matter of fueling infrastructure than car quality or availability at this point. Regardless, the partnership should save both companies a lot.

But speaking of Volkswagen running the battery game, they announced this week that they have increased their stake in QuantumScape Corporation, forming a joint venture for the purpose of producing viable solid state batteries. The goal here is to put them in production vehicles by 2025. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Toyota is doing pretty much the same thing, but on their own. Future partnership incoming? As a refresher, solid state batteries, basically pack more power and energy storage capacity into smaller packages. They said that a solid state battery could increase the range of VW’s E-Golf from its current 186 miles on lithium ion batteries to a whopping 466 miles, which would beat basically every other car out there right now. Hell, that’s more range than my GTI gets on premium gas. I may be looking at the Golf GTE come 2026 or so!

Also in the Volkswagen Automotive Group, Porsche has bought a minority stake in Rimac, makers of two electric super car models, one of which was crashed by Richard Hammond on a hill climb attempt last year. As is the case with most partnerships entered into voluntarily, both companies stand to benefit, with Porsche tapping into Rimac’s experience with electric super cars for their upcoming Taycan and future electric cars, and Rimac getting access to Porsche’s suppliers and potentially greater savings on parts from increased purchasing power.

And you know what stands out to me about these partnerships? They’re all international. Every single one. To me they show the great potential for progress when companies work together, share technology and help one another out, rather than operating in silos, shutting out the competition. The market is tough right now, and if companies are going to survive, they have to work together. And the result for us petrolheads? More choices, lower costs and better, more developed options. If only more people believed in tearing down walls, huh?

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of June 11th, 2018

Daimler Defeat Devices Doom Diesels

In Germany this week, Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer made like a middle school principal and called Daimler CEO Dieter Zietsche to his office. On Monday, he asked a sheepish Zietsche if he know how exactly five cheating devices were found in new Mercedes diesel engines. Of course Dieter claimed he had no knowledge of such a thing and that it was his classmate Martin Winterkorn over at Volkswagen who was the cheater! Well, said Principal Scheuer, he didn’t believe that, but he did believe that Daimler had put defeat devices in as many as one million recent Mercedes cars to try to skirt the Euro 6 emissions standards and that, to make things right, Dieter would have to do the equivalent of resubmitting his homework. Which in automotive terms is recalling 774,000 of their latest model diesels. All joking aside, these cars were probably designed after Volkswagen’s dieselgate scandal came to light, so just how was it Daimler thought they were going to get away with this? And how far does this dieselgate rabbit hole go? The more they cheat, the more it seems like diesel cannot be made clean and really has no future.

Tesla Drops Employees, Props Autopilot

Just one week, I’d love to go through Feedly, which is an RSS reader I use to aggregate my news and think, “oh wow, not a single notable thing about Tesla this week, I guess their 5,000 vehicle production rate is humming along smoothly.” Sadly, that was not this week and they remain the brand mentioned more than any other on my and most websites.

First, some lawsuits; one from an employee who alleges he was fired after he expressed concerns about workplace safety, and another who claims he was ousted after expressing interest in joining a union. Both are crimes, both will probably be settled to nobody’s satisfaction, and both have been denied by the company. Why cover this? Because such rumors have been floating around for a long time and the more we hear about them, the more it seems Tesla has a toxic culture of secrecy, cover-ups and anti-union sentiment, which is a problem when it comes to protecting workers’ rights and well being. Also because no other company is having this sort of problem, at least not visibly.

Then came the news that Tesla is laying off nine percent of their workforce in an effort to streamline efficiency and gain better profitability, which is to say “any profitability at all.” It sounds like the cuts will come primarily from salaried positions because they need all hands on deck for the production of their vehicles. Despite planning factories in Shanghai and Europe, Musk still claims he won’t have to raise any new capital and that the company will be profitable by the third or fourth quarter of this year, so this culling is probably critical to getting there or close.

Finally, hot on the heels of a report from the Association of British Insurers and Thatcham Research indicated that calling vehicles “autonomous” led to dangerous grey areas and driver over-reliance on technology, Tesla announced that they will begin rolling out full self-driving features this August. Details are scarce (as they are on the fact that the next Roadster will apparently have rocket thrusters), but if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that people are too dumb for this technology. If you hear the word “autonomous” and you immediately stop listening to anything else and immediately start thinking that cars are going to do everything for you, you should not be allowed as a passenger in a car, let alone driving. Seriously, hop on a train.

Toyota Drops Cool Bill on Grab

Any time a car maker spends a billion dollars, it’s going to get some attention, and that’s just what Toyota did this week when it took a stake in Singapore’s Grab Holdings, which is Southeast Asia’s largest car hailing service, a company that drove Uber out of their home markets. That Toyota had to spend so much to buy in indicates not only the growing value of ride sharing, but the view among car companies that they think that traditional vehicle ownership is going to be majorly disrupted by car sharing and autonomous ride hailing services. Toyota’s big cash drop means they’ll get a seat on Grab’s board of directors, which analysts say almost guarantees that Grab will start buying Toyota cars for its service. As they say, you gotta spend money to make money, and with $54 billion in cash laying around, I’d say Toyota has some they can spend! Toyota has increased partnerships and investments in a bunch of automotive disruption companies that focus on ride hailing, ride sharing, electric vehicles and autonomous cars, so they are hedging their bets that one or more of those is going to take off and they’ll be well-positioned to take advantage. Once more, Ford should be taking note of how Toyota does business before they have to kill off their entire passenger car production because they didn’t plan well enough.

Autonomous Vehicles will be SO GREAT

Even though autonomous cars aren’t very good right now, they won’t always be glorified assisted driving systems. According to a report by Security America’s Future Energy, autonomous vehicles will be so great for everyone and will lead to an incredible $796 billion in total annual benefits by 2050. This comes from congestion mitigation and economic impact as well as the totally super easy to quantify “quality of life improvements.” It also means cost cutting for taxis and truckers since those hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs will be taken over by robots, and it’s like you always hear those people who lose their jobs to robots say, “but my quality of life is so much better now that I’m unemployed.” This report is full of bogus or at the very least dubious data and projections, including safety because, as we’ve been learning lately, safety isn’t exactly guaranteed by autonomous vehicles. Maybe by 2050 they’ll have it all figured out. That’s only 32 years or so from now.

Food in Fords Making Moves in Miami

Speaking of autonomous vehicles, when Ford isn’t buying old train stations in Detroit to slap their logo on, they’re building customized Ford Transit Connects to act as Postmates food delivery vehicles in Miami. The small vans will be equipped with curbside lockers to hold food, which will be placed in the car by the restaurant after a customer places an order through the app. The food will then be taken to the customer who will receive a locker number and code to unlock the locker. Car arrives, customer gets food, and we all move on with our lives without having to make polite small talk with the delivery person while you try to decide how generous you will be with the tip. In the wake of vacating sedan and small car sales, Ford may be jumping in with both feet on this “autonomous mobility” movement sector and this pilot project could help inform systems and layout for an entirely food delivery-focused vehicle sometime in the future. I look forward to the Domino’s Transit that will cook my pizza while it’s on the way to my house. I don’t mind having to cut it because it’s not like the people at the store actually do it worth a damn anyway.

China Proves U.S. IS Not so Bad

Starting on July 1st of this year, China will be rolling out a voluntary system by which all new cars will have RFID chips placed on the windshield of vehicles, thereby allowing the Chinese government to use its dense network of surveillance technology to track you wherever you go. If you’re thinking, “well at least it’s voluntary,” starting in 2019, it won’t be anymore, and all of those 30 million or so new cars sold in the world’s largest car market every year will be equipped with these chips. China already has a number of surveillance systems, including incredible facial recognition technology, in place that use artificial intelligence to track criminals and shame people with high debts or for petty shit like jaywalking, so this is just another way of maintaining social control, and probably another way in which China can expand its incredibly creepy social rating system. While it sounds like this is yet another step on China’s journey into a dystopian nightmare, bear in mind that we all carry around cell phones equipped with RFIDs, so this could already be happening in the U.S. without your knowledge.

Dieselgate Can’t Stop Won’t Stop

Despite beginning in 2015, here we are three years later and Volkswagen is still dealing with the consequences of their diesel cheating scandal or “dieselgate.” They set aside 28.5 billion Euro to cover the sprawling fines and lawsuits stemming from their inability to make clean diesels that won’t kill us with excess carbon pollution, but just this week they were hit with another one billion euro fine from the German government for the same scandal. The Germans’ investigation was apparently much more exhaustive than the one we had here in the U.S. because it took way longer, but also resulted in lower fines. Add to this the fact that former owners of cheating diesel cars in Vermont and Arizona will receive $1,000 for the hassle of having to turn their cars back in and this thing only gets more expensive for Volkswagen.  In any case, they have to be getting close to putting this whole thing behind them. Just too bad the millions of people in Europe who will likely die early from inhaling those diesel fumes won’t be able to. SAD!

Fishy Filings Could Trouble Toyota

For the last…ever, people and politicians have been saying “where are the jobs?” and this year, Toyota and Mazda came through, committing to spend $1.6 billion on a new plant in Alabama, where everyone was super happy to greet them. Well, almost everyone, because the Center for Biological Diversity has been saying for years, “what about the fish?” Specifically, the Spring Pygmy Sunfish, which is a rare species and could theoretically be driven to extinction by the construction of the factory and the various infrastructure and activities around it. In a lawsuit filed this week, the Center alleges there hasn’t been enough legal protection for the fish’s only known habitat near the factory location, and they’re hoping to get the Fish and Wildlife Service to make some special efforts to protect the important characteristics of the apparently critical habitat. All this for a small striped fish that rarely exceeds an inch in length and has already been presumed extinct twice before someone found one living somewhere. But being the relative conservationist that I am, it strikes me that it can’t be that hard to accommodate some small fish, plus what if there’s like a butterfly effect where if this fish dies, Elon Musk never colonizes mars? Talk about a disaster.

Fuel Economy Matters, but Does it Really?

A new study released this week by Consumers Union and sent to me by AllWaysDrive Blog minion Jordan revealed that, among 19 popular vehicle features, almost 1,900 drivers chose purchase cost, reliability, safety and fuel economy as their top four most important, in that order. The researchers also asked study participants which vehicle they would prefer and participants generally chose options that cost 25% more but increased reliability, safety, and fuel economy. Less important were acceleration and performance, which surely indicates that this study polled the wrong people. Setting aside the fact that the study’s sample size was relatively small compared with the total car buying public, this isn’t really reflective of reality, with the average cost of cars climbing and the average fuel economy of new cars sold actually decreasing since mid-2014 with the booming sales of SUVs and crossovers. So there’s obviously a disconnect between what consumers say they want in an ideal car and what they actually end up buying. Go figure that people can’t be trusted to tell the truth!

Cars Drivers Drive the Least

If you’ve looked on the app Autolist for a car, which I highly recommend you do, you’ve probably seen a bunch of “online only” results from a company called Carvana, which will deliver vehicles to your door in a sort of backwards dealership kind of situation. Well, they also come up with lists, apparently, and after analyzing more than 1.6 million automotive sales from January through May of this year, they’ve come up with a list of vehicles they say get driven the least each year. In the top 15, you get your regular list of high class Mercedes and BMWs that are someone’s “treat yoself” vehicle when they’re not driving their ’94 Ford Ranger back and forth to work, and the same go with the Sunday cars like the Maserati Ghibli, Lexus RC, M4 and sure, even the Volkswagen Beetle. Also on the list are the Nissan Leaf and BMW i3, which people don’t drive because of range anxiety and the Smart ForTwo which people don’t drive because it’s crap. But there are cars on the list like the Mini Cooper, VW Golf Sportwagen and Buick Encore, which are just sort of normal cars. Why are you not driving your Buick Encores, people? Is it because you’re tired of people asking “oh, that’s a Buick?” But leading the list are the Porsche 911 and Chevy Corvette, which are driven just 4,700 and 4,500 miles per year on average, which is just a crying shame because they are both some of the best cars to drive. You stupid collectors are ruining everything!

Fifth Gear Returns this Fall

After the bummer news last week that Matt LeBlanc was leaving Top Gear after his third season, we got a boost this week with the news that competing show Fifth Gear would be returning this fall, with old hosts and top blokes Tiff Needell and Jason Plato once again hosting after a three year hiatus. Fifth Gear never had the budget of Top Gear, didn’t do the crazy stunts and always focused less on the antics of three weird oldies instead of the cars themselves, which was always attractive to the real car nerds out there, even if it was a bit tougher to get the significant others interested. As I mentioned when the old Top Gear crew left for the Grand Tour, more car shows will never be a bad thing and, even if Vicki Butler-Henderson doesn’t return, I’m going to try to find a way to tune in here in the States, and so should you.

Ford Files Patent for Existing Thing

When they’re not buying train stations, delivering Miami’s to-go-orders or killing off popular vehicle models, Ford is busy filing patent applications for silly things that have existed for decades. Recently, the company applied for a patent for a screen that drops from a car’s tailgate to provide a privacy curtain. One could imagine this being especially handy at the beach for changing out of a swimsuit before hopping back into the car or for doing your business while out in the woods or when overcome with a sudden case of bowel evacuation syndrome because you ate curry for lunch and you knew it was risky but decided dammit, Darryl, just go for it. In any case, these screens have been around for years and you can buy them on Amazon if you’re the type of person who chooses not to think about if someone could just look through the windshield and see you despite the privacy curtain. The difference here is that they will apparently be built into the tailgate instead of being an add-on you purchase separately. There’s also a variant that deploys into an awning, basically giving you a shady spot to sit behind your car on sunny days. Plus, with the fact that the Mustang will be the only Ford vehicle without a hatchback or tailgate, this means they could apply it to almost every single car in their U.S. lineup! Hooray for small victories? 

Infrastructure, Now with Stuffed Crust

After so many campaign promises by so many politicians to address the country’s crumbling infrastructure, we are finally starting to see some progress being made. Oh, wait, did you think the government was doing something? Oh, no, sorry. We can’t even get a coherent trade policy. The entity currently working on restoring our roads is actually Domino’s Pizza. Under the guise of creating a smoother ride for their delivery vehicles so our pizzas don’t arrive in a jumbled mess, Domino’s is fixing potholes from California to Texas to Delaware and, after paving over the road canyons, painting them with a very tasteful Domino’s logo and their tagline, “Oh yes we did.” Yes, this is a publicity stunt and yes it’s working but hell no, I don’t mind driving over Domino’s logos in the streets instead of feeling the jarring crash of a six-inch deep pothole and wondering if my wheel has bent so much I won’t make it home. Oh yes you did, Domino’s, because oh no, our elected officials can’t.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Why Canada is Family, Not Foe

Photo by Haskell Free Library & Opera House

Canada - in many ways, America’s younger brother who, despite getting a later start in life and remaining closer to the parents we rebelled so hard against, turned into a cooler, more progressive and not to mention nicer version of ourselves, without all the hangups of being everyone’s go-to guy when something is wrong in the world. We’re so similar in terms of culture, values, and economies, that free and open trade among the countries has been a huge success for both sides since 1987 when the catchy named Canada-United States trade agreement was signed. In fact, Canada is one of the few countries with which the U.S. actually has a trade surplus; a not inconsiderable $8.7 billion last year. On a more granular level, our two countries are so intertwined that almost 310,000 jobs in the state of Ohio alone depend on Canada, with that one state exporting $18.7 billion in goods to the Great White North every year. Across the nation, nearly 9,000,000 jobs depend on Canada, the country which buys more from America than it does from China, Japan and the United Kingdom combined. Guy Lawson has a fantastic read in the New York Times this week if you want to read more about our long and beneficial relationship with Canada, but the point I’m trying to make for this story is that things are going pretty well.

So why then, would it be beneficial to impose tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum? The truth is, it’s not beneficial, and Canada has responded with their own tariffs on Kentucky bourbon and Wisconsin pickled cucumbers, specifically targeting the states of the Senate Majority Leader and House Speaker. The problem is NAFTA and Canada are merely caught in the crossfire of a looming trade war along our southern border despite being, well, on the opposite side. While the U.S. and Canada are very much alike, with the latter having even higher labor and environmental regulations than we do, neither country is much like Mexico, so wrapping them into a free trade agreement made little to no sense. Nevertheless it happened, and NAFTA does need an overhaul to square up some longstanding issues that have bred considerable resentment on our side of the fence. And Canada understands this, which is why they’re trying, always politely, to help renegotiate in a way that doesn’t result in the termination of the good thing we have going on with them.

But then there’s this whole threat of a 25% tariff on foreign-made cars. The once-booming Canadian auto industry has been declining recently but they still export a whopping 85% of the vehicles they make, with most of them coming to the United States. Since everyone with a brain knows that increased costs due to tariffs are passed along to consumers, most analysts see the market reacting to the tariffs in three ways:

1. People will not buy new cars, and instead look for used cars.
2. People will look for cheaper new cars or buy ones made in the U.S. (which, by the way, will still be more expensive thanks to the steel and aluminum tariffs already in place.)
3. Or, people will put off buying a car altogether, accepting that the tariffs are temporary and people will come to their senses eventually, which gives politicians an awful lot of credit.

In any case, under the best projections, LMC automotive is predicting sales drop by 1,000,000 vehicles within the first year, but it’ll probably be closer to 2,000,000, or more than 10% of the market. If consumers react by buying used or locally-made vehicles, it could potentially kill off production of vehicles in Canada completely, leading to hundreds of thousands of job losses in a country that actually pays us almost $9 billion every year for the privilege of trading with us freely.

And more than the monetary threat to a country that poses us no monetary threat, to do so under the guise of national security - to suggest that Canada may be nefariously plotting to destabilize our country by sending us their Ford Edges, Chevy Equinoxes and Cadillac XTSs - isn’t just flimsy logic, it’s downright offensive. Canada is the closest thing we have to a best friend in the world at a time when we’re romping around the playground putting gum in everyone’s hair and stomping on others’ toes. Christ, they fought with us in Afghanistan for 13 years after 9/11. When we need someone to have our backs, it’s Canada. The least we can do is not stab them in theirs and claim it’s their own fault.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of June 4th, 2018

EVs Are Takin' Our Jerbs!

Electric vehicles are all fun and games except for the fact that they contain 30% fewer parts than internal combustion vehicles. While, to most of us, that’s a good thing because it means less can go wrong, it also means there’s less to make. So while many new jobs are created in the fields of battery and motor technology, in Germany alone, as many as 75,000 engine and transmission jobs may be lost if as many as 25% of vehicle sales are electric by 2030. German labor representatives are on the case now, trying to put together plans to maintain jobs by retraining workers in new, relevant fields, or basically, what we refuse to do in America while instead pandering to people who don’t want to give up their careers working in unskilled labor areas that are obsolete. At least one country understands progress!

WRC goes All-EV

The FIA World Council this week approved big changes to the World Rally Championship, moving vehicles to a common motor setup, and those motors will be all-electric. They’ll also use common batteries and a common chassis, but the parts around those - suspension, steering, equipment, etc. - will be up to each team. In that regard, it won’t be entirely down to driver skill because they’re all driving the same car and they will all have the same power, 670 horses from twin electric motors powering all four wheels. The common components will help keep costs down, which has been a growing problem in racing across many series, and is the reason there’s only one team in the top level of the World Endurance Championship. Plus, the relatively short sprint distance of rallying is much more well-suited to electric vehicles compared with endurance racing because of range concerns. I think for many viewers and spectators though, it’s going to be hard to get over hearing the absolute chaos of turbocharged motors hurtling steel and plastic through woods and along cliffs. As for the people living along those cliffs though, they’ll probably really appreciate it.

GM Exec Crashes at Really Bad Time

If you’re a skilled driver who loves vehicles and you happen to crash a car on the track during an Indy car race, chances are you’ll be a bit sheepish but it’s okay, you’re a race car driver and this happens sometimes. But if you happen to be the pace car driver and you wreck the pace car, causing a half hour delay in the start of the race because you spun your Chevy Corvette ZR1 into a wall, you will feel mortified. One can’t help but feel a bit sorry for GM EVP of Global Product Development Mark Reuss, who did just that before the Detroit Grand Prix of Belle Isle this week. Even Indy 500 winner and fast circle man Will Power jumped to his defense saying the corner Reuss took is a bit off-camber and unloads the rear wheels, causing slippage. He even went so far as to issue a really painful apology that he 100 percent didn’t have to do because if you can’t imagine feeling exactly how he felt when he crashed that car in front of thousands of people, you need to be put on an island far away from people because you are a sociopath.

Come On and Take a Free (Autonomous) Ride

Great news for Californians as a new rule has just gone into place allowing you to be picked up by a fully autonomous vehicle. In even better news, the companies running these vehicles can’t charge you a fare for the journey because this is all in the name of testing technology and not capitalism. Well it’s in the name of future capitalism. But focus on free today. Problem is, only one company has applied for a permit to test fully autonomous vehicles in the state, and these systems aren’t exactly totally safe, as we’ve been seeing recently, so maybe don’t hold out for a rare free ride from a company that may kill you.

Tesla Investor Call Sans Fireworks for Once

Tesla held its annual stockholders meeting this week and we got some answers to boring bonehead questions without a healthy dose of attitude for once. The bad news is there is no real super interesting news, but the good news is there’s no real super interesting news. Musk said production of Model 3s is humming right along and they anticipate reaching 5,000 units per week by the end of this month, but right hand drive and base models are still going to have to wait until next year. He said the Model 3 was beating its rivals in sales, namely the BMW 3 series, Audi A4, Lexus IS and Mercedes C-Class. Hidden in that little gem was the fact that nearly a quarter of all Model 3 reservations have been canceled, either by the company or by buyers. While that sounds like bad news, to have that many cancellations and still be outselling the competition really illustrates the ongoing hype around and interest in the car. Finally, Musk said the Model Y was on schedule for release in 2020 along with the new Roadster and Semi. He also hinted that sometime after that, Tesla would be working on a Volkswagen Golf-sized hatchback, which makes sense since it’s the best-selling car in Europe. One can’t help but wonder if, by the time they get around to it, if Volkswagen won’t already have a mass-market electric hatchback on sale, beating them to the punch. Between the eGolf, the Golf GTE and the various VW ID cars, they have an awful lot of irons in the fire.

Lamborghini Awaits Worthy Battery Power

As for Tesla’s competition, they won’t be getting any from Lamborghini, at least for a while because the Italian supercar manufacturer says no battery exists yet that is worthy enough to be bestowed upon one of their raging bulls. Chief Technical Officer Maurizio Reggiani said that they’re aiming for brutal acceleration, a top speed of at least 186 and the range to be able to complete three laps of the Nurburgring. Given that the Nordschliefe is only 12.9 miles, achieving a range of 40 miles seems awfully doable, but I bet you’d be surprised how quickly that range disappears when you’re pushing a Lamborghini as hard as it’ll go around the German forest. But one needs only look at Tesla’s Roadster for evidence that batteries with incredible acceleration and high top speeds remain only a few years away. Even their top of line Model Ss feature an aptly named “insanity mode” which is damn quick. Lamborghinis, however, are permanently stuck in insanity mode, which is sort of why we like them so much.

Your Next Honda, Powered by GM

Tell me if this sounds familiar – A friend of yours is shopping for a car and wants something efficient, so you suggest the Chevy Volt. You get the response, “Yeah, but I want something reliable, so I’m thinking Prius or Insight." Well, the next time you have that conversation, you can fire back, “Yeah, well Honda likes General Motors’ battery technology so much that they recently signed an agreement to use their batteries in future electric vehicles.” Because that just happened this week. If you really want to turn the screw, you can say something like, “Honda is so far behind on battery technology, the deal really isn’t even a collaboration. The deal basically just gets GM a better deal because they can buy more batteries in bulk and then give them to Honda. They may be collaborating on hydrogen fuel cells in a more equitable partnership, but if you buy a Honda electric vehicle in the future, just know you’re basically getting a GM.” That’s not entirely true because motors and transmissions and well, the rest of the cars will be different, but sometimes it’s just good to knock people down a peg or two if they’re blindly brand loyal.

Hyundai’s Connected Car Tech Detailed

Are you the type of person who is too lazy to swipe a credit card or get out of your car for some nachos? Well Hyundai is designing a system just for you! Their Hyundai Digital Wallet and access to purchasing platform Xevo will allow drivers to pay for things like food and fuel and parking directly from the car without having to reach into your pocket or purse to get your preferred payment method. Before long, the steering wheel can just be replaced with a robotic arm that shoves churros into our mouths as the vehicles drive themselves to our destination.

While everyone loves churros, not everyone loves big brother, and a portion of Hyundai’s connected car tech pertains specifically to driver analytics, which the car will collect and share with a company called Verisk, who will give you a Verisk Driver Score, which can then be passed on to your insurance company if you either give them permission or simply don’t tell them not to. This is allegedly to offer tips and discounts on courses to help improve driving and not to tattle to your insurance company that you’re a dangerous driver, but I think the rest of the world can join me in issuing a collective fuuuuuuuuck that on this plan. Some drivers certainly could use some help not sucking, but I will hold myself responsible for informing them of their inadequacy by way of horn blaring and wild gesticulations.

Hyundai Missed the Diesel Bus

And poor Hyundai, they really try, but sometimes, they just kind of look like the guy at a hockey game who is so busy playing Pokemon GO that they miss a goal getting scored and then look up like “oh, what happened, do I clap now?” This week was one of those times because immediately after Nissan and Renault announced that they were both discontinuing development of diesel engines, Hyundai bursts into the room and is like “here it is, our new 2019 Tucson, which features a mild hybrid diesel engine!” Everyone’s like “oh, did he not hear the news?” I mean, truth be told, Mazda has some diesels coming up too, but these are going to be hard sales in Europe where diesels are tanking harder than the Las Vegas Golden Knights right now.

Most & Least Expensive Cars to Insure for 2018

Speaking of insurance, we got a couple of lists today of the most and least expensive cars in the country to insure. The top five most expensive included the Dodge Challenger, which no doubt made the list because of its Hellcat version, and the Toyota 86 and Mitsubishi Lancer, which made the list because they’re driven by young reckless kids. Topping the list though were the Mercedes S-Class and the Tesla Model S, undoubtedly earning their places because of high repair costs and the incredible amount of technology in each.

As for the cheapest to insure, there were predictably a bunch of Toyotas and Hondas, some GMC vehicles, most full-size trucks and, interestingly, the Chevrolet Corvette, which clocked in as the 12th cheapest car to insure. Ahead of it were a bunch more trucks and luxury crossovers and the Jeep Wrangler, which was number six, but the absolute cheapest car to insure in the U.S. this year was the Subaru Outback with its Eyesight forward collision avoidance technology. On average, buyers paid just less than $540 total per year, which is just about half my bill for the GTI, which is only moderately depressing. But it makes sense. They have great visibility, good reliability, good crash test ratings and are driven by crunchy dog-having, oatmeal-loving hippies who never exceed the speed limit and clean up their campsites after themselves. Not that insurance companies would profile people like that. 

Coder Boy’s Wild Ride

In a bizarre story from Virginia this week, a National Guard soldier got hopped up on drugs and stole an armored personnel carrier, then got engaged in a not-so-high speed chase with police after which he was arrested and charged with a whole slew of crimes because, go figure, the National Guard doesn’t appreciate you stealing their things. An APC is basically a tracked tank but without a turret and with a larger interior to accommodate the transport of troops. It’s big, it’s tan, it’s hard to miss flying down the streets of Richmond. Making the story even more bizarre is that this soldier is a sort of well-known coder who made an anti-social justice variant of a secure web browser and tried desperately to get the attention of an accused sexual abuser. Nobody is still sure why he stole the APC but cocaine is a hell of a drug, so maybe he decided “well, it’s there and probably more fun than an Uber home.”

It’s Rainin’ Merde

Finally, in truly disgusting news this week, a woman and her son in British Columbia, Canada were driving along at about 160 miles or a billion kilometers as they call them up there, from Vancouver when they were suddenly struck by a cascade of what appeared to be sewage flying through their open sunroof. One minute, you’re cruising along enjoying one of the many beautiful days the Pacific Northwest has to offer, the next, you’re getting pink eye from someone taking the afternoon flight from Philadelphia. The driver suspects it was sewage from a plane that just so happened to have the supreme bad timing and placement to hit her open sunroof, which is possible, but rare and hardly a reason to keep your sunroofs closed out of sheer paranoia. But can you imagine how much worse it would’ve been if she had been driving a convertible?

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Fiat Chrysler Details Future for Everything but Fiat & Chrysler

I generally try to steer clear of speculation and rumor in my podcast. One, because you can basically do that ad nauseam and face no consequences if things turn out to be false and two, because things do so often turn out to be false! So I went out on a limb last week when it was suggested that Fiat and Chrysler might both be pulled at least from the American market if not culled completely in the case of Chrysler and, well, the jury is still out, for Dodge as well. But Chrysler went into detail about virtually every other brand in their stable, so it’s worth taking a look at the future of the littlest of the big three.

First up, Jeep, the crowning jewel of the Fiat Chrysler portfolio and the one brand sort of keeping everything afloat. Forthcoming are the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer as well as Trackhawk, Trailhawk and Deserthawk variants of their existing vehicles. While we’re familiar with Trackhawk as being racing circuit-focused and Trailhawk being off-road focused, the Deserthawk trim will be focused on, well, deserts. As we saw with the Rolls Royce Cullinan, desert driving is very popular with Arab oil sheikhs and I guess Jeep thinks they can interest a prince or two in an amply-equipped Cherokee. By 2021, there will be an electrified (meaning hybrid or plug-in hybrid) version of each of its models and by 2022, we’ll finally see the Wrangler Scrambler pickup and two new three row SUVs. So for Jeep at least, they stay the course, just like George H.W. used to say.

For Ram, we’ll get a new mid-sized truck to replace the Dodge Dakota that everyone forgot existed at one point. There will also be new super duty trucks and they’re even making a Ram TRX, which is aimed squarely at Ford’s F-150 Raptor because if there’s one thing the world needs, it’s more obscenely off-road capable pickups that cost more than $60,000. Because when you’re rich, but want to show you’re humble, you spend more than most people’s annual salaries on a pickup that will rarely ever see its bed used. There will also be a new version of their ProMaster City Van, which I can tell you all are super jazzed about.

Moving on to the fun stuff! Alfa Romeo is apparently planning on bringing back the 8C Competizione, but rather than as a grand tourer, as a mid-engined supercar, which, yes please. We only ever got 90 whole 8Cs when they were first made on the Maserati GranTurismo platform but since supercars are selling like IHOP pancakes these days, I’d hope they could spare a few more for our shores. Also coming back is the GTV, which is a fairly historic nameplate, but the rendering looks an awful lot like a coupe version of the Giulia, which itself is not a bad thing. They say the GTV will have 600+ horsepower and the 8C will get 700 or so, which means you can expect to see both vehicles catching on fire shortly after they are released into the wild.

Maserati meanwhile is hoping to challenge both Porsche and Tesla for sales, which, wasn’t that what they were trying to do before? In any case, they’re gonna try to do it way better this time with the Alfieri supercar, a new SUV, and four electric vehicles. Maserati chief Tim Kuniskis said, “From a product standpoint, it may look as if Maserati is challenging Porsche and Tesla. We are. We’re going to accomplish this by bringing the market something no other player in the industry can match.” Except by that he really means they’re going to make pretty cars in segments where other cars already have market share and hope to get by on looks rather than engineering or merit.

As for Chrysler, Fiat and Dodge, they were more conspicuous by their absence than by any news about any of them, so we’ll just have to wait and see if the company is going to embrace the Ford theory of profitability or pivot to something completely different.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of May 28th, 2018

Tesla Hits Emergency Vehicle...Again

Let’s see if you’ve read this one before - A man’s driving his Tesla Model S and decides to relax a bit so he kicks on the Autopilot mode, which is working great, keeping him in the lines and evenly spaced between cars right up until the point where it runs him full speed into the back of an emergency vehicle. Oh, sounds familiar? It’s sort of becoming a thing, isn’t it? Except this time it wasn’t a firetruck, it was a Laguna Beach Police Explorer.

Photo by ABC News

The driver says autopilot was on, but we don’t know for sure yet if that was the case. What certainly is the case though, is that the driver was most definitely not fully attentive, which they are supposed to be when driving in autopilot mode because, guess what? People who are fully attentive will be driving, not letting the car do it.

It’s so widely accepted that people do not pay attention when the car is in autopilot mode that Shutterstock now has a stock video of a “sleeping” driver cruising along in a Tesla as it drives itself. This is about the time Elon Musk chirps up and howls at the media for covering another crash of his when there are millions of crashes every day. He’s not wrong here, especially since only minor injuries were sustained by the Model S’s driver in Laguna Beach. But it’s like when my mom let me have a rubber band gun when I was ten - I was given strict guidelines for how it could be used and then I went and shot my brother in the eye. I wasn’t aiming for his eye but hey, his eye got in the way of my shot. Shit happens. And guess what happened then? Yeah, my mom took away the rubber band gun. If people continue to demonstrate they cannot be trusted to use a technology the way it is designed to be used, then it’s either designed wrong or needs to be taken away until people behave. And yes, I realize this could be said about motor vehicles in general, but driving is a privilege and not a right, which the state can take away if you are truly and repeatedly bad at it! But given that Elon’s out there making my rubber band gun look lame with his flamethrowers and journalist credibility ratings services, I doubt he’ll have time to see the sense in my argument.

Tesla Gets Thumbs Up after Thumbs Very Down

After Consumer Reports knocked Tesla’s Model 3 for braking performance worse than a Ford F-150, Elon Musk first had a tantrum, then said everything could be fixed with an over-the-air firmware update, presumably to re-calibrate regenerative braking and increase the performance of the actual brakes on the vehicle. Less than a week later, out goes the update and in comes a big thumbs up from Consumer Reports, who have now bestowed their coveted “recommended” rating upon Tesla’s smallest car. I said last week that it would’ve been nice for the company to get it right the first time, but I’m probably being a little harsh, because almost no company gets their cars right the first time. Look at Ford, who has been making vehicles for a hundred years. They’ve recalled my wife’s Fusion three times now for different things. But with the Model 3, no recall is required. They just upload a fix, your car downloads it and boom, you’re good to go with better performance. It’s really honestly impressive that is even possible now, but as the owner of a phone that has been bricked by an over-the-air update, I can say it’s not a completely foolproof plan to avoid recalls. But good on Tesla for addressing a problem swiftly.

California Unveils Digital License Plates for Idiots

On the subject of California, the state unveiled new digital license plates this week, which are basically e-readers flipped on their sides that display your license number and have a GPS tracker, allowing big brother to see how often you drive past your ex’s house to see if someone new is staying over before you head back to your lonely apartment for a dinner of cheese and sadness. The plates can also display other messages, like advertisements while vehicles are parked, which is just exactly what the world needs more of. And they can be tracked if your car is stolen by a criminal stupid enough to not remove the license plate as the very first thing after actually stealing your car. They will be available for purchase through dealerships at a cost of $700, excluding installation costs and a $7 monthly subscription fee, while I’m not sure what you’re subscribing to other than the appearance of being a sucker. I could now go into how pointless and stupid this is, especially considering it goes on the most vulnerable part of your car in the event of fender benders, but I think you get the point already.

Weekend Motorsports Roundup

There was some racing going on this weekend, all over the place, starting with the Monaco Grand Prix in, well, Monaco. The famous city circuit is known for being tight and showcasing the technical skills of drivers rather than the flat-out speed of the cars and this year was no different. In fact, speed mattered so little that Daniel Ricciardo was able to win the race with a broken car down about 160 horsepower from Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari behind him. In fact, every single driver who finished the race finished in the same position that they started after qualifying. So apart from pit stops, no real passing, which does not make for very compelling racing.

Speaking of uncompelling racing, the Indy 500 was also this weekend and it was won by Will Power, who managed to go around in circles faster than all the other drivers who went around in circles. Congratulations to fast circle man Will Power.

In more exciting racing news, the inaugural Americas Rallycross event took place this weekend in, um, not Americas. It’s taking the place of the Global Rallycross series that went belly up so it’s maybe not so surprising to see the cars racing at Silverstone in the UK. In any case, ex-German Touring Car racer Timo Scheider finished second in qualifying. Normally, second place finishers and qualifying laps aren’t notable except this one is because Timo finished it with his hood flipped up over his windshield. Stop and put it down? Ain’t nobody got time for that! Especially when every second counts and you’re going sideways so often you can just use your door windows to see where you’re going. And perhaps it’s because the course requires so much sideways driving that the winner of the actual event was Tanner Foust, former Top Gear US host who is incapable of driving in a straight line or swearing, and with whom I want to be good buddies. Congrats, Tanner!

Audi’s Bringing Cameras and Efficiency

What has been a key feature on concept cars for years may become a reality on the forthcoming Audi E-Tron. Whereas previously US law mandated that cars come equipped with side view mirrors, a revision to that regulation (we are in the age of deregulation, after all) will mean car companies can now use cameras and screens instead of glass. The advantage here is that wing mirrors generate drag that can cost electric vehicles as much as three whole miles of range, so by eliminating them, car companies can get better range out of their batteries and charge you thousands more for expensive cameras and screens instead of cheap mirrors and plastic housings. There aren’t many other advantages of cameras. Glass mirrors allow you a 3D stereoscopic view of what’s behind you, allowing for better depth perception, they don’t have screens that wash out in direct sunlight and they aren’t blinded by headlights when it’s dark. But progress, Audi will say, to which I respond, I’d rather sacrifice three miles of charge to be able to better see what’s on either side of me.

U.S. Production Update

Several companies announced new plans for U.S. production last week, some of which I’m sure a certain politician will use as evidence that his trade war threats and tariffs are paying off despite no credible evidence of a connection. First, Hyundai is investing $388 million towards building a new plant in Alabama where motors for the Sonata, Elantra and Santa Fe will be built. This of course means more jobs for hard working Americans, but at the same time, only fifty hard working Americans will be able to find new work there.

But Nissan is going the opposite direction, scaling back their North American production by 20 percent to adjust to falling profitability. Low demand has led to greater incentives and more fleet sales, which have decreased profitability for Japan’s second largest automaker. Fortunately, no employees are being let go at the two assembly plants in the US and three in Mexico, but I guess they’re going to be able to spend more time making sure all the bolts are tight on those Maximas and Rogues.

EVs Could Cost Governments Billions

Right now, many governments are investing in subsidies for electric vehicles and the infrastructure to support them, but that may not last too long because the same cars that governments want us to drive could end up costing billions in lost tax revenue. Right now, gas taxes are a huge source of funding for infrastructure support, but as EVs don’t use fuel, that revenue could dry up. The International Energy Agency estimates that, if 30 percent of new car and truck sales by 2030 are electric (which is hugely ambitious), governments worldwide could be missing $92 billion in tax revenue. Obviously that’s going to have to be made up somehow, whether through distance driven taxes or maybe via our electric bills. Otherwise those potholes and crumbling bridges will never be replaced.

Cars are Too Expensive

A new report by CNBC has revealed that the average monthly payment for a new vehicle is a whopping $523, in addition to the fact that loan terms extending as far as 96 months, or eight years, is becoming far more common. Average length is around 67 months, so somewhere in between five and six years, and the total amount borrowed for vehicles rests at around $31,500. All of these numbers represent unprecedented highs, which is a problem considering interest rates are increasing, averaging now 5.17 percent on new vehicle loans. It’s even more of a problem when you consider that, according to my buddy Chuck at the Federal Reserve, the average disposable personal income per capita is just $44,000, which equates to less than $3,700 per month. According to LendingTree, the average monthly Mortgage payment is around $1,100, meaning Americans are spending more than 43 percent of their income on just their car and their house. That may not sound like much, but as the price of goods and services like food and health care increase, consumers are less able to afford their lifestyles. Plus that disposable income number includes benefits and employer contributions to 401ks and pensions. If this sounds familiar, a similar thing happened in 2008 when housing prices were crazy high and we know how that all turned out. But it’s probably fine, guys. After all, 90-day delinquent loans only increased to 4.3 percent this past quarter and Bloomberg reports that people are prioritizing cell phone bills over their auto loans and credit cards, with PeerIQ CEO Ram Ahluwalia saying “the car is no longer a central asset.” But it’s fine.

Uber Pads Wallet, Prepares for IPO

Fresh off surprising Pittsburgh’s mayor with resuming autonomous vehicle testing in the city, Uber now wants to be the “Amazon for Transportation,” according to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Between its ride hailing service and UberEats, the company is doing pretty well financially and hopes to act as a platform for all sorts of transportation solutions, including public transit, ride sharing and even biking. It looks like others are buying this too, with Japan’s Softbank having taken a large ownership stake in the company. Softbank also announced this week that they’re investing $2.25 billion in GM Cruise, General Motors’ autonomous vehicle division, which may open up some doors for Uber to test with vehicles other than Volvo’s, and will allow GM to operate on Uber’s platform. But more than just some Japanese money, Uber wants our money as well and is on course for an initial public offering next year, where individuals with more hope than brains can spend their hard-earned money to purchase stock in a company that is still burning cash and doesn’t really have a solid path towards profitability, at least until its autonomous program cuts out all its human drivers. But Skynet doesn’t go live until 2047 in most Terminator timelines, so I think we’re good for a while if you want to get in on the ground floor.

Jaguar Land Rover Goes Muddin’ (Autonomously)

Jaguar Land Rover announced this week that they are developing a system called Cortex, a project that hopes to develop level 4 and 5 automation for off-road driving. Currently, autonomous systems rely on digital road mapping pretty extensively, so an off-road system would have to depend more on cameras evaluating the terrain ahead and adjusting the vehicle correspondingly. In theory, this will render the Cortex system more advanced and reliable than most other systems at adapting to unplanned changes in conditions. Head of the company’s connected and autonomous vehicle research program Chris Holmes said “It’s important that we develop our self-driving vehicles with the same capability and performance customers expect from all Jaguars and Land Rovers,” which I can appreciate. What I can’t appreciate is someone wanting to take their car off-road, but wanting the car to do the driving when you’re actually off-road. It’d be like designing a race car to drive itself, but with a race car driver as a passenger.

Duct Tape Fixes Everything

If you’ve been on YouTube, and I’ll assume you have, you probably know that there’s a video for how to fix virtually everything, and many of those fixes involve duct tape. Now there’s a video of how you can repair a flat tire with duct tape, except repair is really the right word, but rather “replace.” Some intrepid MacGyvers  who had a wheel without rubber decided to see what would happen if they wrapped the wheel in 20 rolls of duct tape and the results are, well, somewhat surprising in that the car definitely functioned afterwards. Granted, the non-sticky side offers virtually no grip, will tear under any torque and are utterly and completely unbalanced on the wheel, you can actually drive on a tire made of duct tape. That said, 20 rolls of duct tape cannot possibly be cheaper than a tire, so please leave this where it belongs – as a goofy stunt done by YouTube people.

Prius Greatly Improved with 8X the HorsePower

Photo by The Fast Lane Car

I’ve driven a Prius or two in my time and, not being the type of person who really appreciates driving in a super efficient sort of way, I can’t say I really appreciated the car. Now though, some nut jobs have gone and vastly improved the car by taking pretty much everything and throwing it out. The standard second generation Prius body of the vehicle in question now resides on a tube frame that also happens to house the motor from a Dodge Challenger Hellcat, which has been upped from its 707 horsepower to put down 800 at the wheels. Whereas the normal second generation Prius took about ten seconds to get to 60 miles per hour, this car now takes less than ten seconds to go an entire quarter mile and makes a divine sound while doing so. As for gas mileage? I’m gonna guess somewhere around 3 or 4, which does seem a bit thirsty when compared with the original.

Matt LeBlanc to Leave Top Gear

I’ve been catching up with the Grand Tour recently, which is a good show with some funny old guy that feels like an old couch – comfy, familiar, and a little stale. In comparison, Top Gear in the post-Chris Evans seasons feels fresh and interesting and fun and I find myself wishing for more episodes of it rather than the Grand Tour. One of the reasons it’s been so good is Matt LeBlanc, who unfortunately has announced that he will be leaving the show after next series because of time and travel constraints. I get it – he’s American and has to go to the UK for filming, which takes him away from family and friends for a considerable amount of time. In any case, Top Gear will continue on with Chris Harris, who is also excellent, and Rory Reid, who is a genuinely funny guy. But who will replace Joey? Chandler Bing?

Chrysler to Disappear with Fiat?

FiatChrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne will outline the next five year plan for the company’s car brands – a plan he will not oversee since this is his last year in charge of the company. In the last plan set forth in 2014 titled “Our Time Has Come,” Marchionne stated that Chrysler would have eight vehicles in its lineup by 2018, including two plug-in hybrids. As of last count, Chrysler has two cars, the Pacifica and the 300. I guess three if you count the Pacifica Hybrid as a separate vehicle, but still nowhere near eight total models. Gone is the weak 200 and the planned 100 compact sedan and various crossovers never appeared. FiatChrysler apparently got distracted with its brands that were actually doing well, namely Jeep, Ram and Ferrari, and didn’t really put any effort into either Fiat or Chrysler, both of which have crappy, unappealing lineups that are struggling to move cars amid poor reviews and a complete lack of buyer interest. How crappy you ask? Well the company has had to recall 4.8 million vehicles this week because their cruise control may not turn off, which seems like a pretty important thing to be able to turn off. Apparently braking still works to slow the car but people are idiots and may panic if their car doesn’t slow when they disengage cruise control.

Rumor now has it that Marchionne will announce tomorrow that Fiat will exit the U.S. market and Chrysler will exit the rest of the world, remaining for sale only in the U.S. My question is, why stop there? Chrysler has destroyed any sort of goodwill it had in buyers loyal to the brand by not coming out with anything new recently and the Pacifica could just be renamed the Dodge Grand Caravan, and that’s really only because Waymo just ordered 62,000 Pacificas for its autonomous fleet. Kill off the ancient 300 and you have nothing left to keep the Chrysler brand going. I’ll follow up on this next week when we hear more, but it’s probably not going to be too surprising if, just like Plymouth and most of Ford, we say goodbye to Chrysler.

Porsche Calls Car Collectors Immoral

Porsche Klassik magazine published an article recently addressing the issue of investors buying classic Porsches in order to profit from their appreciation rather than to drive them. The author called out such buyers for “spoiling the market” and “causing an explosion in prices even for ‘normal’ Porsche vehicles.” This is largely true, with prices for even basic air-cooled 993 models skyrocketing due to the desire of people to just buy and sit on cars until someone wants to pay them more for it than they paid. I appreciate good design and vehicular beauty and I think that some cars, sports cars especially, could be considered works of art, so in that sense, I appreciate why one might want to preserve such art. But like good artwork, great cars should be appreciated. You appreciate art by studying it and appreciating its form, and you appreciate cars by driving them.  The article goes on to say “the speculation in which many dealers are currently indulging is heading towards the downright immoral,” and I have a hard time disagreeing. But as baby boomers pass on and the generation saddled with $1.4 trillion in student loan debt comes up, these prices will fall back down. They have to, because otherwise the market for them won’t exist.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Electric Vehicles: In Demand & Bad for the Planet?

While vehicles that plug in for electric power comprise just more than 1 percent of vehicles sold in the United States, electric vehicles may not remain such niche products for much longer. According to a new survey from AAA, as many as 20 percent of consumers want their next car to be electric, which is up five percent from this time last year. The reasons why 80 percent remain disinterested are obvious and well covered – from range anxiety to lack of infrastructure to the fact that batteries are a new technology that haven’t yet been optimized – but those interested in EVs say that the benefit to the environment outweighs the concerns.

But is that even accurate? In China, the government has been offering huge subsidies to encourage automakers to build and sell electric vehicles and the country has the highest adoption rate of EVs of any in the world except Norway. The problem is, their smog problem isn’t going away. In China, 72 percent of the country’s electric power is generated from coal, which, regardless of what conservative talk radio may tell you, is not clean and cannot be made to be clean. You can merely capture and store the carbon byproduct of burning coal to create power. They’re not doing that in China though, and oil company CNPC found that electric vehicles emitted more than double the toxic PM2.5 particles that generate China’s smog than do standard internal combustion vehicles. And, if you like your statistics not brought to you by an oil company whose interests may be somewhat skewed, a University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute paper found that cars that achieved greater than 40 miles per gallon were actually more environmentally friendly than the electric vehicles being made in China. And that’s just when it comes to operating the vehicles.

Add to that a Harvard and Tsinghua Universities study that reported that China’s production of EVs, PHEVs and fuel-cell vehicles generated 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than production of internal combustion cars, it’s hard to make the case that electric cars are the more environmentally friendly solution.

Photo by Gwenn Dubourthoumieu

And speaking of production, that’s looking like it’s going to get harder before it gets easier. I’ve discussed this a bit before, but the situation is only worsening when it comes to the global supply of cobalt, which right now is a critical part of the lithium-ion batteries that power most electric vehicles. About 60 percent of the world’s cobalt supply is located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country with a humanitarian rap sheet as long as the receipt you get from CVS when you go in just to get some gum. High taxes, the use of child labor and an unstable government all contribute to huge volatility in the cobalt market, which has gotten analysts revising their figures about when they think a shortage is going to hit. The answer is sooner than later. Though the CEO of Cobalt 27 Capital, the owner of the world’s largest stockpile of cobalt, ensures that there won’t be any supply shortages, he does not go on to say just how much companies will have to pay for that supply – costs that would undoubtedly be passed on to consumers and therefore delay adoption of EVs because they’re too expensive. Non-cobalt-company-CEOs are less optimistic, with Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Darlton Commodities both predicting shortages as soon as 2021. Prices have already spiked 300 percent over where they were in 2016 and capacity is not expanding as quickly as demand, which is a recipe for higher prices.

Fortunately, several companies are getting off their asses and doing something about this. Panasonic announced this week that they are working towards lithium-ion batteries that achieve zero cobalt usage in the near future and have been already reducing its content in the batteries that they supply, primarily to Tesla.  Samsung too has been working to reduce cobalt content below the 5% of batteries it currently achieves, and they are hoping to expand recycling programs that will recover cobalt from used cell phone, computer and other lithium-ion battery sources. Currently recycling rates are somewhere between 25 and 50 percent, so there’s a lot of potential for improvement there. Chinese automaker BYD is also developing batteries with a nickel-manganese-cobalt ration that reduces the amount of cobalt, which, in addition to lowering prices, apparently extends the life of the battery, which is a win-win for companies and consumers.

For even more bad news, cars aren’t the only things using lithium-ion batteries. Companies and utilities are expanding the use of modular energy storage systems to better utilize distributed energy resources like solar and wind farms and even hydroelectric generation, so there’s another force working to increase demand for cobalt and other precious metals. Full disclosure- I work for a company that makes those big battery storage units and they are flying off the shelf, so companies will have to both ramp up cobalt production and R&D into technology that uses less of it if there’s any hope of averting a shortage or at least a price spike.

But back to the cars – what does all this mean for those of us who just want a Jeep Wrangler plug-in hybrid? The truth is somewhere in between everything. While 20 percent of people would love an electric vehicle as their next car, not that many will take up the technology, especially with 80 percent of such vehicles being leased right now. It shows that public trust isn’t there that we’ve really mastered electric cars yet and nobody wants to be locked into technology that’ll be obsolete in a couple years. Cobalt demand will cause prices to remain high but the price of gas was high and look what that did – it spurred investment into the research and development of electric vehicles, which have lowered demand and prices have eased up, if only just a bit. The market will adapt, companies will continue to innovate and while EVs aren’t optimized right now and the electrical grid (especially in China) isn’t well suited to provide clean energy for them, it won’t always stay that way. Nor does it mean that EVs are destroying the planet, it just means they’re maybe not as green as we want them to be yet. We’re on a good path right now and have unprecedented choice in vehicles. At least until companies start thinking like Ford, but I don’t think it’s going to become too widespread.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

The People Fear the Autonomous Future

Waymo Autonomous Test Locations

If various tech billionaires are to be believed, the future of vehicles is electric and autonomous so none of us idiot humans can continue getting behind the wheel and killing one another. The problem is though, we idiot humans aren’t exactly totally on board with that whole giving up driving thing.

In the wake of several high profile stories about people dying in cars driven by half-baked and implemented-too-early autonomous systems, public fear of autonomous vehicles has grown precipitously, up to 73% of a recent AAA survey. Demographic wise, the biggest jump was in people ages 20 to 37, going from 49% afraid to 64%, while still being the age group most inclined to ride in self-driving cars. Women in particular are scared, with 83% saying they don’t want to ride in autonomous vehicles and a whopping 70% saying they don’t even want to share the road with them. Elon Musk will blame this on negative coverage of fatal wrecks involving autonomous tech. Journalists and safety pundits will blame it on companies rushing out technology that isn’t ready for mass consumption. The truth is, they’re both right, but only the latter led to the former, and although autonomous vehicles may end up being safer than humans, they have to prove it first. As Uber suspends its autonomous testing in Arizona (costing 300 people their jobs, by the way) and others scale back plans to launch driverless cars on roadways, it looks like there’s a ways to go yet.

Source: Tim Stevens/Roadshow

And just this week they didn’t do such a great job proving it. On a drive with journalists in Jerusalem, a Ford Fusion run by LiDAR makers MobilEye, blew through a red light during a presentation of the technology, completely ignoring the signal. Fortunately, there were no collisions and everyone is okay, but it brings to mind Uber’s incident where their autonomous Volvo failed to react to a pedestrian. MobilEye claims their cameras saw the red light, but that the electromagnetic interference from the broadcasting equipment used by the TV crew in the car screwed with the signal from the traffic light transponder, and the transponder signals trumped the cameras, so the car cruised right on through. CEO Amnon Shashua said, “It was a very unique situation, we’d never anticipated something like this,” which is exactly the problem with autonomous technology. There’s no possible way to anticipate all eventualities, so these self driving cars will never be 100 percent safe. The company claims to have fixed the issue but wouldn’t go into just how.

Karen Kasler/Ohio Public Radio

Despite all of this, the morons in Ohio have stated publicly their desire to become the “wild, wild west for self driving car testing.” And in case you think I’m kidding, those were Governor John Kasich’s exact words. For those wanting some more words from the governor, he also said “Computers do not comb their hair. Computers do not text. Computers do not talk on cellphones, and this technology, which is going to be the 21st century technology, is going to save lives.” Yeah, right up until while not texting, combing hair or talking, a computer ignores a red light and t-bones someone to death. Not only is Ohio allowing self-driving cars while other states that have done so are reevaluating their programs, they’re allowing autonomous vehicles without humans in them! Though, a licensed driver does need to monitor the vehicle remotely and be able to avoid accidents in case of system failure. This, to me, smacks of a government that has no idea what it’s doing and is grasping at straws for a way to bring some sort of investment into the state. Sorry, Ohio, but this was really short-sighted, poorly planned and idiotic.

In neighboring Pennsylvania, Uber announced they would resume testing their autonomous vehicles on the streets of Pittsburgh despite the Arizona closure, which was I’m sure very fun for Pittsburgh’s Mayor William Peduto to find out about via Twitter. After the fatal crash in Tempe, Mayor Peduto suspended Uber’s right to test, pending the completion of a federal investigation and that they would discuss how to safely resume after that. The city has outlined several changes Uber must make to continue testing, including limiting speed to 25 miles per hour, which the company is apparently fine with, and they say they met with the city several weeks ago to discuss picking up where they left off. But when the one last thing on your to-do list is “call the mayor,” you may want to get that checked off before hyping yourself on social media.

Oh, and speaking of that federal investigation? There’s some news on that, with the National Transportation Safety Board stating that the self-driving Volvo Uber in Tempe recognized both the pedestrian and bicycle she was carrying and had a full six seconds to react, but instead the system did nothing, not interpreting the woman as, you know, a human. Even at 1.3 seconds before impact, the Volvo safety systems determined emergency braking was needed to avoid hitting the woman, but Uber had disabled their systems so it didn’t interfere with theirs. The NTSB study hasn’t been concluded yet though, and they haven’t settled on a probable cause, so I’m not sure why Uber thinks this meets with Pittsburgh’s Mayor’s “completed federal investigation” ultimatum.

Meanwhile in Norway, the land of my ancestors, a company called Kolumbus has decided the future of buses is now and they will begin rolling out completely autonomous EasyMile EZ10 buses, which accommodate 15 passengers and can reach a blistering 28 miles per hour. Except they won’t be completely autonomous because Norway doesn’t permit fully autonomous vehicles on the road, so each bus will also feature a safety driver. Oh and also the buses won’t be hitting that 28 mile per hour max speed because Norway will require the bus to be limited to just 7.5 miles per hour. Oh and the buses won’t be filled to the brim with 15 passengers because Norway will require the company to haul only six people at a time. But starting in June, those six riders per bus will I’m sure have a great time speaking to their driver and watching casual runners fly by them along their route.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Trade War Update

Donald Trump this week celebrated a small victory in a preamble battle to the Trade War he wants to start and insists will be easy to win. China announced that they will cut import tariffs for cars from 25% to just 15% starting on January 1. Car parts will be cut from 10% to 6%, which will help lower the cost to build new cars in the country as well. In exchange, the United States has lifted a ban on products from Chinese telecom company ZTE Corporation, which had apparently crippled the company. Set to benefit most from the relaxed tariffs are Volkswagen and luxury car makers like BMW and Mercedes-Benz, who don’t produce cars in China. Tesla also benefits, as do some premium Japanese brands, which will now be able to compete cost-wise on a more level playing field with vehicles produced in China.

This doesn’t particularly help Ford or GM, who have already established extensive production in China specifically to avoid high tariffs, and with the 15% tariff still in place, there isn’t much likelihood brands will magically decide to start producing cars in the States again and ship them over. There’s also some rich irony that the Germans seem to benefit most from the actions of the U.S. President.

Photo by Dilworth Police Department

And while China cuts their import tariffs, Trump heard only the phrase “import tariff” and decided “yeah, that’s a great idea, let’s look into that” and assigned the U.S. Secretary of Commerce some homework. Specifically, Trump wants him to initiate a Section 232 investigation into the import of automobiles, trucks and auto parts to determine their effects on America’s national security. And right now you’re thinking “oh, this is supremely stupid,” but remember, it has happened twice that Ford Fusions from a plant in Mexico were caught in the U.S. loaded down with a bunch of weed that some drug mules north of the border failed to offload, so it’s entirely possible that cars are the single greatest source of drug trafficking in the United States. Or maybe it could be that pot should be legalized and regulated and we wouldn’t have people smuggling it in and that two examples of some incompetent drug cartel don’t exactly signify a trend. In any case, the Commerce Secretary will decide.

But Trump’s call for the investigation itself has been met with widespread condemnation from, well, kind of everyone. It’s being regarded as a waste of time and resources that could end up not only harming our relationship with other countries, but harming American consumers through generating higher prices for goods, much like the tariffs on steel and aluminum have done. Moreover, most consider it a stretch to think that an import tariff has anything to do with national security, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau going so far as to say it rests on “even flimsier logical grounds.” Automotive News has a great roundup of all the quotes lambasting the move but the best and most concise probably comes from John Bozzella, CEO of the Association of Global Automakers, who said “The U.S. auto industry is thriving and growing. To our knowledge, no one is asking for this protection. This path leads inevitably to fewer choices and higher prices for cars and trucks in America.” So who’s going to win this Trade War again?

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Re-Reflecting on Ford’s Future Product Plans

A week removed from the breaking news that Ford was cutting all of their passenger vehicles with the exception of the Mustang, Focus Active and SUVs or crossovers, I’ve had some more time to think on and read about the decision, and the more I reflect on it, the worse the decision seems to sound.

Clearly needs a truck.

First, a reminder of why this happened. Cars and sedans are about as popular as getting kicked in the nuts. Sure, some sickos out there still like it, but, just like getting kicked in the nuts, owning a sedan makes you feel like less of a man because you could’ve just paid $10,000 more and bought a real man’s car. And by man’s car I mean a truck. In any case, cars and sedans are not selling well, and even when they do, they are low margin vehicles, meaning there’s not a lot of profit to be had for companies selling them. For publicly traded companies like Ford, continuing to sell unprofitable things that you have to continuously sink money into in order to remain competitive means it’s a profit suck, which affects your all-important balance sheet and is reflected in the stock market’s valuation of your company. The more profit you earn, the higher your valuation, the more satisfied your investors are that they made the right choice in buying your stock.

And there’s some old business wisdom to back up axing the sedans. It’s called “core competencies” and is the reason I pay someone to do my taxes and spread mulch around my front yard. It’s just easier, faster and more efficient if I pay someone who does those sorts of things all the time to do them than to try to do them myself. Those are not among my core competencies. And I pay different people for those things because my tax guy’s core competencies don’t include spreading mulch either. At least, not as far as I know. So what Ford is basically saying here is that, “we understand that the car market in the U.S. is not really growing and that we do not make cars and sedans that are compelling enough to compete well against such cars from Toyota, Honda, Hyundai or even General Motors. Therefore, we are willing to sacrifice a larger market share in favor of a smaller share that is more profitable by focusing on our core competency - producing SUVs, crossovers and the Mustang. And we’re going to save $26 billion by doing so.”

In fact, other companies have thrived on this sort of business model, including Porsche, Lamborghini or Ferrari, all of whom focus on sports cars, or Land Rover or Jeep who focus exclusively on SUVs.

Right now you’re thinking, “oh well that does sound pretty logical and I guess they made the right decision so that’s the end of the top stories, right?” Wrong, and sorry, it’s not the end. Porsche and Lamborghini have both hopped on the SUV bandwagon and Ferrari is about to because Porsche’s Cayenne became the company’s best selling vehicle when they first produced it in 2002. And no, that does not mean that Ford is right for sticking with SUVs, it means that those companies understood that they needed a diverse product offering to withstand economic fluctuations. Land Rover can produce only SUVs because they are owned by Tata, who also owns Jaguar, so they have all the product diversity there, it’s just across different brands but under the same umbrella. Jeep is just a freak and is literally the only good thing Fiat Chrysler makes.

And paring down their products doesn’t mean Ford instantly becomes a lean, mean healthy profit machine. It means they have all their eggs in a single basket that is far from immune to market volatility. Healthy companies like Toyota and Honda are constantly evaluating their products and if they deem a certain model isn’t as competitive as it should be, they invest in improvements and get better, more competitive models out there. Think back to Honda’s newly redesigned 2012 Civic, which was universally panned by critics for being noncompetitive. Honda didn’t say, “Oh well, we tried, might as well kill off the civic, it never made much anyway.” They dumped money on redeveloping the car and came out with a completely redesigned model the very next year! Because Honda knows about a thing called owner loyalty, and while the Civic may not make much money, it’s a great first car for kids or young professionals who need an appliance and not a race car. After the Civic, maybe the owner will graduate to an Accord or Pilot or even CR-V. It’s like Black Friday Sales. Those deep discounts exist not because companies want to not make money, but because they want to get you into the door so you’ll spend more money with them, either now or later.

Toyota knows this too. It’s why, this week, they announced that they’re investing $170 million and hiring 400 new people to produce the next generation Corolla in Mississippi. Toyota sold more than 300,000 Corollas last year, so even though the sedan market is tanking, you cannot say with conviction that there isn’t money to be had by selling them, and if buyers aren’t cross-shopping the Corolla with the Focus, that’s a failing on Ford’s part, either in marketing or in product development, not a sign from the market that they should just quit.

Plus, by exiting the small car market, Ford creates a bit of a vacuum there to help its competitors sell more cars, more entry-level vehicles that will generate future loyalty sales. Whether it’s for Toyota, Honda or Hyundai or if the hole is big enough, attracting some Chinese auto manufacturers to come sell their goods here on the cheap. And one of those Chinese companies, or even Hyundai or Mazda (who actually used to be part-owned by Ford) could have been someone Ford could have partnered with to develop a new small car platform that was both more competitive and more cost efficient. But they chose the lazy way and just said screw it, I’m out.

And for what? $26 billion back in their pocket that they’re going to spend somehow. And by the looks of things, not wisely. This week we learned about Ford’s Smart Window concept that utilizes a motor attached to the window to vibrate at different frequencies, allowing blind people to “feel the view” out the window of a car. We also learned about a patent Ford filed for a vehicle with an integrated electric motorcycle. What?! Ford, you can’t make a good Focus or Fiesta, but you’re going to make us a damn transformer? Or how about the fact that Ford is looking for buy-in from its board to purchase and refurbish Michigan Central Station, which as you might be able to tell from the title, is for trains.

Look Ford, honey, darling, I get it. Your shareholders are whiny babies who wanna be fed. But remember that their love is temporary. You can create all the value in the world for them, but you are far, far behind in autonomous tech and electrification. Yet here you are blowing cash in window vibrators and center consoles that become motorbikes. How long do you think the bump from cutting less profitable models is going to last? Probably right up until Toyota and Honda have compelling electric vehicles out there and you’re still trying to shill the new Bronco, which we all know is going to be a shadow of the original. Investor love comes and it goes. It’s a hell of a lot easier to log on to E-Trade and click “sell” when the going gets rough than it is to design and produce a compact, fuel-efficient vehicle if the minds of American consumers start to change again. I just can’t help but feel like you’re going to be sounding a whole lot like Gob Bluth here in a few years. 

Authored by

Devlin Riggs

Tesla Troubles

Tesla: the company that generates more headlines and top stories than actual motor vehicles despite claiming to be a car company. Last time I covered the company, major shareholders had just approved a super unbelievable compensation package for CEO Elon Musk tied to the company’s total market value, rather than to numbers of vehicles produced or Model 3 orders satisfied or JD Power scores or any number of other metrics by which a car company may actually be adjudged to be a success. Just like in Ford’s case earlier, Tesla’s sole focus is on pleasing shareholders, and it really shows.

The problem for Elon and Tesla is, the hype machine eventually runs out of gas and the company valued more highly than Ford, GM, Fiat Chrysler or any number of actual car companies, will have to face the music eventually for perpetually failing to meet the goals it outlines for itself. And that’s a problem when you consistently set outrageous goals that artificially inflate your stock price. That “face the music” time may be coming soon, because there have been several issues in the past few weeks that deserve mention.

Photo by Jesse Gary, KTVU

First, another fatality. This is Tesla’s third in which Autopilot was engaged when the death occurred, and the preliminary investigation by a law firm representing the deceased’s family has decided that Tesla’s Autopilot misread lanes in the road and drove the man straight into a median, where the car burst into flames and killed the driver. Tesla insists that the crash is the driver’s fault because its system isn’t perfect and requires drivers to pay attention to the road ahead and provide input when prompted, which the driver apparently was and ignored. The National Transportation Safety Board admonished Tesla for releasing details about the crash before its investigation was complete and kicked them out of their investigation process. And yes, this is the second story in a row that involves someone dying because a technology company deployed a system to the public before it was ready.

Simultaneously, Telsa was busy recalling 123,000 early Model Ss because of power steering bolt failures that would render the car still driveable, but requiring considerably more effort. While it’s hardly a rare thing for a car company to issue a recall, its coinciding with reports about the Model 3 needing considerable rework after coming off the assembly line paints a poor picture of the company’s quality control.

Speaking of the Model 3, production has been shut down twice so far this year to address bottlenecks preventing the factory from meeting production goals. In their Q1 investor call, Tesla reported 2,000 Model 3s rolling off the line in the last week before the earnings call, which represents a significant jump over the 1,200 observed in the weeks prior, but remains 20% short of the 2,500 goal Elon set for the company in January. In response to inquiries about the delays, Musk declared that there were no delays, but that deliveries were just experiencing a “Time Shift,” which is basically a way of invoking quantum leap doctor who bullshit to try to explain away your company’s failure. And remember, the 2,500 goal was the re-forecast of a re-forecasted forecast. In addition to the shutdowns to improve efficiencies, Tesla is adding a third shift to their Fremont factory, meaning cars will be produced 24/7 in order to start reaching production goals more effectively.

Of course, another shift means a greater potential for labor issues and Tesla has had plenty of those recently, with the Center for Investigative Reporting, uh, reporting that Tesla has been under reporting worker injuries on legally-mandated reports to make the company’s safety record appear better than it is. The center’s magazine, Reveal, interviewed more than three dozen current and former employees, including ex-safety personnel and have previously been nominated for Pulitzer Prizes for the quality and reliability of their reporting. Tesla’s response? Lies. All lies! In fact, the Center is an extremist organization and pawn being used by the United Auto Workers union to try to influence workers into joining, which Tesla is known to be against, having reportedly fired 700 workers for their pro-union sentiments last fall.

And this is only one salvo in the many Tesla or Musk have launched at news outlets for accurately reporting the news. A recent Economist article suggesting Tesla would need to raise $2.5 to $3 billion this year to meet production goals prompted a tweet from Musk calling the Economist boring and replying that the company would be profitable in the second half of this year, a claim viewed as dubious by many actual economists who sort of know what they’re doing unlike a certain someone.

As a result of all of these issues, Tesla’s stock value has been dropping. And although he claims that he’d forego a salary in order to see the company thrive, it’s not hard to see how a $52 billion carrot dangling in front of you might motivate you to work towards it. The problem is, when your success metric is as squishy as shareholder value, which is based on perception, rather than substance, your focus is not on safety, or fair worker representation or quality, or or even human life. It’s based on what people think of you and your future potential, and all the talking in the world isn’t going to matter if you can’t do the walking, and right now, Tesla is still at a crawl.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs