The Electric Future may be Cheaper & Come Later

It’s another week in 2018, meaning there’s been a new batch of news about electric vehicles since they’re pretty much regarded as the future of motoring. But how fast that future is coming is very much in question, and a new study from the Centers for Automotive Research suggests it’s not any time soon. According to the study, government emissions and fuel economy mandates are helping drive the push into future technologies, rather than consumer interest, which tracks with the amount of people leasing electric vehicles instead of buying them.

The research suggests that electrification and self-driving tech will start in densely-populated urban areas with ride sharing services and slowly proliferate to the rest of the market with EVs expected to comprise just eight percent of the vehicle market by 2030. Remember that several cities and countries are aiming to ban the sales of gasoline and diesel-powered cars by 2040, so to make up a 92% gap in adoption in the span of ten years will require some serious incentives or some revised expectations. Additionally, any sort of slowing new vehicle sales market (like we’re seeing now) or economic downturn (like what might result from the ridiculously high deep subprime vehicle loan market) would push adoption even further down the line. 

The United Kingdom’s National Grid, however, isn’t waiting around for electric cars to take off. The electric utility announced this week that they would spend between £500 million and £1 billion to upgrade the electrical grid and install 50 fast chargers throughout the country to the point that 90% of the population would live within 50 miles of a fast charger. Such chargers would fill batteries in most EVs in about 12 minutes, which will go a long way toward soothing the range anxiety of British EV owners. Current demand for such chargers may be low, but in 2017, for the first time, the Tesla Model S outsold both the BMW 7 series and the Mercedes S-Class, so demand is certainly there among the upper crust buyers.

Photo by The Washington Post

But you may not see many other cars at those chargers for some time since the Centers for Automotive Research also suggested that investment in electric vehicle technology would slow over the next few years as companies fail to see the return on their investment with slow sales. Part of the problem with investment is that production of EVs is still very expensive because of rare earth elements like cobalt, which is used in batteries. The demand for cobalt has driven a boom in small-scale cobalt production in Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some mines have been found using child labor to meet production quotas. These small-scale mines, which are sometimes referred to as “artisanal mines” because nothing can just have a normal name anymore, are tough to police and companies that purchase from them are increasingly under pressure to better vet how the resources are being produced. The value of cobalt has tripled in the last 18 months, and companies looking for the lowest cost aren’t likely to commit too much effort into ensuring their suppliers are acting ethically, which is a problem. Unfortunately, the answer usually means slowing the pace of production or paying more from reputable miners.

Toyota, however, is exploring a third option, which is developing batteries that don’t rely on rare-earth elements. While they haven’t yet found a replacement for cobalt, they have developed a battery that uses less neodymium, replacing it with lanthanum and cerium, which I understand are much more abundant and cheaper despite the fact that I’ve never heard of them before. That said, the development will take a while to get itself into vehicles and Toyota is aiming for implementation sometime in the next ten years, which won’t help potential neodymium shortages in the near-term. Now to figure out that whole cobalt thing…

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Can Buyers Trust J.D. Power's Dependability Study?

J.D. Power’s annual Dependability Study was released this week and rather than running down the list of the best and worst, I’ll echo Autoblog’s encouragement to discard information from lists like this because the way they gather data is deeply flawed.

First, they survey owners who have had their cars for three years – not more and not less. And you know what most cars still have after three years? A warranty. And you know why they still have a warranty? Because most manufacturers design their cars well enough that things shouldn’t go wrong within the first three years. Some trust their cars more and will give five year warranties or even longer, but for the most part, things shouldn’t be going wrong within the first three years.

Second, the dependability survey treats all flaws equally. Cars and brands are rated on a “problems per hundred” vehicle scale, so fewer is obviously better. However, if the parking sensors sometimes don’t see the wall in your parking garage, that’s recorded with the same severity as the transmission going out on your idiot neighbor’s Dodge Charger.

Finally, J.D. Power Awards are pay-to-play, which means that, in order to publicize that they won an award, car companies must pay J.D. Power for the right to say they did. Paying for awards may not inherently lead to dishonesty when awards are given, but it certainly isn’t a super system that discourages playing favorites.

So what can you do instead? Car companies generally have reputations for a reason. Lexus is at the top of the list and they belong there because they make fantastic, dependable cars. But then you know that not because of a dependability study, but because of the collective experiences of past and current owners whose stories have dispersed through the grapevine to inform public opinion. Acura and Subaru also make great, dependable cars, but they languish in the bottom half of this year’s dependability study, which is misleading, because you can almost certainly depend on them to get you from A to B, but you may not always rely on your USB port to read your Android phone or something small, and not trivial, but also not critical.

But don’t just trust your preconceived notions about automotive brands, because they’ll lead you astray with companies like Kia and Hyundai, who are in the top seven of J.D. Power’s list and have definitely made huge strides in reliability in the past ten years. Read reviews from real owners on Cars.com or Edmunds or long-term reviews from Motor Trend or Car & Driver or any number of other reputable publications. Read about common problems with cars on forums and social media. Sure, you’ll be getting anecdotes, but you’ll be sourcing them from a larger crowd than either Consumer Reports or J.D. Power. But remember that people are 80% more likely to complain about a product on the internet than they are to praise one, so don’t let individual anecdotes color your opinion of a car if you truly want it. But if you start seeing many stories of similar problems, then that’s probably cause for concern, and you’re probably researching a Chrysler. Which, yes, was at the bottom of the J.D. Power survey, so you should probably research something else.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Teslupdate & Germany's "Things You Just Do Not Do"

Teslupdate (again)

Good lord was there a lot of Tesla news in the last few weeks. Looking at my browser as I wrote this, there were no fewer than sixteen tabs open. And unless you were living in self-imposed media detox, which I would completely understand given the current political climate, you probably heard about the biggest story, which was SpaceX’s launch of the Falcon Heavy. But hold on, we have some ground to cover before then.

First up, a report from CNBC indicated that Tesla was having employees hand-assemble the battery packs to be used in the Model 3s while the machines that were meant to produce them were still being built. As part of this “production hell” that Elon Musk talked about, Tesla was apparently loaned “scores of employees” from Gigafactory partner Panasonic, who make the individual cells for each of the batteries. Concerns were raised that the hand assembly was pretty slapdash and the resulting products were incomplete or unsafe, which the company responded was an allegation that was “detached from reality.” 

Unfortunately for Tesla, it came back to bite the company later last week when Sandy Munro, the founder of Munro & Associates, a Detroit-based engineering firm specializing in reverse engineering products like cars and planes, compared the quality of a Model 3 he was tearing apart to a Kia in the 90s. Calling out panel gaps and fit and finish issues, as well as mechanical quirks, Munro says he hasn’t seen poor fitment tolerances on a car like the Model 3 since the 1970s. In one part of the car, he was able to fit a fingernail in between panel gaps, while on the other end of the same panel, his whole thumb nearly fit. Munro also pointed out how complex the cars were to get in and out of in case of an emergency, noting especially the fact that the rear passengers don’t have mechanical door handles, only electronic. This could be a serious problem if an accident ignites the batteries and cuts power. Of course it’s hypothetical, and these are some of the first models to come out, so hopefully the company is getting these issues all figured out, but not a great first impression to set. 

Video by Autoline.tv

So how did the company respond to Munro’s comments? Flamethrowers! That’s right, Elon Musk fired up the old hype machine on Instagram and announced the sale of 20,000 actual flamethrowers labeled with his Boring Company logo because I guess that was the brand flamethrowers make the most sense under. What they basically did here was take a nerf blaster, cut out the nerf darts and springs and paint it black and white, then insert a $50 Lincoln Electric Inferno propane torch kit, which you can buy at Home Depot, and call it a day. Oh, and they’re charging $500 for the privilege of owning it. Oh, and they’re already sold out, so Elon Musk just made $10 million in the span of a few hours. Oh, and god damn I wish I would’ve thought of this first because this is some Grade A genius shit. Seriously, it looks badass and sure, it’s a ripoff, sure it’s unnecessary, but it’s fun and I do admire a company that can have fun for the sake of it, even if the sake of it is also the sake of distracting you from all the other bad shit going on.

Speaking of bad shit, Elon, zeh Germanz are coming for you! (You may need one of those flamethrowers, so hang on to it.) Porsche announced this week that it's doubling its investment in electric vehicles to an amount nearing $7 billion, which is in addition to what they’ve already spent on their really sexy looking Mission E electric sedan. Some of that will go toward the hybridization and electrification of the Cayenne, Macan, Panamera and 911 and 718 Boxster/Cayman twins, but much will go to future vehicle programs, and they’ve promised that their cars will remain focused on fun. CEO Oliver Blume recently spoke at the 70th anniversary of Porsche sports cars, saying, “At Porsche, the driving experience will always be at the forefront, but in a traffic jam or when you park a car, the driver might want to hand over control of the vehicle.” Finally, someone gets me. Thank you, Oliver! In addition to the spending on vehicles, Porsche has committed almost a billion each will go to expanding their facilities and the development of a charging infrastructure.

But they’re not the only Germans on Elon’s tail. Volkswagen is busy trying to atone for its Dieselgate scandal, from which a big part of the settlement will go toward a massive charging infrastructure, the size of which will rival Tesla’s. Last February, Electrify America, the name of the initiative, announced a very adorable 500 charger network in the first phase. Well, after signing on infrastructure company Greenlots, they’ve gotten a bit more ambitious. Electrify America has announced their first phase will actually now be 4,800 chargers, beginning with 2,800 level 2 chargers in America’s 17 largest cities by 2019 and another 2,000 level 3 chargers throughout 39 states thereafter. Those level 3 chargers will restore 80 percent of a battery’s charge (depending on the battery, of course) in around 30 minutes. Tesla, meanwhile, hopes to have 5,300 chargers up by the end of this year, which is a respectable tally, but we know how Tesla is about keeping promises.

To that point, Elon Musk kept a promise this week when he sent his Tesla Roadster into space on the Falcon Heavy rocket launched by one of his other companies, SpaceX. The launch went off pretty well and successfully launched the car and its passenger, StarMan in his custom-designed spacesuit, on a trajectory toward Mars. In a truly un-Elon-like turn of events, SpaceX actually over-delivered on his promise because the Roadster is on course to overshoot Mars and end up somewhere in the asteroid belt. Whoops.

And speaking of whoops, yesterday Tesla’s quarterly earnings came out, showing the company lost $675.4 million in the three months ending in December. This is compared with losing just $121 million for the same period in 2016, which accentuates just how much the company is spending on the production of the Model 3. The production hell, however, only resulted in 2,425 Model 3s being shipped in the same quarter. It’s not abnormal for startups and tech companies to go for a while without posting a profit. Look at Twitter, they just scored their first ever quarterly profit in last part of last year. But Twitter’s product is entirely digital. To create and make real cars is a completely different undertaking than building a digital platform like PayPal or anything else Musk is familiar with. What’s critical not just for the company but for maintaining the confidence of investors is to show that Tesla isn’t making money right now, but has a roadmap to get there. If the constant production problems and quality issues continue, and if they can’t ramp up to the point where they’re meeting their 2,500 unit per week production target, Elon is going to need to sell a whole lot more flamethrowers.

Germany’s “Things You Just Do Not Do”

In one of the most bizarrely horrible stories to come out of the automotive world in recent memory, news broke this week that a research group operating at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, commissioned a test to prove that diesel fumes were not as dangerous as the World Health Organization indicated. The test itself involved locking ten monkeys in a sealed room and having them watch cartoons while the exhaust fumes from a Volkswagen Beetle were piped in. There are also rumours that there was a similar test conducted on humans, though it’s difficult to believe anyone would’ve signed up for that. It’s actually difficult to believe this whole thing was ever thought of as a valid option. The European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector was funded by Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler, who hoped tests conducted would refute evidence that pointed to diesel engines’ potential for harm. Meanwhile VW and several other companies were installing clever software in their cars so the diesel engines could pollute more without being caught.

What really gets me about this is the stubbornness of the whole thing. We’ve known for a long time that diesel emissions aren’t safe and yet the Germans, who were so heavily invested in the development of diesel technology, simply couldn’t accept the fact that the rest of the world wanted a cleaner way to drive vehicles. The realization that diesels were bad could’ve been a turning point for Germany. They could have said, “You know what? You’re right. This is dangerous, and even though it’s more efficient, we need to find a better way to move forward.” They could’ve led the field in hybrid petrol powertrain development, or in electric vehicles or in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Instead, they found a way to make their diesels motors look cleaner while in fact being much dirtier. And they locked some poor monkeys in a room and probably gave them cancer trying to prove that the rest of the world’s scientific community was wrong.

So what happens now? Volkswagen has set up a lobbyist as a patsy who has accepted blame, despite the fact that internal emails leaked to the German paper BILD suggest that senior management was made aware of the details of the testing. What we get is another scandal for Volkswagen, and let’s not forget BMW and Daimler who helped fund the research, to sweep under the rug. 

Does someone have Elon Musk’s number? I think I know a few people who would like to borrow his hype machine.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

The Future of Gas

I talk an awful lot about electric cars on my podcast, and for good reason. They’re widely accepted as the future of motoring, whether they be powered exclusively by batteries, by hydrogen fuel cells or some sort of capacitor setup we’ve yet to see. And the reasons for this are myriad - EVs produce fewer carbon emissions, they have fewer moving parts so are in theory more reliable, they make less noise and better pair with autonomous systems and, critically, there is a finite amount of oil on this planet to power internal combustion cars. 

But the truth is, and I’ve spoken to this before, I love gasoline. I love pumping it into a tank for five minutes and turning a key or pressing a button and having an electric motor spit that gasoline into a chamber whose sole purpose is to contain a tiny explosion ignited by a little electric spark. And, more than anything else, I love the sound it makes. I love the fire and the fury of a singing six cylinder and the rumbling burble of a V8, even at idle. I love the angry beehive of a turbocharged four cylinder or the raucous rasp of a V-twin, or especially my inline triple. And I will miss all of those things when gasoline engines go away. 

But fortunately, I don’t think we’re in danger of that, at least not for many years. In 2017, electric vehicles made up less than a tenth of a percent of total vehicle sales in the United States, and, sure, they did better elsewhere in the world where incentives are higher or there are more models available or where the income gap is narrower and people have more funds to spend on more expensive electric vehicles, but most analysts predict it will be at least 2025 before electric vehicles are on parity with internal combustion cars in terms of costs.

With the average price of new cars rising every year and the income gap only widening, an increasing majority of the auto buying public will be priced out of electric vehicles even when their average price matches gasoline cars. Buyers will continue to buy used petrol-powered cars until the third or fourth generation of EVs are out and the initial versions have depreciated to the point where they’re affordable. Even then, you’ll have the issue of battery life/reliability and the question of whether infrastructure has built up enough for buyers to see EVs as worthy competitors to good old gas engines.

According to a new report by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, the rate of car ownership in the US is increasing, from .756 vehicles per person in 2015 to .766 vehicles per person in 2016, so there’s a very real chance that, of the people who will be buying an electric car, they’ll be buying it to complement their existing gas vehicles or to serve as a commuting car.

Another report from Bank of America predicts that the U.S. will reach peak oil demand in 2030, meaning there will be no further growth in the demand for oil or gasoline. This, they say, will be directly caused by the increasing share of electric vehicles in the automotive marketplace, which is great. Why is it great if I’m trying to make an argument for gas cars? Because less demand means that we could run into oversupply situations where gas gets even cheaper for those holdouts of gasoline cars like myself and low income households who can’t afford electric vehicles. There’s obviously a risk that oil companies anticipate this and start to curb their drilling or cut supplies, but, from my knowledge of the oil and gas industry, once a well is tapped, it doesn’t make much sense to just plug it up and leave it if even people are using less of your product. You run that well dry and squeeze it for everything it was worth. Companies may not drill new wells or invest so much in shale, which would be a great thing for the environment, so either way we kind of win.

Plus, innovation continues with gasoline engines. Companies are finding new and creative ways to increase efficiency and maximize output. Take Mazda’s Skyactiv-X technology, which achieves 30% better fuel economy than its already good Skyactiv-G engines like I had in my Mazda 3 (R.I.P.). Those will debut in 2019 while the Volvos and BMWs of the world transition their lineups to all-electric and hybrid vehicles. Indeed it’s telling that the first companies committing to move to all-electrified cars are luxury automakers, because they know the cost is higher and their buyers can afford it. 

But for every Volvo XC90, there’s a Shelby Mustang and for every Honda NSX, a Dodge Demon. In fact, there have been many cars announced in the past year that rely solely on burning dinosaurs to go fast and create a great time, and there’s no reason to think that’s going to stop, especially when mixed with some hybrid and electric vehicles, auto manufacturers can meet corporate average fuel economy standards and still have room to blow on gas guzzling performance cars for the masses. Plus the low-cost cars will still be gas-powered, as will the classic cars and trailer queens and garage angels that have been sold up to this point and will be driven on weekends by old guys who share the same love for the symphony of combustion that I have. So I’ll continue to talk about electric cars and they’ll very much continue to be the future of motoring, but that doesn’t have to mean that internal combustion and gasoline will be relegated exclusively to our past.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

2018: The Year the Sedan Died?

Mid-sized sedans - we’ve talked about them before on this site, and the news is rarely good. But recently, it’s just been one hit after the other for the segment and, according to a Bloomberg article this week, there’s a very real possibility that the mid-sized sedan segment ceases to exist in as little as eight years. So could 2018, a year heralded as the Year of the Truck by three very high profile unveilings in Detroit, also be the year the sedan died? 

Truthfully, this movement started years ago. After the days of $4 per gallon gasoline subsided, American buyers resumed the 1990s trend of buying gas-guzzling SUVs and driving vehicles vastly larger than they needed or could justify simply because they could. The family car became the family SUV and the primary victims of this trend were the cars that performed most poorly in a shrinking segment. These, of course, were Fiat Chrysler products. 

But to his credit, Fiat Chrysler CEO, Sergio Marchionne, did the unthinkable - he killed off the Chrysler 200 and Dodge Dart - the traditional bread-and-butter mid-sized sedan and compact sedans that kept the big three American automakers alive during the oil crisis of the 1970s. And the outcome for Chrysler has been incredible. They’ve refocused their efforts on selling Jeeps, SUVs, big, powerful Dodges and Ram pickups, all of which are much higher margin cars than the 200 or the Dart, and the company is finally looking to turn a profit in 2018, which it has not done since 2012.

Other companies are taking a different path, moving production from the US, Canada or Mexico to China. It’s where pretty much all future Buicks will be built, and Ford has alerted Fusion suppliers that they will cease Mexican production, with the alternatives being China or not producing the car at all. With such a declining pie, the pieces are getting smaller for each manufacturer and to justify their existence, mid-sized sedans need to achieve a greater profit margin, which means cutting production cost or raising price. And in a declining automotive market where SUVs and crossovers frequently cost around the same price as sedans, the latter simply isn’t an option. 

So, will 2018 be the year the Sedan died? I think not. Or, I should say, not yet. Toyota has unveiled a brand new Camry and Avalon, the Honda Accord just won car of the year (again) and a new Nissan Altima is coming soon, too. But there’s an unshakable feeling that, even though these sedans will be the best they’ve ever been this generation, this could be sort of a last hurrah for them, as crossovers continue to come in and eat their lunches.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows for crossovers either, though. A study released today showed that compact crossovers, some of the most popular vehicles, especially among young buyers, are among the fastest depreciating cars on the market, losing up to 1.18 percent of their value every week. It’s terrifying to think that you could go in and buy a Honda HR-V or Toyota C-HR or Mazda CX-3 or any number of the other alphanumeric-named, useless hatchbacks on stilts and find yourself a year later with a car worth just 39 percent what you paid for it 52 weeks ago. And the truth is, there’s no great advantage to these compact crossovers. They have less storage than the cavernous trunks of mid-sized sedans. They handle worse, usually have less powerful engines and generally all have obnoxious styling. But they’re hip and offer a slightly higher ride height, which allows you to see more of the road beyond the screen of your iPhone 10. Plus, they’re easier to park in these urban communities where I’m told the youth all live. 

So sure, things could turn around for the sedan, once people realize how poor these compact crossovers are both in terms of value and practicality. But at the rate sales are declining and sedans are being put out to pasture, by the time common sense catches up with buyers - by the time they realize that sedans really are enough car for virtually everything - it could already be too late.

Authored by
Devlin RIggs

Consumer Electronics Show Round-Up

Last week was the annual Consumer Electronics Show, and as vehicles become increasingly laden with technology, the show has become increasingly a car show. Here is a comprehensive round-up of everything CES had to offer petrolheads.

Samsung & Harman’s Autonomous Tech & Digital Cockpit

Technology company Samsung and high-end audio manufacturer Harman teamed up (well really, Samsung bought Harman last year for $8 billion) and showcased a new camera system for autonomous vehicles that included safety features like collision and lane departure warning systems and adaptive cruise control. They also showed off a so-called “digital cockpit” that is basically replacing the entire dashboard of a car with customizable screens that users can set so their profile comes up when they go to drive a car. It’s massive, and cool looking, but do we really need more distracting screens in front of us in cars? They’re kind of aiming to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

Digital Assistants Get Baked (In)

A number of automakers, including Toyota, have announced plans to integrate Amazon’s Alexa into their future vehicles, but a lot of these cars already have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. At CES, Google has announced that the company is rolling out an update to Android Auto this week that will add Google Assistant to compete with Alexa for the title of which AI can more poorly interpret the words “Call mom.” In reality, the list of functions you’ll be able to do with Google Assistant should be pretty impressive, from sending and receiving messages and playing music to reserving parking spaces with SpotHero and ordering coffee from Starbucks, all while keeping your hands on the wheel. Since more than 400 models of car or truck already feature Android Auto compatibility, this could be a major leg up for Google in the digital co-driver space.

Aptiv & Lyft’s Autonomous Rides

Outside the Las Vegas Convention Center, special BMWs outfitted by autonomous car maker Aptiv and organized by Lyft were available to shuttle CES delegates around the city to predetermined destinations. Sure, this is cheating a little bit because users couldn’t just input whatever destination they wanted, but the cars still had to deal with real traffic along their prescribed routes, and they did it without incident. Aptiv expects to have a Level 4 autonomous vehicle suite available to manufacturers like BMW next year.

VW & Uber Partner with Nvidia

Speaking of partnerships, Nvidia took the opportunity of CES to announce deeper partnerships with Volkswagen and Uber. With VW, Nvidia will help out with vehicle automation and AI, specifically for the I.D. Crozz and Buzz vehicles coming in 2022. This will apparently proliferate through Volkswagen’s other EVs as the lineup grows. That AI will also go into Uber’s fleet of self-driving taxis and freight trucks, where it has already been getting a bit of action in the autonomous Volvo XC90s. Uber says it has completed more than two million miles of autonomous driving in its tests.

Kia Niro EV Concept

In addition to the raw technology, we also got a look at some new cars, or at least concepts. One was the Kia Niro EV Concept,  which takes Kia’s Niro compact crossover, throws out its hybrid powertrain, and swaps it for a fully electric system offering 238 miles of range, which is the same as the Chevy Bolt, but in a larger package. The concept is very concept-y with its execution and has a ton of features that’ll never make it into the final car, like some huge screens and two-spoke steering wheel. But let’s be honest, if Kia gets a compact crossover EV to market that has good range and good looks, they will just be printing money come 2020.

Hyundai Nexo FCV

Kia’s parent company Hyundai also got in on the concept car action, unveiling their Nexo flagship crossover, which is a large hydrogen fuel cell vehicle with an electric motor developing 160 horsepower and almost double that in torque foot pounds. It’s not exactly fast at a 9.5 second 0-60, but it’s three seconds faster than Hyundai’s Tucson Fuel Cell Vehicle and has a range of 370 miles, which beats nearly every pure electric vehicle on the market. Plus it’s a crossover, so people will actually buy it. Now the only thing remaining is to figure out a hydrogen filling infrastructure…

Byton EV

Another new electric vehicle startup called Byton showed off their electric crossover at CES this year. It features what they call a coast-to-coast display, which is lovely that they thought enough to cover us here in flyover country. That screen also covers the entire dashboard and they say it will make it to the production model, which will apparently start around $45K and will be manufactured in a plant in Nanjing, China. It’ll get 250 miles of range in the base model and looks really nice on the inside and outside, but in a sort of plain way. It’s kind of a toned-down mix of a Range Rover and Lexus RX - it doesn’t really have an identity of its own, but it’s not ugly, and the screen in the middle of the steering wheel is kind of cool. It also has Amazon’s Alexa baked into it, so voice command should work, well, mostly okay. So why bother having the big screen? In any case, Byton, I’ll believe you can produce this car when you produce it. As we’ve seen with Faraday Future, the automotive industry is no stranger to Vaporware.

Toyota’s e-Palette Concept

One of the neatest automotive concepts at the show was Toyota’s e-Palette concept, which is what they think the future of mobility looks like. Basically, in this future, Toyota manufactures the hardware, basically a vehicle shell that is highly customizable. It could be a delivery van, a ride-sharing vehicle or mobile e-commerce platform. Since it’s all modular, it can even be all those things within the span of a day. While Toyota provides the hardware, companies would be the software designers, creating unique user experiences for the occupants or people to whom items are delivered. It’s an interesting idea and could be a workable concept, especially in cities. For now though, we’ll just have to rely on Tony in his red Toyota Avalon, who is only four blocks away but Lyft says it’ll take him 14 minutes to get here.

That’s all the major stories from CES this week, but we’re on the verge of the Detroit Motor Show, so stay tuned for that next week! 

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

This story originally appeared in the AllWaysDrive Podcast. Subscribe now and get the latest news every week!