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

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

Headlines for the Week of February 26th, 2018

Time to Flee Chicago

An investigation from ProPublica and Mother Jones this week revealed that the city of Chicago has been bankrupting its citizens through aggressive efforts to collect on parking fines. And it’s not just a few isolated cases. They found around a more than 10,000 Chapter 13 bankruptcies that included debts to the city which were usually for unpaid tickets in amounts averaging $3,900. Tickets totaled about 7 % of the city’s total operating budget, around $264 million in 2016. Chicago loves to make parking difficult. For residential streets, they require you purchase a city sticker. Where you can find a parking spot, sometimes there will be neighborhood stickers too, further restricting spots. If you don’t have a city sticker, bam. $200 fine, and it’s not like they won’t give you a ticket because you have already received one. Unpaid tickets can result in garnishment of tax refunds, impounds, license suspensions and more. So while they can’t imprison you for debt, they basically make it impossible for you to travel, which makes it awfully hard to hold down a job to pay off fines.

There are many caveats to this, of course. You should obey the law and pay for parking and park legally, and in Chicago especially, having a car sucks because of the winter and it’s generally pretty easy to get around with the L and Metra, but they don’t go everywhere. So while it’s not impossible to avoid getting trapped in this cyclical debt loop with the city, it’s pretty hard to get out of once you’re in it. That’s where bankruptcy comes in, which is sometimes the only choice even when it wrecks your credit score. Chicago has been one of the only major metropolitan areas to lose population recently and one can’t help but wonder if it’s policies like this that place the city’s budget over the wellbeing of its people that is driving the exodus.

Geely Owner Buys into Daimler

This week Li Shufu, Chairman of Chinese automaker Geely, spent 7.3 billion Euro on Daimler stock, making him the largest single shareholder in the company who rejected advances from him previously. He now owns almost 10% of the company after initially asking for only five and has signaled his intention to stick with that amount for the time being, which sounds like a threat if he’s not taken seriously. China has been one of the strongest markets for German vehicles in the last decade and vehicles from Audi, BMW, Mercedes and others are frequently copied by Chinese manufacturers looking to cash in on their popular style. The Germans don’t need help selling their cars in China, and Daimler already has partnerships formed with BAIC Motor and BYD to develop electric vehicles under the Denza brand name, so it makes sense why Daimler wouldn’t want anything to do with Li or Geely. What it is Li is hoping to get from his hostile purchase of Daimler stock is still unclear, especially after it was reported that he had kicked the tires at Fiat Chrysler before going after Daimler stock. The companies are very, very different, so perhaps it’s just an effort to exert a greater control on overseas automotive players. Sort of the business equivalent of building sand islands in the South China Sea to claim more territory.

BMW to Build Mini-E in China

Speaking of China, they’re way out ahead of the rest of the world in terms of electric vehicle adoption and automakers the world over are seeing the advantage of working with Chinese companies who have developed expertise in this space. One such company is BMW, who has partnered with Chinese company Brilliance to produce the forthcoming electric Mini. Apparently this will be the first mini vehicle ever produced outside of England even though Mini has been owned, operated and designed by Germans since 2001. For some reason, some Mini electric vehicles will also be produced in England, but they will be different than the ones made in China. Given the strong history of both countries producing unreliable crap, this is sort of like a choose your own painful automotive adventure scenario. 

UPS Expands Electric Fleet

Meanwhile, UPS is keeping Brown close to town. Er, home. Hometown. They’re getting some electric vehicles from the U.S. Specifically from Workhorse, who we’ve mentioned a few times here for their electric pickup truck. Apparently they’ve been working with UPS for about four years on the development of a class 5 delivery truck, whatever class 5 means, but UPS want more of them and have placed an order for 50. They’ll use these vehicles as a technology testbed with the aim of purchasing more next year. Of course the range of these trucks won’t be as good as on their gas-powered counterparts, especially when hauling heavy loads, UPS said that, just like their skimpy shorts, they’re okay covering less ground than is appropriate.

Ferrari Keeps on Rolling (Back Odometers)

Some disturbing news for all of you looking at the used Ferrari market this week when it was revealed that Ferrari corporate openly allowed dealerships to manipulate odometer readings, rolling back mileage to zero to inflate the value of their vehicles for sale. It’s not clear if they could roll back mileage to an arbitrary number, since a car with 50,000 miles on it will show some signs of wear and the odometer reading zero miles would smell awfully fishy. There’s also a statement from Ferrari that this could only be conducted on cars with fewer than 311 miles or 500 kilometers, which seems like it was intended to be used to wipe off delivery miles so new cars could be handed over to customers with a big old goose egg on the dash. How many times they could be reset though, could be meaningful. And the fact that, in order to use the tool, dealerships were required to receive authorization from Ferrari HQ is most definitely meaningful because it means they’re at least complicit in violating US federal and state laws against odometer manipulation. Ultimately, I don’t think this is going to result in any substantial change in the used Ferrari market since its application was apparently so limited, but it’s just sketchy as hell that such a function existed anyway. It’s pretty strange to me that Ferrari makes cars where you can change the odometer willy-nilly, but you can’t even stop it catching fire because they used cheap glue. Italian priorities...

Metal Market Manipulation Means More Migraines

Back here at home, Donald Trump has announced that he will be applying a 25% tariff to foreign steel and a 10% tariff to aluminum, apparently to prop up U.S. metal manufacturers. This is, of course, shortsighted and idiotic because lots of things use metals as components including, importantly, motor vehicles. So by making parts more expensive to come into the country, that incentivizes companies to produce their cars elsewhere and then import them, costing the U.S. vehicle manufacturing jobs. It will also result in higher vehicle prices during a time when vehicle sales are down, costing dealerships salespeople jobs. It could also kick off a trade war with China, the world’s largest steel manufacturer, who could impose tariffs on American goods in response, costing jobs in other sectors like farming. While the tariffs haven’t been implemented yet, the announcement alone took the stock market down 500 points because real businesspeople have the common sense to understand how supply chains work and appreciate the consequences of such actions. Hopefully this is a warning sign enough to scare Trump away from actually implementing the tax.

Ford’s Dumb Advertising Record

Visitors to Madrid, Spain may have noticed the iconic España Building looking a little different due to a truly massive Ford advertisement recently. Showing off the new EcoSport compact crossover, it is actually the Guinness World Record holder for largest billboard. I know an audio medium is not an ideal venue to discuss the scale of a visual advertisement, but consider it’s the size of 20 tennis courts and you sort of have a mental picture of how huge and unnecessary it is. If you’re thinking it’s ironic that they’d use such a wasteful display to promote the EcoSport, Ford says that when the ad campaign is complete, it will be donated to the Apascovi Foundation employment center for people with disabilities, where the materials used in its construction will be repurposed somehow.

Toyota to Build Mini-Nurburgring

The Nurburgring in Germany is widely considered the best place to test the limits of a car thanks to its long and varied course. That’s why it’s so popular to try to set new records there - automakers think of it as a measure of a car’s ability to cope with the most demanding conditions a car can face while driving as fast as possible. But for Japanese companies, Germany is half a world away, so getting cars there for comprehensive testing can be a huge pain in the ass. So as Toyota got to work on a new research and development center back home in Japan, they have decided to dedicate two square miles to the creation of a mini-Nurburgring. It’s just 3.3 miles but will feature many of the most demanding turns and elements of the famous German track. Fortunately, since this will be owned by Toyota, I don’t think it’ll experience the same ridiculous lap time contests, saving journalists the world over from having to roll our eyes when some new company claims to be the fastest ever around it.

Uber Rider Blacks Out, Finds Himself Home (300 miles away)

Another week, another crazy Uber story, but fortunately this was in no way the company’s fault. A man visiting friends at West Virginia University got hammered and, like a responsible college kid, called himself an Uber to get back home. Problem is, he lives in New Jersey and the driver, a well-meaning chap with a ridiculously comfortable Toyota Sienna, obliged for the 300 mile journey across three states to return him home when he blacked out in the back seat. The cost of this monumental cock-up? $1,635 and one rich Uber driver’s whole night. Even worse, the guy accidentally ordered an Uber XL instead of just an X, so he paid $700 more than he even could have if his drunk ass had been able to press buttons right. At least he didn’t drive, but maybe there is such a thing as too drunk to Uber.

Stink Bugs Create Rotten Situation for Kiwis

New Zealand residents waiting for new cars from Japan have been forced to wait a bit longer due to a severe infestation of stink bugs on container ships from Japan. New Zealand has a fragile ecosystem to which stink bugs could potentially do severe damage, so three container ships hauling approximately 10,000 new and used vehicles from Japan have been made to sit off the coast of the country until they can be cleaned out. A further 8,000 are sitting at the dock in Japan waiting for transport. New processes will be put into place after this fiasco to ensure cars are cleaned prior to shipment, but there’s still no word on when those ships will be cleaned up and vehicles delivered. Suddenly my house’s infestation doesn’t seem so dire.

Clever Man Pays, Steals with Own Tools

Here in the Midwest, police across several states are looking for a man who has been stealing thousands of dollars from automated car washes in Ohio and Indiana. This guy rolls up to an automated wash, inserts a laminated $20 bill attached to some fishing wire, yanks out the bill and cancels the sale on the wash machine, which spits out money in the amount he paid. At one station in Indiana, he was able to complete the task 35 times, netting him $700 just at one location. He’s apparently done this several times at different locations in different states and has yet to be caught, despite his face being visible to cameras on the machines. And we’re not talking about some criminal hacker mastermind, we’re talking about a clever guy with a laminator and fishing line. I had no idea car washes were so easy to game or held $700 worth of cash in them at one time! Kudos to this guy, but also not because, you know, criminal.

Naked Man Plays, Drives by Own Rules

In Kansas City this week, drivers along the 435 freeway that loops the city were treated to quite the show. Specifically, on display was a nude male riding a stolen bright yellow ATV into oncoming traffic. He refused to stop police and kept going for a while, managing to be filmed by several drivers which, let me tell you, makes for one hell of an animated gif. Police were eventually able to apprehend him and noted that no “dangerous instruments” were found on him, which seems like an especially harsh commentary on his personal endowment. Apparently the owner of the ATV called the police to report it stolen, at which point the 911 dispatcher started laughing and said “we know where your ATV is.” The owner may want to go ahead and purchase a new seat though.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines & New Cars for the Week of January 8, 2018

Sales Slump to Continue

After all the numbers came in for 2017, overall vehicle sales were down 1.8% over 2016, which marks the first decline in seven years and, unfortunately for car makers, there’s no real end in sight. That is, unless you’re a super car manufacturer. Aston Martin and McLaren both recorded their biggest ever sales years in 2017 because the rich are getting so incredibly stinking rich!

Anyway. During the recession, people held on to their cars longer because they couldn’t afford to replace them. This meant stiffer competition among automakers for the sales that were occurring, so they worked hard to make their cars more appealing, more reliable and safer. When the economy finally bounced back, people spent the next seven years getting rid of their old vehicles and upgrading to newer, better cars.The reports bear this out – cars these days are safer, more reliable and more satisfying than ever before, and so people are keeping them longer, leading to a sales decline.

Sure, you’ll still have incidents where people blow through red lights and total cars, thereby generating a certain amount of reluctant sales, but there are already 1.26 vehicles on the road for every one licensed driver, meaning we have a shit ton of unlicensed drivers out there, or people just have plenty of cars.

And that’s what the industry experts are thinking – we’ve reached peak car, where we’ll back off to a stable replacement level of sales each year. Plus, as interest rates rise, people aren’t going to want to take out loans for new cars either. So how will automakers cope with a shrinking pie from which to get slices? Will they keep innovating as they did during the recession to attract a larger share, or will they collectively start making their products less reliable so they go bad at a prescribed point, forcing owners to upgrade? This is what we’d call the iPhone sales tactic.

Leasing Surges

On the heels of the sales report, leasing looks like it’s going gangbusters. About 31 percent of all new vehicle sales are leases in the US, but if you look at plug-in hybrids, the number jumps to 55 percent of all sales. And then there’s pure electric vehicles. Eighty percent of all EV sales are leases, which is crazy. Almost all people want to essentially rent these cars for a few years and Bloomberg is reporting that a major cause of this is the overall sense among consumers that electric vehicles are going to get better than they are now, so they don’t want to be locked into obsolete technology. Plus, resale value of EVs is currently very, very poor so purchasing one outright just doesn’t really make any sense, apart from for those 20 percent of people who bought them outright. Enjoy your Leaf!

Fuel Costs Jumping

Of course, those EVs may start to look more attractive this year as the 2018 Fuel Price Outlook suggests that gas prices could peak at just less than $3 per gallon. GasBuddy predicts that the national average price will rise 19 cents to around $2.57 per gallon this year, which still is not THAT bad, especially when you look at the rest of the world. But combine that with the drop in fuel efficiency we saw among new car purchases last year and GasBuddy predicts the average household will spend $1,898 on fuel this year. That’s $133 more than last year, which is the cost of at least two nice taco dinners, and I cast shame upon the evil oil spectators behind this rise because nothing should stand between us and nice taco dinners!

California Banning ICEs

Meanwhile in California, the land of the future, a bill has been introduced to the state legislature that would ban the sale of new cars and trucks powered by gasoline or diesel fuels by the year 2040. If you’ve been tuning into the show for a while, you’ll know that 2040 is also a deadline set by Paris, London and a few other cities or countries, with some even having more aggressive targets for pollution reduction. They estimate that the measure, if it’s adopted, would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels in just ten years. We’ll have to see how they end up voting, but I bet there are going to be some very busy lobbyists in Sacramento this week! 

Mazda’s Creepin’ Tech

Mazda this week filed a patent for some technology that’s both innovative and incredibly creepy. It’s apparently all in an effort to thwart distracted or drowsy driving. Basically, there is a camera or series of cameras set up inside the car, pointed at the driver and the car’s computer uses the driver’s eyes and expression to determine if the driver is paying attention and engaged with the drive they’re going on. If it determines that the driver is busy checking texts or Facebook or dozing off, the car will apparently respond by doing anything from simple sounds and visual prompts to changing the navigation system to route the driver to a more fun-looking road to drive. If the driver looks like he or she is having fun and is entertained by the route, the computer will store that route for later reference. Basically, Mazda is going to find all the cool roads and fill them with CX-9s because drivers can’t put their stupid phones down anymore.  

"Eyes on the road, buddy!" - Mazda

Nissan Gets in Your Head

And speaking of creepy, Nissan is taking it to the next level with their new Brain to Vehicle (B2V) system, which they will be showing off this coming week at the Consumer Electronics Show. Drivers are fitted with a skull cap that monitors brain wave activity and transmits signals to steering, acceleration and braking systems that can respond before the driver even moves his or her hands or feet. The driver still actually makes the car do things, but the car just anticipates what’s going to happen and can start things milliseconds sooner. Apparently this is meant to enhance the driving pleasure when it seems to me it’s just cheaper to make cars faster and more responsive than to dump time and research into brain wave monitoring. But hey, they’re making money like crazy selling Nissan Rogues to people so they can do what they want I guess. 

Tesla Under-performs...Again

Meanwhile a Tesla earnings call this week managed to once again unveil the woeful under-performance of the company in meeting the goals its founder sets for it. Rather than churning out a few thousand Model 3s per week as predicted earlier this year, Tesla’s highest number yet was a little less than 800 and, let’s be honest, making almost 100 cars a day is still a super achievement and they’re ramping up effectively. The problem comes when the founder is all bluster about getting to 5,000 cars per week by the end of Q1 2018 which, by the way, has been pushed back to the end of the second quarter. Tesla’s stock took a hit after the announcement, which was, for once, not accompanied by some other shiny thing to distract investors from the problems going on. Tesla has a big year coming up with the launch of both their semi truck and the Model Y, but it’s critical they get their shit figured out quick, or buyers are going to start figuring out that hey, that Chevy Bolt is a pretty nice car and I can go buy one right now.

Burn Rover, Burn

On Sunday night last week, a parking garage in Liverpool, England, resembled the gates of hell as a raging inferno engulfed 1,400 vehicles. Fortunately, no one was injured and, surprisingly, the fire wasn’t started by an Italian super car. It was rather friendly fire, coming from a Land Rover, of course vehicles not known for their wiring or electronics excellence. The fire really is something incredible to see, as you can tell from the video above. The fuel in the cars just fed the fire until it was completely unconquerable by the local fire brigade, meaning they couldn’t stop it spreading to other cars. Sort of like an automotive herpes that, instead of itching, just creates a huge insurance hassle for thousands of people.

Squirrels Drive Local Man Nutty

A British Volkswagen Golf driver learned the hard way how squirrels are  just rats with fluffy tails last month. Apparently he parked his car outside his girlfriend’s father’s home near London and then left with the girlfriend for a month to tour southeast Asia. During that time, several squirrels decided that hey, Volkswagen does make a pretty comfy car, and called the place home, storing acorns in every conceivable place throughout the vehicle they could access. The glove box, the engine bay, even the transmission was packed and the owner found it tough to shift when he returned home. The clean-up and disposal of hundreds of perfectly good acorns that would feed families of the little bastards throughout the winter cost the driver £230. Which is not a small sum, especially coming back from vacation.

Hot Dog, Cool Crime

In other food-related automotive antics, a driver in Texas got off with a warning this week when he was pulled over for a minor traffic violation. Apparently, prior to departing, he placed a hot dog on the rear bumper of his Chevy Silverado and taped a piece of paper with “Free hot dog” written on it above (hard to tell from the above photo, but easy to see how creepy it is) . He then proceeded to drive from Waco, Texas to Brownwood and back, a journey of more than 120 miles, before getting stopped. The hot dog and sign were still there. Now if you’re me, you think this is like the adult equivalent of free candy written on the side of a seedy van, but if you’re a Brown County sheriff's department officer, you just think he’s a funny dude and let him be on his way. Only a matter of time before witness reports roll in about bodies being found in the back of a white pickup with hot dog residue on the bumper.

Pampered Oregonians Pumping

You may or may not be aware, but New Jersey and Oregon both require full service gas stations, or at least they did. Oregon has started allowing rural stations to permit self serve. You know, the same kind of gas we have literally everywhere else in the country? Well apparently people are freaking out about it, don’t know how to pump their own gas and are afraid that they will either burn the whole place down or smell like gasoline the rest of the day. I get that if you grew up not doing it, you may not know how to pump gas, but I fail to believe that people have never watched an attendant do it for them, and I have absolutely zero sympathy for these pampered brats kicking and screaming to get the good old times back. This really seems like a Portlandia sketch in real life. But apparently that really just is the state of Oregon.

Turkmenistan Bad Luck Ban

They aren’t the only place suffering though. Do you love black cars? Do you live in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan? Well tough luck. Your car has just been banned because the president of the oppressive country has decided they are bad luck and they must be impounded or repainted at the owner’s expense. And I do mean expense because it’s a very poor country and the people there can absolutely not afford to repaint their cars just because their president is a nut job. Sorry Turkmen!

Banned in Turkmenistan.

New Cars

Is there a future for the Fusion?

First up in new car news is actually the cancellation of a new car, or at least new design. In a letter to suppliers this week, Ford announced that they are canceling the planned redesign of the Ford Fusion which was scheduled for a 2020 launch. While this doesn’t mean that the Fusion itself has been discontinued and doesn’t rule out a major change coming later, this does look pretty bad, given the trouble brands have had with selling mid-sized sedans this past year. Buyers just want SUVs, trucks and crossovers these days and while Fusion sales are going okay, particularly to fleets, Ford apparently doesn’t see the value in spending time and money in refreshing a car that has only been around four years and remains one of the best looking cars in its class. That or this is the evidence we need to show that Ford is all a part of a massive marijuana smuggling scheme from where the Fusions roll off the line in Mexico. Remember those stories? Twice Fusions have been found with the spare tire well packed to the brim with weed awaiting receipt by a distributor in the US only to be discovered by a so-called innocent car buyer. Sure, Ford. I’m on to you.

New Audis with New Looks

While Ford foregoes redesigns of its cars, Audi has decided that their utter lack of creativity for their own cars needs to be changed. If you’re like me, you’ve probably sat in traffic, admiring an Audi and thought “that’s a really nice looking S6. Or, uh, A8. No, A4? RS4? Shit.” That’s apparently pretty common. According to an interview with Autocar, CEO Rupert Stadler says the similarity between models was used to make Audis more recognizable to emerging markets, which they say has worked swimmingly and now they’re free to spend money and be creative again. Marc Lichte, Audi’s Chief Designer, was quoted as saying something along the lines of “Oh, thank god, Jesus in heaven I’m bored to death over here and only have rulers on this drafting table!” New designs should start rolling out in March or April of this year.

This originally aired in The AllWaysDrive Podcast on January 4, 2018. Subscribe now and never miss the latest new car news!

Authored by
Devlin Riggs