Headlines for the Week of August 13, 2018

Faraday Future Still a Thing, Promises Millions of Cars

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

Germany to Force Diesel Fixes for VW Owners

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

South Korea Banning BMWs for Flambéing Themselves

Photo by BBC News

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

VW’s Electrify America Promotes not VWs

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

Swedish Vehicles Vandalized by Incendiary Immigrants?

Photo by CNN

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

Subaru Replacing Recalled Ascents Outright

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

Hertz 100th Birthday Makes a Great Vetteversary

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

Formula E Racers Coming Up for Sale

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

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

— Fernando Alonso (@alo_oficial) August 11, 2018

Fernando Alonso Retires

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

Porsche Sets Track Records with Panamera Hybrid

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

Bottoms-up Booze for Bimmers?

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

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

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