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

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

Teslupdate (again)

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

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

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

Video by Autoline.tv

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

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

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

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

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

Germany’s “Things You Just Do Not Do”

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

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

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

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

Authored by
Devlin Riggs