TorqueNews Hot Topics (Page 128)

Off to the Electric Chair! Unlike other legacy car companies with their so called 5 and 10 year plans toward electrification, this is how I know VW Group is pretty damn serious about meaning what it says about an electric future. Its lead luxury brand Audi plans on electrifying or eliminating some of its iconic signature vehicles way sooner, and in doing so, it’ll send a shakeup message to the luxury car market that electric cars are now the new marque to be judged.

Something is going viral like canine parvo across the internet, and it’s becoming a fascinating watch. You’ll see scores of Tesla owners actually playing hide and seek with their new Tesla Model 3s with the latest upgraded hard and software, in lots and garages. The scary but endearing part of the process is when their cars “sniff” them out to reunite. Welcome to an unexpected turn in the Driverless Car Revolution: it’s now about Astro, not Rosie!

A Boston area driver walked away from a brutal crash last week with only bumps and bruises after his 2001 Toyota MR2 was involved in a brutal crack-up on Interstate Route 95. The operator swerved to avoid an item that flew out of a pickup bed and ended up in collision with a semi-trailer. The image speaks for itself.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: The Eve of the Ides of March like the Model Y unveil at the Tesla Design Studio came like the new car itself and went like any other event without much fanfare. Both are no frills or gimmicks, the most practical you can get in a car and an event, neither didn’t take much money to make, and in the car’s case it has the potential to outsell it’s siblings combined.

Public charging, replacing, and upgrading an ion battery to a BEV apparently got a little easier and maybe even cheaper to do when two startups recently announced they inked a deal to combine their services onto one menu. Fenix Power and ChargeShare, two young companies worth keeping an eye on, are looking to make BEV ownership easier, cheaper, more accessible, and convenient, and believe they’ve found a way to bridge both the new sales and after market parts arenas in the BEV industry.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: I continue the miniseries of stories of “Life after Leaf” in this beginning of the post-hybrid age when we are now getting over PHEVs and short range BEVs like Nissan Leaf, and taking a more serious look at new BEVs now that they’re more car and charging choices, better battery ranges, and cheaper prices. One option coming soon is a BEV CUV that’ll compete with the Hyundai/Kia SUV electrics. Here’s the unveiling of the smaller Model Y.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: This is an ongoing mini-series of reports themed “life after Leaf,” where I take a look at what happens when you turn in the keys of a firsthand used BEV like Nissan Leaf after a brand new lease or purchase, to wonder what happens to the car thereafter. There’s such a plentiful amount of them that many will not see a long life, but in this report we take a look at why it makes sense to still buy a cheap used all electric car.

Sometime next year BMW will be introducing their first real non-compliant full production all electric car. It won’t look as funky as i3 does. It’ll actually look like a real normal car. And it’ll be based off the 4 series. So with my BMW in the shop AGAIN, and the dealer giving me a 430 coupe as a loaner, I decided to take this opportunity to give you a dynamic of what to expect from a 4 series electric by looking at the gas one and my car, a 3 Series, first.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: I hope this is about as mad as the mad doctor can be, signing a pact with the almost-devil of the car industry right before industrial birth of start up production. I guess he’ll be the industrial obstetrician. I hope the car baby ain’t no Rosemary’s. Dr. Scaringe is looking to make a deal with a devil who has more money than God. Jeff Besos of Amazon is in with this. What a strange three way this could be. I cringe: gee Doctor: will it be good for you too?

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: I wonder if the people who are caught red handed being “distracted while AutoPilot” realize how lucky they are they got away with their crime. Unlike the people who I last wrote about who face the wrath of the NTSB and the courts for their tort who proclaim “my Tesla did it, not me,” “driving distracted while AutoPilot” is a crime of reckless endangerment, and most are getting away with it without realizing it.

By selling the entire model range in three categories, Tesla Corporation makes each car more cheaply, and simplifies discerning which car is which. If you want “Ludicrous,” which now comes in a separate upgrade package at a $20,000 premium, no more looking at old school Bentley-like badges to see battery energy capacity, you just look for “Performance.” This also helps with pricing and sales: by having cheaper Base Models S and X, Tesla is getting ready to sell Base Model 3.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: One of the worse things a driver can do in a late model car engaged in an accident is to fib or outright lie. You see, whether you realize it, their car may help you, but your car is going to make it really easy to tell your side of the story, with data and soon even images, sooner than later, and regardless of what kind of shape the car is in, and whether for your benefit or not. Your car always telling the truth, is one thing! Getting on the same page with you, is another.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: It’s not looking too good in the public relations arena for Cadillac and GM when the national, now world conversation nows turns toward questioning the existence of luxury car brands after the Cadillac XT6-Gate GM Debacle. Aston Martin’s CEO weighed in with the XT6-Gate to establish six ultra brands, and none of the ones below it like Cadillac will surpass them. But let’s be clear: XT6-Gate is an American problem, not a European one.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: While GM didn’t strike an iceberg like Titanic with the recent Cadillac XT6-Gate Roll Out, XT6’s Super Cruise “Radio Delete” from the options list Gaffe, and Caddy’s the ”Lead Brand” Announcement Kerfuffle with no Caddy BEV for three years, it certainly ran into the reefs too quickly like the Costa Concordia. Although it isn’t a massive blockbusting disaster, it is a serious debacle that needs some changes. And they better do it soon.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: GM President Mark Reuss’ recent announcement of putting Cadillac as the lead brand against Tesla helped everything else but Cadillac. Cadillac just put their third gas CUV into their portfolio right after this announcement! A real all electric car company doesn’t do that! To be taken seriously by anyone you have to be reliable and believable, and that means having honesty, and to be honest, starting with yourself, you have to believe in yourself. Who’s fooling who?

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: Until recently no one in the car industry ever had an experience of what it was like to end production of a car product due to obsolescence, they and other peer brands have produced since its invention in the mid-nineteenth century. Shutting down gas while ramping up electric is a double money losing proposition into the tens to hundreds of billions. Only the wealthiest and most powerful car companies on earth can survive this conversion process, and I look into how this is so.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: There have been incidents across the country lately that have become more noticeable and reportable to both news agencies and the police. “Coal Rolling” and “ICE-ing” are suppose to be acts of protest against emissions policies but they are really nothing more than acts of cowardliness by ignoramuses. Empower rather than arm yourself by doing these ten things to stop these shameful people.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: As GM’s ten year plan for electrification and autonomy turns into a five year plan, that actually now is really an “ASAP plan,” GM is facing a reality that except for the Bolt factory, none of its North American facilities are fully ready for an all out massive BEV production schedule. As GM kills everything off about itself that burns gas, it has no choice but to turn to the Chinese for help. Please welcome the GM Chinese electric car at a dealer near you!

While Tesla and Electrify America sweep themselves across America’s interstates upgrading the supercharger networks, other networks with their superchargers elsewhere, incompatibilities between PHEVs and BEVs that may have been initially overlooked, are starting to become clear: PHEVs are incompatible with superchargers, and while the UK looks to ban them from superchargers, US car makers may already be taking care of the PHEV problem by just outright getting rid of them.

OPINION AND ANALYSIS: Nobody is taking these Russians seriously about the specs and their one year warranty to their recently proposed Russian Mustang BEV, but I tell you one thing: at least they got a spec sheet. They got renders. They got ideas. They even got a warranty for a car they haven’t built yet. They’re eager for publicity and/or to build. I say, where’s the people who invented the damn car to begin with? Do they even know what electricity is beyond a cigarette plug in the dash?

Porsche has recalled 75,000 2017-2018 Panamera models to fix a software glitch that knocks out the power steering. The resulting failure increases the steering effort of the Panamera which might lead to crashes. So far, no crashes have been reported.

For decades Chinese car companies have all tried to enter the US car market to meet some kind of failure. Learning from the lessons of Chinese car companies past, one car maker known as Qiantu Motors (Dragonfly logo, means “freedom”), is teaming up with a California based electric car and energy startup to make its first foray into the US market with a battery electric sports car to take on Tesla’s portfolio. Qiantu starts the competition against the Roadster II, with the 2020 Qiantu K50.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: Attention military, law enforcement, security, and/or hunters who validly possess a firearm, or anyone else with the gall to carry a firearm illegally: the chances of your battery electric vehicle catching fire from a purposeful or accidental firearms discharge through the battery pack are much greater than if pierced through a gas tank. Read this story now coming to light about a 2014 Tesla S to find out why.

OPINION AND ANALYSIS: Inasmuch as we are fooling ourselves into believing that gasoline new car purchases will be a viable option even in some parts of the world past 2030, we are also fooling ourselves into believing that we’ll be able to drive our present and near future classic cars around twenty plus years from now. This is a tail pipe dream. Well, like Jaguar Land Rover, Aston Martin has also found a solution to anticipate this issue.

OPINION AND ANALYSIS: With VW Group’s accelerated plans to cease gas car production sooner, Bentley needs to ask itself what kind of car company does it want to be? If Aston Martin stuffed battery packs inside the seats and boot spare tire wells and fenders of a Rapide, why there isn’t something similar done inside a Spur or a Mulsanne? Bentley isn’t doing that; they’re running counterculture to their heritage, and risk losing what they worked hard to get after leaving Rolls Royce: not becoming another Cadillac.

“To lease or not to lease… that is the question.” This same question stumped Hamlet, and it’s still puzzling car buyers today. Learn about the benefits of car leasing vs car buying.

OPINION ANALYSIS: Rivian Automotive, the once Clandestine now Maverick Electric Pickup Truck Maker added another BEV to its portfolio, a full sized three rower SUV called R1S. I’m so glad they made it nice and boxy and conservative and all BEV. All they need to do now is stretch that battery tray and back seat room, bespoke it out, make it LWB, send it upmarket past Bentley and Rolls, and let it sit next to Rover SVAutobiography, to let their brand take off, and let the doe roll in.

OPINION ANALYSIS: America’s first plug in hybrid, a segment opening PHEV was put to death recently, the Chevrolet Volt was a cutting edge trailblazing vehicle that bridged the gap between siphoning off gas and waiting for battery technology to improve before pushing on to an all electric car world. So cancelling it seems counterintuitive. It is not. Actually Volt was a great accidental/incidental transition vehicle who’s time came and was way gone.

Traditional and conventional engineering wisdom dictated for years that the purpose of a Mercedes Benz was to enable you to withstand a crash, so that you can survive to buy another Mercedes. Perhaps that conventional thinking now also applies to a Tesla. Five kids driving and riding in a high speed Tesla crash their Model X into a tree and creek. The car was destroyed. Fatalities: 0. The hero: the Tesla.

Unveil Review: Rivian Automotive, the Michigan based startup that for ten years carefully, but secretly planned to find the right vehicle, at the right time, and at the right moment, to launch an all BEV the world hasn’t seen, seemed to find the right recipe to unveil that vehicle NOW, as they launched something that Tesla had expectations of doing first: to launch the first all electric pickup truck in the world. And Rivian did it. Not Ford. Not Tesla. This is a game changer . . .