TorqueNews Hot Topics (Page 130)

With Type 1 Beetle Mark 3 in its swansong, VW decides in good timing that it’s ready to try its luck and good fortune on another storied halo, that some say as a van, has more potential of being even more popular and longer lasting than Beetle, even as an electric. Let’s hope Samba reaches its 100th Birthday in 2049 that Beetle almost made in 2038 (or earlier?), but didn’t quite live as long.

Instead of going over the top like most car makers do, especially startups when introducing autonomous technology in their concept vehicles, BMW took a more practical approach recently with theirs, called iNext, a new electric driverless capable concept CUV but still a human hands on driving car which includes a steering wheel and pedals. So practical they intend to put something much like it into production in as little time as in 2021.

Meet Vera. She’s Swedish, and she means it, damn it. She’s a badass Level 5 Volvo robot electric tractor pod almost as low to the ground as a Porsche, only three times bigger. So low, if you’re not careful, she might mow you down before her collision avoidance and passive emergency braking systems are autonomously activated! Potential roadkill beware! No airbags need apply . . .

Here’s another ex-Ford that got spit out by the blue oval to go on with life and do better without them, since partnering up with Chinese Geely, Volvo is whipping out some amazing products even a new division, and the baby XC40 electric is a prime example. A BEV competes with Jaguar iPace, Audi eTron, and Tesla Model X, all at Model 3 prices. Another ex-Ford in your future. Not bad!

Instead of waiting to wonder what a Mustang BEV CUV will come to, rogue ex-Forder Aston Martin shows their former boss they don’t even need an SUV platform to electrify one of their products, they can do it on a current production car: their flagship saloon, the Rapide. Attention American Cops: this ex-Ford is definitely a Crown Vic and Explorer Inceptor Killer!

Thieves are hacking Tesla vehicles and their key fobs worldwide with special hacking computer hardware tools to steal the car within seconds. It took Tesla a year to solve it. All this, from the company that wants to bring us a world of electric cars without drivers, the problems that may seem too difficult for Tesla to solve over the electric cars they already have that still need them.

Sono Motors is a Bavarian startup electric car company that actually has a very good chance of making it to production being months/weeks away from making their sole solar BEV with the 7,200 orders they already have. Yes, that’s right, a BEV that has solar panels all over the car that provides a range extending 30 km or 18 miles for the 155 mile battery range a day.

After abandoning plans for Zil, the storied Russo-Soviet official state car builder that was supposed to make Vladimir Putin’s next set of wheels back in 2012, the Russian Federation tapped and funded a government entity to develop a LWB car. Here’s the thing: instead of relying on unreliable Russo-Soviet engineering, they German engineered and are now ready to market this SWB car with Europe in mind. Both cars have Porsche developed engines. I get it now. A Zil this is not. Not bad at all.

In formulating a response to Audi’s rollout of its first BEV e-Tron very soon, more so than responding to anything Tesla, Daimler AG bizarrely unveils a whole year before its debut, its first head-on to Tesla full production BEV, a historical vehicle on its electric E-Mobility platform in CUV variant in the separate Mercedes EQ line. But they baffled the media giving it only a puzzling 200 mile range.

With the continued uptick purchases of trucks and SUVs by US consumers, while global new car sales are slowing down, and gas prices remaining low the last two years, there is now a glut of used EV cars on the market, with bargains to be had if you know where and how to find one for the right price.

In setting up its charging network for its upcoming flagship all electric sports saloon, the Taycan, Porsche gives clues as to how premium, luxury, and performance brands outside of the Tesla universe will be treated until as such time as all brands have access to everyone eles’s networks.

People would laugh at a vacuum company investing money and its reputation in building all electric BEV cars it’s never done before. But Dyson has something that took Tesla years to get and another thing it still doesn’t have, that gives Dyson an edge against Tesla: a manufacturing apparatus to build solid state batteries, and the key patents to make them, which are better than what Tesla is using.

As new car sales slow down for the first time since the Great Recession, car makers have had to make key decisions about marketing and production efficiencies, and Ford is no exception. Ford may be limiting itself with choices that customers will grow tired of, if it’s all about just one car: Mustang.

German camper manufacturer Dethleffs continues its experimentation in the EV camper market with another prototype. The last one we reported was a Type 3 RV EV camper covered head to toe with solar panels. This time it’s a EV RV trailer already in production as a conventional camper, that it’s still hitched to a vehicle, but self propels itself with two electric motors on each wheel. A large battery pack has implications for off grid camping and auxiliary home power.

In opening the first Jaguar Land Rover Classic facility in the US, the first of its kind, JLR is cleverly taking steps to preserve its heritage with the cars already in the wild. By expanding the restoration market by offering electrification and restoration options, it also takes steps not only to help clean the environment, but also cleverly erase the mechanical troubles its cars have been known for, for decades.

Poor Tesla: First it was the Shorts, now even the Russians are coming after them with a new Kalashnikov CV-1 electric car. Kalashnikov wants to build an electric car. But this Russian response from the inventors of the AK-47, to Tesla’s earth soothing, humanity healing, eco-conscious electric car lineup, is a retreaded 1970’s Soviet Era hatchback retro-electrified. Classic car conversion: maybe. State of the art design prototype: no. Roadware! Very nice!

Ohio electric commercial mobility company Workhorse Group has been in the news lately with either new products or updates on the progress of ongoing ones. They diversified their product line by rolling out a new helicopter drone recently in Manhattan. With the recent news of Ford introducing a hybrid, and Tesla’s plans to introduce a BEV pickup, eyes are now paying closer attention to Workhorse and their new pickup.

We have no one to blame for the destruction of the manual transmission except for the few of us that were gifted to know how to use it. If we only knew how few of us existed, maybe we could have coordinated consumer demand to prevent the inevitable from happening. Electrics would have sealed their fate anyway.

UBS takes a look at Tesla Model 3 to make a tear down assessment of its latest product to find lots of things to be impressed about the car except for the profit margin of the proposed $35,000 Single Battery Pack/Motor RWD Base Model 3 Sedan.

With the growing rapid output of worldwide EV production, the glaring reality of supply and demand becomes more obvious as to which key players in the auto industry are prepared for battery shortages and which ones are not. Regardless, if the company you buy a BEV from is not one of “the big three,” you should expect you car order to be delayed because of battery shortages by the factory.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently revealed that Tesla’s battery development people have come up with a lighter weight and cheaper design of the Model 3 battery pack. This can be a game changer not only for the elusive Base Model 3, but across the entire present and future model range.

The Tesla news blindsided and shocked the world. A stock exchange wasn’t notified, neither was the Securities Exchange Commission. Not even the board of directors of the company that was affected by the news. Stock prices went crazy, its stock was eventually suspended, everyone who’s anyone about billions denied they were asked to help, and a moment of explanation finally came: Elon Musk wants Tesla to go private, he wants an equity leveraged buyout, and he wants the Saudis to finance it.

Like it was a few weeks ago when a Spanish designer took to Instagram to show his render of a proposed Tesla Semi 8 RV Camper, another artist has given us his vision of what a Tesla Model S next generation might look like with the present generation before its retirement sometime in 2021.

We continue our series of reports on EV camping, an industry taking off like wildfire in both the retirement and surprisingly Millennial demographics. In this story I will address the challenges of what EV campers face once they get to their camp site.

Finding themselves in the same situation they were ironically in back in the 1970’s facing record loses toward bankruptcy, Harley Davidson, the storied motorcycle company had to swallow some bitter reality medicine and face up to changing times with a younger generation that the company turned off with motorcycles their fathers rode, and their Millennial sons (and daughters) never liked. And now here comes the Harley Davidson electric motorcycle.

Electronic key fob identity theft is becoming a real security concern for a number of car drivers. Beware of this and secure your car key fob to prevent break-in and GTA.

Talk about eager to get into autonomous cars. Some people can’t wait until you have to get a real one. A national trend is developing quickly that has the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) alarmed that if it’s not soon abated it will add another condition to the already overburdened resources of local law enforcement, and that is car jumping to the song and social media movement #InMyFeelings by the pop artist Drake and recording the episode to post it on YouTube. The NTSB is telling people to stop.

The first all electric Porsche since 1897 is having ramp up production issues but so far Taycan is on schedule with an assembly line timeline of 2019. Taycan will be Porsche’s first production all electric car and the second electric Porsche ever made, since the sports car company founder Ferdinand Porsche built the last one himself, the P1 which was the first Porsche ever built.

Let me start off at bat: Don Marchionne is a great man. Period. I didn’t agree with him with his paltry 5 year electrification plan for FCA Group, but with his expedited departure, we can now look back with definitive successes and failures. This is how the Era of Sergio Marchionne came to an end, and the Era of Jeep begins as the dominant force in the car industry, perhaps to equal that of Goliath General Motors, now that Jeep takes the world stage.

In an unusual nighttime announcement during the week after the American markets closed, Tesla said it was setting 2019 production dates for two all new vehicles, one coming as a surprise. With the launch of the second generation Roadster and the surprise production of Tesla Semi, Tesla sets its sights on both extreme ends of the vehicle market, while it battles itself to bring the Model 3 to the global market, and battles insolvency before it beats them everywhere.