As a retired operative of the auto propaganda community, I watched the schoolyard brawl between Tesla’s Elon Musk and the New York Time’s John Broder with detached interest. I won’t re-hash it again. Unless you live in a monastery in Tibet, and your Samsung Note 2 was impounded, because you were caught masturbating to Google image search, it was impossible to escape the fallout from the war of tweets, blogs, and counter-tweets. To this day, bullets and barbs still ricochet through the Internet. Only hours ago, Musk was still seen tweeting about an “impressively out of touch NYT auto editor,” while the world at large is utterly confused. And that is the true tragedy. This after-action report is dedicated to the victims.
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Afew years after its debut in concept form, Volkswagen is readying the ultra-efficient XL1 on a limited production basis. The XL1 could cost as much as 70,000 pounds (or $106,000), and return as much as 314 mpg (according to European test protocols).
Tesla Motors Inc. released its Fourth Quarter & Full Year 2012 Shareholder letter on Wednesday. While the letter provides a very positive outlook for Tesla’s future, there are some questions looming in the background once we dig deeper into Tesla’s balance sheet.
In the kind of Plate-O-Shrimp moment that happens all the time in the car-writing business, I ran across a genuine, one-of-8,515-build Volvo 780 Bertone Coupe in a Denver self-serve wrecking yard just days after writing about this fine Swedo-Italian machine. (Read More…)
Titan is the one with the money and the talent to produce tires. What does the crazy union have? It has the French government.
Okay, that’s direct, but it’s not the most direct thing Maurice Taylor said regarding the possibility of investing in a France-based tire manufacturer.
The thousand injuries of the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission have been borne as the operators and taxi passengers best could, but when someone ventures to insult the august governmental body, there is always some lackey ready to claim that the TLC protects — protects! — New Yorkers against a variety of imaginary offenses from racism to murder. Anything’s possible. The TLC clearly protects New Yorkers from the Cloverfield monster, because it’s never actually been spotted in the city.
On the other hand, when it comes to protecting New Yorkers from counterfeit, defective taxi parts, the FBI has to get involved.
The drama circling around the New York Times test of the Tesla Model S doesn’t surprise me one bit. Why? Because I understand, perhaps at a deeper level than most of the motoring press, how batteries work. Perhaps that has to do with growing up in a family of engineers and scientists, but battery technology has always interested me. So when people from Phoenix came to me crying in their soup about their LEAFs in the heat and friends started wagging fingers at Tesla and the New York Times, I figured it was time for a battery reality check.
Toyota will make in the neighborhood of 10 million units this year, but plans on a big push for 2014 that will propel it way beyond the 10 million mark. (Read More…)
Li Shufu, Chairman Geely
Two months ago, we wrote that Geely will pour $11 billion into a development program for the next generation Volvos, and that half of that money would go to Sweden. Our commentariat did not quite buy that and said that the technology will go to China. Right they were. (Read More…)
A parts shortage has resulted in a shutdown at Chrysler’s Windsor Assembly Plant, home of the Dodge Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country.
As a first-rate cynic and an enthusiast of the English language, I reflexively cringe when I hear the latest “CBC buzzwords” (CBC is Canada’s version of NPR) that get thrown around by the sort of people who think that bicycles will eventually replace cars as our main mode of transportation in our future communitarian-utopia of urban living.
You may have heard them before; words like “vibrant”, “sustainable” or “diverse” inevitably always used as a positive adjective regarding one’s proximity to a farmer’s market or yoga studio. Describing oneself as a “storyteller” when one’s employment situation is murky at best. Describing any commodity good as “artisinal”. This is what I call “word torture”, and if George Carlin were still alive, he’d have a field day.
Imagine my horror when I logged on to the website for the latest installment of Ford’s Fiesta movement and saw it was chock-full of these nebulous descriptors. I nearly had to go back and read one of TTAC’s “Volts on Fire” stories just to calm my rapidly rising blood pressure.
The first of my childhood friends is about to tie the knot this summer, and my friends and I are busy with preparations for the bachelor party. Normally this would call for some awful white stretched Hummer, but some stipulations have been handed down by the groom.
Prevailing wisdom today holds that small cars, manufactured in developed economies are some of the least profitable cars in existence. So why do companies like Peugeot, Citroen and Renault persist in producing them?
From my post yesterday, you might get the feeling that I think all special editions are bad. That isn’t true. Occasionally, a car company makes a special edition when it’s not desperate. And occasionally, it’s pretty good – even if it doesn’t include extra horsepower. This post details all those special editions that were surprisingly tolerable – even if they were mostly unique badging and special paint.
Only A Nutcase Would Import A Car To America. B.S. Wants To Change That, And He Needs Your Signature
As a worldly American and car nut, on one of your world travels, there will be a time when you fall in love with a car in a foreign land. The crush on that thing will be so big that you will want to take the irresistible beauty home with you. Just ask Sajeev or Frau Murilee.
My advice: Resist that urge at all cost. Trust me, it is easier to import a new wife from Pago-Pago to America than to bring-in a lightly used Euro-spec Porsche from Zuffenhausen. There is one man who wants to change all that: A man with the initials B.S. petitioned the White House to liberalize the immigration rules for used cars. No, it’s not THAT BS. (Read More…)
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