Category: Drive Time

Update On Big Auto’s Duracell Drive

Corporate Fuckery, Corporate Wokism, Drive Time

Following on from yesterday’s post on VW, Mercedes and Stellantis (the bastards), there’s this:

Car makers slash EV prices, suspend production and extend petrol model availability as electric demand wanes

The global downturn in sales of EVs has been triggered by a cocktail of diverging policies on green incentives, range and charge anxiety among drivers and the fact prices haven’t come down as much as experts had forecast.

As such, 2024 has been awash with a wave of U-turns by legacy car firms in response to a lower-than-expected appetite for electric vehicles.

‘Appetite for EVs among consumers is quickly diminishing. There are many factors contributing to this, including the lack of clarity around incentives, high prices and concerns around the low residual value of EVs.’

Yeah, not to mention the paucity of charging points when your Duracell phuts out, the cost of replacing said Duracell when it becomes as worn out as Madonna’s box at a P Diddy White Party, and those pesky spontaneous combustion episodes — to name but some “consumer concerns”.

Looks like corporate obeisance to the great Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© is losing its luster, especially when that pesky cold hard cash is involved.  (Also see:  Germany restarting coal-fired electricity generating plants.)

This is especially rich:

‘The new pricing structure on Corsa Electric and Astra Electric is the latest in a number of measures we have taken to democratise access to electric vehicles.’\

“Democratize access”, my aching African-American white ass.  That’s just a fancy term for “getting rid of unwanted stock”.

But when it comes to weaselly corporate-speak, it’s hard to top this:

Volvo Cars chief executive Jim Rowan said: ‘We are resolute in our belief that our future is electric. An electric car provides a superior driving experience [nazzo fast, Guido] and increases possibilities for using advanced technologies that improve the overall customer experience [like having their every move tracked and sent to insurance companies and ad agencies].

‘However, it is clear that the transition to electrification will not be linear [ya think?], and customers and markets are moving at different speeds of adoption [or not moving at all, see above].

‘We are pragmatic and flexible [except of course when we try to coerce people into buying our Duracell cars by eliminating the ICE option completely], while retaining an industry-leading position on electrification and sustainability.’ [and I hope you’re the first to go out of business, Mr. Leader]

Wait… what’s this I’m experiencing?

Oh, and one more thing, speaking of Duracell cars:

…not that any of my Readers would be affected, of course, being Sensible Chaps.

Big Auto, Big Brother

Drive Time, Surveillance Society, Technology, Two-Minute Hate

Yesterday, I talked about wanting to own a pre-digital car — i.e. one that doesn’t fucking spy on your every move.

I often wonder what car or cars I’d get to replace the Tiguan, and what’s interesting is that I’m having precisely the same feelings that I have with guns and watches: nothing of recent manufacture at all — especially given that they’re all without exception loaded with electronic gizmos I don’t care for, or else gizmos that spy on you and/or could possibly be used to control your driving. In fact, the more I think about it, I’d probably have to go back to pre-1970s cars — fully resto-modded of course — to find a car that has not a single computer chip in its driving operation.

Here’s a business opportunity, because this is America.  (I don’t have the technical skills or capital to follow through on this but I’ll just throw it out there.)  Is it possible to turn your car into a mobile Faraday cage?  And would it be possible to turn the feature on and off?

I know, car companies and / or the godless insurance industry would probably use their lawyers and lobbyists to outlaw this, just as law enforcement tried to prevent speed-radar scanners, but it’s worth a shot.  With a switchable cage, the insurance companies couldn’t exactly deny you coverage or raise your rates if all the data showed was you doing trips to the supermarket once a week.

It’s time for us to fight back against this nonsense, and to borrow an expression:  rage against the machine — the machine, in this case, being Big Brother cars, the cunts who make them and sell your data, the even-bigger cunts who strip-mine your personal data, and and the last category of cunts who use your personal data against you.)

I feel a mega-rant coming on, but instead I’ll just go to the range.

And just to make you feel better, if my car was spying on me it could report said destination to… well, anyone who might be interested in such data.  Makes you think, dunnit?

…And Speaking Of Big Auto

Business, Drive Time, Management

From the fools who bet on EVs as being the Next Big Thing:  Volkswagen and Mercedes.

Yeah… screw you and your little Duracell cars, screw you for buying into the Big Manufactured Panic stemming from the Global Warming Climate Cooling Change© hucksters, and screw you for trying to force us into buying your shitty fad products by cutting back production of regular internal combustion-engined cars and trucks.

And while we’re on high-level fools in Big Auto, ladies and gentlemen, I give you:  Stellantis.  This is what you get, and deservedly so when you let finance people run an engineering business.  Let me count the ways:

  • Misreading your core customers
  • Forcing inferior and low-demand products onto the market
  • Reducing product offerings when your competition offers choice (and having those remaining products be simply me-too choices, which you’re always going to lose especially when your products are less reliable and more costly)
  • Making long-term decisions based on doomsday (and fallacious) predictions
  • Sacrificing long-term growth for short-term profits (see below)
  • Ignoring basic marketing principles, e.g. when faced with growing reserve stock levels, increasing prices rather than cutting them.

Stellantis has broken each and every one of those oh-so basic rules, and the people who will pay the price are their employees, who are going to be laid off as their workplaces end up being shuttered.  Now, of course, they’re scrambling… in the face of being sued by shareholders.

Sadly, the people who have made all these disastrous business decisions will be fine thanks to generous severance packages and bonuses.  (Tavares’s compensation last year was worth $40 million, for example.)

instead of facing the proper consequences of public flogging followed by hanging.

That Zimbabwe Road Trip

Drive Time

So having read my post about One For The Road, and having watched said show for yourselves, now is the time for y’all to pick the dream sports car of your youth to retrace the steps of Clarkson, May and Hammond as they drove across Zimbabwe.

As I pointed out in the post, these were the cars they chose:

Hammond:  Ford Capri

May:  Triumph Stag

Clarkson:  Lancia Monte Carlo

…and highly interesting choices they were, too.

My choice is this:

Read more

Worth Watching

Africa, Drive Time

I watched the last episode of The Grand Tour  on Prime last night, and I loved it, but not just for the antics of the three buffoons themselves.

I have often stated that if I could choose an African country to live in (and assuming that it wasn’t a frigging death trap — I know, that’s a big condition), I would unreservedly choose Zimbabwe, and specifically eastern Zimbabwe.

To call it beautiful qualifies as the understatement of the year, because it is about as close to Eden as one could imagine:  wonderful climate, interesting not to say spectacular scenery, and for some reason the locals are not the angry assholes so common in the rest of the country — perhaps because the place is so magnificent.

And if you watch One For The Road, you’ll see all that in the first quarter-hour of the show.  Even the cynical Clarkson is impressed by the scenery.  Once the trio climbs out of the semi-coastal zone, the countryside becomes the real Africa:  dry, hard and inhospitable.  But for that first hundred or so miles, as they leave the incomparable Nyangani district, is to witness Paradise.

My only regret is that they trio took the northerly route, through the festering cesspit of Harare (the capital) rather than via Bulwayo to the south, and the incredible Matopo Hills, en route to the Victoria Falls and, eventually, northern Botswana.

Anyway, I told you all that so I could play a familiar game.  As it happened, the three Brits chose their cars according to only one criterion:  which car would you like to take on that trip, under the condition that you’ve always wanted to own one, but never have.  Clarkson chose the chronically-unreliable but wonderful Lancia Monte Carlo (!):

May picked the Triumph Stag (with its terrible Triumph engine rather than the more-reliable Rover V8):

…while Hammond picked a Ford Capri:

Unsurprisingly, all were cars of their youth:  1970s-era, at a time when young men dream of their ideal cars, but can’t afford to buy them.

So, gentle Readers, after you’ve watched the show and seen the terrain over which the three Top Gear / Grand Tour men had to drive, my question to you all is:

“What dream car of your youth would you choose for the trip?”

Assume that, like Clarkson et al., you’d have a support team accompanying you, so feel free to pick anything, no matter how apparently impractical.

My only condition is that like the Grand Tour team, you’d have to cover the 1,300-mile distance in only four days, as they did — and include a trip on a ferry down Lake Kariba, as they did.  One’s normal choice of, say, an F40 Land Cruiser or Series 1 Land Rover would not be ideal, because you’d have to cane it on the tarred roads in order to make the deadline, and Land Cruisers / Rovers are not known for their ability to cane anything except your kidneys as they bounce all over the place.

No;  in the spirit of One For The Road, you have to pick a dream sports car of your youth for your trip.

Feel free to indulge yourselves.

Now:  I’ve closed Comments for this post, because you’ll need time to get to watch the show (which you need to do to get into the spirit of the game).  Next Saturday (Sept 21), I’ll set up a post wherein everyone can state their choice for the trip.

Catalogue Of Negatives

Drive Time

If you want to see everything I hate about modern cars all in one model, then watch this video about the 2025 Alfetta from Alfa Romeo.

Is it beautiful?  Oh hell, yes.  Yes, its hybrid engine is blisteringly fast and powerful:  400-500hp (!!!???) that very few people on the planet can handle anyway  Yes, it has all the scoops and wings and stuff that are absolutely necessary on, say, a Le Mans sports car or F1 car;  but on a regular road car?  Not so much.

And yes, it has all the AI (!!!!) -driven features for “infotainment” that all the cool kids seem to want these days.  (When did cars become all about entertainment — as though driving a super-quick sports car is not entertainment enough?  And who needs the “info” part of that equation when whatever they put out as “new” is generally speaking about two years behind the technology to be found on your smartphone?)

And remember:  I fucking love love LOVE Alfa Romeo cars, so I’m hardly an unbiased audience here.

My problem, as with so much in today’s world, is that I prefer simpler things when the trend is increasingly towards the evermore-complex.  And absolutely every “feature” mentioned in the video sets my teeth on edge.

Of course, with all that complexity comes price.  The Alfetta’s going to cost over $140k, which means that it’s going to be unaffordable to just about anyone who’s not also looking at a second-hand Ferrari or Lambo, or a new Maserati GT.  Honestly?  (and this is the first time I’ve ever said this) I think the Chevy Corvette is a better deal, at just over half the price and pretty much the same performance, but without — at the moment — all the silly electronic geegaws.

Pass.  With the utmost regret.