I CONTINUE TO MONITOR Automotive News, though with somewhat different focus in retirement than the weekly in-depth scrutiny of my professional years. These days, I let the issues pile up for awhile and then enjoy assembling tidbits about the articles that catch my fancy. Here are the latest several.
VW’s ID Buzz. Were I ever to replace my trusty 2012 Honda Crosstour, I confess I’m attracted to the ID Buzz BEV minivan, as described by Jack Wallsworth in Automotive News, August 21, 2024.
The pros: A BEV certainly suits my driving profile; the Crosstour’s odometer only recently turned 31K. I like the utility of the ID’s boxy shape. And I’m old enough to recall its predecessor’s hip nature.
This and following images from Automotive News.
Plus, sharing my Crosstour’s selling point, the ID Buzz’s ingress/egress would likely be free of hair-scraping.
And there’s the romance too….
The cons. My home, built in the 1960s, would need electrical updating to optimize the Buzz’s home rebuzz. And the ID’s price range, $61,545 to $71,545, calls for some mental readjustment on my part.
The ID’s top-line 1st Edition, Jack Walsworth reports in Automotive News, comes with “a two-tone exterior, unique wheels, roof rail cross bars, special badging, an electrochromic glass roof, as well as a ‘coastal-inspired interior.’ ”
“Coastal-inspired.” Just my psycodemographics.
Would-Be Thief Locked Up in Vette. Nick Bunkley shares a wonderful tale in Automotive News, September 24, 2024: “After visiting a Starbucks in Miami Beach, Julio Solano found a man inside his Corvette begging for the door to be opened. He filmed the man’s pleas on his phone while waiting for police to arrive.”
” ‘My brother, this is not your car, this is my car,’ Solano told the man, later identified as 33-year-old Ravesh Rabindranauth.”
” ‘Can I get out?’ Rabindranauth can be heard asking.”
” ‘No, you can’t get out,’ Solano replied. ‘We’re calling the cops.’ ”
YouTube image via Automotive News.
Bunkley notes, “Officers arrested Rabindranauth, who was charged with burglary.”
“ ‘The car’s electrical components don’t function without the keys, and fortunately, he didn’t know about the manual door release under the seat,’ Solano told TV station WPLG in Miami.”
Has Elon Musk Crossed the Line? An article, an Editorial (and an accompanying cartoon) discuss Tesla and its founder Elon Musk. Laurence Iliff writes in Automotive News, September 15, 2024, “Car buyers in Silicon Valley, where Tesla was born, are turning away from the brand as its models grow stale, EV competition heats up and the liberal majority there rebuffs CEO Elon Musk’s rightward political shift, according to industry analysts and the most recent vehicle registration data.”
Iliff recounts, “Musk famously moved Tesla’s headquarters to Austin, Texas, from Silicon Valley in 2021 after clashing with local officials over COVID-19 restrictions at its Fremont factory. Now, some electric vehicle buyers in the high-tech region are returning the snub.”
An Owner’s Perspective. Iliff quotes Loren McDonald, head of EVAdoption, a Silicon Valley consultancy: “I pull up to an intersection and every car is a Tesla Model Y, and I’m also driving one because it’s the modern Toyota Camry. But there are a lot of reluctant Tesla owners who don’t want to give Elon any more money. More and more people have just had it with him.”
Iliff recounts, “In the broader five-county tech corridor, Tesla registrations fell 21 percent in the same period while non-Tesla EVs grew 1.4 percent, according to S&P Global Mobility. The other counties are Alameda, San Mateo, Contra Costa and San Francisco. The Silicon Valley Historical Association considers all to be within the region.”
“Tesla dissolved its media relations team in 2020,” Iliff notes, “and didn’t respond to an email request seeking comment.”
Image from Automotive News, September 23, 2024.
An Editorial View. In its September 19, 2024 Editorial “Elon Musk Plays Politics at Tesla’s Risk,” “Call it the X factor,” Automotive News writes. “As one consultant put it, ‘More and more people have just had it with him.’ ”
“But as the election draws closer,” the Editorial observes, “Musk’s posts have ranged from standard candidate support to amplifying conspiracies to downright inappropriate, especially his musing about the lack of assassination attempts against the current president or vice president.”
Indeed, this editorial appeared in mid-September. Since then, Musk’s actions (particularly his $1 million giveaways to registered voters) have been even more outlandish. Not to say potentially downright illegal.
Henry Ford had his proclaimed antisemitism, but I could find no record of his buying votes or voter registrations. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024