If it’s not a vehicle you buy for the performance, why is BMW making such a big deal about it being their most powerful production car ever? And if it is a vehicle you buy as a rolling fashion statement, why is it perhaps the ugliest BMW out of a generation of recent very ugly BMWs?

Munich claims this is good for a 3.7-second 0-60 time

Really unfortunate news for the guy who just needs his Carrera GT to get to work and doesn’t have a backup vehicle.

First Gear: The UK was one of the more extreme examples of how MPGe gets abused. Many people in the UK get a company car, and the “benefit-in-kind” tax on these vehicles is linked to CO2 emissions. Drivers could choose PHEVs with nominally very high MPGe ratings, never plug them in and still get the tax benefit. I…

McKinsey is in the “give me your watch and I’ll tell you what time it is” business. Their job is to extract the maximum amount of fees from clients, not to be arbiters of what will actually happen. They don’t really “believe” anything, so much as they know what pitch will be the most compelling way of extracting these…

Virtually all the unicorn commentary on these issues takes it as a given that battery technology is changing rapidly, similar to computing power improvements in the last few decades. Batteries are actually an extremely mature technology. What was available in a 2012 Tesla Model S is fundamentally very similar to what…

Might be an idea to comment on real-world range when you’re reviewing an EV. Given that this is basically a less practical but more aerodynamic version of the Ioniq 5, it would be good to know if that trade off translates to better real range.

Have you tried using Electrify America / Electrify Canada? It is a sh*t show of broken chargers, error messages, an app that tells you chargers are available only for that not to be the case, charging speeds far below the advertised power of the charger, etc., compared to Tesla’s network that just works, pretty much…

No, they are not. Losses are on the income statement. The income statement doesn’t reflect capital investments in plant and property, except through the depreciation and financing costs of these items. You are probably referring to profit margin in the sense of gross margin (i.e. direct expenses of manufacturing the…

First Gear: It is again shocking that small sedans and mid-sized electric SUVs priced at a point that isn’t too far off the average US vehicle price sell in much larger volume than ultra-luxury EV sedans.

Ford made a $1.3 billion profit on $44 billion in sales in the last quarter, ending a year in which they lost money overall. They also just announced that their EV business is going to result in $3 billion of losses in the coming year. It’s very hard to make money on EV sales at this point, even with the large price…

Is there really very rapid progress? Batteries are a pretty mature technology, and there have not been many step changes, if any, in cost and energy density since the Model S was launched. There are plenty of advancements being discussed in areas such as solid state batteries, but much of this seems a long, long way…

Do they really get it? I actually want a hatchback that’s easy to get the kids into the back - a practical vehicle that is also good to drive. As much as there is so much hate around here for SUVs, there are actually some good reasons why people like them and have moved away from sedans. I would prefer a wagon or…

I’m not sure if non-car people are as upset about the yoke as car people. A friend got a Model S Plaid and I asked him what he thought of the yoke. He had no idea what I was talking about. When I explained I was talking about the weird steering wheel, his response was that he hadn’t really thought about it. Maybe he’s…

Whatever anyone thinks of Clarkson, I think the idea that old Top Gear with Tiff Needell was a better show is a pretty fringe view.

This 100%. When I had my 2017 100D, it was incredible how practical the car could be. I regularly threw a couple of road bikes in the hatch. At no point did I ever think it needed more power. I think the “regular” Model S is the sweet spot in the current range. It’s already faster than almost anything on the road, not…

Balance sheets don’t reflect P&L - that’s on the income statement. Income statements don’t reflect capital investments or liabilities, except in the form of depreciation, interest expense, gain from investment, etc.

This conflates cash flows and profits. Tesla had cumulative negative cash flow of (I think) about $12 billion prior to profitability, but cumulative net losses of $6.6 billion. Money that gets ploughed into factories and other capital investments is not losses, it’s negative cash flow - and yes, investment on the…

Tesla Model Y - the ride quality is abysmal. Obviously it’s not actually the most uncomfortable car on the road (and the seats are pretty good), but within its category of mid-size crossovers and hatchbacks, I can’t imagine there is any car with poorer ride quality. I say this as someone who’s owned an R53 Cooper S.

Then presumably they would also want the cooled seats to be equally accessible?