First Gear: It’s a shame that the Fisker Ocean appears to be very much a pre-production car released far too early, since the struggles that Rivian and Lucid are having do emphasize the importance of launching the right product first. A compact SUV is absolutely the right vehicle to launch, but it sounds like the…

“Anyone could paint a Rothko” is exactly as reductive as “you’re an uncultured philistine if you don’t appreciate Rothko.”

All that expense just to house a replica made of Ford Mustang suspension bits, and I think some Fiat 124.

Exactly. I drove my mum’s 1.4 Vauxhall Corsa and her 1.6 Fiat Tipo DGT. I don’t think either of them had more than 90 hp, and I was still able to drive like an idiot. My dad’s Saab 900i had 116 hp and his 9000i 16v a screaming 130 hp.

But don’t you think these are classic Tesla / Musk moves / logical fallacies? What I mean is scenarios in which they assume something hasn’t been done before because everyone else is an idiot, instead of considering that other very sophisticated auto manufacturers who literally spend every waking moment thinking about…

Absolutely not defending this sh*t show of a vehicle, but I do remember when we had our white Kia Soul EV, I noticed it was absolutely covered in tiny rust spots, which must have been brake dust, since I was able to remove them with Iron X spray and a lot of elbow grease. I imagine this would really show up on the…

Yea, I get that, which is why I was saying I don’t understand why anyone would get the TX 500h (which is a regular hybrid, not the PHEV) instead of the equivalent Highlander.

I don’t understand why someone would get the TX 500h instead of a Grand Highlander Hybrid, which also has “lose the will to live” levels of styling and excitement, and the cheap / hard plastic interior, but gets you there for a lot less cash.

I don’t think it’s to save cost as much as it is to meet fleet emissions requirements. They can generally get lower emissions from a modern 8/9/10-speed auto than from a 6-speed or 7-speed manual. There are certainly enough people who would pay a premium for sports cars with manuals that they could be offered as a…

This is political posing. Trudeau said...

Yea, these are the kind of builds that terrify Porsche dealers, because if you bail before you take delivery they’ll be stuck with an unsellable car.

Agree. Particularly now that all of these supercars are so wildly too fast for normal roads, image and character are a lot more important than tenths of a second. Aston has had a lot of stumbles, but the brand is so much cooler than Ferrari or McLaren.

All of these things are true (and are basically the same points I made in my comment). None of these things mean that Tesla is the next Enron, which is the comment I was responding to. I also probably wouldn’t bet on Tesla at the moment, but to date, betting against Tesla has generally been a losing proposition.

That seems like quite a stretch. Tesla’s revenue was close to $100 billion for the year ending in December, the vast majority of which came from selling cars. This for a company founded only 21 years ago. To put that in context, BMW’s annual sales were about $160 billion, for a company that’s been around since 1916. Ye…

Not only is the Buick half the price of the X7, it’s also objectively far better looking and probably rides more smoothly. The sheer ugliness and crass styling of the BMW definitely outweighs the adult diaper connotations of the Buick brand.

It is quite rare for new cars to have major safety issues like sudden power loss on multiple units. The Fisker story sounds quite different from the typical teething issues that are expected in any product launch.

I wonder if it’s also because Fisker forced the quality control / testing to be rushed, so they could get the car to market sooner.

Except the Ocean is built under contract by Magna. I have a friend who basically had to give away a Karma because it died and he couldn’t get it fixed.

It really is nothing like that at all. Obviously you’ve compared GDP growth, employment, productivity, inflation, foreign trade across all the EU’s major economies against the UK to get to this opinion? You were just told Brexit was universally bad, so you believed it.

Maybe, but compared to the basket case that is most EU economies, the UK isn’t looking so bad. The CEBR forecast from December of last year indicated that the UK will be Europe’s fastest growing major economy over the next 15 years.