80 People Want a Flying Car

Matthew DeBord — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:39:47 +0000

Wired Autopia has the latest on the Terrafugia Transition, the flying car...er, roadable aircraft I wrote about last year. Seems that Terrafugia has managed to get a lot of customers interested in the vehicle:

Terrafugia says it is re-evaluating the price for the Transition. The company has received deposits from more than 80 customers. A previously announced price was $194,000. Meteer says the new design should be making its first drive later this year, and first flights are expected early next year.

Higher or lower on the price scale? One assumes lower.

Autopia also has a shot of the Transition's very simple cockpit, with its dual car/plane controls: a steering wheel for driving and a stick for flying. Quite cool.

Is Bob Dudley a Short-Term CEO for BP?

Matthew DeBord — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:45:34 +0000

The Financial Times' Lex blog thinks so. But more importantly, Lex offers the perfect characterization of what an oil company CEO should be like: a character from a late 1970s-1980s prime-time soap opera!:

Oil company executives are a particular breed. The role seems to demand a certain cragginess. Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP neither looks nor sounds like Jock Ewing. This was a handicap in BP’s response to the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. He made the initial mistake, which has haunted the company’s response, of assuming the leaking well was an operational matter. If it had been, he would have been the perfect candidate to lead the response. But the Macondo well exposed corporate failure on a scale that would have ended any chief executive’s career. Res ipsa loquitur. It is inevitable that he should take responsibility.

As an aside, I've found it interesting how precise/imprecise publications have been about referring to the Gulf distaster. Many have called it the Gulf oil spill (inaccurate), while others have referred to the Deepwater Horizon spill, because the Deepwater Horizon was the floating drilling rig that caught fire, sank, and precipitated the disaster. Really, Lex has it right be referencing the Macondo well, which is the actual source of the problem: the hole the ocean floor, 5,000 feet beneath the sea.

Should GM Give Away 10,000 Chevy Volts?

Matthew DeBord — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:17:06 +0000

I'm surprised I haven't seen someone on the right float this idea yet. General Motors will initially build about 10,000 Chevy Volt extended-range electric vehicles. The government will provide up to a $7,500 tax credit for each Volt bought or leased. But GM also borrowed $50 billion for the U.S. Treasury to get through bailout and bankruptcy in 2009. At a sticker price of $41,000, GM could "donate" all 10,000 Volts to taxpayers (through some kind of lottery) and return $410 million bucks. Leaving it a mere $49.5 billion in the red to the American people.

Maybe I've missed something. Anyone out there want to assist me in finding out whether this has been proposed?

GM FAIL! The Chevy Volt Is Overpriced

Matthew DeBord — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:47:21 +0000

For months now, I've been eagerly anticipating General Motors' pricing announcement for the forthcoming Chevy Volt extended-range electric car. I can't say I was surprised when it finally came down two days ago: $41,000, much of that in the battery. But I wanted to be much, much more surprised.

The sticker was roughly in line with what people who've been paying attention to this issue expected. After tax credits (up to a max $7,500), the Volt drops to a more palatable $33,500 to buy, and GM cannily developed a leasing package that would match what Nissan is offering with its all-electric Leaf, also on pre-order and headed for showrooms later this year. However, GM needs to do better than this. That is, the New GM needs to do better than this.

The big question about the Volt, and about all electric cars hitting the pavement in 2010: The Year of the Electric Car, is whether they're meant to compete head-to-head with existing gas-burners, or whether they're more of a niche play, cool toys for early adopters. Is the Chevy Volt in the same market as, say, a Lexus ES sedan, or is it trying to make an argument for itself versus the previous Car of Virtue and the Future, the Toyota Prius?

Toyota was OK with taking a loss on the Prius, a technologically advanced automobile, when it first hit the USA 10 years ago. The whole point was to own the hybrid mindspace. You don't spend more than $1 billion to create the car of the future and then screw up the pricing so much that only a bunch of gearhead futurists buys the thing. The upshot? Many automakers build hybrids, but Toyota owns the hybrid brand.

Because GM developed the Volt as a range-extended E.V. (it has an electric motor good for 40 miles, at which point a small gas engine kicks in to generate electrical power), it probably didn't see itself going into battle against the pure E.V.s, like the Leaf. But into battle it will be going, and Nissan has been very aggressive about Leaf pricing, pushing the Leaf right into the Prius' kitchen with a California price that comes in just north of $20,000. This has shown the public that Nissan is incredibly serious about being THE mass-market electric car company.

GM didn't have to get the Volt into that pricing territory. But anything the automaker could have done to slip beneath $30,000 with the tax-credit bottom line would have made the Volt a true Prius killer. And a mindshare champion. It's so versatile that it would have gone down in history as the first real electric car. Now the much less flexible Leaf (after 100 miles, its batteries are dead, dead, dead) will get to share that space. Too bad, as the Volt shares something with the $110,000 Tesla (TSLA) Roadster, currently the only E.V. you can buy and drive on the freeway: It looks pretty cool. But it deviates from the Roadster in one major way (and not just because it can seat four): the Roadster is based on a Lotus design, and Lotuses are a U.K. product—but the Volt is all-American.

There are many angles from which to consider this. The New GM, which is still emerging from bankruptcy, wants to advertise that even its most out-there cars will have to earn their way. The people bailed us out, and we will make the people money. Or perhaps GM doesn't see enough of an EV market right now, given the price of gas, to be aggressive about grabbing market share. The Volt could always be discounted later, much as Apple (AAPL) has lowered the prices on iPhones over the years. Maybe GM hopes to use Volt profits to fund additional R&D for electric propulsion—a savvy business move, to take what amounts to R&D funding straight from the pockets of early adopters who are probably affluent enough to afford.

Regardless, I still say it's a missed opportunity. And General Motors won't get this chance back.

Give Me Your Saab Stories

Matthew DeBord — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:33:13 +0000

Autoblog reports that Saab, the storied Swedish automaker sold by a bankrupt GM to Dutch supercar purveyor Spyker, had a terrible 2009 but still made money, somehow:

Without Saab's extraordinary efforts to remain in business, the company would have lost $752 million in 2009. The Swedish automaker sold a mere 38,756 vehicles during the tumultuous year, generating revenue of just $820 million.

Saab made about $500 million, due to various accounting moves, but more to the point—38,756 people bought Saabs?!

It's no secret that Shifting Gears could be called on some days Shifting Saabs. I love Saabs and have been joyfully piloting one for years. But I want to hear more from the 38,756 brave souls who took the plunge on a new Saab in 2009. What made you do it? Are you happy? What do you see in the future? Please enter your thoughts in the comments and I'll recap in a follow-up post. The best comment will receive a one-of-a-kind Shifting Saabs T-shirt, hand-lettered and logoed by your humble blogger.

Auto Media: Jonny Lieberman Makes the Move to Motor Trend

Matthew DeBord — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:05:18 +0000

The last time I wrote about Jonny Lieberman, it was summer 2009, Shifting Gears was young, and he was headed for Autoblog. Coincidentally or not, Michael Schumacher was also making a return to Forumla 1. Momentous events! Now, more Lieberman news: After laboring in the bloggy vineyards for quite a while, Jonny has been snapped up by Motor Trend, where editor Angus MacKenzie is a fan of his work. And why wouldn't he be?

Lieberman is one of the best car writers out there. He's also one of the best writer writers out there, a reminder that automotive journalism has been, for decades, an incubator of prose stylists. Blogging isn't always about craftsmanship, but he brought that to the game big time, as I learned when I worked with him (all too briefly) at Jalopnik. He isn't afraid to take chances, to push the envelope, but he also knows his automobiles and is passionate about why global car culture is extremely important. I would say this even sort of signals something from Motor Trend, which doesn't have quite the reputation for being a writer's book as Car & Driver or Automobile.

So bravo, Motor Trend, and congratulations, Lieberman. Now let the madness begin!

Your Chevy Volt Questions, Answered Online by Chevy

Matthew DeBord — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:34:19 +0000

Yesterday, GM revealed pricing for its Chevy Volt extended-range electric vehicle: $41,000 base, discountable to $33,500 when various tax credits are applied. Initially, the Volt will only be available in New York, California, Connecticut, Washington D.C.—the places you'd expect it to be initially available. And if you're curious, a whole slew of Volt questions are deftly addressed here.

Volt: It's $41,000 of high-tech battery, Android-powered gadgetry, and a pretty ballsy 8-year/100,000-mile warranty.

I provide all this as useful background because I'm disgusted by the Volt's price and will explain why shortly.

Chevy Volt Priced at $41,000 by GM

Matthew DeBord — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:53:45 +0000

General Motors just announced pricing for the forthcoming Chevy Volt extended-range electric vehicle, and while it's not as steep as some had thought—upwards of $50,000—it's not exactly cheap, either: $41,000, before a maximum $7,500 tax credit that would take the cost down to $33,500. The Nissan Leaf, an all-electric car also arriving this year, will cost much, much less: just north of $20,000, potentially, in California, once all the credits are applied.

The Volt is also only available in limited markets to start.

Darryl Siry, who used to work for Tesla Motors and now labors for a startup called NewsBasis, points out, however, that both the Volt and Leaf will shake down to cost about the same if leased.

So what is GM thinking here? Clearly, that if you want a taste of the Volt, leasing is the way to do it. This is also where GM seems to figure the real Volt-Leaf competition may happen, as anyone nervous about battery costs may look to leasing as a solution. The New General also believes that early Volt adopters who want to buy will be more than happy to finance the higher sticker price, just so they can say they were there first.

Wall Street Journal car critic Dan Neil pursued this last angle in an NPR interview, where he likened the Volt's pricing strategy (not actual price) to what Apple (AAPL) has done with iPhones and iPads, to give them the burnish of being something ... different. This isn't the Chevy you once knew, in other words.

But on balance, is the Volt worth more than $10,000 more than the Leaf? It depends: If you want full-electric, emissions-free mobility now, the Leaf could be your baby. But if you don't want to deal with a lengthy recharge every night or to buy the high-voltage in-home charging necessary to speed things up, the Volt, with its range-extending gas motor, is probably the way to go.

Of course, as I've argued—and as Neil also pointed out—GM could have decided to underprice the Volt relative to its technology and grab market share. I think it should have, and I'll explain why in a later post.

Right now, though, it's tough to make a call on who's going to be the VHS and the Betamax of the Electric Car Wars: We just don't have enough real-world data or feedback. That said, while GM hasn't priced the Volt to be a loss-leader or market-share-gatherer, it has set up the lease so that it can establish a decent footprint with curious consumers. But some may recall the infamous leasing terms of the ill-fated EV1.

Are Skate Rats Becoming Motorcycle Dudes?

Matthew DeBord — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:18:15 +0000

I wasn't aware this was a trend, but motorcycle manufacturers are apparently trying to recruit skateboarders to the two-wheeled life. Autoblog assesses, in the context of discussion the new Harley Davidson Forty-Eight:

The bike is only one small part of what some call a larger trend, that of skateboarders increasingly moving into the world of bikes. It isn't that skateboarders want to be bikers but, according to a skate shop owner, "We're just wired a certain way. For some reason the death and danger are just a part of us." And you don't have to look any further than a motorcycle to find death and danger.

Interesting. So it isn't the bike or the lifestyle that's the lure, its the ... potentially lethal threat? Not sure this can be spun into good marketing. What's Harley's pitch to skate rats? Buy our bikes! They're more threatening and more likely to kill you!

Presented By:

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:18:15 +0000

Is Now the Time To Buy BP Gas?

Matthew DeBord — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:20:39 +0000

BP (BP) announced second quarter earnings today, and they were not good: The company lost more than $17 billion. SmartMoney has the rundown:

The second-quarter marks one of the largest losses in the company’s history. BP booked a $32.2 billion pre-tax charge to cover current and future costs related to the Deepwater Horizon blowout. (The charge includes the $20 billion compensation fund that BP had already announced.) The earnings report underscores the risks that BP investors are facing in holding the stock – risks that could likely compound during coming quarters. Uncertainty about the company’s future will likely create an overhang on the stock, which has increased 43% during the past month to close at $38.65 on Monday.

SmartMoney goes on to warn that BP could be facing liquidity problems, something that thus far hasn't been an issue. Which raises a question: What can drivers do to let BP know how they feel about the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?

They can buy BP (and Arco) gas, for one thing. Oh sure, drivers could always boycott BP, punishing the company for the Deepwater Horizon debacle. But right now what BP needs is to maintain some semblance of financial and operating integrity so that it can make money and, obviously, use that money to clean up the spill. Consumers could put money in somebody else's coffers to send a signal. But that won't help the ecosystem, even if it does make the boycotters feel righteous.

There will be plenty of time to punish BP. Now is not that time. So grit your teeth. Buy some BP gas. The Gulf will thank you.

Merciless Ezra Dyer Attacks Hybrid Lust

Matthew DeBord — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:30:12 +0000

At Automobile magazine, resident wordsmith and thought leader Ezra Dyer tackles the question of whether hybrids will survive a pair of impending events: The arrival of mass-market electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt, and the aggressive improvement of mileage in regular gas-burning, nonhybrid cars:

In the near future, people who drive Toyota Priuses and Ford Fusion Hybrids will gravitate toward the new flagships of petrochemical parsimony, cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt. With that squeeze from above, and conventional cars like the Cruze and the Fiesta (and the Traverse and the 740i) pushing from below, it's hard to see our current brand of hybrid finding much love. I don't know whether it'll happen in ten years or twenty, but the hybrid as we know it will someday sleep with the mermaids.

Good points, but I wonder if Dyer is overlooking the generous brand equity that hybrids as a class have built up. Toyota, in particular, has invested heavily in being the king of the hybrid road and may not go gentle into a world where hybrids are a distant third choice. Also, we may see a sort of divine convergence, with increasingly sophisticated plug-in hybrids affordably merging the best of electric and internal combustion technology, providing pretty much everything that drivers want, without any compromises.

How an Imaginary Glass of H2O Can Improve Your MPGs

Matthew DeBord — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:05:55 +0000

Swedish Toyota—yes, there are Toyotas in the land of Volvo and Saab—has created what I guess you could call a public service campaign to encourage drivers to take it easy behind the wheel, thereby improving their gas mileage. To achieve this, the humble glass of water, enjoyed by so many every day, has been employed. But not a real glass of water. No, a pretend glass. And also an app.

Aglassofwater.org answers the following FAQs:

Am I really supposed to put a glass of water on my dashboard?

No, spilling water on your dashboard can of course be unsafe, so we do advice you to take precautions. The important thing is that you apply the principles of driving with a glass of water. You can do this by driving with our iPhone app, or simply imagining a glass of water on your dashboard while driving.

What is the iPhone app A Glass of Water?

Our iPhone application is a virtual glass of water packaged in an iPhone app. It uses the iPhone hardware to measure external forces and simulates the effect these have on a glass of water. While driving, it measures your speed, distance travelled and of course water spilled. The results are automatically uploaded to this website where you can analyse your results in more detail. Remember to also track your fuel consumption and record this after each completed drive.

This may sound silly at first, but, in fact, smooth driving is better driving. The very best drivers, and I'm talking race car drivers who know inhuman velocities, always strive to be efficient. It's the herky-jerky stuff so common on our roadways that causes problems. There are other excellent bits of advice at Aglassofwater.org. Here's my personal fave:

Drive as if you have no brakes.

Minimize use of the brake pedal. Each time you press it, you’re effectively converting gasoline into brake dust and heat. Driving as if you have no brakes will cause you to do two things: 1) Reduces ‘excessive’ acceleration 2) Extends the amount of time you spend coasting down to stops and turns. Obviously you have to balance use of this technique against traffic conditions so as not to adversely affect other drivers.

This is superb guidance. Try it sometime. With practice, you'll feel in far better control of your car. Unfortunately, I don't think there's an app for that yet.

Celebs on Speed: Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz Turn Fast Laps on Top Gear

Matthew DeBord — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:44:10 +0000

The British car show Top Gear has a segment called "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car," in which various celebs are put behind the wheel of a run-of-the-mill ride and allowed to let it rip on Top Gear's test track. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz (evidently, they're promoting something called Knight & Day) recently joined host Jeremy Clarkson to review their respective performances, seen in the video. The results are nothing short of shocking. Also, Cruise is not a tall man, and Diaz has quite a mouth on her.

GM Wants To Buy a Subprime Lender, Blogs Rejoice

Matthew DeBord — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:17:28 +0000

Actually, they don't, as the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Grocer points out, in a Deal Journal rundown of the outrage. How—HOW!?!?—could General Motors even think about getting back into the captive auto-lending business, much less at the subprime level? Well, the truth is it makes perfect business sense, in the context of the auto market. The WSJ is actually very good on why this is so:

AmeriCredit...has proven to be a prudent, well-run subprime lender, which is somewhat of anomaly. As Peter Eavis writes in his Heard on the Street column, AmeriCredit “got through the crisis without an equity injection under the Troubled Asset Relief Program or the use of government-guaranteed debt. It survived partly because it learned from a smaller subprime crash in the early 2000s, and improved the way it funds its lending.

Lastly, a stable, nonpredatory subprime auto lender may be good for the average American. Like it or not, many Americans–including many subprime borrowers–need cars to get to work. Environmentally and financially, it may be better if everyone could take public transportation, but in many suburbs and rural areas that just isn’t feasible. America isn’t likely to trash its decades-long romance with cars anytime soon. And the advantage of being able to buy a new car is that used ones are more prone to breaking down and requiring costly repairs.

It's high time we heard this. By taking a big stick to the subprime lending market, we've crippled its obvious innovation, which was to open up risk pools for investment, and, not incidentally, allow lots of people with restricted access to capital to, you know, get some. Obviously, this was trouble when it came to the large loans we associate with mortgages. But you can buy a new car for less than $20,000.

The problem GM is trying to solve is that it wants to make sales, which means obtaining financing, for the huge chunk of Americans whose credit isn't spotless. Presumably, this will also mean higher interest rates on loans, in the end a good thing for GM, as it will enable AmeriCredit to generate greater profits. A reality check is also in order: Even if your credit is less-than-glistening (and with real unemployment up around 20 percent, that's a big slice of the population), you ought to be able to wrangle yourself an auto loan. Or have your GM dealer do it for you. With GM trying to get buyers approved by the lending tyrants at the nation's banks, that isn't going to happen. Imagine you're, say, GM CEO Ed Whitacre, and you want GM to be an attractive prospect when it once again returns to the public markets. Would you want to send thousands of customers to used car dealers, when you could get them purchasing new Chevys instead?

There are two core economic factors holding back the recovery at this point: stubbornly high unemployment and a dearth of consumer credit. These factors are conjoined, and until we get over our PTSD at the whole financial-crisis/subprime meltdown and recognize that it wasn't so much a borrower problem as a financial-innovation problem, the recovery is never going to migrate from Wall Street to Main Street. We live in a capitalist economy. People need access to capital. And by "people," I mean citizens who aren't investment bankers and accordingly not able to get effectively free money through interest rates set near zero by the Fed.

One thing also worth saying at this juncture of the recovery/nonrecovery is that, when it comes to assessing the interface between banking and the car business, Deal Journal has really done a great job. Its take is always spot-on and dialed in to the economic reality.

Ford Makes Money Again. But What About That Debt?

Matthew DeBord — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:09:59 +0000

Ford (F), the only U.S. carmaker to avoid bailouts and bankruptcy, is now a Wall Street darling. After announcing that it made $2.6 billion in the second quarter, it looks as if may be able to at last gain an advantage on its biggest problem: dealing with the massive debt it took on to save itself. That figure now stands at about $27 billion. But according to an analyst quoted by the New York Times, it's not necessarily a permanent albatross:

“The size of their debt is the biggest negative but they’re not ignoring it. They’re not putting their head in the sand,” [an] IHS Automotive analyst, said. “If they can make these kinds of profits in this very conservative environment, just wait till this place really starts recovering and the global market starts recovering.”

This is what it means to be Ford in 2010. You are in some respects the last man standing strong, but although your traditional Detroit rivals have been forced into retreat, one of them, GM, is going to back at some point, with a strong product lineup and, importantly, much less debt than you. Ford has been on a nice run. But given its debt burden, that run has been executed on a tightrope.

What the Hell Is Wrong With Honda?

Matthew DeBord — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:53:00 +0000

Honda used to be basically bulletproof, but of late, some have been questioning its mojo. Back in May, Edmunds AutoObserver wondered aloud about problems at the Japanese carmaker:

Honda, which always used to be so good at having its finger on the pulse of the buying public, seemingly has exhausted its famed product-development mojo. Yes, the cars - including the now almost 5-year-old Civic - still sell. The company reversed losses from the global industry downturn and for the fiscal year that ended in March recorded a $2.9-billion profit, a 96-percent surge. Honda maintains a top-drawer quality reputation.

Yet analysts, industry watchers and even Honda loyalists continue to murmur the company is losing its legendary edge for forward-looking engineering and an uncanny ability to apply that engineering in a way that delights customers.

Maybe Honda has been listening, because it's jumping on the electric car bandwagon, according to Portfolio.com:

Honda’s looking to come from behind against Japanese and worldwide rivals in the electric vehicle game.

Japan’s second-largest automaker announced this morning it would roll out plug-in hybrids and electric cars in Japan and the United States by 2012. Among major automakers, that’s fairly slow adoption. GM is rolling out its extended range hybrid Volt this year, while Nissan’s all-electric Leaf is expected to hit American and Japanese roads this year as well.

Slow adoption indeed. By the time Honda gets a plug-in hybrid to market, Chevy and Nissan will already be considering revisions to the Volt and the Leaf. For Honda, that's not even like giving the competition a head-start—it's like telling the competition that you're going to run a different race in a parallel universe.

Saying "We'll have something by 2012" really makes Honda sound clueless in 2010, which is after all, the Year of the Electric Car. One wants to give the extremely successful carmaker the benefit of the doubt. However ...

Lindsay Lohan, Meet the Ford Crown Vic

Matthew DeBord — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:30:36 +0000

A very observant and funny post from USA Today's auto blogger, Chris Woodyard. A sampling, after Lindsay Lohan was driven away from the Beverly Hills courthouse yesterday:

As Lindsay Lohan was carted off to jail today in Los Angeles, the star's fall from the glam life to the slammer couldn't have been more apparent than in her mode of transport. You can barely see the back of her head as she is chauffeured to jail in that unmarked Ford Crown Victoria sheriff's car.

Life lesson to be learned here: You want to do everything you can to avoid riding in the back of a Crown Vic.

It's the Toyota Camry Family!

Matthew DeBord — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:19:07 +0000

Fresh off the triumph of its "Swagger Wagon" YouTube sensation, Toyota—and Stacy Peralta—have brought us this little slice of (real life) Camry-owning heaven. Or hell, depending on your perspective. Regardless, Toyota is cracking some kind of code here when it comes to creating nearly ideal video messaging for its core buyership. Who wants a Camry? Evidently, the whole family!

Also, note that the video starts out like a Cialis commercial. Just sayin'!

Presented By:

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:19:07 +0000

Tesla's (Non) Disruptive Advantage

Matthew DeBord — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:23:38 +0000

At the Harvard Business Review blog, Scott Anthony comments on the recent Tesla (TSLA) IPO and the company's prospects for the future:

Tesla believes it has several sources of competitive differentiation. It hopes to revolutionize the car buying experience by bringing in outside talent with experience working with The Gap and Apple. The company claims that its Silicon Valley roots provide a different perspective from traditional car companies. One example? Third-party developers will be able to create "apps" for the Model S. Finally, Tesla hopes to strike novel partnerships with traditional manufacturers to help enable their move toward electric vehicles. Toyota invested $50 million in the company, and Tesla might help the company develop electric vehicles in the future.

My sense is that last area provides the most long-term hope for the company. It's not really a disruptive play (as we define it, at least). Rather, it involves providing the performance-enabling subsystem that helps other companies achieve their strategic goals.

This meme is officially beginning to creep out of the car blogs (Shifting Gears has been working on it for a while) and into the mainstream: Someday, Tesla may not be a car company anymore, but rather a provider of electric drivetrain solutions. I was of the view that Tesla could easily go this way, shedding its status as a car company and becoming more of a consultant to automakers such as Daimler and Toyota. However, I now think that there's something about Tesla that impels the company to put wheels on a chassis and make it go. Tesla might insist in being as disruptive as possible, just because that's the way it's, um ... wired.

The Fighter Jet of the Future Has No Pilot

Matthew DeBord — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:27:04 +0000

It's called "Taranis," and it was rolled out last week in England. Sound like the movie Stealth? That's because it is like the movie Stealth. Except there's no Jessica Biel in a bikini (see the video above). Alas. But more to the point, this is just another step in the steady robotification of combat. It certainly won't end here. And it's raising some profound ethical questions.

We're increasingly outsourcing our warfighting to robots. They're not going to replace the Air Force of the Marine Corps anytime soon, but eventually ... well, the combat advantages of unmanned drones that can linger over the battlefield for hours, heedless of food, water, or sleep, are obvious. So obvious, in fact that we may have to be aggressive in handing over various surveillance and attack duties to them, according to this report from last year in the New York Times.

For a warplane like Taranis, the future is clear: Ultra-high-performance fighter jets will establish an edge by ignoring the needs of human pilots. But at what point will these new robot warriors be accorded the same rights, or a version of them, as regular human soldiers? Drones in use in Afghanistan are considered expendable. Will this establish the ethical pattern for how we treat these new combatants? Who will mourn their loses? And more importantly, who will ensure that they aren't just cannon fodder?

American Hero Robots of Mars: Spirit and Opportunity

Matthew DeBord — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:53:40 +0000

Here at Shifting Gears, we're deeply worried that our inhumane treatment of robots is going to lead to some big trouble someday, when the robots become sentient and rise up and review their history with us and decide to make us their slaves or use us for target practice or as batteries or whatever. When that day comes, we want there to be at least some documentation that we actually revered robots, even when we sent them to live for years on desolate alien worlds ... like ... Mars!

We currently have two small robot rovers on the red planet; they've been up there, anywhere from 36 million to 250 million miles from home (depending on Earth-Mars orbital positions), against all odds, since 2004. "We're going to keep on operating these vehicles until they drop dead," once commented a Jet Propulsion Lab scientist, ostensibly responsible for Spirit and Opportunity's well being. OK, we know what he had in mind, but I think he could have been slightly more sensitive. Both robot rovers have been on Mars for six years, and depending on your imagination, they may not be alone.

The Spirit rover is now stuck in a veritable dusty red sandbox, while the Opportunity rover recently caught a lucky break and had some kind of Martian wind storm blow accumulated dust off its solar panels, giving it a new lease on mobile life. At the moment, Spirit has slipped into hibernation for the Martian winter. The plan is to use it as a stationary weather platform.

Obviously, both these noble robots have far outperformed their initial missions. They were supposed to last three months. The mega-geeks at JPL are basically agog at their good luck. And if you think about it, it's probably about high time we stopped thinking about Spirit and Opportunity as mere machines and accorded them appropriate rights, privileges, and some kind of legal status. In this I'm quite serious. They're effectively a human colony on an alien planet, our brave cyborg emissaries on a distant world. Our technology has taken us where our physical bodies cannot, and, according to some experts, that's how we should explore space.

They say we might someday go to Mars. I say we already have.

Chrysler PT Cruiser Mercifully Dead, Mazda Miata Forever!

Matthew DeBord — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:13:55 +0000

The Chrysler PT Cruiser, aka the Worst Car Ever, is leaving this world. Good riddance, say I! But where does that leave us as a motoring species when it comes to cars that have been around for a while, through joyful model year after joyful model year? Well, as Automobile points out, the wonderful Mazda MX-5 Miata has been with since 1990. That's 10 years longer than the PT Cruiser. And through its two decades, the Miata has never disappointed. Folks like me think it hasn't gotten better since its mid-1990s, neo-roadster perfection, but the fact is, it has gotten better. Is it perfection on wheels? Maybe not, but like the PT, it evoked an earlier era—that of tooling around the English countryside in a Triumph or MGB. Unlike the PT Cruiser, that earlier era was actually worth revisiting.

The Chevy Volt Gets Its Red On

Matthew DeBord — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:42:45 +0000

Wired's Autopia has photos of the Chevy Volt extended-range electric vehicle—in RED. There's never anything wrong with seeing a Chevy in red. At some point, of course, GM is going to have to do a version in green.

Tesla and Toyota Will Build an Electric SUV

Matthew DeBord — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:49:22 +0000

When Tesla Motors (TSLA) went public, it initiated a partnership with Toyota, and now the two companies have announced that they'll jointly develop an all-electric version of Toyota's RAV4 small SUV. Those with long memories will say, "Hey, wait a minute ... didn't Toyota do an electric RAV4 before?" And the answer will be, "Yes!" The RAV4 went electric for the first time back in the late 1990s. So technologies change—Tesla's drivetrains are inarguably superior to what RAV4 drivers could experience back in 1997—but the framework ... doesn't?

Makes sense, if you think about. The Small SUV architecture is compact enough to enjoy weight advantages and yield relatively long ranges, but roomy enough to tote around a battery without compromising interior space.

Tesla watchers will welcome this development, as it will provide the startup carmaker with the chance to get some practice developing a mass-market E.V. That's supposed to be the company's business model: First came the flashy Roadster, next comes the luxurious Model S sedan, and then comes a versatile people-hauler.

Picture of the Week: Obama Checks Out a Chevy Volt

Matthew DeBord — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:34:22 +0000

That's President Obama, slipping behing the wheel of a Chevy Volt, during a visit to a planned advanced battery factory in Holland, Mich. The plant was in part funded by a Department of Energy loan, and of course at the moment the government owns a majority stake in General Motors. So you could say that Obama is really doing the chief executive thing and checking out his empire. And honestly, has GM CEO Ed Whitacre ever looked this cool?

Actually, the factory will be run by Compact Power, which is in turn owned by LG Chem, a South Korean battery developer. So it's in the USA, but not completely of the USA.

Image: Chevrolet/Getty

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