First Drive review: 2016 MG GS crossover

IT IS the brand that will not die. Grim receiverships, doomed mergers, heart-sinking hive-offs . . . Time and again, life has dealt MG blows that would have felled a lesser mortal. And every time this honoured British institution has got up again and vowed to carry on, like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with severed arms, shouting, “It’s just a flesh wound.”

Which is heartening for people who are still able to see in that proud octagonal badge distant glimmers of the nippy two-seaters of yore — people who retain some residual idea of what MG stands for, in the metaphorical sense as well as the literal one (Morris Garages).

Yet the reality is that MG in its current guise is essentially a portfolio of licensing rights wholly owned by the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, with an assembly plant and a design studio in Longbridge, Birmingham, and an unromantic but thoroughly 21st-century remit to offer the UK Chinese cars in translation.

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Thus far this multinational project has yielded the MG6 saloon and the MG3 supermini. Neither has particularly set the critics or the showroom forecourts alight, but the company can at least report growth, from the few hundred cars it sold in the first year of this operation to just over 3,000 cars in the UK last year. In five years, it would like to sell 20,000 here. Well, everybody has to have an ambition.

MG is going to need a medium-sized SUV, though, this being the guaranteed sales-tickler of our age. And lo and behold, here it comes — the MG GS, which has already been pottering about on the roads of China for a year, but now arrives in the UK, allegedly re-flavoured for European tastes.

Like its brethren in the MG range, it has a fat badge on its nose, to which it adds an interestingly minimalist upper grille, like a silent-movie villain’s moustache. The bonnet bulges and the boot lid is sheer (and rather sharp to handle) and there are rubber-studded foot rails for added child-proofing and general butchness. Overall it seems to share the ambition of most cars in this area, which is to be shaped somewhere between a boiled sweet and a baby’s training shoe.

There are four variants of the GS, all with a 1.5-litre 4-cylinder petrol engine, made by General Motors. The Exclusive version I drove had a 7-speed automatic DCT gearbox, for the first time in a latest-generation MG; there is also a six-speed manual.

“Overall it seems to share the ambition of most cars in this area, which is to be shaped somewhere between a boiled sweet and a baby’s training shoe”

MG is not offering a diesel version. It claims diesels are mostly a company-car proposition and private buyers in the main want petrol engines, which may be true but is still a large part of the market from which to curtain yourself off.

There is no four-wheel-drive option, either: it’s front wheels or nothing. Again, all-wheel possibilities do seem to please the purchasers in this market segment, who like to feel they’re getting a car that could cope with anything, even if they’re not actually going to be exposing it to very much.

MG, however, speaks of a desire not to “complicate the buying decision”, which may be as brave a way as we have heard of explaining a limited catalogue of options (though not so limited that you can’t perk up the GS’s unexceptional interior with a cheap and cheerful touchscreen).

The main point, though, is that the MG GS undercuts the Nissan Qashqai, the dominant player in this game, by more than £3,000. And this while offering greater headroom than a Qashqai, although since people largely stopped wearing hats, except at weddings, extra headroom has struggled for kerb appeal.

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On the roads of rural Oxfordshire, our MG GS jiggled up and down like an agitated toddler. The automatic box didn’t scroll through its gears so much as drill down noisily in search of them, and the steering seemed to drift off into a daydream at certain points. Or maybe that was us.

But anyway, this car is not going to sell on how it drives. It’s going to sell on looks and price. And it does look different and it is cheap, albeit not as cheap as ultra-budget SUVs by SsangYong and Dacia.

MG has put a five-year or 80,000-mile warranty on it, so is not expecting it to fall apart any time soon. And if it did, no doubt it would jump back up every time, until it was just a single punctured tyre bolted to a naked chassis, still shouting: “Come on! Is that all you’ve got?” Because that’s MG.

The post First Drive review: 2016 MG GS crossover appeared first on Sunday Times Driving.

source http://www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/first-drive/first-drive-review-2016-mg-gs-exclusive-dct/

Jeremy Clarkson’s Stinkers

IN THE olden days, when you had an actual bank manager and he drove a Humber, motoring journalism had a serious point. Back then Triumph would sell you a car with handling that would put you in a ditch if you tried to go round any corner at any speed. Volvo would sell you a car that wouldn’t move at all. Rover would sell you one that wouldn’t start in the first place.

Some cars were quite dangerous. Others were absolutely lethal. Some used a lot of fuel; others gulped it down like Oliver Reed after a bar fight. Cars were massively different, and it was a motoring journalist’s job to steer the uninitiated through what was a minefield.

Remember those early turbo cars from Saab and BMW and Porsche? This was a new thing, and there was a message that only an experienced road tester could deliver. “Beware.”

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Everything has changed. Because of government targets, all cars are economical and all have five-star safety ratings. And, thanks to the economy of scale, all are made from the same bits. The brakes, for instance, on your car are the same as the brakes on everyone else’s car. So is the suspension. So is the airbag.

I’m still asked, “What’s a good first car for my daughter?” or, “What’s a good car for £15,000?”, and the answer is: “The Volkswagen Golf.”

You love driving and you want something really fast? A Volkswagen Golf R. You are a teacher and you need something reliable and cheap to run? A Volkswagen Golf diesel. You are a student and you have only a thousand pounds to spend? A second-hand Volkswagen Golf. You need five seats? You need a big boot? You need the latest technology? Ask me anything, and if I have my sensible hat on, you’ll get the same answer: “The Volkswagen Golf.”

“One day Google and Uber and Apple will launch driverless machines, and everyone will climb aboard unless the established carriers can find a way to thrill and excite and dazzle us”

You might imagine that in the Volkswagen Group the best engineers were sent to work at Bugatti or Bentley or Lamborghini. But you’d be wrong. The best are sent to work on the one car that pays for all the tinsel. They’re sent to work on the Golf.

Other car makers know this. They know that the Golf is to the world of cars what the number 42 is to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. So you’d imagine that they beavered into the night to make something better.

But most of the time they don’t. They just assemble the components and build a factory where the labour is cheap, and that’s it. Flair? Nah. And all this means that when you drive up the motorway today, it’s as if you’re stuck in that Pete Seeger song Little Boxes.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
And they all get put in boxes, little boxes, all the same
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

I truly despise boring cars. I hate the lack of imagination. It causes me heartache when I’m in a car that goes and stops and steers and does nothing else. Cars can, and should, be so much more than transportation devices, and if the car makers themselves continue to think they can’t, they are ultimately bringing about their own demise.

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One day Google and Uber and Apple will launch driverless machines that will get us from place to place cheaply and safely. They will be the easyJets of the road, and everyone will climb aboard unless the established carriers can find a way to thrill and excite and dazzle us. That glass of champagne when you take your seat on a BA flight. That’s what the car makers need to install.

Currently, though, if you drive a Renault crossover or a Hyundai saloon or a Vauxhall hatchback, what you’ve got is a box. A tool you buy by the yard; a tool with no personality, no character, no soul. And if that’s all you want, why didn’t you buy a Golf?

 

 

Vauxhall Astra SRi NAV

There was a problem with the Vauxhall Astra SRi. I was supposed to take it to the country one weekend, but on the Friday night Richard Hammond announced that he didn’t like the colour of the Aston Martin Vanquish Volante he was supposed to be driving and went home in his own car.

I did like the colour, however, and I much preferred the idea of tooling around in a convertible Aston for the weekend to that of bumbling about in a mildly speedy Vauxhall. It was unprofessional, I know, but…

I still had to cobble together some thoughts on the Vauxhall, though. It was red and turbocharged and it would be fine for anyone who needed four wheels and a place to sit down when moving about. And now I’m out of space, which is probably a good thing, because I have nothing else to say about it.

• Full review I need a screensaver — and this ain’t it
• Price at the time £21,285 (June 2016)
• Engine / power 1598cc, 4 cylinders, turbo, petrol / 197bhp @ 4700rpm
• Acceleration / top speed 0-62mph in 6.6sec / 146mph
• Clarkson’s rating ★★☆☆☆
• Clarkson’s verdict Can I have the Aston back, please?

 

Infiniti Q30 Premium Tech

Nissan’s Infiniti brand has not been what you’d call a runaway success. The cars have always been ho-hum and have been sold to people in America who are too interested in food and the baby Jesus to notice they are tarted-up Datsuns.

The Q30’s 2.2-litre diesel engine moves the car along and doesn’t appear to have an alarming thirst for fuel, so that’s fine. But it sounds like a canal boat when it’s cold. It’s so loud that it has to be fitted with noise-cancelling technology.

I think that’s what the engine does, in fact: turns diesel into sound. Because it sure as hell doesn’t turn it into large lumps of power. Every time I pulled out to overtake a caravan, I had to pull in again because there wasn’t quite enough grunt. So, all things considered, that’s not fine.

• Full review Ahh, sauerkraut sushi soup. Looks delicious
• Price at the time £31,180 (June 2016)
• Engine / power 2143cc, 4 cylinders, turbodiesel / 168bhp @ 3400rpm
• Acceleration / top speed 0-62mph in 8.5sec / 134mph
• Clarkson’s rating ★★☆☆☆
• Clarkson’s verdict A mess, but at least it looks good

 

Skoda Superb SE L Executive

Not once before now, in more than 20 years of writing for The Sunday Times, have I sat for quite such a long time, watching the cursor blinking impatiently as it waits for me to write something down. I was going to explain that a Skoda Superb is a cheap way of buying a Volkswagen Passat, because that’s what it is, under the skin. But the truth is, you’re not going to be very interested in reading about a Volkswagen Passat either.

I drove for 200 miles up the M1 the other morning, and it was an endless procession of cars such as the Superb. And they all suffered from the same problem. They were all average. The Skoda has the same amount of soul as a fridge freezer. It’s the sort of car that you’d buy by the foot.

“Hello. I’d like five-and-a-bit yards of car, please.”

“Certainly, Geoff. Let me show you the Superb.”

At no point when driving a Superb do you think, “Eugh.” But you never think, “Wow”, either. And that’s not good enough.

• Full review It’ll give Geoff all the fares he can carry
• Price at the time £26,785 (May 2016)
• Engine / power 1968cc, 4 cylinders, turbodiesel / 148bhp @ 3500rpm
• Acceleration / top speed 0-62mph in 8.9sec / 135mph
• Clarkson’s rating ★★☆☆☆
• Clarkson’s verdict Good for minicabbing but not for the soul

 

Zenos E10 S

A sports car must be little and light. It should have a small, revvy engine and no more than two seats. The latest offering comes from Norfolk. It’s called the Zenos and it’s a sports car unplugged. It has no doors, no windows, no sun visors, no radio, no carpets and no roof of any kind. I have encountered better-equipped pencils. It has a Looney Tunes power-to-weight ratio, and that means it’s bloody fast. You know the track is where it belongs, really. On the road, where I mostly drove it, the noise was fun for about a minute and then not fun at all. The exhaust bark is tremendous, but all you can hear is the wastegate, which sounds like a fat man who’s using Victorian plumbing to flush away the after-effects of a particularly enormous dinner.

The steering became wearing too, because it’s unassisted and very fidgety. And then, I’m afraid, we come to what might fairly be described as the turd in the swimming pool. The brakes. The front wheels have a tendency to lock up. An antilock system would solve all that, but the whole point of the Zenos is that you get no driver aids. I like that philosophy, when I’m on a sofa and someone else is doing the driving, in a race, on the television. But a bit less when I’m heading towards a tree in a cloud of my own tyre smoke.

• Full review It’s a blast… until you look for the brakes
• Price at the time £32,995 (April 2016)
• Engine / power 1999cc, 4 cylinders, turbo, petrol / 247bhp @ 7000rpm
• Acceleration / top speed 0-60mph in 4.0sec / 145mph
• Clarkson’s rating ★★☆☆☆
• Clarkson’s verdict Somebody stop me

 

Renault Kadjar dCi 130 Signature Nav

This car started out in life as the sensible but dreary Nissan Kumquat and was then turned, for accountancy reasons, into a Renault Kadjar. A name dreamt up by an agency when all the other names have gone. No one is going to yearn for the day they own a Kadjar.

No one is going to spend hours on a configurator, seeing what it would look like in orange or with bigger wheels. It will never be seen in a Fast and Furious film. It’ll never be an option in the Forza Motorsport video game. It’ll never be a poster on a young boy’s bedroom wall.

There will never be an Airfix model, or a fast R version that will sweep to victory on a racetrack. It offers nothing that would make you buy one if you could use a Google car-club vehicle instead. Both are soulless tools. But one is much, much cheaper.

• Full review Not coming to a young boy’s bedroom wall near you
• Price at the time £25,395 (December 2015)
• Engine / power 1598cc, 4 cylinders, turbodiesel / 129bhp @ 4000rpm
• Acceleration / top speed 0-62mph in 9.9sec / 118mph
• Clarkson’s rating ★★☆☆☆
• Clarkson’s verdict A dreary milestone on motoring’s road to oblivion

 

BMW X1 xDrive25d

BMWs feel utterly German. Except for the horrible old X1. You got the distinct impression that BMW’s engineers — quite rightly, in my view — didn’t want to build a so-called crossover. So they had it made in factories in India, China and Russia, and it felt like it. In fact it felt like a cement mixer. Unfortunately for the BMW purists, it was a huge sales success, so the company had to make a newer version.

My test car was fitted with four-wheel drive, so you might think it’d have been able to deal with a bit of muddy ground. Nope. On a short piece of level grass it was skidding about all over the place.

The range-topping TwinPower 2-litre diesel that I drove didn’t feel speedy. In fact it left the line about as enthusiastically as its designer got out of bed in the morning. With a plaintive cry of: “Must I?”

I suppose that, all things considered, it’s not a bad car. It doesn’t crash all the time, or explode. If it were a Kia or a car from one of those weird Chinese companies, you’d say it was quite nice.

But because it says BMW on the back, and because you know just how good BMWs can be, you expect something better.

• Full review The beancounters’ gift to box‑haulers
• Price at the time £36,720 (February 2016)
• Engine / power 1995cc, 4 cylinders, turbodiesel / 228bhp @ 4400rpm
• Acceleration / top speed 0-62mph in 6.6sec / 146mph
• Clarkson’s rating ★★☆☆☆
• Clarkson’s verdict A BMW by beancounters

 

Seat Leon X-Perience SE Technology

Since I started testing cars 31 years earlier, I’d never driven a Seat. The company had never offered, and I’d never asked, because I really couldn’t see the point.

The Seat Leon X-Perience SE Technology that was sent for review had very snazzy door mirrors, but apart from this it was easily the most nondescript waste of metal, glass and plastic since Microsoft’s Kin phone. And it was brown.

Seat tries to jazz this up by saying it’s actually Adventure Brown, but there’s no such thing.

Any attempt to use second for a low-speed manoeuvre means you will judder to a halt and people will point and laugh and you will feel foolish.

I’m grateful to Seat for lending me this car because it reinforces every belief I’ve held about Seat’s cars. They’re a waste of time.

• Full review Does this Spanish fly? No, it’s a homage to catatonia
• Price at the time £26,905 (June 2015)
• Engine / power 1968cc, 4 cylinders, turbodiesel / 148bhp @ 3500rpm
• Acceleration / top speed 0-62mph in 8.7sec / 129mph
• Clarkson’s rating ★★☆☆☆
• Clarkson’s verdict Not worth the 31-year wait

 

Nissan GT-R Track Edition

Jimmy Carr was in the passenger seat of the GT-R Track Edition, and after less than half a mile he asked if the sat nav was programmed only to take the occupants to the nearest chiropractor.

I’m always hesitant to say that a car is dangerous, because it’s a legal minefield, but this one gets bloody close. Twice in an hour I very nearly had an accident because of the sudden and unexpected changes in direction.

There is no give. At all. Drive over a manhole cover and you get some idea of what it might be like to be involved in a plane crash. You actually feel the top of your spine bouncing off the inside of your skull.

So we are left here with a tragic conclusion. The standard GT-R is a five-star car. It is one of the best cars in the world. And yet this track-day abomination gets no stars at all. Because it’s pretty much useless.

• Full review Think hard before you hit the throttle in the camber gambler
• Price at the time £91,995 (December 2015)
• Engine / power 3799cc, V6, twin turbo, petrol / 542bhp @ 6400rpm
• Acceleration / top speed 0-62mph in 2.7sec / 196mph
• Clarkson’s rating No stars
• Clarkson’s verdict From hero to zero

 

Volkswagen Scirocco 2.0 TDI

I was born with a love of cars, a love that was ignited by the Maserati in my Ladybird Book of Motor Cars and nurtured by my first serious relationship, with a Ford Cortina 1600E. But it was cemented in place by my first car, a Volkswagen Scirocco.

Truth be told, I didn’t really want to drive the new Scirocco, for all the reasons that you read about on the Dear Deidre page in The Sun. You know how it goes. You enjoyed a year-long relationship 35 years ago. You hook up again, thanks to Facebook. And she has turned into a moose. Nobody wants that in their lives. Better to keep love from the past as a memory.

It doesn’t look right and it makes all the wrong noises when you start the engine, and there’s no getting round the fact that you are driving a car based on the Golf Mk 6, not the current and much better Mk 7.

Also, it stalls a lot. Doubtless for reasons that have a lot to do with the polar bear, this diesel engine needs a bootful of revs before you can even think about setting off. And then, when you do, you think something is broken, because there simply isn’t enough oomph.

As an overall package it did nothing all week except remind me how much I wanted a Golf GTI.

• Full review Dear Deidre, I had a fling with my first love. She’s lost it
• Price at the time £23,760 (January 2015)
• Engine / power 1968cc, 4 cylinders, turbodiesel / 148bhp @ 3500rpm
• Acceleration / top speed 0-62mph in 8.6sec / 134mph
• Clarkson’s rating ★★☆☆☆
• Clarkson’s verdict My angel has become a moose

 

Hyundai i800

The Hyundai i800 is worse than that parasite that burrows into children’s eyes. It’s worse than the cubicle on a hot army base with a D&V outbreak. It’s worse than trying on trousers, even. I would rather apply sun cream to James May’s back than travel again in a Hyundai i800.

It’s annoying. Hyundai knows how to make a decent car. But with this one it has chosen to make one that is boring and slow and ugly and awful.

Because it probably figured there was no point in trying with a car that was going to be bought only by African taxi drivers and European Catholics who’d had too many children and were consequently too exhausted to notice that they were going at just 6mph.

I will never go in one again. Even if it’s three in the morning and it’s raining and I just want to get home and it’s what the taxi driver happens to be driving. Because I’d rather sleep on a bench and catch flu.

• Full review For comfort and looks, a camel wins
• Price at the time £24,845 (April 2016)
• Engine / power 2497cc, 4 cylinders, turbodiesel / 134bhp @ 3600rpm
• Acceleration / top speed 0-62mph in 17.6sec / 104mph
• Clarkson’s rating No stars
• Clarkson’s verdict Give me a camel any day

 

Click to read part 1: Jeremy Clarkson’s Star Cars

The post Jeremy Clarkson’s Stinkers appeared first on Sunday Times Driving.

source http://www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/clarkson/jeremy-clarksons-stinkers-2015-16/

Tesla owner in Autopilot crash won’t sue, but car insurer might

Tesla stresses that Autopilot is only an assist feature

A Texas man said the Autopilot mode on his Tesla Model S sent him off the road and into a guardrail, bloodying his nose and shaking his confidence in the technology.

He doesn’t plan to sue the electric-car maker, but his insurance company might.

Mark Molthan, the driver, readily admits that he was not paying full attention. Trusting that Autopilot could handle the route as it had done before, he reached into the glove box to get a cloth and was cleaning the dashboard seconds before the collision, he said. The car failed to navigate a bend on Highway 175 in rural Kaufman, Texas, and struck a cable guardrail multiple times, according to the police report of the Aug. 7 crash.

“I used Autopilot all the time on that stretch of the highway,” Molthan, 44, said in a phone interview. “But now I feel like this is extremely dangerous. It gives you a false sense of security. I’m not ready to be a test pilot. It missed the curve and drove straight into the guardrail. The car didn’t stop — it actually continued to accelerate after the first impact into the guardrail.”

Molthan’s experience — while not as serious as a fatal crash that federal regulators are investigating — still highlights the challenges ahead in determining who is to blame when semi-autonomous vehicles are involved in accidents. Insurance claims involving Tesla’s Autopilot are largely uncharted territory, in part because driver behavior is still a contributing factor.

Cozen O’Connor, the law firm that represents Molthan’s auto-insurance carrier, a unit of Chubb Ltd., said it sent Tesla Motors Inc. a notice letter requesting joint inspection of the vehicle, which has been deemed a total loss.

Tesla said it’s looking into the Texas crash. Tesla stresses that Autopilot is only an assist feature — that drivers need to keep their hands on the wheel and be prepared to take over at any time.

Fresh focus

Tesla’s driver-assistance features, which the company calls Autopilot, have been in the spotlight in the wake of a fatal crash in Florida on May 7.

Probes by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board of the Florida crash are ongoing. After non-fatal accidents in Montana and Pennsylvania, Consumer Reports called on Tesla to require drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel and to change the feature’s name to avoid confusion.

Scrutiny around Autopilot is heightened in part because the federal government is drafting guidelines, expected to be released this summer, for automakers racing to bring fully self-driving cars to market. Ford Motor Co., while announcing plans to produce a fully autonomous vehicle for use by ride-hailing services this week, said it would avoid adding incremental technologies because they leave the driver too detached — in “no-man’s land” — to take over in a dangerous situation.

While Ford and Google espouse an all-or-nothing approach, Tesla has introduced driver-assist technology in “beta” form for continuous improvement and frequent over-the-air software updates. Tesla’s website stresses that active sensors, GPS and high-resolution digital maps help the vehicle to stay within lanes, and that “real time feedback from the Tesla fleet ensures the system is continually learning and improving upon itself.”

Automakers including General Motors, Honda Motor Co. and Daimler AG have also pushed to add features that take over some of the work but require the driver to remain responsible.

Safety first

About 35,200 people were killed in U.S. auto accidents in 2015, according to NHTSA. The overwhelming majority of vehicle accidents — 94 percent — are due to human error. Safety regulators want to improve human behavior while promoting technology that will protect people in crashes and help prevent them from occurring.

Fans of Tesla’s Autopilot bemoan that there’s no database of lives saved or accidents avoided by the technology.

“I’m disgusted that the only time Autopilot is in the news is when there are crashes,” said Diana Becker, 55, of Los Angeles, in a phone interview. “Nobody hears about the accidents that don’t happen.”

Becker recently completed a 27-day road trip throughout the West with her two children. She credits the Autopilot in her Model X with saving her family from colliding with a driver who crossed suddenly in front of them.

“I drove 400 miles a day on our road trip, and Autopilot was my second pair of eyes,” said Becker. “I depend on it.”

A Missouri man who suffered a pulmonary embolism last month relied on Tesla’s Autopilot to help him drive at least 20 miles to the nearest hospital, Slate reported.

Molthan, the Texas driver, also owns a Model X SUV. He said he’s a big fan of Tesla and CEO Elon Musk, but his next car won’t be another Model S.

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Porsche drivers fume: Where’s our VW diesel payout?

Volkswagen settled its diesel deception

Volkswagen settled its diesel deception involving almost 500,000 U.S. automobiles, paying dearly to satisfy car owners affected by the emissions scandal.

What it hasn’t done is make whole its very best customers — those who own its pricier brands, which nevertheless run on smog-spewing engines.

Anand Jobalia, a hotel and home developer in Daytona Beach, Fla., is still paying $1,300 a month on his 2014 Porsche Cayenne. The SUV originally cost $81,531. Now he can’t find a buyer willing to offer more than $42,000, including the Porsche dealership where he bought it.

“I’d have a very hard time buying another Porsche at this point,” Jobalia said. “When you spend this kind of money, the least you can expect is some communication when something like this happens.”

Volkswagen has agreed to fork over about $10 billion in a settlement with U.S. regulators to buy back most of its dirty diesel models at generous rates. But that deal applies only to the company’s 2.0-liter diesel engine, a staple of Volkswagen’s eponymous product line, Jettas, Passats, and Beetles. The company has yet to address the emission cheating in its larger, 3.0-liter diesel engines, which were bolted into Porsches and Audis that cost two and three times more than an entry-level Volkswagen.

In addition to Porsche’s Cayenne, the larger diesel engine went into recent Audi sedans –A6, A7, A8; Audi SUVs — Q5, Q7; and the Volkswagen Touareg. It was particularly popular among Porsche fans. At one time, diesel Cayennes accounted for 15 percent of U.S. Porsche sales.

All told, roughly 85,000 vehicles are waiting for resolution on the larger engine. Joe Rice, a South Carolina attorney appointed to represent the class of plaintiffs, contends that Volkswagen is being more nonchalant this time around.

“These owners are very frustrated, and they feel like they’ve been abandoned,” Rice said. “Granted, Volkswagen has had a lot on their plate … but it’s self-inflicted, and they just need to gear up and deal with it.”

James Kohm, director of enforcement at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, said an appropriate resolution would be a settlement similar to the one hammered out for the smaller engines. Volkswagen, however, hasn’t started negotiating over its Porsches and Audis.

“Right now, we’re in litigation mode,” Kohm said. “And we think we have an extremely strong case.”

Although far fewer customers are still awaiting a payout, they paid far more for their cars. The sticker price on a 2015 diesel Jetta started around $21,640, while a diesel Cayenne went for almost triple that amount. Audi’s Q7 commanded at least $53,400 in the 2015 model year. “It’s a big case,” Kohm said. “You’re still talking about billions of dollars.”

‘Working cooperatively’ 

Porsche said in an e-mailed statement that it “continues working cooperatively with all regulatory authorities.” Audi sent a similar statement.

The longer the scandal goes on, the more likely it is to tarnish the company’s blue-chip brands. After all, there’s no scarcity of choice for someone looking to spend more than $50,000 on a vehicle. Porsche, in particular, is Volkswagen’s treasure. It’s still seen as the architect of both the best-performing cars and the best-built cars. In J.D. Power rankings, the brand tops the list on performance and design and is second only to Lexus on dependability.

Car aficionados tend to get a bit breathless when they talk about Porsche. And they aren’t wrong. Close the door on a contemporary Porsche, and you’ll know what they’re talking about. It’s a six-figure “thwump” that sounds as if it were designed by NASA.

Porsche is also one of the world’s most profitable car companies. Part of that is a result of the price premium commanded by its brand. But it also comes from the clever engineering of a massive conglomerate: Porsche engineers can occasionally tuck Volkswagen parts under all its lustrous metal. A chassis here, a turbo there, or, in the case of the Cayenne, a devious diesel engine.

Reputational protection

Porsche wisely never put the pilloried engine in any of its sports cars, which no doubt will help it maintain some momentum through the diesel fallout. The Cayenne, to purists, is a kind of a compromise — a junior-varsity Porsche, or perhaps a Porsche Light. The line workers in the brand’s Slovakia plant could bolt old Pontiac Aztek engines into the Cayenne, and thousands of the Stuttgart faithful would still clamor for a 911.

Indeed, Porsche-pining doesn’t seem to have slowed much. In the 11 months since the VW diesel scandal broke, Porsche sold 5.2 percent more cars than in the year-earlier period, even without diesel SUVs. And for Audi, sales barely dipped over the same period.

Nevertheless, our Florida home developer won’t be buying another Porsche. Jobalia has been hankering for another sports car, something similar to the 911 he owned. But if he decides to treat himself, he says, the first test drive will be in a Maserati.

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Like glittery metallic paints on cars? There’s something you should know…

The mica used to give metallic paints their sparkle was mined by Indian children

You’re a conscientious consumer. You buy eggs from cage-free chickens, your bling is blood diamond-free, and your iPhone…well, you try not to think too much about your iPhone.

But what about your car–specifically, its glittery metallic paint? Have you mulled that over much?

Apparently, you should’ve. Car companies like Audi, BMW, and Volkswagen are investigating reports that the mica used to give metallic paints their sparkle was mined by Indian children as young as ten.

As appalling as that is, the news shouldn’t have come as a surprise to automakers. Cosmetics companies use huge volumes of mica to shine up lipstick, eyeshadow, and blush, and the child labor issue was brought to their attention two years ago. Shouldn’t car manufacturers have seen the potential link?

Perhaps, but maybe they took the Indian government at its word when it promised to eliminate the practice of putting children in mica mines. Unfortunately, enforcement of the Indian government’s new regulations has been spotty at best, and today, it’s estimated that 20,000 child miners can still be found in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand, abutting India’s eastern border with Bangladesh.

Much of the mica those children unearth still makes its way to exporters, who sell it to giant firms like China’s Fujian Kuncai, who then sell the mica to major players in the auto paint industry like Axalta and PPG. At least two automakers–BMW and Volkswagen–have confirmed that their paint suppliers have relationships with Fujian Kuncai and that they’re investigating whether the paints they’ve used include materials derived from child labor.

Complications

As with most things in the real world, solving the problem of children mining for mica isn’t cut-and-dry.

For example, child labor is a common practice in these areas of India. Should it be? Of course not. But it is, and changing ingrained social behaviors is difficult (see also: racism, sexism, and homophobia worldwide).

Also, the families of underage miners depend on the children’s extra income to live. Sure, government regulators can force mines to stop hiring kids, but how are the kids’ families going to compensate for the loss of household income in the short term?

Lastly, mica is used in a whole host of products, including many plastics you can probably find lying around your house. The cosmetics industry and the auto industry are taking the heat right now, but in fact, many, many other manufacturers must get involved before the demand for child-mined mica drops off.

RICHARD READ

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87% of vehicles could be electric today with no problem – Says MIT

Today, electrics account for less than one percent of cars in America

 

August 17, 2016

Skeptics sometimes doubt whether electric vehicles will catch on. They compare them to gas-powered cars, trucks, and SUVs, bemoaning the fact that EVs have shorter driving ranges and higher sticker prices. However, a new study shows that the biggest obstacle standing between EVs and mainstream consumers may really be a lack of information.

The study was carried out by a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It reveals that 87 percent of vehicles registered in the U.S. could be magically converted to electricity overnight, and the country would be just fine.

ALSO SEE: Ford promises autonomous cars for ride-sharing by 2021

In numerical terms, that means that more than 226 million of the country’s 260 million registered vehicles could go electric now, and we’d have the capability to pay for them, keep them charged, and get where we need to go.

To reach that conclusion, the team led by MIT’s Jessika Trancik spent four years poring over a variety of statistics, including the distances that people drive in a given day. They looked at detailed, GPS-based data from drivers in California, Georgia, and Texas and conducted nationwide surveys about transportation habits.

In doing so, not only did they discover that EVs would meet the needs of most motorists, but also that going electric wouldn’t cost car owners any more money than if they were to keep driving their current gas-powered vehicles:

“[T]he team found that the vast majority of cars on the road consume no more energy in a day than the battery energy capacity in affordable EVs available today. These numbers represent a scenario in which people would do most of their recharging overnight at home, or during the day at work, so for such trips the lack of infrastructure was not really a concern. Vehicles such as the Ford Focus Electric or the Nissan Leaf–whose sticker prices are still higher than those of conventional cars, but whose overall lifetime costs end up being comparable because of lower maintenance and operating costs–would be adequate to meet the needs of the vast majority of U.S. drivers.”

They also realized that there’s not much difference between travel habits in different parts of the country. Trancik explains that, “The adoption potential of electric vehicles is remarkably similar across cities, from dense urban areas like New York, to sprawling cities like Houston. This goes against the view that electric vehicles–at least affordable ones, which have limited range–only really work in dense urban centers.”

And of course, switching to electricity would dramatically reduce America’s dependence on oil and its greenhouse gas emissions. Converting 87 percent of gas-powered vehicles to EVs would reduce U.S. gasoline consumption by 60 percent and cut transportation-related emissions by 30 percent. (As the statistics suggest, converting the country’s most pollution-prone vehicles–mostly those used for commercial purposes–isn’t feasible yet.)

All that said, Trancik and her colleagues note that electric vehicles aren’t always capable of meeting drivers’ needs. On long road trips, or when extreme weather reduces a battery’s driving range, motorists would need back-ups. However, those occasions would be rare, and needs could usually be met with a short-term car rental or ride-share.

Whether the report will convince more drivers to opt for EVs remains to be seen. Today, electrics account for less than one percent of cars in America. Compared to countries like Norway–where 24 percent of new cars sold are electric and the country is considering plans to ban gas and diesel car sales by 2025–we’ve got a long way to go.

RICHARD READ
Reporter

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Aston Martin GT12 Roadster

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