Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

The final tour

The Grand Tour (this iteration, anyways) has come to an end. Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May have done their final motoring program after two decades of collaboration. An absolute end of a glorious era. Their final episode - aptly titled One for the Road - is up to the usual standards: spectacular cinematography, mixed in with many pre-planned ridiculousness.

It’s a firm reminder that things change, and things come to an end. Nothing is static, good or bad. In a (fake) ideal world, car enthusiasts would love to see Clarkson, Hammond, and May continue on making car videos. Like your favorite pint of beer, you don’t want it to end ever. Every February there has to be a Super Bowl. But even with the NFL’s immensely enormous popularity, who can say for certain American football will still be around in a few decades?

Father Time is undefeated, of course. No one wants to see an obese Clarkson on these prolonged road trips in third world countries. He himself probably can’t handle the stress any longer. People age out of their profession (like NFL players), it is what it is.

Clarkson did remarked in One for the Road that one of the reason he is retiring from the job is that he cannot get excited about electric cars. And those are the future, isn’t it? I very much agree with Clarkson. I think electric vehicles are fantastic for urban driving duties. The fact they don’t emit any greenhouse gas in our city environment is a huge win.

However, there’s no romance in electric cars.There’s no quirks to give them flavor, unique mechanical layouts to bring about varying dynamics. They all sound the same, too. The whirl of an electric motor doesn’t exactly tingle the spine. A crescendo that never arrives.

Clarkson and co can’t do an epic road trip in used EVs. Soon as one breaks down, you have to call a tow truck, and that is the end of the program. There’s no fixing it on the side of the road like an internal combustion car. The fire risk with batteries is too huge to perform stunts with EVs. The amount of water to put out an electrical fire is apparently way too much.

Never mind that plenty of countries and locales don’t have the infrastructure to support vehicle charging.

With these two headwinds of advancing age and lack of enthusiasm for modern new cars, it’s no wonder Clarkson, Hammond, and May are hanging up their proverbial hats. Hang their jerseys up on the rafters; these three (and their entire crew) have provided us with many tremendous hours of motoring entertainment. Cheers.

First time?

BMW drivers have the infamous reputation of being assholes on the road. We completely disregard proper road manners. Turn signals? What are those? Add to that the magnificently instant power of electric motors, and the asshole intensifies even more…

I recently took my BMW M2 to the dealer for its annual service. For loaner vehicle I was given a BMW i5 - an all-electric BMW 5 Series. It’s the first time I’ve ever driven an electric car, never mind that it’s my first service loaner to not be powered by dinosaur juice. I was instantly a fan: unlike a gas loaner where I have to refill the amount I use, for an EV loaner there’s no expectation of charging back to the initial level! As a fan of decreasing the amount of hassles in my life, this development is lovely.

Back to the BMW i5. The instant torque of electric motors is indeed very intoxicating. No naturally-aspirated gas engine can match the response of an electric motor. With such accessible power, electric cars invite drivers to be aggressive. It’s too easy! Anybody that’s in front of you can be passed in an eye blink. Any gap in traffic can be filled before other drivers can react. Even for me, someone who prefers to do the speed limit in the slow lane, the i5 loaner egged me to test out its capabilities. The fastest car in the world is a rental EV.

Not that I wasn’t of this opinion before, but having driven an EV finally, I am more convinced that you should absolutely buy electric if you are able to charge it at home. The power is nice, yes, but so is the negligible maintenance cost (brakes and tires, mostly). And if you believe in the whole better-for-the-environment mission (let’s skip over the mining materials for the batteries part), even better.

If I actually had a commute, I wouldn’t look at anything but an all-electric car.

Can't outrun the battery

As we are nearing the month of September, I am very excited for the next iteration of the venerable Apple iPhone. I skipped upgrading to last year’s iPhone 15, so my current iPhone 14 Pro is going on two years of use. While the processing power and the cameras are still capable and fantastic, the issue with having that old a phone is the battery.

These days I am down to the 20% threshold at the beginning of evenings. Sooner rather than later, my iPhone 14 Pro will no longer last a full day of use on one overnight charge. A mere inconvenience for sure, rather than anything detrimental. But when I can throw money at the problem - by spending over a thousand dollars for a brand new phone - I shall certainly do that.

That’s the thing with anything that runs on batteries: degradation. Your device is only as good as the battery fitted inside. Once it deteriorates past a certain threshold, you no longer have the same kind of device. A laptop that only lasts two hours on a charge (it was eight hours when new, let’s say) is effectively a desktop. It’s only as mobile as your proximity to a pluggable power source.

Obviously, a solution is to swap out the old battery for a new one. And I just might do that when the battery on this M1 Max MacBook Pro that I am typing on degrades enough to be annoying. The first generation of Apple Silicon is still so powerful that I don’t see the need to get a whole new Mac laptop anytime soon.

You can’t do that with an electric car, can you? I would be super weary of buying a used electric car like a Tesla Model 3 - unless there is a way for customers to see the remaining battery capacity. Mileage is not longer the main determining factor. I would buy a used Model 3 with 50,000 miles with 85% capacity over a similar Model 3 with 30,000 miles, but has 75% capacity left.

The price is wrong

Honda has (finally?) launched a fully electric vehicle for the North American market: the Honda Prologue. As expected, the Prologue is a mid-size SUV thing - the most popular type of vehicle in the States - designed to haul people and stuff. The layman would not know that this all-electric Honda is co-developed with General Motors. Not quite a re-badge, but it’s definitely a GM car with Honda window dressing on top.

Not that in it of itself is a bad thing. What Toyota has done with the Supra - essentially a re-styled BMW Z4 roadster - seems to have worked (and continues to work) just fine. I see plenty of Supras on the road, driven by guys who look a bit too young to be able to afford a $60,000 sports car.

The main problem I see with the Honda Prologue is that it is too expensive. The poverty FWD trim level starts at $48,795. For the AWD trim with some bells and whistles that most people would want, you’re looking at well into the $50,000 mark. Worse: as of writing, the Honda Prologue does not quality for the Federal EV tax credit ($7,500). I would bet only the true die-hard Honda fans would buy one of these over a Tesla Model Y (low $40,000s after tax incentives). That, or Honda will have to heavily discount the Prologue.

The Model Y has another advantage: buyers don’t have to beg some asshole at a dealership to take their money.

To be competitive, I think the Honda Prologue needs to start the high $30,000s. Because that’s what a gas engine equivalent - the Honda Pilot - starts at. Honda can’t charge an EV premium for what is a mass-market product, because that would simply drive buyers towards Tesla. Ford found out about this with its electric Mach E SUV. The problem is that Honda - GM, really - cannot build the Prologue cheap enough to sell in the $30,000s. Meanwhile, Tesla can produce Model 3 sedans and sell profitably in the high $30,000s all day long. It’s a competitive advantage that’s evident in the sheer amount of Model 3s and Model Ys we see on the road.

The first legacy automaker to market with an all-electric mid-size SUV selling in the $30,000s will be the one to take a chunk out of Tesla.

Don't buy used

Word on the street is that Ford has (again) lowered pricing on its Mustang Mach E electric car. The base real-wheel drive version can now be had for (just) under $40,000. Ford is also throwing in $7,500 on leases. Combining with the federal EV tax credit of another $7,500 makes the base Mach E a highly attractive option if you just need a simple electric runabout. I would consider one if I actually needed a car.

And because I wouldn’t want to buy a used electric vehicle. You simply cannot trust it. The thing no one seems to be talking about is battery degradation. Much like the battery in our smartphones, the cells in electric cars degrade with use and time. But how much it degrades does not scale linearly with mileage. Depending on the usage pattern - how often it’s charged, how fast, to what level, etc - an EV with 50,000 miles can potentially have a healthier battery than a 20,000 miler.

This is a critical piece of information in electric vehicles because the battery is everything. A degraded battery cannot motivate the car to the same number of miles as new on once charge. At least with a combustion car you can expect the same range in a high-mileage gas engine.

The problem is we have no way of knowing about battery degradation. The electric cars (currently) don’t show the health percentage (our smartphones do). Venturing into the vast menu of a Tesla Model 3 doesn’t reveal this information. I think manufacturers should include battery health indicators, plus showing how much maximum range has been lost as well. As I said, range in an electric car is everything.

Beg some asshole

On a recent perusing of Reddit, I encountered a discussion about how difficult it still is to buy a new car these days. Inventories remain low, therefore dealership markups are still a thing to contend with. Basic supply and demand: whichever party has the power can dictate the terms.

Of course, that doesn’t mean people can’t complain about it. Especially those who want to buy a new car, but not exactly in a hurry to do so. These buyers can wait it out and try different dealerships to get the best price possible. But that in itself can be a time consuming, frustrating process. You’re begging people to shut up and take your money, yet they won’t do it. One Reddit commenter summed it up perfectly: “I just fundamentally can't bring my self to go beg some asshole to take my 60K.”

I think that is a big reason why the Tesla Model Y is the best selling vehicle - in the world - for the first quarter of 2023. Tesla sells cars directly to the customer, one price (that can change periodically), no markups or discounts. You can do the entire transaction on your smartphone, never needing to talk to a dealership salesperson. There isn’t a finance manager to upsell you on extended warranties either. In a time when when finding a car at MSRP is akin to hitting the lottery, the Tesla method of selling is highly attractive.

The pendulum will eventually swing back in the customer’s favor. Unless the traditional automaker constrain supply intentionally. That would be too cynical. I don’t think the automakers can sell (especially) electric vehicles while still relying on the dealership/markups method. Tesla’s direct-sale model will simply continue to eat their proverbial lunch. Those with the money and patience want low hassle above all else.

You're waiting for this?

Last week I was at the local Safeway which has an electric vehicle charging station in its parking lot. On a mid-week morning there was a line of cars waiting to use the four already occupied charging ports. Are these people really sitting there for god knows how long, waiting to “fuel up”? Charging an electric vehicle is far slower than filling up a combustion vehicle with gas. The advertised maximum charging rate only occurs in spurts, and in ideal conditions.

My current stance on electric vehicles is: if you cannot charge at home, then you’re better off buying gasoline-powered. The public charging infrastructure (outside of Tesla’s own superchargers) is still not ready for primetime. I follow quite a bit of car people on twitter, and the consensus I’ve gather is that the public charging network is slow, inconsistent, and not enough. The convenience of being in and out of a gas station in under 10 minutes is still a massive advantage.

I’m genuinely surprised that people are even willing to wait that long for a charging spot. The amount of impatience I’ve witness on the driving road these days is high. You have drivers honking at cars with the audacity to wait for pedestrians to cross before making a turn. What do they want? To run them over? Worst is when I see such impatience on weekend mornings. You’re aggravated on a Sunday morning? I have to assume you’re simply in a hurry to go die.

Personally I do not have the facilities to charge a car in my home. Therefore an electric vehicle does not factor in my future anytime soon. My time is worth way more than spending an hour just to charge up a car.