AutoComplete: Tesla posts a big loss, Ford gets sued and the Hyundai Sonata goes solar
Cars
Welcome to roadshow auto complete, your weekly round up at the biggest news in the automotive world.
This week we have news on Tesla's que to earning earnings call, Ford getting sued for over a billion dollars, and the solar roof on the Hyundai Sonata hybrid.
Bur first, let's start with that Tesla news.
Tesla's Q2 earnings report sent the stock market into a little bit of a tizzy.
With share prices dropping nearly 10% in After Hours Trading, once folks saw that Tesla loss for Q2 2019 was much bigger than analysts had predicted.
This is a bummer of course but it's not all doom and gloom in Fremont.
The big tease Chinese Giga factory is progressing quickly and should be online by the end of the year.
The company is also shuffling things around and it's California factory to make room for model white production which is slated to begin in the fall of 2020.
To say that Hyundai's 2020 Sonata is an improvement over previous versions, at least in the looks department, is a vast understatement.
The new car is phenomenal, bordering on gorgeous, and now, Hyundai is pulling the wraps off of the hybrid variant.
It's broadly similar looking to the other models, except that it has a damn solar panel on the roof.
Now it's not the most efficient way of charging your vehicle, given that it will only tack a couple of miles of range on after six hours in direct sunlight.
But it looks cool and it's a feature we hope to see on more cars going forward.
The Polestar 2 electric vehicle is the first mostly affordable model to be debuted by Volvo's fancy performance-minded EV sub-brand and we just found Found out that it's getting a decidedly awesome looking performance package.
This package includes ��hlins suspension, Brembo brakes, stickier tires and forged wheels.
It also comes with some choice visual tweaks for the vehicle like the yellow gold seatbelts we saw on Pollstar 2's press photos.
Rumor is that this package will cost around five grand and while that's not chump change, Considering what you get, maybe it's a good deal.
Bit by bit, teaser by teaser, we're learning more and more about BMW's iNEXT SUV.
The latest teaser of it is a steering wheel.
And if that seems little odd at first, well, it is.
But when you look more closely at the photo, some things become more apparent.
Like the fact that wheel isn't quite round.
Now, it's not quite as not-round, as, say, the new Corbet's steering wheel, But that shape is meant to show users more accurately what angle the steering wheel is at when they transition out of a more automated driving mode.
Now, there are also fiber optics embedded in the wheel, to let you to know when you can and cannot engage certain autonomous features.
Pretty cool?
Normally when we hear that Renault made a new EV, we do one of those things where we just say Saying out loud and then quietly go about our day.
Not this time though, because Renault took the guts of a twisty and shoehorn them into a vintage Renault for L.
It's adorable and functional.
And our desire to drive when someone near the beach in the south of France is extremely strong.
Bruno's calling it the E-Plein air between it and the Peugeot he legend concept.
We're extremely here for what's going on in France these days.
The federal government has been all fired up about California is right to set its own emission standards and the folks in DC have been working on a way to strip the state of that power.
Automakers aren't as into that idea as the government seems to believe they are because four of the biggest car makers in the biz have signed a pact with California to lock in some more aggressive than federal fuel economy and emission standards.
These guidelines are a little less intense than the Obama era edict that cars average 50 miles per gallon by 2025.
But there's still an improvement over what Trump's administration is seeking.
Henrik Fisker has been trickling out teaser images of his next vehicle for months now.
And so far they've been well, surprisingly decent looking specially when you compare it to it's last effort, the Fisker EMotion.
The latest tease comes from Mr. Fisker's Twitter account and it shows up the nose of his forthcoming EV SUV But we're still a little iffy on his assertion that the models start under $40,000 when it launches in 2021 and that it will include mostly recycled materials.
Did you know that since 2015 BMW has manufactured the battery packs for its GV SUV models in-house in its Spartanburg South Carolina factory.
It was a small surprise to us, since many companies choose to have that done by a supplier.
Still, BMW decided to increase it's pack production abilities ahead of the start of construction of the new X5 XDrive45E and X3 XDrive30E models by spending around $20 million in total on upgrades which include In beginning the battery pack production area to nearly 90000 square feet.
Ford's been having well publicized issues with its power shift dual clutch automatic transmission for years now.
But based on owner complaints, it would seem that the Blue Oval has yet to iron out the problems.
The situation has gotten so bad now that the federal government is looking at getting involved.
With a couple of senators and the congressman seeking review of the ongoing situation.
Ford's power shift transmission initially saw use in the US in the Ford Fiesta, which hit dealers in 2010 as a 2011 model, and was then used on a tonne of smaller Ford vehicles across the globe, including the focus.
It seems like Tesla has been bleeding off high level execs for a while now, most recently having lost its longtime CFO.
Well, that trend is continuing this time with its longtime Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel announcing his exit during the company's Q2 earnings call.
According to both Straubel and Musk, he's stepping down from his executive role but will remain an advisor For the company.
Starbucks Delivery is a service that's been running in pilot program mode for a while now in 11 markets across the US.
And that pilot has been so successful that the company is planning to roll it out nationwide by early 2020.
The delivery part of Starbucks delivers is being handled exclusively by Uber Eats and Starbucks has gone All in on it, even developing special packaging that keeps your hot stuff hot and your cold stuff cold.
Amazons key in car delivery service has been available a bit on a few selected models brands like Volvo but if you're not familiar with key it basically Allows Amazon to deliver packages directly to your vehicle without you being there.
And now it's coming to a bunch of Honda and accurate vehicles.
Specifically you can enable it through your Honda link connected car app on your smartphone and then you are off to the proverbial races.
Of course you'll need a Honda or accurate knew enough that it actually works with Honda link for this whole shebang to work.
The defining feature of electric vehicles is torque.
It's plentiful and effortless and available at zero RPM.
That's why electric drivetrains make so much sense for pickup trucks that need to haul a bunch of heavy crap around.
Ford wanted to find an elegant way to illustrate this point so it took a prototype electric F-150, hooked it to a train full of other F-150s that weight about a million pounds, and dragged it a ways through a rail yard.
Now, of course, trains are on wheels, and those wheels ride on metal rails.
Those rails and wheels working together make for very little in the way of ruling resistance, so this test isn't as tough as it could have been, but it's still pretty impressive.
When it's not busy hooking electric trucks up to trains, Ford is generally busy building its wildly popular and internal combustion powered F-150 and Ranger pick-up trucks, and selling them to an adoring public like it's going out of style.
Unfortunately for Ford, it may have fudged the fuel economy numbers on these models a bit, when the EPA changed its testing methods.
Which has led, at least in the eyes of a law firm, to its customers paying as much as $2,000 more per year in fuel than they should have.
In an effort to stick it to the man, the suit, which is being handled by a Seattle-based law firm Is seeking damages from the blue oval in the neighborhood of 1.2 billion dollars.
That's not chump change friends if you like that could really eat into the bottom line if that lawsuit goes through.
Well that's it for autocomplete this week.
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