Tag: lucid motors

The roaring comeback of the ICE!

On By ChristofferIn Electrical vehicles, ev's, News, OpinionLeave a comment

Between US elections, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle-East, and whatever else may have passed through your news flow this summer, chances are that you’ve missed something that’s gone a bit under the radar. And that, my friends, is more or less a complete turnaround in the business plans of the world’s leading car manufacturers, and the roaring comeback of the good old combustion engine!

The ICE is making a comeback at a level that no one would have expected just a couple of months ago. Doing so, it proves a few points that won’t be new to readers of this blog, but that I’m happy to note anyway, since it’s always nice to be right: firstly, if you want to sell stuff, there needs to be demand. Secondly, if something cannot hold in the long term, it will break sooner or later. And thirdly, it’s unwise to bet against the world’s largest car company, especially when it’s Japanese. Let’s dig in and look at what you may have missed while sipping your pina colada at the beach!

To set the scene, let’s start with something that EVO, the UK car magazine that this blog takes its inspiration from, noted in its editorial back in July, namely that within just the last month, three new combustion engines involving five global car brands were announced. In all cases, it was about ICE’s optimized for hybrid usage with electrical motors, efficiency measures, adaptations to sustainable fuels etc. Other signs that the combustion engine is far from dead have also flourished over the last year, perhaps nowhere more so than in Modena with the Purosangue’s naturally aspirated V12. The fact that Ferrari shares are among the best investments you could have done over the last years also don’t really speak in the direction of a quick demise of the ICE.

Owning Ferrari stock would have given you more than 700% in the last 10 years, most of it in the last two years. Hell, you could buy an ICE-powered Ferrari for that!

It’s also interesting how differently car CEO’s speak today, compared to just a few months back. The first one that made me swallow my coffee the wrong way was Peugeot CEO Carlos Tavares, who during a car show went on camera, stating in the blunt way only a Frenchman can that electrification is nothing car manufacturers have chosen – it’s something Brussels (meaning the EU) has imposed. His body language made clear he enjoyed it about as much as a rotten slice of foie gras. Unfortunately, Stellantis (the group Peugeot belongs to) have replaced him since the interview.

A few weeks later it was Ola Källenius, the Swedish CEO of Mercedes-Benz, who until recently was very happy to tell everyone about Mercedes’s fully electrical future but now sings a different tune, whereby combustion cars are still very much part of the Mercedes mix, alongside hybrids and EV’s. That’s of course a direct consequence of the lukewarm reception Mercedes EV’s have gotten from the market, especially the soap-like EQS. Now the talk is of a new S- and even E-class coming with as options combustion, hybrid and electrical engines.

What a new S-class could look like – far better than the EQS! (Illustration Larson)

A few months earlier the same message had come from BMW in Munich, confirming several combustion engine initiatives over the coming years. To round it off, in the same week as this is published, Volvo joined the long list of manufacturers stepping away from an all-electrical future, in Volvo’s case by 2030. The talk is now of reaching 90%, however including various types of hybrids.

None of this is really surprising. Because what all these car CEO’s seem to have forgotten, but actually should know better than various politicians and other policy makers, are the laws of supply and demand. And what has become painfully clear is that there is no demand for EV’s on the scale the political class would like there to be (if you need to read up on why they won’t do anything for the climate and are currently one of the most unethical industries around, see here, here, and here). From a European perspective it’s actually even worse, since the day, should it come, when demand improves, it’s not European, but rather Chinese manufacturers who stand to profit from it.

Let me give you a couple of pretty staggering examples of this in real life. The Porsche Taycan is generally hailed as the best EV around from both a driving and a charging perspective (if not range). Two years old and with less than 30.000 km’s on the meter, it can easily be had for 30-40% of the price as new – that’s a depreciation of over 50% in less than two years for the best car in the segment! And with the new model out, those numbers will certainly not improve going forward.

A Polestar 2, a European EV favourite, far less good than a Taycan but also far cheaper at around 75-80′ as new, will without problems be yours for 30-35′ with the same kind of mileage as the Taycan. And should you like soap, the numbers for the Mercedes-Benz EQS are similar. It’s getting to a point where European car dealers no longer want to trade in EV’s, not just because of the insecure value, but also since they tend to sit in the courtyard far longer than traditional cars.

A year ago, it would have been in front of the dealer’s entrance. Today, it’s hidden in the backyard.

What’s happening is that disappointed owners, either outright or through various types of leases which typically have a 36-month life (at least in Europe), trade in their EV’s and when doing so, opt for a conventional car to replace it with. That’s the case in up to 90% of cases in the US, as various reports have shown. Why? Well, unrealistic range promises, especially in winter, a lacking charging infrastructure, and various technical and quality issues with many EV’s all make for a not very attractive cocktail. As energy prices rose in parallel to the ownership and will continue to do so for every windmill and solar farm that is set to replace conventional energy, it turns out the savings over a traditional car aren’t that big.

The combustion engine technology is now over 150 years old, removing the technology risk that is very much present in the EV market, and that all the talk of battery revolutions only contribute to. Two years ago it was just a matter of time before solid state batteries once and for all solved the range and charging issues. Now, it’s instead sodium batteries that will do the same, and are simpler to develop. Who in their right mind would buy an EV, more expensive than a traditional car, with a technology that risks being obsolete in a year? You take this together with all the other EV issues you know well by now, and the logical conclusion is that other than in cities or for shorter trips, the ICE still reigns supreme.

As this sinks in, the effect is that conventional manufacturers go back to what they’re good at, i.e. technological innovation around the combustion engine, and EV manufacturers that are not very well capitalized start going belly up. Fisker already did (making it the second time the Dane Henrik Fisker manages to bankrupt the same brand), others are heavily at risk (Polestar starts having pretty severe cash issues and a share price that is at rock bottom) or not in control of their destiny (Lucid who are at the mercy of the Saudi money tap). All this is normal – every new industry has a lot of companies who don’t make it. It was just the buzz of the last years that may have made it look different.

Marcus Brownlee called the Fisker Ocean the worst car he had ever tested. Six months later, the company was bankrupt and owners have hopefully learnt to check the health of the brand next time around.

What is not normal is however the elephant in the room called China, that as said previously, I believe will dominate the low- to mid-priced EV market going forward. Why? Well, with a home market of over a billion people, unlimited state subsidies and a supply chain of rare metals especially from Africa that has been carefully crafted over the last decade, China has done everything Europe should have done to be successful, had they really meant business. Instead, the EU now wants to put tariffs on Chinese EV’s, which less than a month after it was announced, was countered by China doing a deal with Saudi Arabia, where Chinese EV’s for Europe will be produced with no tariffs. And there won’t be any sanctions or tariffs on Saudi going forward either, that oil they also sell, is very helpful when it gets cold.

Going forward, the world will thus hardly be fully electric, and this is where the world’s largest brand Toyota comes in. Although they were heavily criticized by the environmentalist lobby, the Japanese stuck to their guns and continued to produce and perfect hybrid solutions. Their logic is simple and should have been easy enough for every car company to understand: if the supply of rare metals and other input materials is limited, then splitting a large battery pack into four smaller packs for four cars, rather than a big one for one, makes a lot of sense. Hybrids also eliminate all the issues linked to range, charging, and under-capitalized car brands no one has heard of.

A Toyota hybrid drvetrain – expect to see more of these going forward!

So where does all this leave us? Well, conventional manufacturers will be all too happy to reverse course and fall back on what will be the conventional car market going forward – meaning hybrid solutions around the combustion engine. And should there be an evolution around e-fuels, we can probably do without the whole hybrid package as well. On the other side, there will be EV’s at various price points, working well for cities, shorter trips or people preferring the technology. And yes, should we in the end get a battery revolution in terms of range, charging and more sustainable input materials, maybe they will take over -but that’s neither for tomorrow, nor next year.

It’s pretty incredible that it’s taken us this long to get us to the only place that made sense from the beginning, but as said initially, if something cannot hold, it will break sooner or later, and the dreams of 100% EV’s just did. Personally, i’d be delighted to consider a hybrid. I’d have nothing against driving fully electric on shorter distances, and reducing my fuel consumption on longer trips. The ethical issues linked to rare metal excavation are still not solved, but I guess you can’t have everything, and things are at least improving in this regard. Mark Twain once replied to a letter by saying that “the report of my death was an exaggeration”. Mid-2024, the same thing is just as true for the combustion engine!

The sand pile is crumbling

On By ChristofferIn ev's, News, OpinionLeave a comment

If you’ve studied economics like me, the name Hyman Minsky may be familiar. He was an American economist who developed the financial stability theory, basically saying that stability breeds instability. Think of a sand pile: at some point, adding one more grain, although infinitely small in itself, will make the pile crumble. That’s more or less what we’re witnessing right now for the sand pile called “Ev’s for all”, crumbling far quicker than even I had imagined. I wasn’t planning to return to the topic anytime soon but sometimes events force your hand, and there’s just too much that’s happened in the last weeks and months not to take note of, as it is kind of important for the whole car world.

The starting point as I remember it was sometime back in February when two things happened. Mercedes boss Ola Källenius, roughly at the same time as presenting the stupidest EV of them all this side of the Hummber EV, the electric G-class, came out and said that electrification of the whole Mercedes fleet would take longer than expected. That’s of course another way of saying that demand is lacking. Mercedes have pushed the date for the last combustion engine forward from 2030 to 2035, where it most certainly won’t stay.

Time will tell, but this could go down as the symbol of when the tide turned…

Roughly at the same time, the FT ran an article on Lucid Motors, where Lucid boss Peter Rawlinson said that his company cannot rely on “bottomless wealth” from its 60% Saudi owners. In other words, the sheiks in the country of many sand piles are thinking of turning off the tap, if they haven’t done so already. Lucid has close to USD 5bn in the bank but is currently burning USD 1bn per quarter and lost close to USD 3bn in 2023. Given they’re not close to making a profit anytime soon, they will thus need to fundraise again before the end of the year to survive. In the current market, I wish them luck.

Luck is also what Rivian still needs, and this one hurts a bit more since I find it a really innovative company that have brought something new to the market, and have plans for continuing to do so in the future as well. A friend of mine drives the Rivian SUV and is thrilled about the car, its features and gadgets. However given a lack of Rivian car buyers, the company urgently needs to save money and announced in March that production has been paused in their new factory in Georgia and that instead, they will fall back on their old production plant which is cheaper to run. And whilst we’re on SUV’s, if anyone is curious about Fisker, they’re so close to the brink that they can go belly up at any point in time, and contrary to Rivian, the SUV called Ocean they’ve launched is crap in most testers’ view.

A small opening side window in the back is the only attraction of the Ocean. Literally.

Moving on to the EV wannabes, Porsche is making all kinds of strange sounds around the all-electric new Macan. The idea was that the combustion one would be taken out of production in 2025-2026, and the all new E-Macan, launched as we speak, would then fully replace it. Now, the talk is of not replacing the ICE one until 2030. The issue for Porsche is that the new Macan is built as an EV from the first screw, meaning it’s not made for a combustion engine. Therefore, it’s most probably the old Macan that will be updated such as to live a bit longer. That’s certainly very far from what Porsche, blinded by the general EV trend, originally intended. It’s really terrible when client demand isn’t where you want it to be.

To round it all off, even the king of the hill Tesla has come down the hill, at least a bit. Firstly in stock price, where it’s down about 1/3 this year, making it by far the worst performer of the so called Magnificent Seven. That said, it’s still worth more than twice what Toyota is. Then there’s production numbers, where Tesla not only ships less cars than a year ago, but also produced around 70′ less cars in the first quarter than analysts were counting on. Tesla has also lost around 1/3 of its market share in the all-important Chinese market, falling from 10.5% to around 7% as per the Chinese Passenger Car Association, all due to the intense Chinese competition discussed in earlier posts.

As the headline says, things improved in March, let’s see if it’s the start of a new trend.

You’ll note that all of this has to do with falling client demand, and nothing has to do with the other fundamental EV issues, such as not even being close to having enough metals and related stuff to produce the EV’s our politicians plan for, and that the battery production with all its required input materials is both highly polluting and highly unethical. That comes on top of the waning demand, and as Ineos’ founder Jim Rathcliffe says, you can’t force EV’s down people’s throat – although I’m sure at least some politicians will try.

I yelled at European luxury automakers pathetic efforts to build competitive EV’s a few weeks ago, and also said the cheap part of the market risks being taken over by Chinese EV’s. That’s exactly what’s happening, and in addition, growth has stalled in the developed world for all the reasons we’ve already gone into. A challenging capital raising environment means that many of the new EV brands risk going under, and (especially European) politicians who are still incapable of delivering a charging network commensurate to the growth they want to see have done the rest. I’d say they should take most of the blame.

At the same time, I was surprised earlier this week to see the Biden Administration’s projection for what the US car market will look like in 2050. As can be seen above, EV’s aren’t expected to take over anytime soon, although they are projected to grow quite a lot. Hybrids continue to grow too, which we’ve been discussing here, and what for example Toyota has said all along. Most people drive short distances, and thus splitting a big battery pack in one car into five smaller packs in five cars makes most sense when materials are limited. Anyhow, by 2050, 2/3 of all cars are still expected to be what should be called combustion engine cars, since by then, I’m willing to bet we’ll have other stuff than fossil fuels to power combustion engines with, which also means they may be around for far longer than anticipated.

If you really want an EV, then as I’ve said before, there really is no better alternative than a Tesla, pretty much wherever you live. But if you don’t, be aware you’re part of a growing crowd and that your petrol car will be fine for years to come. As I was finishing this post, I saw the news that the European car safety organization Euro NCAP has come out with new rules, requiring a car’s essential functions to be handled by physical buttons, not over a screen, for a car to get the maximum five safety stars starting in 2026. Trying to sell a car in Europe that has less than five safety stars is all but impossible, so this will obviously cause further pain for many, especially most EV manufacturers. If we keep going at this pace, the future starts looking really bright!

Airy 1300 hp dreams!

On By ChristofferIn Electrical vehicles, News2 Comments

It was certainly not a surprise that after our week in western Florida and the car reflections that came to me on the beach, New York would be vastly different. Still, I had to laugh to myself directly after landing, realizing I had just complimented our American friends on their civilized way of driving and was now about to die in a taxi from Newark airport, driven by a constantly honking maniac in a way only a maniac can drive a car. Let’s call it a return to reality… There’s no doubt Florida is more laid back than NY not only driving-wise but that said, it was great to see NYC back to its old, pre-Covid form!

We spent most of our days walking around Manhattan, and it was in the nowadays very pleasant Meatpacking District that we came upon the new Lucid showroom. We went in and talked to the very friendly Johan from Lucid, whom I guess I shouldn’t refer to as a sales guy since some strange American regulation makes a difference between shops and showrooms and prevents personnel in the latter from disclosing prices of cars shown. Having said that, Johan knew all there was to know about the Lucid Air, setting him apart from a number of other car showrooms and even shops around the world. We thus had a great discussion which brought me back to what I wrote last week about the greater freedom in EV design potentially replacing 700 hp V8 engines as the differentiator going forward. Lucid is not what I was thinking of when doing so, but I would claim the Air is a step in the right direction, and no doubt a very impressive one!

The Air in the Meatpacking district showroom

Lucid Motors was started in 2007 in California under the name Atieva as a 20-employee battery company. Today’s CEO Peter Rawlinson joined the company as CTO in 2013, having before that worked as lead engineer for the Model S at Tesla, and before that for Jaguar and Lotus but also for the legendary Porsche tuner Ruf. Rawlinson’s vision was to build the best EV in the world and thereby the first real luxury car in the segment. Before listing Lucid on Nasdaq through a SPAC deal in 2021, the company notably secured financing from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, and its good capitalization no doubt has helped the company bridge the various supply delays it together with other car makers have had in the last year. As I write this, Johan told me they have delivered about 3.000 cars and are ramping up production. Being mostly US-focused so far, plans for Europe have been delayed, but Lucid will launch in a number of European countries in the coming months, including Germany (where there is already a showroom in Munich), Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands..

So what is the Air? The slightly philosophical answer to that is that it’s the kind of car that can only come out of a company that hasn’t built cars along certain routines and principles for a number of decades, and also not from a company with a larger-than-life man at the top who by principle insists on fitting something like falcon doors to a car, even if it delays it by two years and then still doesn’t work when it reaches the market (I know I’m incredible subtle here so just to clarify, I’m referring to the Tesla Model X). The Air takes a new approach and shows a new way of thinking, not only in how it looks but also in the thinking that has gone into it. Rawlinson claims the only principle that steered the team in the development was to build the best EV in the world and having everyone committed to that goal, letting all the underlying pieces contributing to the single goal.

It really looks like nothing else seen from the side…

Size-wise the Air is comparable to a Mercedes E-class on the outside, but with an interior space on S-class level. It looks good but I would not call it beautiful. It is however definitely different, especially over the passenger space between the A- and C-pillars. The Cw-wind resistance factor at 0.21 is of course excellent, and the front booth / frunk space is huge at 280 litres, apparently the biggest in the industry. It may look like a hatchback but the rear booth is conventional, being very deep but also quite low, in a Citroën CX-kind of way. That’s a shame since it makes it difficult for those of us with needs for dog cages or other bulkier stuff, and at least from the outside, it looks like the decision not to go for a hatchback design was not because they couldn’t but rather because they didn’t want to.

The real revelation however comes when you step in to the car and are met with an interior that is far beyond anything in any other EV (very much including cars like the Merc EQS). Under the glass roof that reaches over the full passenger space, Lucid has built an interior mixing leather with textile and wood. It looks and feels very much like the premium car it aspires to be, and does so all the way through and not like for example the mentioned EQS where the lower half of the interior is mostly cheap plastic. It’s a clean, nice design, with all the different screens you have nicely integrated. The glass roof gives a very airy (…) feel, and the leg space in the rear is larger than in most limos, with as only drawback that you can’t fit your feet under the front seats. By the way, the rear seats are in a different color than the front, a neat little design trick I think we’ll see more of. I wasn’t able to test he functionality of all this but the screens interact nicely with each other, and there’s also quite a few functions that can be operated over physical buttons.

The small screen left of the steering wheel reminds of the new Escalade

The Air comes in different equipment versions and also with one or two engines, which is one part of the Lucid magic. At less than 100 kgs and fitting into an airplane carry-on suitcase, not only are these engines smaller and lighter than anything on the market, they are also more powerful. One engine produces 670 hp (meaning that the top version “Dream” has 1300 hp…) and is thereby more than 100 hp stronger than a Taycan engine which is twice as heavy. The battery pack is the second part of the “secret sauce”. Lucid uses cells from LG but develops the pack internally and has managed notably to reduce resistance and thereby power loss through heat. This gives the Air around a 500-mile range, and Johan was very relaxed about this actually being for real even in less-than-ideal conditions. If true, it means that Lucid would set a new range standard. Peter Rawlinson however prefers to talk about charging speed, believing it to be more important than range as it ultimately makes cars with less max range acceptable. And less range means lighter, cheaper, and hereby also sportier cars (remember Rawlinson used to work at Lotus?) Anyway, in Europe Lucid uses the same CCS-system as the German manufacturers and the car can in ideal conditions charge at up to 300 kW, meaning 300 miles in 20 minutes. Prices for dual engine cars will probably start around EUR 150′ which would make it more expensive than a Model S Plaid, but cheaper than a Mercedes EQS.

Will two-tone interiors become the new trend?

I really wish Lucid well, not only because they’ve put together a good car but also because it feels like the next step in the evolution of EV’s, and the first EV I’ve ever really wanted to put in my garage. Of course you need to drive a car before giving any kind of final verdict, but I’m kind of relaxed about it since on one hand tests confirm that it drives well, even very well compared to other EV’s (and that assessment came from none less than Evo!). And on the other, as discussed a bit last week, beyond pushing the pedal to the metal an reaching 100 km/h in 2-3 seconds a few times, which is no doubt a big thrill, neither Lucid nor any other EV will ever bring the excitement through the driving experience. They need to do so differently, and the Lucid air is a good step in that direction!

Robust management and struggling EV’s

On By ChristofferIn News, OpinionLeave a comment

This week will be a small overview of various things happening in the car industry as well as around it, highlighting some current developments and issues and some others that may become important in the coming years. This will of course touch on EV’s that seem to become a crucial part of that future whichever way you turn, but we’ll actually start in the (still) conventional industry, up at Aston Martin’s HQ in Gaydon in the UK. That is where Tobias Moers, previous CEO of Mercedes-AMG, moved in two years ago, with a mission to improve profitability at Aston. He did, quicker than most expected, but in spite of that, last week he was forced to clean his desk.

I’ve touched upon Moers both in my post on AMG and in that on the Aston DBX last year. He was the boss of AMG between 2013 and 2020, leading Mercedes’s sub-brand in a short-term successful, but in my humble opinion a long-term somewhat risky brand dilution strategy, and was hired by Aston’s strong man Lawrence Stroll in 2020 (father of F1 driver Lance Stroll) to accelerate Aston’s turnaround. Moers said himself that he would never have taken the job hadn’t it been for Aston’s line-up, especially the DBX, and he started the transformational Project Horizon straight away, contributing to rapidly increasing profit numbers for Aston, to a large extent built on the DBX. There’s no doubt he greatly improved and streamlined Aston’s production processes, but in parallel he also became known for his “robust management style”, apparently contributing to many senior departures and a general bad climate in the Gaydon factory. This to me sounds very much like a cultural clash between German efficiency and British, well, uniqueness, but Moers is anyway now replaced by ex-Ferrari chief executive Amedeo Felisa as Aston prepares to launch a new range of sports cars, most of them electric.

Well, he does look rather “robust”…

That brings us to the latest from the EV world, and I believe what we’re witnessing right now and will continue to witness over the coming months and years, is the great pains associated with going from the production of a few hundred cars to true mass production. The two new EV brands mostly in the news and also those with the most exagerrated valuations (although those are far less exagerrated now than a few weeks ago) are no doubt Lucid Motors, the American luxury EV builder, and Rivian, the equally American EV pick-up builder. Starting with the latter, it recently had to increase the price of its R1T by up to 20% and halve its production target of 25′ cars this year. So far, around 900 Rivians have been built. Lucid on the other hand, saying it wants to get its first car “exactly right” has pushed back the production start several months.

There’s a few things here worth considering. No doubt part of the problems can be traced back to the global supply chain issues the world is currently experiencing, more on that later. That’s however far form the whole story, the most important component of which to my mind boils down to whether these new car builders can emulate the Tesla success story with the same kind of “mojo” that made Tesla what it is. I’m not saying they can’t, but it’s certainly not a given. Firstly, there are very few Elon Musks in the world. Secondly, it’s very easy to forget the production hell Tesla went through over close to ten years before starting to make money. At one point that production hell was so bad that dealers had to fit the wheels on the cars, just to give an example, and quality issues plagued the company on several occasions (and to be honest, still do).

Personally I think it would be great if Rivian made it!

That’s all changed now, but the change consists in a development which has made Tesla much more of a standardized car company, whether they like it or not. Which then of course brings us back to all the traditional carmakers who now all have a number of EV’s in their line-up. They were certainly neither first, nor very innovative, but they know how to build cars and have the production process not only under control, but perfected over decades. I’m sure we’ll have a new Tesla at some point. It may be a brand we’ve yet to hear of, or it may be Lucid and Rivian, but that’s far from certain. They probably have about 12 months to make or break it, and I wouldn’t put my oney on them making it.

Things would certainly become much easier for not only Lucid, Rivian and Tesla, but also for all other car makers in the world if the current supply chain disruptions were solved, or at least improving. Currently however, rather the contrary is the case. Many of you have probably already seen the below picture in various forms, showing all ships currently waiting to unload in China, mainly in locked-down Shanghai. The total number is over 500, and they’re not waiting because the port is full of ships leaving…

Zero Covid has a price…

Shanghai is in a lockdown that doesn’t seem to end anytime soon, rather the contrary as imposing similar lockdown measures in Peking is now being discussed. We’re not going into Covid policies here, let’s just say that the combination of a zero Covid policy leading to most people not having antibodies in combination with clearly less efficient domestic vaccines (no Western vaccines are allowed in China) make even the current Omicron variant potentially quite dangerous. And “dangerous” in a country of 1.5bn in habitants could mean a few million deaths. The current situation will therefore not change soon, but at some point China will have to decide between an economic depression an relaxing measures. Not only car builders hope for the latter.

To conclude, let me share an interesting picture from Zeihan on Geopolitics (highly recommended for those with an interest in geopolitics!), showing the material consumption of EV’s vs conventional cars, as well as materials used in various energy sources. It’s no secret that EV’s require a greater quantity of most materials than conventional cars, quite a few of which are problematic, as highlighted in my post on why EV’s won’t save the world a bit more than a year ago. It’s also true that things are improving, which is great. I notably learnt from a trustworthy source last week that Tesla has now managed to eliminate cobalt in roughly half their batteries. Such and other improvements also mean EV’s make up the CO2 deficit from their production in fewer km’s which is also great – although that calculation never includes the fact that you’re building a whole new car often only to replace a still fully functional existing one, as I believe it should, given we still have no answer to what should happen to all the cars we plan on replacing with EV’s.

These are not produced in your typical holiday destination…

There will however always be more problematic materials needed in EV’s and renewable energy sources, and if we think about where these are produced, that puts Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine into perspective. We’re currently all dreaming of eliminating Russia as an energy supplier (and please, also as an aggressive invader of other countries!), and few people think of Saudi Arabia and Iran as other great countries to do business with, but as we electrify the world and need to get to the minerals mentioned above, we’ll have to deal with a far larger number of other not-so-great countries than we did in the oil days. These notably include Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Mozambique, Guinea, Gabon, China, Congo and yes, Russia. That’s obviously not ideal in any way, but it’s the price to pay for a future based on windmills and solar panels!

Happy New Year!

On By ChristofferIn NewsLeave a comment

2021 is slowly coming to an end and it’s time to summarize it through the eyes of the Thrill of Driving, in other words this blog. In a few words, it’s been a truly great car year and that many of you seem to get some inspiration around your car dreams through this blog makes us very proud! There’s around three times as many of you this year compared to 2020, which at the time was also a record year, and as readers you’re part of a truly global group, with most of you coming from the US followed by the UK, our native Sweden and Switzerland where I live, but with other countries following all the way down under to Australia! We can only thank you for your interest and fidelity and in this last post of the year, I thought we’d look back at some of your favourite readings in 2021 as well as some other noticeable things that may follow us into 2022.

For the Aussie readers (and everybode else), I’ll need to cover Holden at some point!

Looking at your favourite car posts from the year through the lense of the dream garage, a concept I’m sure quite a few of us regularly phantasize about, most of you would like to put something like the following mix behind your garage door…

  • The sports car would be a Maserati 3200 GT / Coupé GT, a Lamborghini Countach or a Ferrari Testarossa. Obviously the cheapest option here is the Maserati and that post, by now more than two years old, continues to be your favourite. So far that hasn’t improved resale values though so it’s not too late to make that dream come through – go for it! You’ll need a bigger budget for a Testarossa and (especially) a Countach, but you get far more drama as well, including the pleasure of a mechanical 12-cylinder!
There would always be room in my garage for a Countach!
  • Those of you with family needs seem mostly to opt for one of the two grand daddys of SUV’s, however with very different profiles. On one hand there’s the classy Range Rover Classic, on the other the very cool MB AMG G63. Obviously these two don’t really compare and the RR could be in the oldtimer category as well, although there are firms out there that bring them to a modern standard, as highlighted in the post on restomods. Some of you still prefer the charm of a good old station wagon and many of you like the the Volvo 850 T5-R! That’s great as long as you make sure it’s yellow!
If the G63 is a bit too common for you, there’s always the Brabus G800!
  • There’s very little competition on what the convertible would be, namely the MB R129 SL that I also wrote about almost two years ago but which continues to go strong. Again, this blog luckily doesn’t influence resale values (yet) so it’s not too late! Those that prefer adding an 80’s coupé as their third car would instead go for the wonderful Alfa GTV6 I wrote about back in May. And those who want what is still considered by many as the best car of all time are by now on the lookout for a MB 500 E as per my recent post.
Not the world’s best car, but the coolest headrests ever!

Other topics that have caught your interest include F1, and how could that be any different given the fabulous season which just ended. It will really be interesting to see where we head next year given all the changes that await, as described back in October.

As we’re about to turn the page on 2021, what can we expect for 2022? The first thing to note is that if you’re in the market for a new car, you’re in for a wait, and it could be a very long one. Most manufacturers struggle with supply chain disruptions caused by everything from Covid to the conflict around Taiwan and if your car isn’t in stock, it could easily be up to two years before you get it. This is something that risks not improving anytime soon as China continues to close down whole regions at the sight of a Covid infection, something that is highly disruptive. Then again, why would you bother? As this blog hopefully helps illustrate there are always great options among cars already built, and the price of these is increasing as we speak given new cars can’t be delivered, so don’t wait too long!

Our globalised world isn’t really working right now…

Sales of electrical cars are exploding (although from a very low base), so there’s reason to think that 2022 will see the large break-through that arguably already started in 2021, also since all large manufacturers are now in the game. That’s all good and great but contrary to what you would believe from mainstream media, we’re nowhere near EV’s taking over completely. They still make up low-single percentages in the US and at most low double-digits in some EV-friendly/subsidized other markets. With the push for green energy leading to strange decisions around varous sources of base power (namely to close them down without a replacement) we’d also better make sure we can satisfy the rising energy demand not only EV’s currently give rise to. As I write this, it doesn’t look very promising at least from a European perspective. It would also be helpful if we can find some substitute for those problematic metals in the batteries that I highlighted in my post on EV’s almost a year ago.

Lucid is an interesting new market entrant in the full EV segment

Finally in my personal garage I need to tell you what happened after the XC90 left. The search was large and covered various concepts as you may remember from my post at the time. I’m happy to say it’s come to an end and that I’m thrilled with the outcome! More about that early next year along with the regular mix of old and new, classic and sports car, F1 and an opinion here and there. If you have ideas on what the blog should contain, do bring them on, I read all suggestions and try to take them into account. And please subscribe – then you’re sure not to miss anything, and you help us making the blog even better!

A happy, prosperous and healthy new year 2022 to you all – may it be full with great drives!