Showing posts with label cars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cars. Show all posts

Thursday, June 5, 2025

New RAM CEO admits retiring the V-8 Hemi engine for RAM 1500 truck was a mistake, brings it back this summer

 

... Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis, who unretired from the automaker late last year, admitted the decision to cancel the Hemi engine for its popular consumer-focused Ram 1500 was a mistake.

“Everyone makes mistakes, but how you handle them defines you. Ram screwed up when we dropped the Hemi — we own it and we fixed it,” Kuniskis said. “We’re not just bringing back a legendary V-8 engine, we’re igniting an assertive product plan and expanding the freedom of choice in powertrain for our customers.” ...

Ram’s sales have been struggling for years amid price increases and production mishaps, as well as the automaker killing off the Hemi engine — a staple of the automaker and its predecessors since the 1950s. ...

More.

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Burning cargo ship bound for Mexico from China with 800 electric vehicles on board abandoned off the coast of Alaska lol


 

... Fires across all vessel segments hit the highest level in a decade in 2024, according to insurer Allianz Commercial. ...

More.

Gee, I wonder why.

Don't park one in your garage.

Monday, April 7, 2025

Car manufacturing jobs, so-called good jobs, already don't pay enough to enable these Detroit auto workers to buy their own homes and have families, and they fear layoffs because of the tariffs

 The Wall Street Journal doesn't mention it here.

This guy's been working for the company for 10 years and he's still renting.

... Daniel Campbell, who maneuvers steel auto parts around a Stellantis factory north of Detroit, says he and many of his colleagues are worried about layoffs.

“I’m scared,” he said from his brick bungalow on the west side of Detroit, which he rents with two roommates. “We’re complaining about gas and eggs now. Who is going to be able to buy these cars that are already $80,000, and then you make it $90,000?”

The 46-year-old UAW member, who makes about $30 an hour, and one of his roommates have talked about trimming their spending, including eating out less and cutting clothing and electronics purchases. 

“There’s going to come a time where we’re not going to be able to go and spend,” he said

 At work, the assembly lines have been running faster in recent weeks as Stellantis has tried to stockpile parts ahead of the tariffs, Campbell said. He and his co-workers are running out of room to store the parts. ...

Friday, March 28, 2025

Just as 9.7 million of 43 million student loan borrowers become past due again, cars they can't afford to buy anyway soar in price due to tariffs, a one-two punch alienating the youth vote from Trump

 Over 9 million student loan borrowers past due after bills restarted, Fed estimates

... A new student loan delinquency can cause a borrower’s credit score to drop more than 150 points, the Fed warns.

... The tariffs will kick in at midnight on April 3, and Trump has said they will be “permanent.” ...

... A spokesperson for Klarna acknowledged to NBC News that people needing to pay for meals on credit is “a bad indicator for society.” ...

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Republicans under Trump lay the groundwork for the police state which Democrats could only wish for: AG Pam Bondi threatens US House Representative Crockett (TX-30) with terrorism charge


 
 In the future, everything wrong will be deemed "domestic terror" and suffer the draconian punishments for domestic terror.
 
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has nothing better to do than appear everyday on Fox News, has the temerity to threaten a Congresswoman. Wait until it's your free speech which is threatened.
 
On second thought, don't wait. It already is.
 

... “She is an elected public official, so she needs to tread very carefully because nothing will happen to Elon Musk, and we’re going to fight to protect all of the Tesla owners throughout this country,” Bondi said during an appearance on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” ...     

If AG Merrick Garland had done this to a Republican, you would have never heard the end of it from the likes of Mark Levin and his ilk.

But hey, when Republicans do it it's OK!

 


Methinks 'twas lefty Elon who did the turning

But of course the turncoat liberal poofter would miss that.

  

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Violent attacks on Tesla keep law enforcement busy nationwide, but especially in the leftist Pacific Northwest

 Violent attacks on Tesla dealerships spike as Musk takes prominent role in Trump White House

... Musk critics have organized dozens of peaceful demonstrations at Tesla dealerships and factories across North America and Europe. Some Tesla owners, including a U.S. senator who feuded with Musk, have vowed to sell their vehicles. 

 But the attacks are keeping law enforcement busy. ...

A number of the most prominent incidents have been reported in left-leaning cities in the Pacific Northwest, like Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, where anti-Trump and anti-Musk sentiment runs high. ...




Tuesday, March 18, 2025

The US depression in road travel from COVID-19 ended in 2024 and lasted five years

 The 3.257 trillion miles of 2019 was exceeded in 2024 by 5 billion miles, on an average annual basis.

The depression in road travel from the Great Financial Crisis lasted eight years, from 2007 to 2015.

Previous to that we had similar, but smaller contractions in US road travel, from 1979 to 1982, three years, and from 1973 to 1975, two years, precipitated by the oil trade shocks of the Iranian Revolution and the Yom Kippur War respectively.

You are now free to move about the country.

 


Vehicles in the US are now 12.6 years old on average, up two months from 2023, 1.1% are EVs

May 22, 2024:

 Average age of vehicles hits new record in 2024

... The US vehicle fleet surged to 286 million vehicles in operation (VIO) in January ... 

... 3.2 million EVs in operation in January ...

Sunday, March 9, 2025

Tesla has become real unpopular all of a sudden, what could the reason be?


 

 ... Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, more than a dozen violent or destructive acts have been directed at Tesla facilities, according to court documents, surveillance photographs, police records and local media reports reviewed by The Washington Post. ... 

More.

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Fascist Musk, Fascist Tesla: The electric car company would have been unprofitable for seven consecutive years through 2020 without selling its phony government carbon credits to other dirty automakers


 

 Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding

... Musk is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ coffers. ... He has been a big beneficiary of national industrial policy, especially Democrat industrial policy, through government funding. ...

About a third of Tesla’s $35 billion in profits since 2014 has come from selling federal and state regulatory credits to other automakers. The credits are given to automakers that meet certain standards, including selling a certain percentage of zero-emission vehicles. Tesla is the largest seller of these credits to automakers that don’t meet the standards and want to avoid paying a fine.

These credits played a crucial role in the company’s first profitable quarter in 2013 and its first full year of profitability in 2020, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Without the credits, Tesla would have lost more than $700 million in 2020, marking a seventh-consecutive year with no profits, according to an analysis of SEC filings.

With the credits, the company instead reported a $862 million profit.

While Musk has advocated for ending the EV tax credit for consumers, he has said little about these regulatory credits. ...

Nearly a tenth of government money that has benefited Musk’s companies comes from agencies in eight states, including California. ...

In 2016, SpaceX’s success in securing federal contracts prompted rival Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin (and owner of The Washington Post), to say in a company meeting: “Elon’s real superpower is getting government money,” The Post reported. “From now on, we go after everything that SpaceX bids on.”

More.

Musk's many government subsidized businesses are just the currently most prominent examples of American fascism. For bigger ones simply look into the defense industry, the energy industry, or healthcare, or Amazon's early no-sales-tax arrangement which allowed it to become the retail behemoth that it is. President Eisenhower warned us about this long ago, but we're so used to it now that we just take it all for granted.

Real capitalism is swallowed up by the combine between the taxation authority holding a gun to your head, taking your money, and giving it to the corporations.

That's the racket. That's the American way.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Elon Musk is the biggest federal government teet sucker in history, the wealthiest man in the world on the backs of American taxpayers, and the biggest hypocrite about it


 

The hypocrite:

 
 
The grifter:

As Musk works to slash federal spending, his own firms have received billions in government contracts

Over the last decade, Musk's companies SpaceX and Tesla were awarded at least $18 billion in federal contracts, according to spending data -- with SpaceX winning more than $17 billion worth of contracts since 2015.

 

And don't forget the benefit of the government coin in the till for every Tesla purchased: 



Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Kevin Dowd: close the border, eliminate regulations, end the war on fossil fuels, cancel electric vehicle mandates, do a little dance







 
 
 Kevin Dowd takes over for Maureen Dowd on Thanksgiving, here:
 

Trump promises a return to common sense and has been given the tools to accomplish it with an electoral mandate and all three branches of government on his side. He cannot squander it. He must not get bogged down in petty disputes and perceived slights. ...

There are things he can do right away to make a difference: close the border, eliminate regulations, end the war on fossil fuels and cancel EV mandates. ...

He should move forward without rancour or grievance, fuelled by the joy of the Trump Shuffle, his robot-like dance that has broken out at UFC fights and across the NFL. I’m going to have the younger members of the family teach it to Maureen on Thanksgiving.

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Every single dollar spent by government is a dollar thrown into the fire, except for those handed directly to Elon Musk for every Tesla sold, so Trump adding a new Department of Government Efficiency is extremely amusing

Yeah, let's put the HOG feeding at the government trough and getting filthy stinking rich off electric car subsidies and tax credits, and government rocket contracts, in charge of government efficiency.

 


 

 Trump announces Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy to lead new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ 

What a bunch of phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rollas. 

"Government efficiency" is one of those oxymorons that is more equal than other oxymorons.