Automotive

This summer my wife decided to go all electric with the Volvo EX90.  I must say we like it a lot!  Cheers

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In terms of autonomy it is rating at 500km here in Canada and it’s very true to its rating, maybe even better (getting 550 to 600 if driving less then 110 km/h on the highway). The real test will be this winter but we don’t go far and we can charge home. She decided to changed because of the better driving experience… more to come

I cannot disagree with her...

I must say the first two brings great memories as I had that exact same car when it came out

You didn’t want to go the ubiquitous Tesla route?

I haven't driven one, a few friends have them.  They're nice cars!  The friends who do have them say they're very pleasant cars but seem to have some software bugs.  One has commented the audio system is very good.  A good portion of these friends all drove Tesla Model X vehicles before getting into the Volvo EX90.

But the early ones would die if not used for a few days. The 12v battery. And no easy way to charge I’ve heard. I just drove an ultra one for a few days and the air suspension and ride was so nice. Very luxurious. Will keep my wife in xc90 as she doesn’t want to do electric despite me saying it would be easier for her to just plug into the garage vs going to gas stations

One day, there will be a generation of kids and adults who didn't really grow up in the petrol/diesel age. And they will ask incredulously... "You mean you had to fill the car with a combustible liquid? In a tank? That sounds dirty and dangerous. And this liquid was derived from oil, which is derived from prehistoric carbon matter?"
I try to avoid vehicles with air suspensions now. As they do seem to have some problems and risks as the vehicles age. But yes, they can give an SUV a great character of both responsiveness and comfort.
I do like the idea of an electric car. Thank you very much. You get Ferrari level performance and around BMW M3 pricing. The car used to be very noisy and unrefined, but the new ones are a lot more livable.
There are kids and young adults today in USA who find it incredulous that washing machines at one point had little lawn mower engines attached to them! These existed well into the 1950s! Maybe longer in some parts of the USA.

The comfort air suspension provide is just something I could not live without! Cheers

I’ve had multiple air suspension cars. No issues. More composure over rough roads. I think they’ve gotten better over the years.

However, I am sure there will be little bugs appearing overtime, but it does not bother me that much as the overall drive quality and comfort Trump all of these potential pitfalls compared to other vehicles for our own personal taste

I've driven my Tesla for six years now.  I absolutely DO NOT LIKE the styling of my Model 3.  And I kind of want to switch to the new Model 3 - as it looks better in my eyes.  I have the "platypus duck bill" front bumper.  


The Tesla Model 3 is extremely aerodynamic.  But from certain angles, that front bumper design doesn't look great in my eyes.




In a 3/4 view, the Tesla doesn't look bad, but in a frontal view, the duck-bill shape of the front bumper becomes really apparent.


Every day I go to my garage, I see the car and it looks unattractive to me.  Having owned the car for six years, I still haven't gotten quite used to it.  However, the car has been very well behaved, very reliable.  I was stranded once for four hours because I had a tire punctured and there's no spare.  Not the car's fault.  I now keep a spare in the trunk.  Outside of this, the car is been extremely reliable.  The car is also noisy tire and road noise, the brakes aren't very good, the gas pedal isn't hinged on the floor for precision, the glass is not hydrophobic (all of my previous cars had hydrophobic glass), the rain sensor is not a dedicated sensor and is integrated into the cameras and doesn't work well, the firewall between the hood and the passenger compartment moves and the brake booster is on that firewall so the brake pedal feels somewhat vague, but despite these small issues, I still like the car.  It's also the first "efficient" car I've ever owned.  All of my previous cars were more stability/handling focused.  




The new Tesla Model 3 facelift looks much better in my eyes!  


Later this year, BMW will come out with their "Neue Klasse" line of cars.  Which should be very good.  They will have the big screen (a la Tesla) and while I think this car looks a little weird and futuristic, I do think it looks fun and futuristic.  My big question is how good will the advanced driver assistance systems be.  And secondly, BMW dealers want to make a lot of money in service (more than Tesla at least), what are the maintenance requirements and costs?  And will a spare tire be available?



I also recently drove this - the G580 E drives well.  It's fast, it's comfortable, it's got good stability.  But it is a bit conspicuous.  The range is short.  And the advanced driver assistance systems are not as good as Tesla's.  Tesla has a very smart cruise control that is absolutely fantastic for longer journeys.  This is one of the few Electric Cars that has a spare tire!  

Model S and X just got their updates a few weeks ago.  

They have not replowed a sufficient amount of profit into development and have not brought out anything of note in the last 6 years or so. Even the Model 3 and Y facelifts are largely that - maintaining the 400V architecture and significantly lower charging speeds than more modern competition. In many European countries sales have cratered (mostly 50% under same period 2024 (Norway being a rare exception), and 2024 was already drastically weaker than 2023) in a strongly growing market for electric cars.

I don't want to get into the politics part nor sound like a conspiracy theorist - but there is a lot of irrationality on all sides. There are also politically-motivated groups whom are intentionally damaging Elon Musk, pandering to simple thinkers and portraying him as something he is not on social media - making accusations with little evidence. And not to sound terribly conspiracy theorist, some of those groups have even tried to partner with car companies competitive to Tesla.
I am not a big Elon Musk fan, but he is being falsely accused of many things in Europe and across the world. And surprisingly, social media has made many people very shallow thinkers. If they thought slightly more deeply, they would probably realize that many of the accusations against Musk fail under any logical scrutiny. But all of this doesn't matter. You know why? Chinese cars will soon dominate the landscape. VW Group, BMW Group, Mercedes-Benz Group will all become slowly weakened by the Chinese car brands, and eventually large percentages of shares of these groups will be bought by Chinese banks and Chinese car companies - some possibly becoming subsidiaries of Chinese car brands.
Some people have said that the European car companies will follow the Swiss watch company trajectories in the 1970s and 1980s - that trajectory is shifting from a practical tool object to a luxury status object. Those people have a cool opinion, but they don't likely have any true experience in the car industry; that doesn't work in the car industry. The analogy doesn't work in real life. In order to make a great car, there's billions of Euros required in R&D. There's trickle down and trick up economics. Rolls Royce is a great machine today because it has access to BMW's suppliers, resources, and technology. But, back when RR and Bentley were tiny producers, making cars on their own, they made a beautiful cars that drove very poorly. And they made 1200 cars in a good year. Today, those brands make 20,000 cars a year, having real scale. In other words, you need tremendous scale, technology partners, and a huge R&D budget to create a good car with its own platform.
Having worked in the automotive space, there's a lot of noise out there, a lot of theories. Either way, the future looks rough.
Musk is one of the many executives who realize the writing is on the wall for the car industry - the big picture guys all see the Chinese dominance scenario. But few executives are making drastic changes to keep their firms relevant in the next generation, as few are invested to the same extent Musk is. Musk is slightly younger and he owns a higher percentage of a car company than almost any other executive. Thus, Musk is stuck in this business for the long-haul; whereas the other executives are already near retirement. Musk wants to pivot his Tesla company into something else, into an AI/Robotics/Robotaxi firm - who knows if he will be successful. Nobody can say this is right or wrong - too early to tell. I would say that the other Western car firms might not be pivoting fast enough. The Western car firms are still trying to figure out how to cut costs - when they need to be thinking about new products.

But the bigger issue is that the Tesla package simply lost competitiveness. Their aftersales is abysmal here (in comparison to existing brands), the reliability is mediocre at best. While for many of the early adopters (especially Model S) the advantages that it had back then as an electric car made them overlook this, in a market where the product is at best par for the course and if one is less generous slowly falling behind, these become real issues.