Are we doing this? I guess we’re doing this. It’s Thursday and we’ve got: General Motors is blinding people, Peugeot is confusing people, VinFast is trying to win people over, and Elon Musk contradicting himself.
Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
Elon Musk Sells Lots Of Tesla Shares
No further TSLA sales planned after today
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2022
I’m not interested in all the discourse around Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Twitter. It’s exhausting and it’s not my beat. I highly recommend you read The Verge if that’s your jam. They’re doing a good job.
Musk either is a super brain genius and it’s all going to work out for him, or he’s been winging it all along and it’ll collapse around him. Or maybe not. There’a great line from The Coup’s “Repo Man” that goes:
Banks that give the loan figure – damn, in the worst case
We makin money cause we had it in the first place!
And where was it that they got that cash from?
You when you deposit it from bustin yo’ ass
That’s all to say: If you’re the richest man in the world and you lose money, you still might be the second richest man in the world and your ability to make money is directly proportional to how much you have. Plus, there’s always money somewhere in Qatar or Saudi Arabia or the banana stand or whatever.
The tweet above is from April and it’s Elon Musk, as I read it, implying there were no plans to sell more Tesla shares to support Twitter (We already shared a report that Musk was considering getting new loans for Twitter using Tesla as collateral).
According to CNBC and SEC filings, Elon Musk sold some more shares yesterday worth about $3.6 billion. This is, if I’m counting correctly, the third time this year he’s sold shares since saying he wasn’t planning to do so. I like this quote from the CNBC article:
According to financial research firm VerityData, Musk has sold 94,202,321 shares so far this year at an average price of $243.46 per share for pre-tax proceeds of approximately $22.93 billion.
Director of research for VerityData, Ben Silverman, wrote in an e-mail to CNBC on Wednesday, “Musk’s prior sales going back to November 2021 were expertly timed, so Tesla shareholders need to pay attention to Musk’s actions and not his words – or lack thereof when it comes to his recent selling.”
Plans change! It could be a tougher market for Tesla going forward as competition from Chinese firms in China and everyone else in Europe and the United States gets a lot stronger.
Markets are not fully transparent or logical/rational and perhaps that data is just being priced in, but Twitter has dropped from about $292 when the Tweet above was posted to… $156 yesterday. That’s not quite a 50% drop.
Peugeot Is Dropping The INCEPTION At CES
Don’t name a car inception. That’s a silly name. Before the movie, you can call a car INCEPTION in all caps and people will think it’s clever. Now people will just think about the movie. You try telling that to the French!
Peugeot is now part of Stellantis and so it makes a bit of sense that they should debut its new concept at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas next year. Here’s all the company is saying about it:
With a new formal language that exalts its feline and attractive attitude, its revolutionary interior design and its promise of unprecedented driving sensations, the PEUGEOT INCEPTION CONCEPT opens a new era based on the brand values, Allure, Emotion and Excellence.
Do I hope this means that Peugeot will start selling cars in the United States? Absolutely. Will this happen? I’m guessing no. Stellantis needs another brand in the US like David needs another rusty ass Jeep. I feel like every Fiat dealership I see is 18 used non-Fiats and one 500X that never sold.
Also, don’t name a car INCEPTION:
GM Recalls 825,000 Vehicles For Super Bright Lights
Brains are weird. If there are 15 people in your town of 300,000 people who have mullets and you happen to randomly see all of those people in the same day you’d assume the hairstyle had made a huge comeback. If you saw one of these people every three weeks you’d just assume you saw some people with mullets.
I bring this up because a couple of times I feel like I’ve seen Tahoes or Suburbans where it seemed like all the lights were on in front and it was super annoying (I live in New York and they’re extremely common). It didn’t happen enough for my brain to catalog it as anything other than random.
Then I saw the news today from the AP via The Detroit News: “GM recalls over 825k vehicles to fix daytime running lights.”
General Motors is recalling more than 825,000 SUVs and cars in the U.S. and Canada because the daytime running lights may not turn off when the headlights are on.
The recall covers certain 2022 and 2023 Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Silverado 1500, Chevrolet Suburban and Tahoe, GMC Sierra 1500 and GMC Yukon SUVs. Also included are Cadillac CT4s and CT5s from the 2020 to 2023 model years, as well as Buick Envisions from 2021 to 2023.
My brain feels like it had an itch for three months and the Associated Press just dragged its pointy nails along my cerebellum. Such a satisfying feeling.
VinFast Opens Four More Stores In California
VinFast, the Vietnamese car company hoping to sell electric cars in the United States, has just opened four more stores in Southern California as part of their curious push into the market. Here’s what the company’s CEO Giang Nguyen had to say:
“We are proud to open four more VinFast stores in California, rapidly expanding our retail system to bring direct product experiences to customers and meet their vehicle needs. This will not only be where the customers learn more about VinFast’s products but also a place to connect VinFast to the customers and take care of them for a lifetime of car ownership.”
We had a chance to poke around some of their future cars at the Los Angeles Auto Show and thought they looked as though they could be competitive if priced right. We haven’t driven them, but our buddy Kevin Williams did for Jalopnik and it doesn’t sound like their vehicles were ready for prime time:
The VinFast VF8 is a compact-ish midsize EV crossover, with 350 horsepower in Eco trim and 402 HP in the Plus trim. Even with the generally higher curb weight inherent to an electric vehicle, 350 horsepower should be enough to scoot the VF8 around with authority. Yet throughout my time behind the wheel, the VF8 felt like it had barely half that output. I drove every pre-production vehicle VinFast brought to the event; all of them felt slow, and their performance was inconsistent.
The Flush
Should Peugeot come back to the United States? If it did, what would be the product mix?
- The Volvo XC40 and Escape are the only two SUVs that did well on new IIHS test
- The men who helped Carlos Ghosn escape had a far worse fate
- The 2023 Subaru WRX Miraculously Only Costs $31,625
- The World’s Biggest Shipping Company Wants To Ban Gas-Powered Trucks
- Used car prices keep falling as inflation finally cools
Got a hot tip? Send it to us here. Or check out the stories on our homepage.
Photos: Peugeot, Tesla, Adult Swim, GM, Vinfast
Feeling a bit vindicated by that GM recall.
Was driving to meet a couple friends on Saturday night and had a Tahoe behind me at a light after dark. The headlights were bouncing off my side mirrors and straight into my eyes. Felt like it took about 30 min to recover from they were so bright. Kinda glad to hear its a correctable issue and not just thats what headlights are now, deal with it in your low sedan.
I’m pretty sure those lights blinding you have nothing to do with this recall, which is about DRLs.
On a more personal note, it seems the idiotic trend of driving around at night with fog lights always ON that I’ve started noticing a few years back is now firmly entrenched, as the vast majority of cars I now encounter on the road are being driven by one of these morons (the rest of them are driving with only the DRLs on at night, with zero lighting in the back).
I think if Peugeot was really wanting to come back to the US, then take the Puegeot line up from Mexico, diesels and all from the SUV 2008 to the Landtrek(Might be a way to hide the Chineseness of these trucks in the US), exclude the delivery vans and sedans and just copy and paste.
Though I do think if they are able to basically give away the E cars and SUV’s in Europe we should be getting the E2008 minimally at about the same price as a Bolt.
Peugeot doesn’t need to come back to the US as a brand, they could just sell Peugeot’s products as Chryslers. The 508 could be a Chrysler 200 and the 408 could be well something? They could probably sell the currently Ds branded crossovers as Chryslers too.
So maybe VinFast is only making cars as a publicity stunt for their “real” moneymaker… A website where you can lookup VINs Fast. Need to renew your insurance, but don’t remember your VIN? VinFast! Want to check the CarFax on a Craigslist post with the license plate showing? VinFast!
They’ll all be Thousandaires before you know it.
“Should Peugeot come back to the United States?”
“Now I’m here to convince you to buy a Peugeot.”
Aha! I see through your entirely transparent plan.
Also, yes.
I actually owned a base model 1982 Ford Escort 2-dr hatch in high school. It would have been about 10 years old at the time. The build quality was very good, and it held up extremely well (as compared with other cars from that era). I would be interested to see how we would evaluate the build quality of a 2022 Vinfast in 2062 to make this a fair comparison 🙂 Or are you suggesting that Vinfast build quality is on par with the industry circa 40 years ago?
Peugeot should come back to America, and the dealers should be merged with Fiat-Alfa Romeo-Maserati dealerships. Make this a full experience with the different brands in different zones of the dealership.
On the Peugeot side: Sell only the 508 and 408 models (especially the 508 SW PSE) along with the full range of Peugeot kitchen equipment with a little French bakery on site. Décor being almost but not quite stereotypical French.
The Fiat and Alfa Romeo middle section: The 500E and Abarth 500E along side the Alfa lineup of Giuila, Stelvio, and Tonale with an Italian coffee house. Décor being bright and cheerfully stereotypical Italian, lean into it.
The Maserati side: The full Maserati line up with the leather, paint and wheel choices on the walls, the MC20 on a turntable. There’s access to a separated cigar bar. Décor being a very upscale yet inviting lounge like.
Oh boy. So…. full disclosure I’ve been a TSLA investor for a long time, andddddd…. earlier this week I cashed out all of it. I’ve lost over 50% of the value of my portfolio in 6 months, because Elon has gone from Space Elon and tweeting sass as the big 3, to full MAGA-Qtard insanity. Allowing politicians that instill terrorists to storm our nation’s capital building to be amplified is not a good thing. Constant downplaying of Covid and changing his pronouns to “Prosecute/Fauci”? What the fuck. I wrote a big letter to the board of investors, told them I’m no longer comfortable with my money being associated with someone like this, and sold everything. I’m now sitting on a pile of ‘pretend’ money that I need to reinvest or I’ll do something stupid like purchase more non-running 70s euro luxury cars or something.
Anyway, TLDR: Long time investors are bailing, you can hate Elon news all you want but this is a huge tidal shift in public perception, and attacking the core customer base that made a company successful is not 4D chess, it’s fucking stupid.
Makes sense. I habitually invest poorly, recently I’ve been watching the price drop and been itching to invest in Tesla
Him cashing out as much as he can is no good sign. Watch it drop, if he continues to cash out, doesn’t announce realistic smart products, keep on lying about products that will never happen (fsd, robotaxi, roadster, cybertruck) then, don’t invest.
If there is no products strategy switch, the place is doomed. Lawsuits are coming in hot.
That’s also why it’s newsworthy of this site. The 420$ share was built around lies, people have noticed, if nothing real happen, it’s no good sign for tesla (or the company value will just drop back to other similar manufacturer values, and that’s just bad for Mr Turd.)
Ps 1st answer to you is being moderated, don’t know why.
Since Stellantis — or whatever they’re calling themselves this week — isn’t listening to me, I’d like to see them bring back the 205 GTI and 405 Mi16. Drove the former in France a jillion years ago and loved the daylights out of it, and had the latter on loan here and drove the absolute bejeebers out of it. Screaming wacko-mobiles deserve a comeback as compensation for hideous crap-beasts like the Vinfast.
Unrelated question: After reading the Jalopnik article, I have to wonder: where is the money for all this weird Vin-stuff coming from? Anybody know?
And yes, a day without any reference to Musk would be nice indeed!
I know this isn’t your fault because, like you said, it is relevant to the culture, but god damn am I so tired of hearing about Muskrat. I’m tired of his every breath being reported on and him completely dominating every news cycle on every site and blog out there. We just got over like 6 years of endless reporting about that other guy, now it’s this bozo’s turn. One person and their actions being what seems like the only news worthy happenings of the world just seems unhealthy and feels like it kinda bludgeons everyone into a relative hivemind. Like, it’s all we hear about, so it’s all we think about and all we talk about. I just… I’m so tired (have I mentioned that?) of the omnipresence of cult of personality types and the attention they always get. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older now, but I don’t ever remember being as exhausted of the happenings of the world and it’s reporting as I’ve gotten over the last like 7 years.
I’ll stop yelling at the clouds now.
/tangent
Also yes, bring Peugeot back, but we get to taser anyone who calls it “pewjet”
Yeah, I’d be cool with bringing Peugeot back. When I was in the UK earlier this year, I saw a few of the new 508 wagons while I was sitting in traffic and I think that’s probably the best looking currently produced wagon. Although I certainly wouldn’t say no to a 508 sedan. Their current 308 looks pretty good too.
Keep doing that dirt, Elon, but remember! The field mouse is fast, but the owl sees at night!
As for headlights, since I bought my Miata I almost permanently have my mirror turned to the night side. Was in traffic the other day at dusk and a big ole lifted Ram pulled up behind me and I went to flip the mirror. A second after I did that the guy turned his lights to just his running lights till the light turned green. Was a pretty cool move. He got a thumbs up.
I guess, in summary, fuck modern headlights. I hate them so god damned much.
That lifted Ram driver sounds like a considerate person. So many drivers just don’t realize (or don’t care) what they’re doing to others on the road. I recall an automotive writer who bragged about driving around with his high-beams on all the time because he was too lazy to replace the bulbs in his low beams…
My current car has one of those fancy “automatic” dimming rearview mirrors (side mirrors, too), but to be honest, I miss the simple old manual flippy kind of mirror. The automatic one doesn’t always seem to know when I want it to be dim and when I want it to be bright… and it takes a moment to adjust while the flippy kind was instantaneous and 100% within my own control.
Of course, there’s nothing out there to combat the increasingly bright lights coming at you from the front.
I actually use yellow tinted driving glasses at night now. I need readers to see my gauges so I got the kind with 2.00 bifocals built in.
Do the yellow lenses help? I’ve seen them before and always wondered if they were effective or just a gimmick.
I’m driving with yellow bulbs headlights, it makes the driving at night so much less tiring !
Yellow glasses must be great over other people lights.
Yes! It’s just that they’re pointed too high. Could easily be fixed at the factory for probably no additional cost but they insist on terrible, horrible, very bad aiming schemes. Sometimes I’ll see teslas with one bright headlight because the other one is pointed correctly! I swear some of the Toyota/Honda offerings are angled UP
As a child of the 70s and 80s, please oh please let Peugeot come back. I really miss seeing people stranded on the side of the road next to a 504 or a 505 wondering if they had really bought an MB equivalent like their salesperson said. We called it “Peugeot face.” It would have been a meme if there had been an internet.
The difference between them and us (stranded on the side of the road with an MG, Alfa, FIAT, or Lotus) was we knew what we were signing up for.
Let’s bring Peugeot and all the others over. Have the NTHSA or whatever other alphabet needed to match the European standards. This way we can show the ridiculous companies here that we don’t want to be spoon feed yuge trucks and SUVs (or CUVS and Crossovers for that matter). Give the land of Freedom some choices! (specifically wagons!)
Reader since March 32nd here. One small request: can y’all please for the love of God stop giving coverage to every blip of news generated by Elon Musk?
Shockingly little of it is informative anymore, and it’s been most of my adult lifetime since it was entertaining either. And it seems like in the last month, coincidental with the Autopian’s (very reasonable) push for revenue, there’s been a spike in Elon Bullshit in the feed here.
I started reading the Autopian every day (multiple times!) because Torch, Tracy, and Beau seemed to hold this place to a higher standard than any other automotive publication from Day 1. No thoughtless regurgitations of press releases posing as analysis. Real deep dives. Real stories. Genuine passion. And it’s usually all there, every day, in every story.
Back to Musk. Repeatedly giving airtime to Elon’s financial transactions and other dipshittery looks a lot more like search engine optimization for the site than a genuine effort to see what one of the three or four most interesting and worthwhile automotive stories of the day are. It just…doesn’t seem very Autopian, ya know?
To quote a rom com title: I love you, you’re perfect, now change. Seriously, much love for all the tireless work y’all do to make this hands-down the best place on the internet.
Like it or not, Tesla stock dropping by almost 50%, while other electric vehicles come on the scene is newsworthy of an automotive “news” site.
I also studiously don’t follow Elon except when something happens that shoves him into my field of vision. Didn’t have a clue that he had sold off shares again till I read this. Despite that I’m interested. Hell, I’ve been forecasting that they were going to be obsolete within 10 years if they don’t change something drastically. Watching it start to come true is something I’m down to follow.
Don’t want there to be enough Elon spam to end up having a section devoted to his crazy ass, but if its newsworthy then its newsworthy
This is car newsworthy because his shenanigans are effecting his prime source of wealth and the (for now) most well known EV company. This is no less relevant than Ghosn’s shenanigans, in fact probably more because as the other major and minor car companies start knocking on Tesla’s door, Musk’s behavior has a direct effect on the company. I have little doubt major stockholders and the Board of Directors have been calling him. Either they pull on his leash or they push him out, one might work, the other might benefit the company greatly.
The thing is if there’s an uptick in Musk news it’s not because of a change in focus, or an SEO thing, but because there has generally been an uptick in Musk news. After he bought the bird site he has been doing a lot of stuff, and the Tesla Semi showed up too, which is major automotive news.
This site hasn’t really covered his spectacular bungling of the bird site either.
Yeah, if anything, I think I see less Musk news here than anywhere else. Love him or hate him, he is relevant to EVs and the automotive industry in general, among other things.
There is no other motive other than he’s in the news and it’s a discussion every time internally if we want to ignore it. I actually went back to check to see when the last time he was a lead story and it was a month ago, but there’s such a drip of random things he does he shows up often. I’m certain we cover it less than other people and often it’s just a gear.
Still, I hear you. I dislike writing as much about Musk as you dislike reading about Musk, if not more. The standard we try to apply is: Would we cover this is if was another CEO/Chair? If Bill Ford decided to buy the Texas Rangers and dump a bunch of money into them he got from selling Ford stock and then made himself manager of the Rangers and kinda promised he wouldn’t sell any more Ford stock and then… sold Ford stock three times. Would we cover it? Probably.
I think we need a better rule, though, because he does noteworthy things too often. I’m open to suggestions.
As much as I hate to suggest it, a dedicated monthly Musk aggregate? Everything dumb but noteworthy he does in one monthly blob?
Lets everyone not interested ignore it, lets the older stories die a bit so they just generally don’t attract the Musklesters and Teslarati (and when they are attracted, they’re in one spot that’s easy to nuke from orbit)?
Honestly, this is a good idea, and one that I suggested, too!
Ask anyone on staff: I make everyone have to justify every Musk story, especially based on a tweet. You gotta prove that it’s newsworthy and different, and that our readers have any reason to care. I’m very strict on this, because I’ve seen the alternative of covering him (or people like him; DJT) ad nauseum. It can ruin a website.
That will not happen here.
Thank you for approaching it this way. I, and I’m sure damn near everyone else, appreciate it
David Tracy is correct. Before we publish anything on Elon Musk (and often on Tesla) we have a whole discussion about if our site needs to talk about it. There have been stories that we passed on because they weren’t worth it (most of the Twitter drama, which seems daily at this point) and there will be more. There was a lot of discussion about the inclusion of Elon in this story, too. Ultimately, we felt that it was relevant enough to car news to be worth talking about.
Of course, not everyone wants to hear about Elon, so we’re open to suggestions!
I don’t know if Peugeot is the correct answer, but FIAT dealers need *something* to sell. Not that I have any love for car dealers of any make, but I do kinda feel bad for the FIAT dealers who have had 1-3 models to sell for the past few years, after spending tons of money to build “Studios”. According to Good Car, Bad Car, FIAT dealers have sold under 100k new cars since 2016, combined total.
“Should Peugeot come back to the United States? If it did, what would be the product mix?”
Yes, and they should bring back the bicycles they used to sell here. My old Peugeot ten-speed could stand to be replaced with a newer model.
Or mostly their SUV and SUV-adjacent models, since they would probably sell. 2008, 3008, 308, 408 would probably do well, if marketed right. The 508 SW would be nice, but they’d probably be disinclined to bring it.
Oh those poor gm owners, I’ve been cussing them all along and it wasn’t their fault!
Now let’s do something about the fact that their hood is higher than my roofline!
The hood on a 3/4-ton 4WD Chevy is higher than *my* roofline, and I drive a Chevy truck!
I’ve been railing against the clouds for a long time about this. Driving into a wall of intense light at eye level. At least I’m glad to see it’s a recognized problem and being addressed.
As for the height issue, I recently saw something about a call for front cameras to reduce the incidence of truck drivers hitting things and people they can’t see in front of them. I thought it sounded goofy until I made a point of walking up to a fairly new pickup. For real. They can’t see shit out to about 10 feet.
I read that review of the VinFast, and oof.
If what he said is remotely true, VinFast is gonna flop. HARD.
Yeah, the longer it went on, the worse things seemed. The employees hype and overzealousness with cars that were seemingly little better than go karts was bizarre. And there was some incredibly creepy shit going on. That whole company town vibe was really unsettling.
I just finished reading that incredible Kevin Williams piece on VinFast. Wow. I don’t really have words for whatever that was.
Instead of bringing Peugeot back, take Peugeot models, break out the sharpies, cross out “Peugeot” and scribble on “Dodge” and then sell them that way.
Established brand and dealership network, might as well use it.
That would make a huge amount of sense – let Dodge cherry pick the best models from Peugeot and Opel, let Chrysler sell Citroens and DSsesess (and also maybe Lancias, if they ever actually launch any models). Stellantis gets to pump more volume out of Europe, the two US brands get new products, and they stay differentiated without customer-noticeable badge engineering
I disagree completely with your assessment of brand identities and ideal product mixes.
In Europe, Stellantis has been trying to position Peugeot as the ‘sporty’ one and Citroen as the posh one – which aligns exactly to the Dodge/Chrysler divide. While the 508 isn’t going to replace the Charger – is anything? I’m pretty sure that’s on the way out – they probably wouldn’t import every other model anyway.
As for crossovers being Jeep only right now, who cares? They still need a product mix, and the Stellantis CUVs aren’t really Jeep-esque. There would be more than enough differentiation to split Jeep’s “off road, muddy boots, go fly fishing” image and what Peugeot and Chrysler are doing. Besides, that’s what people buy now, and Dodge and Chrysler are both in desperate need of things people buy.
That was supposed to be a reply to rootwyrm which should be obvious.
No, you misunderstand, Jeep is fine, they have their niche of Eddie Bauer dads – which is a huge niche, as you point out – and more than enough product for them.
Chrysler and Dodge are desperate for product. Chrysler sells three models, two of which are the same minivan – and the 300C is about to die. Dodge is so starved for something to put on their lot they are doing desperate rebadges of CUVs anyway – at least if they’re rebadging a 5008 you can’t buy one anywhere else.
Peugeot, Citroen and Alpine. Bring ’em all back. Bring that French weirdness back.
Vinfast? Another EV with a build quality of a 1982 Ford Escort.
The only Peugeot I want is the spinner from Blade Runner 2049.
STOP YELLING, PEUGEOT
I’m against bringing the Peugeot brand back, because it puts an even bigger squeeze on Chrysler. I’m all for bringing the cars themselves over and rebadging them.
Yes bring Peugeot back! Having recently imported a 90s Pug hatch, I’m a big fan of the brand!
What kind? 106 S16? Rallye? XNd?
306 GTi-6