A Porsche test driver says the brand apparently has no interest in fake shifters (like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N’s) in EVs, but his reasoning seems completely off for a sports car driver. Canada is matching the U.S.’s 100% tariff on Chinese-built EVs; here’s how that is going to adversely affect Tesla. We’ll talk about how some Rivians got a bit melty, and plenty more news on today’s installment of “The Morning Dump.”
Hi, it’s David Tracy writing the intro to The Morning Dump, as Thomas had to run and return a Subaru test car right in the middle of writing this TMD. Nonetheless, I think he did a fine job given he had to cut his writing short; anyway, let’s get into this whole “fake shifting” topic.
Porsche Says No To Fake Shifters In EVs
The same wave of electrification that’s boosting refinement of the average family car is dulling engagement in performance cars (aside from pedal response, which is now better than ever), and some automakers seem more open to ways around it than others. Australian outlet Drive reports that, according to a test driver, Porsche doesn’t care much for simulating an ICE experience in a performance EV, and that mindset may run the risk of missing the bigger picture.
Speaking to Australian media, Porsche development driver Lars Kern said the German brand is monitoring competitors in the sporty electric vehicle (EV) space, but did not see the need to adopt a fake shifter akin to the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N.
“Obviously, we look into what the competition does, but our perspective on this is always why should we make something worse?” he said.
“I mean because, in like just how it translates power or how power is applied? The electric engine is better than an ICE [internal combustion engine], so we figured there’s no reason to simulate what has been in the past.
Sometimes objectively worse things are more fun than objectively better things, and Porsche should’ve learned this from the whole 911 R debacle. Basically, the trackday-grade 911 GT3 killed its manual transmission option for the 991.1 generation, because a dual-clutch is just faster around a track, end of story.
However, in 2016, Porsche rolled out the limited edition 911 R, which paired the GT3 RS engine with a six-speed manual gearbox (a “worse” option if you go by performance), and collectors went nuts. Suddenly, a nearly-new 911 was worth almost a million dollars on the secondhand market because people were willing to pay for the engagement of a manual gearbox. As a result, Porsche brought back the manual on the 991.2 GT3, and has kept it ever since.
Is simulated shifting the same as a manual gearbox? Absolutely not, but I could see it providing helpful auditory cues on track and boosting engagement on the street, where the envelope of a modern performance EV can’t really be pushed. Rogue engineers, specifically those on the 718 EV project, do your thing.
Canada Will Match America’s Chinese EV Tariffs
We all should’ve seen this coming, right? After the Biden administration announced new tariffs on Chinese EVs, major trade partner Canada is following suit with a matching 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles imported from China. Bloomberg broke the news broke the news ahead of the official announcement this morning, writing:
The government plans to announce a 100 percent levy on electric cars and 25 percent on steel and aluminum, according to people familiar with the matter, speaking on condition they not be identified because the matter is still private. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to unveil the policy in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he’s gathered with the rest of his cabinet for a series of meetings about the economy and foreign relations.
Indeed, on Monday, CBC News confirmed this announcement, noting that “The tariff will apply to electric and certain hybrid passenger automobiles, trucks, buses and delivery vans.”
So, what impact would this new levy have as it goes into effect on Oct. 1? Well, we already know that Polestar and Lotus face exposure, but the 100 percent tariff on China-sourced EVs will have much wider effects than just curtailing sales at a handful of niche brands.
As it stands, the Canadian Domestic Market Model Y and Model 3 are both built in Shanghai, and a 100 percent tariff on those products would make them no longer economical to import from that plant. Out of the 179,712 zero-emission vehicles sold in Canada last year, the Model 3 and Model Y made up 32.6 percent of the market with 58,704 units sold, so resourcing supply from Texas, California, and potentially even Germany will be critical to maintaining volume. In addition, Volvo might be in a bit of a tight spot given that Chinese-built EX30 electric crossovers are already hitting dealer lots in Canada.
While matching America’s tariffs on Chinese EVs may benefit many Western manufacturers, it could hurt a small selection of them, and perhaps more importantly, may hurt consumers through potentially higher pricing and reduced choice. If we’re collectively making the decision to effectively kick cheap Chinese EVs out of Canada and the United States, we need affordable homegrown EVs ASAP.
Well, That Ain’t Good
If you’ve been waiting for your brand new Rivian electric SUV or pickup truck to ship from a factory holding lot, you might want to hold your breath because more than 50 of the brand’s EVs got a bit melty. Over the weekend, Reuters reported that a fire broke out in a parking lot at the plant on Saturday, damaging a group of electric vehicles.
Last month, a group of Rivian RDV electric vans at an Amazon fulfillment center in Houston, Texas were filmed having a thermal event. Rivian told us that a high-voltage battery pack wasn’t the instigator in that event, so hold your horses on speculating on this latest thermal event because it’s possible this didn’t start in a battery pack either. On the minus side, this isn’t great for optics, but on the plus side, the fire happened outside the plant and not inside of it.
Financial Times Takes A Critical Look At Ford
Yesterday the Financial Times published a piece titled “Ford shares have stalled: can CEO Jim Farley steer out of its rut?” In it, the author, Claire Bushey, takes a critical look at Ford’s performance, calling out shareholder concerns and Ford’s promises for the future.
The piece begins with a quote in which CEO Jim Farley and CFO John Lawler acknowledge the problem and take accountability.
Ford executives have laid out big plans in recent years to improve its profitability, but they have long known they face a sceptical audience. “Ford has been stuck in a box with thin margins, weak growth and low valuations . . . and it’s now time to break out,” chief executive Jim Farley told investors last year. Even then, though, chief financial officer John Lawler said: “We’ve told you this before . . . and we haven’t delivered.”
The piece goes on, noting that last month the company continued to struggle with high warranty costs, and that its earnings fell short of expectations, leading to a drop in share price.
Plus, with Ford reducing its EV plans and building more ICEs instead, shareholders are feeling a bit uneasy, with the Financial Times writing:.
Farley has been trying to implement a plan introduced in 2021 to cut costs, improve quality, increase revenue from digital subscription services and hit a 10 per cent adjusted operating margin by 2026. But he acknowledged last month that remaking Ford involved “growing pains”.
When it scrapped plans for an electric three-row SUV last week, Ford explained that the model had failed to meet its target of profitability within one year. It also said it would cut the share of capital spending it dedicated to EVs from 40 per cent to 30 per cent, while moving some battery production from Poland to Michigan to take advantage of US tax credits.
The biggest concern is quality and warranty costs, and the Financial Times spends pretty much the rest of the article talking about that. Though Ford’s JD Power “Initial Quality” ranking has improved, issues with quality remain, and they’re not necessarily a result of poorly built new cars:
The latest problems behind a warranty challenge that Barclays analyst Dan Levy called “frustrating for investors” stem from models launched as long ago as 2016. “It’s clear that we had a period of time where the robustness wasn’t what it needed to be,” Lawler said.
Read the rest of the piece here, as there’s lots more to talk about regarding Ford’s journey towards improved quality and overall stock market performance.
[This section of TMD written by David Tracy]
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I know there aren’t many songs out there about go-karting, but out of every track in that genre, “Hey, It’s Your Funeral Mama” by Alexisonfire has to be my favorite. From the riffage to the chorus, it just makes you want to emulate a much lower-stakes version of Alonso’s overtake on Schumacher around the outside of 130R.
The Big Question
You can easily argue that a manual transmission is objectively “worse” than an automatic, and yet there’s still something desirable about a stickshift. With an EV, such a stickshift would be “simulating” gear changes that don’t actually happen, whereas on an ICE you’re actually physically changing gears. To the operator, how much does that distinction matter? And would one have to have experience with a manual ICE car to find this fun?
Parsh is right on this one. I like manuals on cars where there’s a physical connection. I’m actually doing something to control the car. It’s satisfying to get the timing of everything right — clutching in and out, shifting, rev-matching — these are all items I physically control, with no fakery. The Porsche manual gearbox we wanted back, as Porsche dorks, was a real gearbox that would be physically controlled by our inputs. We want that more manual experience and feel.
I also like that my CVT doesn’t make its performance *worse* by trying to simulate shifts it doesn’t make.
Maybe Hyundai’s toy shift knob is fun — I don’t know since I haven’t driven it. I still think parsh is right on not faking what isn’t there. I like a good, honest car.
Whether it’s authentic or artificial ultimately doesn’t matter. Is it good? That’s the only question that matters
I was really hoping we were gonna be cool about Chinese EVs, cause I can’t afford current Canadian EVs.
They’d have to fully replace my ICE, which ones on my price range can’t do for my uses. But I COULD get a cheap BEV runabout and keep my ICE for the other occasional use purposes.
Alternatively, SELL ME A GODDAMN BEV HYBRID TRUCK. I can’t wait to see how the Ramcharger fares.
Axe carting! In NC near Charlotte we found a place that offered indoor ICE carting, axe throwing, bowling, laser tag, and a full bar and pub food. My coworker ended up t-boning my boss. Everybody wins!
So no fake manual, but we get turbo EVs?
Good enough for 80286 computers, good enough for Porsche…
Spot on
As a three-pedal snob and track enthusiast, I don’t buy autotragics of any kind for driving through Chicago traffic, let alone on the track, but in an instant torque EV I wouldn’t need any shifting, especially “simulated” ones.
I don’t want simulated anything in any automobile of mine. I don’t want fake engine noise, I don’t want fake shifts, etc.
As far as shifting a BEV is concerned I want fixed “gear” positions, not some knob. As in when I put it into drive it stays in drive until I depress a button that unlocks the shifting lever to allow me to shift into “neutral” or reverse. With the resurgence of drum brakes in BEVs I hope with it we’ll see a return of the cable actuated emergency brake. Electric parking brakes cannot function as an emergency brake, they get stuck on often, and when they do get stuck on they are a PITA to get unstuck.
Came here to say this.
Mind you, I enjoy rowing my own, and the howl of an overheated VW engine through a glasspack as I race some guy in a Mustang through the Bighorn Sheep Canyon, but…fake engine noise, fake shifting??? What next…FAKE WIND IN MY THINNING HAIR? EH???
…I think there was an old scifi story about this. The Marching Morons, I think it was.
I don’t have an issue with the transmission deciding when to shift or if it is some sort of (non rubber band) CVT. What I hate most is not having the third pedal to slam my foot on to disengage the engine or switch to neutral. Especially in winter driving and emergency skid control.
I have the opposite preference: All of my CVT-equipped cars are of the rubber band variety. External belts are much easier to change.
“I don’t want simulated anything in any automobile of mine. I don’t want fake engine noise, I don’t want fake shifts, etc.”
How about fake wood and fake leather?
Oh, I like those. That being said I also hate fake hood scoops, unnecessary hood bulges, fake grills, etc.
I like tbose things as well. Fake summer and fake winter on demand is also nice as is thousands of fake music acts (many long dead), fake daylight, etc.also on demand.
Drum brakes are coming back??? I guess most braking is done by regen so they don’t need the higher performance of discs.
I also hate fake vents with a passion. My hatred of fakery applies to other aspects of my life. I am slowly building all my own furniture because I hate veneer covered MDF.
“I am slowly building all my own furniture because I hate veneer covered MDF.”
My father LOVED Danish modern furniture. Very expensive stuff too. Most of what we had growing up was 1960s era Brazilian Rosewood and walnut. Beautiful stuff and fairly hard so it could take some punishment.
Then came the house fire. The fire department used a LOT of water. All that beautiful furniture was laminated particle board (except for the legs). Even rooms not touched by fire were doused, the furniture ruined.
The thing is the furniture MIGHT have been saved if the shitty particle board had not swelled. My uncle was a wood shop teacher and was insistent the veneer could have been re-adhered with heat and pressure but the swelled particle board was beyond salvation.
Why furniture manufacturers didn’t use exterior grade particleboard with water resistant resins which instead of the crap actually used baffles me – it couldn’t have costed much more and that furniture was damned expensive. Same comp!ain’t with cabinet makers, do you not realize your products are going into kitchens and bathrooms?
Since the fire I had my own dreams of building my own solid furniture too in rhe Danish Modern style but with Ipe and Patagonian Rosewood both of which are hard AF (and not endangered, thanks a lot CITIES!) and would be a Hell of a challenge but would not get beat up even in a house full of toddlers with hammers.
Point of interest: My grandmother in Sweden had a very plain, scarred table from the 15th century or so I was told. You can bet that thing was SOLID, I think it was oak. It had also at some point in its history also been in a fire, there was some charring underneath. The table was still very serviceable even though I’m quite sure at some point in its history it was also assaulted with hammers (no word if they were wielded by toddlers).
I will tell you, working with tropical woods is a nightmare. They are so bloody hard that you are sharpening as much as you are working. Oak, cherry, and walnut are great to work with. Maple can have some weird grain patterns that tear easily when planing but make gorgeous pieces. I joke that if you spend thousands of dollars worth of tools, you can make your own furniture for twice the price and a tenth the speed of the stuff at the furniture store.
I got into ipe after I read it had been used to deck the Coney Island boardwalk for 85 years until it was wrecked by hurricane Sandy. This company was able to salvage some of that original ipe, resurfaced it and is selling it for other projects:
https://excelsiorwood.com/blog/history-behind-coney-island-ipe-wood
85 years as heavily used decking in a salty, seaside boardwalk, wrecked in a hurricane and its STILL useful? Oh HELLS yes!
Plus it’s fire resistant. That’s quite a resume!
Oak, cherry, and walnut are great to work with. Maple can have some weird grain patterns that tear easily when planing but make gorgeous pieces.
Those are nice. Cherry especially. Hickory, pecan, persimmon and ash can be interesting too. Ash was pretty common in the earlier Danish modern stuff.
“I joke that if you spend thousands of dollars worth of tools, you can make your own furniture for twice the price and a tenth the speed of the stuff at the furniture store.”
It might take 10x as long and cost 2x as much but it can last for millennia. Plus no @#$ particleboard!
That’s gotta be worth something, especially if its also an artpiece.
For the rear wheels, which are usually where the emergency brake is put on most cars.
Your front brakes do ~70% of your braking, also on cars no matter how you build them disc brakes drag, but drums don’t, so you get a little efficiency boost using drums on the rear.
Adding a proper emergency brake to cars with disc brakes is complex and expensive, so most manufacturers nowadays put on one of those crappy electric parking brakes and call it a day. For drums it’s just adding additional cable actuation to the existing drum brake actuation system with detent positions for the lever to act as a parking brake as well.
I still want to know when automatic gear shifts became associated with “engagement”. We have the holy grail (see, I can do it too!) of transmissions with EVs that don’t ever cut your power to shift and are perfectly smooth because of not needing to shift, but now we’re trying to make them feel more like an old school automatic, which is particularly ironic since automatics have been trying to be more like a single-speed EV drivetrain for a long time. Hence the existence of the CVT. But maybe that’s the answer – the CVT was in many ways the final form of the automatic, but so many of the implementations were terrible that they poisoned the well for that “perfect” power delivery.
Re: Ford: It’s great that the execs keep taking accountability for the problems at the company, but at some point they have to start taking steps to change it. At some point apologies ring hollow if there isn’t a change in behavior to go with them.
All that matters is they parachute out before the stockholders wise up.
Yes! See? Someone gets it. Except that bit about the implementations being terrible. The Jatco Xtronic CVT is certainly one of the best. Everyone knows it, after all.
Somehow I thought I might hear from you on this post. 😉
Porsche’s take there is absolutely correct, and less noise from the car’s engine means more ability to hear what is going on and engage with the rest of the machine, not less. The whole point of an EV powertrain in racing is that your torque pedal is instantly and precisely responsive to driver input, spend more time hearing your tires or literally anything else instead.
Plus, unless you have had your hearing damaged (quite possibly by overloud cars or motorcycles), the raw sounds of an EV powertrain are not particularly subtle and are themselves a different kind of engagement.
No one who rides a snowmobile complains about the engine droning around despite the CVT, because you just find your own fun in the conditions instead. And snowmobiles are by far the most fun things anyone can drive. CVTs likewise are not inherently bad, and adding fake shifts to them is making them both worse and inherently bad. Automakers ‘just’ need to program them less for intentionally dulling bad driver inputs and instead let them be what they are which is *physically* the optimal engine response in all conditions.
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Rant over, but so much of those type of compliants is nothing more or less than being conditioned to assume a certain type of boisterousness is objectively good, when at most it is a subjective experience, and many of us do not enjoy the Harley exhaust raging by (I say that as someone who grew up with and around them, whose parents worked at the company, whose parents still own a Dyna etc).
I am perfectly fine with having choices. I don’t like paying for the development of systems I would instantly turn off, and I would not even consider buying a vehicle where I could not turn off that stuff, but if other people like it… whatever… as long as it isn’t so loud that no one around you can even have conversations in public.