Thanks to new European carbon dioxide emissions rules, all but two automakers have a bit of a problem — they reportedly aren’t on target to meet 2025 emissions standards. While using a carrot-and-stick approach may be a short-term solution, it wouldn’t work forever. To fill that missing middle, there’s a good chance automakers will have to build a hell of a lot more hybrids, which leaves Toyota in a pretty good place.
In addition, impact from that rail lockout from yesterday has likely been averted due to government action, and while that should keep the car supply from Canada flowing, it’s likely not a great thing for affected workers. Oh, and Hyundai’s found a way to make defrosters invisible, which is pretty damn cool.
Thank goodness it’s Friday, am I right? I’ve got one more edition of The Morning Dump to work out before Matt gets back on Tuesday, but until then, let’s get cracking with a run-down of juicy car news tidbits all neatly packaged together.
Could Hybrids Be The Solution To European CO2 Rules?
If you already thought combustion-powered cars were getting expensive in Europe, there’s a chance we haven’t seen anything yet. See, Automotive News Europe reports that automakers are struggling to meet 2025 carbon dioxide targets amid reports of slowing EV demand, which could lead to some hefty fines. When confronted with a problem like this, the solution is often carrot-and-stick, but hybrids could prove valuable. From Automotive News Europe:
Of the major automotive groups in Europe, only Geely and Tesla are already below their 2025 targets. Tesla has no problem meeting its target because it sells only zero-emission full-electric cars while Geely is helped by its Volvo brand, which sells high numbers of full-electric models.
If only two brands continue to remain on-target, how will other brands strategically reduce combustion vehicle sales in order to keep these fines to a minimum? Well, without launching new product, reduced supply and higher prices of combustion-powered vehicles could be a short-term Band-Aid. As Dataforce analyst Benjamin Kibies noted, “Car buyers must prepare for price hikes on petrol and diesel cars, while BEVs will become more affordable with the introduction of new models.”
It’s a solution, but without further product action to fill the missing middle, it could come at a cost. See, while a greater number of EVs is good for the climate, a short-term reduction in the number of affordable combustion-powered cars may have social costs, as higher new prices bump up used prices, and buyers may be priced out of the late-model market.
In addition, while Europeans may drive shorter distances than Americans, battery electric vehicles aren’t always practical for those who can’t charge at home or at their office. The ideal solution includes a mix of hybrids that would lower the number of full BEVs necessary to meet targets while still giving consumers choice. Maybe Toyota’s onto something because outside of Tesla and Geely, it’s closest to meeting 2025 EU targets thanks to a range chock-full of hybrids.
Hyundai’s Got Some Cool New Glass
Alright, so reinventing the wheel may be a fool’s errand, but Hyundai has found a way of re-inventing the defroster and it looks pretty neat. By using a metal coating on the glass, Hyundai’s made the defroster elements invisible, but the tech is so much cooler than that. Not only does it keep the cabin cool by blocking some of the sun’s rays, it also runs off of 48-volt power for ludicrously fast defrosting times.
The 48V system can completely defrost the glass surface within five minutes at -18°C, up to four times faster and consuming around 10 percent less energy compared with conventional air-conditioning systems. Additionally, on hot days, the metal coating can passively block at least 60 percent of solar energy, reducing cabin cooling requirement to significantly improve energy efficiency.
I don’t know about you, but this all seems like a big win to me. Of course, we still don’t know the cost of such a system, but as battery electric vehicles continue to gain market prominence, solving the drain of climate control on high-voltage systems will become ever more important, so don’t be surprised if this tech makes production. Hyundai’s also been working on radiant floor heating and a nano-coated film that functions a bit like transparent window tint to reduce cabin temperatures on hot days, so don’t expect this new sort of defroster to be the only thing in the automaker’s arsenal.
[Ed Note: I recently drove an older (~2006) Range Rover, and noticed little wavy things in the windshield; turns out, it was a heated windscreen! -DT].
Alpine Locks In A Second Driver
With Esteban Ocon off to Haas for 2025, Alpine has been looking for a second Formula 1 driver, and it’s appointed reserve driver Jack Doohan as a driver alongside Pierre Gasly for the next F1 season. The 21-year-old Australian might not be a household name just yet, but not only is motorsports in his blood, he also has some impressive achievements that make him a promising candidate for the FIA’s top level of racing.
Doohan got his start in racing with an assist from Michael Schumacher, who gifted him a kart back in 2012. It only took a few more years before he was a back-to-back Australian karting champion, who then took to Europe and finished third in the 2017 CIK-FIA European Karting Championship. From there, he finished fifth in the 2018 F4 British Championship, second in the 2019 and 2020 F3 Asian Championships, and although the 2020 FIA Formula 3 season was rough, Doohan finished second in the 2021 Formula 3 Championship, which is incredibly impressive when you consider Doohan was also competing in Formula 2 that year.
Having been picked up as a reserve driver for Alpine in 2022, he achieved a third-place finish in the 2023 Formula 2 season, so it certainly seems like he has what it takes to score Alpine some points, so long as they don’t have a dog’s dinner of a car. It’s also pretty neat that Jack Doohan is the son of five-time 500cc Motorcycle Grand Prix world champion Mick Doohan. Sometimes racing runs in a person’s blood.
Crisis Averted
Remember how yesterday, it was reported that Canadian rail workers were locked out, which could’ve caused a new car shortage if it were to drag on? Unsurprisingly, in big disputes like this, you can often count on government intervention. As reported by Automotive News, the Canadian federal government is forcing the rail workers and railways to sort at least some of their shit out before being forced back to work.
To Canadians, this news will likely prompt a bit of eye-rolling before moving on. To Americans, section 107 of Canada’s Labour Code is likely unfamiliar, so let me break it down. It allows the Labour Minister, which is a bit like Canada’s equivalent of the Secretary of Labor, to “do such things as to the Minister seem likely to maintain or secure industrial peace and to promote conditions favourable to the settlement of industrial disputes or differences” if they’re deemed necessary. In this case, not having major corridors of commerce flowing may affect the peace of a population stretched thin by wage stagnation and an extreme housing bubble, so yeah, that’s the way it goes. Car shortage maybe averted, but potentially in a way that’s detrimental to the rail workers actually affected by the initial action.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
A lot of good rap songs about cars exist, but man, Curren$y gets it. With project titles like “The Owners Manual” and “Gran Turismo,” great automotive bars, his own R/C hobby shop, a killer car collection including a bunch of Sacco-era Benzes with AMG bits, a Pace Car C5 Corvette, an Impala SS, lowrider builds, a nigh-on perfect fourth-gen Camaro, he might be the biggest car guy in the game. Want a great place to start listening to his discography? Here’s “Showroom” off of his 2012 album “The Stoned Immaculate.” With bars like “Up-to-date bill sheets, documented mileage / Handbook in the console I know everything about it,” it’s almost impossible not to give this track a big “hell yeah.”
The Big Question
Everyone needs an exit song, so what are you planning on bumping in the whip as you roll out of work for the week?
(Photo credits: Toyota, Hyundai, Alpine, Honda)
Richard thompson, “Vincent Black Shadow”, followed by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, “Berlin”.
Prompted by a line in SWJ’s article earlier this week, I put Beck’s Odelay album into Youtube Music and hit the ‘radio’ button (to get the Algorithm to cough out songs with a similar sound/vibe).
In the fullness of time it offered up a tune called Ghostwriter by RJD2 (I had heard of neither song nor artist before) but I really liked it, so I’m going to start with that song and see how far down that rabbit hole goes on my drive home today.
heard and heard ,thx
My MP3 player just randomly decided to play Meatloaf’s Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.
That’s sort of car related, but totally not the point of that song.
Does a flat-6 count as an exit song?
Exit song? I’m usually the last one out at work. There was a local band in Denver that performed an original song “Last Call” (not to be confused with countless other songs of the same name) I’d go with. As far as I know never officially released a recording of it, was left off the 2nd album, so I have an unofficial recording. I’d go with that.
Having said that, I work from home, so not like I actually get into the car and go anywhere.
Germans have had the metal film defroster for years, for example euro Passat has it and probably more expensive brands as well. So Hyundai has ”just” added the 48V tech which makes it faster I guess?
Lesser VAG brands, such as Skoda, use the thin wire variant. Annoying in certain situations, but defrosts and defogs the windscreen really fast. So I don’t think the speed is a big issue… Fords have had the wired screen for decades in the colder climates. Replacement cost is probably not an issue, it is just an added layer in the laminate. I would be more worried about the cameras and sensors in modern cars. They need to be calibrated and not every shop has the tools and expertise. Also, as someone noted about the old Fords: the Skoda windscreen is also tough as hell, stones just pit the screen, several times I have thought ”thats it”, but just small pits in the surface. I guess the extra layers also make it more durable?
Deerhoof – Rrrrright
Been listening to Rusted Root lately. “Send me on my way” is happy tune to start the weekend!
My exit song will be silence, no music, I just want quiet time today lol 2 hours of meetings and off I go to look at a car at the dealership lol
What car?
Sometimes I will delay passing someone so I can downshift and hit the gas at the EXACT RIGHT moment in any song that drops the beat. Purple Lamborghini comes to mind but I can think of about 1000 others.
I am too old to be bumping anything or referring to my automobile as a whip. But the new Sabrina Carpenter album came out, so probably that.
“Too old” applies to things like drinking alcohol without getting hungover, or riding rollercoasters without hurting your neck. No one has ever been too old to bump in the whip.
I dunno, I try to use that language around the youth and they make fun of me. But I appreciate the reminder that with age comes wisdom (hopefully).
Well the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference has already filed a 72hr strike notice against CN. So those trains will possibly grind to a halt again. CPKC workers are already striking as their union is also challenging the forced arbitration order in court. I am not familiar with Canadian labor law so who knows what’ll happen. $1bn CAD in losses a day has to hurt pretty bad though.
GM’s EV1 had the coated glass trick too, it’s not that it doesn’t work it’s just more expensive all around, so much for making EVs cheaper.
Usually clock out song is usually some generic 80s white guy song, Asia’s Only Time Will Tell or Dokken In My Dreams or Queensryche Jet City Woman or some such.
I can’t stand by and let you deride “Jet City Woman!” The guitar part for the chorus alone is enough to make that song interesting (not to mention the vintage Seattle in the video). I’ll refrain from going on a full Patrick Bateman diatribe, but generic Queensryche were not!
The others you mention I don’t know but if you regard them as categorically similar to JCW, I’m excited to check them out today; so thanks for the heads-up.
I was more deriding myself, it’s me, I’m the generic 80s white guy, Queensryche rocks!
Fords of the 90’s had “Insta-Clear” windshields that worked similarly, and that tech probably got into the Rover Tracy mentioned. I wish every car had it, as I drive East in the morning.
Sympathy for the Devil is the go to song here for me.
As in no sympathy at all come November 5th.
Which can’t get here soon enough to be honest.
BTW, I guessed your name way back before you decided to grift half the population of the US…
But the possible future riots to “stop the steal” should be entertaining, right?
Yet perhaps Gimme Shelter will be appropriate also come Nov. 6th?
America. What a shit show…
Kevin Durant had it right. His quote on patriotism, and playing for Team USA: “A lot of bullshit happens in our country. But a lot of great things happen, too.”
I know most here are pro-Union, but threatening to hold the economy of a whole country hostage should not be an option…
The Union workers did not strike; the railroads locked them out. Big difference.
Like that time my hot ex-gf did not dump me but I definitively dumped her. It was me, not her.
It was an inverted strike. The Companies went on strike against the employees. I guess that is called a “lockout” instead.
I got Ride the Lightning queued up
One of Kirk’s most whistleable solos! He used to compose such perfect little journeys; I don’t hear the same breadth from him anymore.
Didn’t Ford do the heated windshield thing back in the 90s with some of Taurus’s? Image the replacement cost when rock cracks your windshield.
I had a Sport Trac with this feature. Whoever owned it before us apparently lived on a gravel road, because that windshield was pitted so badly you could barely see through it when the sun was low.
We TRIED to break it so we could get it replaced under insurance coverage (following too close to gravel trucks and the like) but it was so thick everything just bounced off instead of breaking it. I think it would have been around $1,800-$2,000 if we’d just had it done without an insurance claim. (We eventually traded it off for an F-150.)
Contrast this with our Sorento, whose glass was so thin just about anything would break it. We had to do replacements on that car each of the first four years we owned it, and I think the first two retailed for about $1,400 each.
I think they got cheaper and thicker/stronger as time progressed, because after that fourth one, they didn’t break nearly as often.
Everybody talked so much shit about how Toyota wasn’t building enough EVs fast enough and they were going to get left in the dust. I defended Toyota for years on Jello Picnic. And here we are.
Exit song is Liquor and Cigarettes by Chase and Status.
so few of us fighting the idiot masses with their “Elon Musk is the way herr dee durr” and here we are
For us European they make a lot of sense. If you live in a city and park in a collective garage charging the car at home is difficult / impossible. So you can EV as much as you want, but adoption isn’t going to be as high as you want.
The alternative? HEV. Who makes the most recognisable hybrids? Toyota. Hence the success.
And people still claim that Toyota is somehow behind on EVs. Like they haven’t been building cars with large batteries and electric motors as part of the drivetrain for 25 years. They just clearly don’t see EVs as a market they want to focus on. And for now, hybrids seem like the right way to go.
Seeing as I have some decent thump in the trunk of my Sacco Benz, I think I’ll bump the TMD song of the day.
Once again, imma need some Autopian Playlist posts authored by Thomas.
With enough luck, a two-stroke engine. With less than enough luck, whatever the tow operator chooses.
The Hummer H1 and HMMWV had heated windshields in the 90’s for civilians and maybe earlier for the military. The HVAC system isn’t great, so the best way to keep the windows clear was to directly heat them with electricity, rather than air.
Ford had something similar in the 70’s and there’s probably some 50’s car that had them as well, but that will take more research on my part.
All that being said, I believe this new metal coating is still unique and likely better than the very thin filament used in most other versions.
“Epic” by Faith no More came up on the random mix while I was parking this morning, so I guess that’s what I am rolling out to come quitting time.
I was just this morning musing that FNM would be in my top favorite bands.
My leaving work song today? “Close Your Eyes And Count To Fuck” by RTJ
Undoubtedly too late now, but this seems like an awful and easily gamed method of setting targets.
If I were running Stellantis when this target was announced I would have immediately requested the import of a bunch of Ram HDs and sold them as Citroens to bring my average emissions (and therefore target) up, then just quit selling them right after I had locked it in.
More realistically, I might have temporarily stopped selling some small cars or engines for a couple years to accomplish the same thing less blatantly.
Indeed, that is the problem in the US. Automakers like it that way, as gaming the system rather than actually delivering good products is the one and truly ubiquitous MO in the auto industry. Just like the EPA standards, which no, are not actually difficult or expensive to implement testing in the full test suite.
You cannot stop selling those smaller cars as it is what we buy. Even Dacia has started selling hybrids for this precise reason.
What are they doing instead? Selling decontented cars to meet prices and include BEV and HEV powertrains. The C3 or Frontera are just that, cheap everywhere but with electrified powertrains.
So whatever made European cars great, is gone.