On today’s pre-Thanksgiving Dump (curiously larger than the post-Thanksgiving one) we have some questions about Alpha Motor Corp, a bunch of BYD news, and a French invasion of sorts.
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
Is Alpha Motor Corp Real?
Few EV startups have captured the imagination of car journalists quite like California-based Alpha Motor with its cool ass trucks and other potential vehicles. By my count, the brand has created renders for 18 different models. What it has not created, so far as I’m aware, is a physical car.
This is an issue. This was an issue last December when The Verge interviewed Joshua Boyt, the company’s business lead, along with its head of marketing, and got some vague answers to some important questions about who the company actually is. Here was The Verge’s take on all of this:
Playing the “mysterious EV startup” can sometimes help capture some of that money. But so far, Alpha Motor is demonstrating there’s a razor-thin line between being properly cautious and intentionally muddy about what, exactly, the new company is up to.
So that was about a year ago.
It turns out that Alpha Motor is still putting out designs and the image on top of this post is the company’s latest render from the LA Auto Show. It’s not even worth naming because there are so many of them at this point and, frankly, it looks like an ersatz Mitsuoka. [Editor’s Note: There’s nothing wrong with that! I’m pro-Mitsuoka! -DT].Â
Why do I bring this all up? It also turns out that the company was part of a Car Design News panel at the LA Auto Show that was happening right next to our Shrimpstravaganza. I missed it, unfortunately, because I was eating shrimp. The good news is that Alpha Motor put out a press release with most of what was said during the panel. The bad news is that I’ve never read so much marketing-speak BS in my whole life.
My kid woke up vomiting this morning and so maybe it’s put me in a bad mood but, honestly, reading this whole discussion just makes me want to join her. Here are some highlights:
Alpha is bringing together various aspects of vehicle manufacturing under a collaborative platform. We are developing synergistic communication to achieve complex tasks such as satisfying compliance.
And…
Alpha is currently developing an ecosystem to support consumer lifestyles, culture, and community. CAMP is an industry first, Collaborative Adventure Mobility Platform which represents Alpha’s unique automotive process that opens new ways to experience products and builds upon the Move Humanity™ culture of community innovation. It creates an engaging platform to streamline sharing of ideas, complete technical development, and contribute to finding solutions in sustainability.
And…
The DRIVE is Alpha’s platform where people share travel experiences and recommendations for music, entertainment, hospitality, and fashion. KINETIC is a movement to recognize family, friends, businesses, and our community at large. The people we celebrate on Kinetic enrich humanity with their dedication in culinary, art, music, hospitality, and beyond. Alpha will be announcing details for exhibitions and tradeshows in 2023.
I’m sorry, but this is going to make me Move To The Toilet™ if I have to read, or share, anymore. While this kind of Silicon-Valley-marketing-buzzword speak is not unique to Alpha Motor, it’s a lot easier to swallow from an established car company or, really, any company that’s built an actual car.
The cars they design look cool. It would be interesting if those cars came to market. Building a car is hard and patience is a virtue and all that, but this has gone on just about long enough.
Until they create a drivable vehicle or file for bankruptcy I’m not sure it’s worth anyone, anywhere writing about them again. Certainly, I cannot fathom why anyone would put them on a panel. [Editor’s Note: The company, based in Irvine, CA and started by Lexus LC designer Edward Lee, was founded in 2020, so it’s just coming out of the gate. The designs are nice, and I for one hope the company can prove Matt wrong and actually build some nice hardware at some point in the near future. The founder’s LinkedIn page reads that his goal is to “[commercialize] next generation automobiles and mobility solutions.” Even if the company doesn’t build cars, it becoming an EV supplier of sorts could be a win. (Look, as a startup founder myself, I’m just trying to be positive, here!) -DT].Â
BYD Raising Prices In China
Most of the car news out of China lately has been about foreign automakers having to slash prices in face of an economic slowdown. Mercedes cut the cost of some of the company’s EVs by as much as $33,000 and other automakers have done similar.
What’s Chinese EV-maker BYD doing after seeing a 350% increase in Q3 profits? Raising prices! In a post on the company’s Weibo this morning they announced the move, stating that the cost of sourcing battery materials and a a drop in government subsidies necessitates the increase (I’m relying on the Reuters translation).
The price increases range from 2,000 to 6,000 yuan or, approximately, $300 to $900. Given that BYD’s cars are significantly cheaper than the foreign competition this should still make the cars very competitive.
Has Warren Buffett Made $1.2 Billion On BYD Investment?
In other BYD news, we’ve already reported that Berkshire Hathaway has been slowing unwinding its investment in the company and the unwinding is continuing. It’s not clear why (Warren Buffett isn’t saying) this is happening or, more importantly, if they plan to sell all of the company’s stake or just part of the company’s holdings (they still own about 16%).
CNN, however, has put together the math on how much Berkshire Hathaway may have earned from the transaction.
It’s not clear how much Berkshire has profited from the sale. But the average price of each share in the five deals disclosed by the company since August was around HK$205 ($26).
Using that average, Berkshire might have bagged a net profit of $1.2 billion by offloading the 49 million shares, assuming a purchase price of HK$8, according to a calculation by CNN Business. The conglomerate’s current stake in BYD is worth $3.9 billion, based on the latest stock price.
That sounds right. As far as investments go, this one is a doozy. Berkshire initially bought $230 million in 2008, when the global economy was in the crapper. If you take what they’ve sold and add it to what they still have that’s about $5.1 billion total or, roughly, a 20x or so return in 14 years.
Stellantis Reportedly Has Nowhere To Put Its Cars
Because there is no end to the disruption of the global supply chain by the pandemic and the war, Stellantis (specifically, Peugeot) is back to cranking out its popular 3008 and 5008s in a plant in Sochaux, France. What they can’t do is physically deliver all of them because they’re apparently running out of transportation.
From a Reuters report on the problem:
Carmakers across Europe are struggling to make shipments with a lack of truck drivers and a shortage of truck and train capacity under the combined effect of the war in Ukraine and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With several thousands of cars waiting to be sent from Sochaux, which produces bestsellers Peugeot 3008 and 5008, Stellantis has turned to an unusual solution by using a former military airfield at Lure-Malbouhans, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) away, to store them temporarily, the sources said.
There are worse places to be stuck! Above is a photo of Alex Roy in a Peugeot 504 Cabriolet V6 not too far from Lure-Malbouhans. We borrowed the car from the Peugeot Museum in Sochaux. Go visit!
The Flush
Hope springs eternal, and this is never truer than when it comes to designing cars. What’s your favorite example of a vaporware car?
Buick Avista. It looked so production ready I checked their website for months ready with my deposit.
Re: Alpha renders, without an actual product – Yeah, they’re beautiful, but… https://youtu.be/m3dZl3yfGpc
Also, favorite vaporware car? The entire “design portfolio” from the infamous Hot Rod magazine April Fools’ joke in 2008: “The Return Of AMC.” https://www.motortrend.com/features/hrdp-0804-amc-concept-cars/
(Also, please give us hyperlink capacity in the comments.)
As soon as they used “synergistic” I knew they were full of shit and not actually accomplishing anything viable.
That Alpha design reminds me of a Mohs Ostentatienne.
I put Alpha’s chances of actually building a series production car somewhere below those of Nobe, and Nobe’s chances are somewhere below the likelihood of achieving sustainable fusion power in my lifetime
I think we need to define what a true vaporware car is.
Too many people are tossing concept cars into the mix. Concepts aren’t promised as prototypes for a future production car. Cadillac never promised to produce the Ciel, Sixteen, Escala, or Elmiraj. They were just design studies to guage customer interest. Now how Cadillac misjudged customer interest so badly as to give us the all-over-the-place design of the Celestiq rather than the elegance of the Ciel is a completely different matter.
IMHO, true vaporware is a vehicle or range of vehicles that are promoted as being targeted for production and available for purchase “in a couple of years.” Elio, Faraday Future, Lordstown Motors, these are true vaporware.
As for the best, how about the Devel Sixteen? A 2000 HP 16 cylinder mega-super-hyper car unveiled in 2013 with a variety of power levels and options to be available. Yep, 9 years ago. And how many functional prototypes are out in the wild? Yep, zero. That, my friends, is vapor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devel_Sixteen#:~:text=The%20Devel%20Sixteen%20is%20a,announced%20price%20is%20$1.6%20million.
Chrysler Firepower! (IIRC the exclamation point was actually part of the name)
The Smart ForMore is one, not because I wanted one, but because they cancelled the showing at the last minute and shoved it in a shed.
I think there was also a Hyundai mini-minivan – like Mazda 5 sized thing – that was spotted testing and apparently near production but scrapped before anything was announced.
I love the last-minute, shove it in a shed, pretend it never happened cars.
I would have loved to see the Dodge Copperhead make production.
As a Dutchman I am obligated to mention several Spyker concepts/ideas.
And I like those designs by Alpha, even a station wagon!
For a free ticket to France and $1000 per delivery, I will personally help Stellantis out with in person car deliveries to their customers. (Driving the car to the purchaser’s house does count as delivery.)
Lordstown Motors is vaporware
I saw a Lordstown truck at SEMA. My question was would it fall apart if I touched it.
You do realize that startups are now using AI to write their press releases. Right?
It’s obviously the cheapest AI available on Alibaba. That marketing vomitus reminds me of a Deepak Chopra random deep-sounding phrase generator from a decade back
I was going to say the same thing. This is “Alpha Motor+marketing bullshit”.
My favorite is the MDI AIRPod. Nothing says vaporware quite like a compressed-air vehicle.
Pontiac XP833.
vaporware car? Does the Tesla Roadster II count? I don’t want one, but it is my favorite because it clearly shows how delusional Mr Musk is.
As has been opined many times, what we need is a decently quick, acceptably sporty EV skateboard chassis that can let a thousand deranged coachbuilders bloom. The 22st century answer to a VW floorpan, engine and wiry bits that maniacs can plonk bodies on, and reuse other brands taillights. Torchy might actually explode with excitement, but hey.
Isn’t that pretty much what they are doing in China? There’s a zillion brands and I doubt they all develop their own go-bits.
“Every cheap, highway-capable electric motorcycle” is my favorite vaporware car.
“our shrimpstravaganza…
My kid woke up vomiting this morning”
You did throw away the shrimp by now, right? Please let it not still be in your fridge right now. (although that sounds more something for DT)
But I hope your kid is feeling better
Lol, she is, and it’s a fair question! We didn’t throw out the shrimp but that’s only because there was no shrimp left.
“Hope springs eternal, and this is never truer than when it comes to designing cars. What’s your favorite example of a vaporware car?”
Buick Avista and Buick Avenir.
I have literally never had a single person say anything but ‘damn, that’s cool’ in response to the pictures of either. And these are concepts that are approaching 10 years old. If Buick introduced either one of them tomorrow, they would look like the freshest thing on the road, the Avista would sell out in an hour and with very minor interior updates the Avenir would sell out in a week.
Alpha gets way too much attention for how vapor’y they are. I think they even won some EV award, because the rules only required that the vehicle be ‘available for purchase’ because you could reserve one. Yeah, if submitting your email address to effectively just join their newsletter counts as ‘reserving’, then sure…
And their concept renderings are just that. Pay too much attention to the relationship of the wheel size (which they oddly tend to give detailed information about) relative to the vehicle’s size and proportions and you’ll realize none of it makes sense. Sure, it’s a concept, and they often don’t make sense, but all Alpha is doing regurgitating the same baseline rendering with different aesthetic flourishes. Now we’re doing whitewalls and wire wheels?!?! The f****?!?!? I await Alpha’s next rendering of an EV horse and buggy. Which I’m sure will be accompanied by a press release full of ‘dynamism’.
If there’s one thing several hundred years of capitalism has taught us, it’s that there are still plenty of suckers out there willing to invest in imaginary products if you know how to sell it to them, and the leeches on Wall Street are more than happy to promote these scammers so long as they get their cut.
On a completely unrelated note I just watched the episode of Taxi your avatar comes from. Classic stuff!!
I don’t don’t mind an extensive criticism of a Automotive maker, but it makes you seem a lot more authoritative if you get the name right: Alfa Romeo, not Alpha.
Oooh! Opps! THAT APLHA automotive company …, damn… never mind me. I’ll be off mumbling to myself in a corner. Apologies there, flatisflat.
haha! No worries!
I’ve noticed that my local Chrysler dealer is overflowing with Wagoneers and Grand Wagoneers, while the Ford and GM dealerships nearby are still pretty empty. Is that a sign of Stellantis having a more resilient supply chain, as with the Peugeots, or is the Wagoneer bombing?
It’s complicated(TM).
Ultimately the short version is this: the FCAtlantis supply chain is generally on par or slightly above average. However, they are trying to sell a SIX DIGIT SUV into a deepening recession with extreme economic uncertainty.
A high 5 to 6 digit land yacht with predictably miserable fuel economy and Stellantis kwality into an environment where consumers are concerned about fuel and spending power.
The Wagoneer/Grand Wagoneer can duke it out with Genesis. Easily. And that is my highest praise for anything production. Hyundai really is the benchmark.
FCAtlantis finally realized build quality and materials matter on the WL and GW. And they are REALLY nice cars inside. But they also decided the already insane margins weren’t enough margins, and have priced them into the fucking stratosphere.
$60k is a little bit under 6 digits and the Tahoe sells fine. If there’s a problem, it’s a Jeep problem, not a full size SUV problem.
I think the Waggy needs to be priced more competitively with the Tahoe/Suburban. The grand can compete with the Yukon Denali and Escalade.
Yukon Denalis aren’t selling either. Dealers still trying to pull ‘market adjustment’ bullshit of $10k+ on an already $90k+ car.
Real wages keep going down, Fed is making the cuts hurt ten times more, corporations are profiteering for every penny left, and the only reason any normal person in the US could afford a new car at all was extremely cheap money (that is: Fed rates at or near 0.) You could let roll in 10 years of negative equity and let the note ride for 96 at a 0.9% interest rate.
Average interest rate for a new car loan now? 6.06% on a 60, 6.85% on a 72, for A+ credit only, and most won’t write past that now. On a $100k car with 8% sales tax and no trade-in value, that’s more than a fucking house payment. $1600 a month on the loan, $200+ a month on the insurance (all it takes is one car hitting one kid to blow up the books,) and don’t even ask about the gas mileage.
I am kind of impressed by how badly times Jeep’s inexplicable attempt at going upmarket is. That’s a car built for cheap gas and cheap credit, and it launched right when both of those things disappeared.
I’ve started seeing a decent number of Wagoneers lately. I wonder if they have more availability at this moment and they’re starting to move because of that.
Since Elio was already mentioned and since their last official update was June, I’ll go with Nobe.
1.) Cadillac Cien
2.) Cadillac Sixteen
3.) Buick Avista
4.)Vector/any of ’em
5.) 80s Buick Wildcat mid-engine concept.
6.) 1993 Corvette Stingray III concept.
7.) Ferrari Mythos concept.
8.) Lamborghini Portofino concept
9.) Ferrari Modulo
Tired: Cadillac Cien?
Wired: Cadillac Ciel
Out of your list, the Vector W8’s and M12’s were the only ones that were actually certified, EPA approved and sold to the public. Albeit in very small numbers, but I don’t think “vaporware” applies to them.
Uh, the Vector company was formed and a car shown in 1978. No production happened until 1989, and roughly 50 cars were made before Vector folded in 1993. So perhaps not true vaporware but at best condensated vapor.
Don’t forget John Z. Delorean’s original shot-across-the-bow sportscar, the Pontiac Banshee. GM never made it because it would have killed the Corvette dead. A sub-3000 lb. two-seater with proposed engine options from a rorty OHC straight six all the way up to a 421 Super Duty, for two-thirds the retail price? Yeah, The General wasn’t having that.
Favorite example of a vaporware car? The obvious example is Elio which is more of a long running joke than an actual car company at this point but do prototypes count? Because if so I definitely vote for the Suzuki C2!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7As9XNJBAOY
I forgot about that Suzuki. It would have been a fun, tossable car.
Elio actually pivoted to selling their own digital currency at one point, if that doesn’t scream vaporware, I don’t know what does