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.
Hyundai And Kia Are Going To Space
In case the new Kia Sportage didn’t look extraterrestrial enough, Hyundai and Kia are seeking to develop “mobility solutions” to use on the moon. Hey, it’s a lot more realistic than Mars. In a statement issued on Thursday, Hyundai Motor Group elaborated on their plans to team up with a bunch of research institutes to do moon stuff. So is this some sort of moon domination play? Well, not quite. Hyundai Motor Group intends on taking what it learns from building moon stuff and applying it to “mobility solutions” here on Earth. It’s certainly a bold strategy, so I’m curious to see what the eventual results look like. The signing ceremony held in Korea was attended by Chung Kook Park, President and Head of R&D Division of Hyundai Motor and Kia as well as top officials from the six research institutes: Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI); Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI); Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI); Korea Automotive Technology Institute (KATECH); Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT); and Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). With collaboration expected to start as early as August, the consultative body will define the concept of lunar exploration mobility and major core technologies while developing and reviewing specific strategies and implementation measures to operate on the moon. Hyundai Motor and Kia will support the consultative body with their smart mobility technologies.
Federal EV Tax Credits Get A Possible Extension
Well, I don’t think we saw this one coming. In a surprise moment of productivity, the U.S. Senate has pulled together a deal on a massive legislative package that, among other things, extends federal EV tax credits. Truthfully, I was shocked when Reuters reported this news because I thought tax credit extensions were as good as dead. Aside from those being two names I never want to see on this site again, this bill seems pretty important. Not only does it avoid hanging USMCA partners out to dry like a prior proposal’s additional incentive for EVs made in unionized American plants did, a proposed $4,000 credit on used EVs seems like a pretty big deal. Now it’s just up to the House of Representatives to pass this bill before it may head for Presidential signing. Fingers crossed. The deal struck between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin also includes an expansion of the existing $7,500 EV tax credit as well as a new $10 billion investment tax credit to build clean-technology manufacturing facilities, according to a summary from Schumer’s office. The bill that Schumer and Manchin agreed to also includes $2 billion in cash grants to retool existing auto manufacturing facilities “to manufacture clean vehicles, ensuring that auto manufacturing jobs stay in the communities that depend on them.”
Bentley Pushes Back Its First EV
Bad news out of Crewe, Bentley’s first electric vehicle has been delayed from a 2025 start of production back to 2026. Automotive News Europe has some information from Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark regarding the delay, although no confirmation was given as to the delay’s cause. While delaying important new product isn’t great news, there is a kernel of good news here. The development of Bentley’s electric vehicle is only the start of an ambitious plan to go all-electric by 2030. The car – expected to be a coupe – will still be revealed in 2025 as planned, Hallmark said. The delay is a “matter of months,” he told Automotive News Europe. If the 2030 target still seems to be on track, I reckon most things should be alright in Crewe. Electric powertrains’ low noise characteristics and incredible smoothness make them ideal for luxury vehicles, so I can’t wait to see how Bentley harnesses the smoothness and performance of electricity. Hallmark said the money to pay for the transformation came from Bentley itself after the brand reversed years of weak financial results to post record profits of 389 million euros in 2021 on deliveries of 14,659 cars. He confirmed the 2030 target for an electric-only lineup.
Sebastian Vettel Announces Retirement
It’s always a bit sad when a champion retires, but everyone must hang up their hat at some point. Four-time Formula 1 world champion Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement plans on Thursday through his newly-created Instagram account. According to the BBC, Vettel will bow out of Formula 1 at the end of the 2022 season. A post shared by Sebastian Vettel (@sebastianvettel) It’s safe to say that Vettel is a bit of a legend. Only three F1 drivers in history have more world driver’s championship titles than him, and only Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher have won more races. While I’m a bit sad to see Vettel leave Formula 1, I can’t wait to see what he focuses on next. Spending more time with family is often a wonderful pursuit, [Editor’s Note: I’m going to qualify that this depends heavily on the specific family. Sebastian never met my uncle Morris. – JT] and Vettel deserves to relax after 14 years of full-time racing. The German said he would “take more time to reflect on what I will focus on next” at the end of the year. He said spending more time with his family was a priority.
The Flush
Whelp, time to drop the lid on today’s edition of The Morning Dump. Happy Thursday, everyone! The weekend is just around the corner. With time off work comes time for wrenching, and while I usually ask about your wrenching exploits on Fridays and Mondays, I’m putting a twist on things today. There are some cars that scare even experienced wrenchers, so I’d love to know what cars you wouldn’t touch with a 50-foot pole. Personally, most Audis are firmly in a no-go zone for me. I’ve seen timing guide replacement on a V8 S4 happen in real time and that’s definitely not something I’d like to do on my driveway. Add in all sorts of triple-square hardware on models like the B8 A4, and you can probably understand why I’m leery of most quattro-equipped wonders. Still, I’d do awful things to get my hands on a V10-equipped Audi S8 or megaspec A7 3.0T, so I guess you just can’t shake the crazy from car enthusiasts. How about you? What are your red flag cars? Lead photo courtesy of Hyundai Started wrenching with my very first car — a ’59 Hillman Minx, if you must know — and continued through just about every piece I’ve ever owned. Rebuilt maybe a dozen engines, did all kind of suspension work, electrical system repairs and more brake jobs than I care to think about. But my current Toyota might as well have a sealed hood. I check the oil and, if hard-pressed for time and/or money, might change the air filter. Yeah, I’m a wimp. But I sure do miss the cars I could work on…. As a millennial, I look at my computer-controlled fleet of two cars and wonder how anyone kept their cars on the road before before the era of electronic control (and diagnostics). Every electronically-controlled system is conceptually simpler to understand (to me) than its strictly mechanical forebears. Take a look at Alfa Romeo’s mechanical fuel injection and then tell me EFI is more complex. You can wrench on modern cars, you can teach your friends to wrench on modern cars, and we can all advocate for a future free of OEMs’ gatekeeping walled garden bullshit. Yeeaah…..let’s spend billions to travel to and practice in an environment completely unlike Earth, but use those lessons to better our ability to provide solutions for mobility ….on that effing rock we already exist on and could literally go outside and practice on right now. I cannot even fathom the potential range of ulterior motives present in this effort… Thing is, although I don’t do most of my own maintenance due to that Seattle apartment lifestyle, I try to keep on my end of things–I’m the only person I know who checks their tire pressures monthly and prior to every trip more than 150 miles, for example. Same story with oil, coolant, etc.–I don’t change the fluids, but I make sure they’re in good shape on a regular basis. I took a trip down to Portland two weeks ago to see family, and like usual, checked fluids and everything before heading down, specifically because I knew I was gonna push the mileage on my usual 5000 mile change by about 700 miles. Oil was fine, maybe 1/8″ lower than completely full, but well within spec and I was only going to run it another 500 miles at that point. Well, fast forward two weeks, and on Monday night I’m dropping some folks off when I hear the engine start to knock. Was off the road and in a parking lot less than 30 seconds later, thankfully was off the highway. I popped the hood and it was HOT. Pulled the dipstick, absolutely zero oil. Coolant was fine, but hot as well. I got it towed in to my mechanic on Tuesday and they’ve confirmed it’s fucked–no leaks, no idea what happened. No codes were thrown, not a single flash of the low oil light (except maybe by the time I got into the parking lot, wasn’t gonna restart it to find out). It sucks. I don’t know where I went wrong. Although the folks at the shop have always been solid in the past, I still feel like I’m getting the “this idiot drove it without oil and is confused at what happened” vibe, like they don’t believe I actually kept up on the stuff if it failed that catastrophically. Or maybe I’m just projecting. So yeah. I’m out at least 4k for the motor swap if I did it myself with an old ebay motor, which would be a giant pain in the ass with renting tools and shop time and all that, or I’m out closer to 9k all in to have the folks at the shop do it for me. Even with my amazing fiance helping out, I make under $40k living in Seattle, so this hurts a lot. Just did a $1.5k brake job earlier in the year, too. Trying to decide if it’s going to get sold for scrap or if there’s someone out there who wants a well maintained shell of a 2012 Accent. And I get to feel like a dumbass who loves cars so much they let theirs just…run out of oil. Fuck. https://autoservice.hyundaiusa.com/Campaign132/MicroSiteTemplate/MicroSiteTemplateVINValidate/1524 For all I know one more repair would’ve been the ticket to getting her reliable again but by that point I’d spent way too much trying to keep it running in such a short amount of time. I still sometimes think what did I do to the poor car but sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason unfortunately. From what you wrote I don’t see anything that you did that would have cause it. Try not to beat yourself up about it. While I do think electronics are mostly easier to deal with than analog, especially the later carbureted systems with vacuum mazes or mechanical fuel injection, some are pretty bad about requiring proprietary computer systems for maintenance. Sometimes there’s aftermarket options, but they seem really hit or miss on features and it’s hard to get specifics without shelling out and testing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a big step toward a bill. Let’s not count our chickens before they’re hatched though, eh? If you can afford, say, a Dino 246 or 308 GT4, you can pay some guy named Luigi to drop the engine and do whatever it needs. And you’ll have a lot of fun in the times in between! Any front-engine car, I agree 100%. I’d even extend that to inline-transverse installations if they are turbocharged. My newest (2014) Audi Allroad has only required oil changes and brake pads in the 70K I’ve had it so far. Modern electronics don’t scare me, you need a few diagnostic tools and the correct information, but they’re not voodoo. Mostly they just work…… Right now I’m wrenching on my tow pig. The usual Northeast routine of soaking the offending nuts in Blaster, getting a cup of coffee to let the Blaster work, and then running out for more blue wrench fuel when that doesn’t work. In the Midwest we have the same routine, except it’s one beer while waiting for normal rust, two for extra crusty.
