The Escape is one of those cars that got less interesting to me as it got better. The original, hybrid and boxy small crossover was really ahead of the market in many ways. While the model has improved measurably over that original, it has lost a little flair. The fact that it’s basically gone is both representative of where the auto industry over-pivoted towards EVs and, frankly, how it’s making up the gap with more expensive models.
While the Escape is one of The Morning Dump’s preoccupations, it’s not the only one. I’m also interested in how Tesla is selling Full Self Driving and, at least according to one report, it’s over-selling it. The USMCA? Probably, maybe, kinda dead. It sounds like there’s more talk coming about how it’s gonna be a bunch of bilateral deals, though maybe those can save it?
Here’s something I haven’t written about lately: Grand Theft Auto VI. It was way more expensive to make than I realized.
Money Talks So Escape Owners Won’t Walk
In researching The Morning Dump this morning, I’ve all but convinced myself that Ford is going to name one of its UEV-platformed electric vehicles the Ford Escape. It just makes too much sense. Assuming the Ford $30,000 EV pickup is the Ranchero, the family crossover based on it should just be the Escape. Right? Remember I said this… unless I’m wrong, and then you can just forget it (and if I am right I’ll just remind you of that fact a bunch of times).
By the way, the first ever story I wrote as an automotive journalist was covering Ford’s future CEO Mark “Execumullet” Fields announcing at the Chicago Auto Show that it was silly for the company to abandon the Taurus name and that it would be renaming the Ford 500 the Ford Taurus. That was a weird, mid car, but it brought the Taurus name back for a little while at least.
The Escape hasn’t ever quite had the prominence of Taurus or Explorer, though it has a loyal following and sold in impressive volumes, especially towards the end of last decade. That’s why Ford abandoning the Escape name always struck me as odd. It’s always been a great entry-point into the fold with a loyal following (my own MIL went Explorer->Escape->Escape). Essentially, the Ford Escape died so the $30,000 truck could live, and with both the Bronco Sport and Maverick in the fold it maybe made less sense to retain it.
I keep forgetting that Ford also abandoned the Edge around this time, and I assumed that Edge buyers would go Explorer and Escape owners would go Bronco Sport/ Maverick. My assumption was wrong. Well, half-wrong. Edge buyers are going to the Explorer and so are Escape owners.
What’s going on here?
Some Escape owners are managing to get great deals on the old stock of Escapes on dealer lots, but like Knicks hats, that’s an increasingly finite resource (I haven’t been able to find a hat all weekend). Other than not bringing back the Ford Escort, the people who run the company clearly have some idea what they’re doing.
If you wanted a cheap Escape, the MSRP was as little as $32k before Tax, Title and Licensing fees. As for the Ford Explorer, technically the cheapest is the Active 100A rental special is the cheapest at $40,750 out the door. I want heated seats and USB ports, so for the much larger three-row I think the regular Activ spec is the one to get, and at $42,075 delivered that’s a big jump from a base Escape.
According to Automotive News, the answer for Ford was just to make the Explorer $10,000 cheaper for Escape owners:
But current Escape owners can save up to $10,000 through private offers from the automaker aimed at keeping them in the fold, said Jim Moshier, general manager at Ricart Ford in Columbus, Ohio. Ford told dealers that those targeted discounts, plus more attractive lease options, would help make up for the Escape going away.
Moshier said his store is selling significantly more Explorer Active models this year, which Ford has prioritized building. Many of those base-model buyers are moving up from the Escape.
“It’s not that big of a jump when you add the private offers in there,” he said. “Ford met the need.”
I am on the record complaining about trimflation, so for me the big news here isn’t just that Ford is making it possible for Escape owners to upgrade to the Explorer, but that Ford seems to be sticking to its pledge to make more of the entry-level trims.
A part of me doesn’t love getting people who don’t really need a larger three-row vehicle into a larger and heavier three-row vehicle. The size of the Escape just the right size for people and offers a nice alternative for something in between the Bronco Sport and Explorer, which, again, makes me wonder if the new EV thing isn’t just going to be an Escape.
Tesla Is Reportedly Exaggerating The Safety Of FSD
I know people who are not particularly enamored with Elon Musk who have older Model Ys equipped with what Tesla calls Full Self Driving, and they love the tech. These are interesting conversations for me, because I am skeptical of the platform as a perfect replacement for drivers. I always make it clear to them that they also need to do it supervised as the system isn’t perfect.
Better than the average New York driver? Yeah, well, maybe it is.
This is the point Tesla has been trying to make to regulators: Perfect? No. Better? Yes. Is that true, though? Reuters looked at some of the claims made by Tesla and you’ll be surprised to learn that the company that exaggerates everything may have exaggerated something.
The presentation […] claimed FSD could have potentially saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries.
Researchers interviewed by Reuters said those figures are highly misleading because they are based on the unrealistic assumption that every U.S. vehicle, including freight trucks and crash-prone motorcycles, would be replaced by an FSD-enabled Tesla car – and that every Tesla car is, in fact, at least seven times safer than the one it replaces.
The Reuters examination also found Tesla exaggerates the technology’s safety by comparing a rate of crashes in FSD-piloted Teslas that triggered airbag deployments to a U.S. crash rate for all vehicles that includes far less-severe accidents. The company also compares its cars to the average U.S. vehicle – which is much older than the average Tesla. That distorts the results because automakers have gradually introduced new safety features that reduce crashes.
This does seem misleading, but it appears that it’s misleading in the “lies, damn lies, and statistics” sort of way that many companies in all realms, including automakers, engage in. The regulators interviewed by Reuters said any approvals for FSD came after their own testing and didn’t rely on claims from Tesla for what it’s worth.
Yeah, So, USMCA Talks Are Now Bilateral Talks
President Trump last week claimed that the USA didn’t need anything from Canada and Mexico as a way of dismissing his own USMCA trade deal, meaning the most likely outcome is the USMCA goes away and is replaced by a bunch of bilateral deals. Or, similarly, the USMCA gets an extension because bilateral agreements act as quasi-amendments.
Per The Canadian Press, that seems to be happening:
Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said he expects to see bilateral agreements negotiated with the United States as Canada and Mexico look to extend a critical continental trade pact.
“I would expect that we will have bilateral arrangements between Canada and the United States, between the United States and Mexico, sort of adjacent to the trilateral framework,” LeBlanc said at the U.S.-Canada Summit in Toronto on Thursday.
“If those agreements resolve issues that all three countries are trying to resolve, I’m hopeful that we might, at that point, have the extension.”
Cool.
Grand Theft Auto VI Was How Much?
I finished GTA V in a hurry, realizing that I had a kid on the way and that this would probably be my last chance to finish a massive game. Little did I realize that it would be so long for the replacement that I’d maybe have time again to finish the sequel.
Also, according to this Manager Magazine article, it was a lot of money to make.
The wait is finally over: On November 19th, the video game “Grand Theft Auto VI,” or GTA 6 for short, will be released. This was confirmed by Strauss Zelnick (68), CEO of Take-Two Interactive, the video game company responsible for the GTA series, at an investor conference at the end of May. After two postponements of the release date last year and roughly 13 years since the release of its predecessor, GTA 5, the wait for millions of fans should finally be over: November 19th could go down in history as the day a single product turns the entire entertainment industry upside down.
Because GTA 6 is not only considered the most expensive video game of all time, but also the most expensive entertainment product ever. It has been in development since at least 2018 , and industry analysts estimate that production costs have now reached up to $1.5 billion . Take-Two CEO Zelnick declined to give specific figures in a recent interview , but confirmed: “It was expensive.”
Damn.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
While I will forever be a Texan, I think this Knicks playoff run is what finally made me feel, after living here for more than a decade, like a New Yorker. It not only brought the city together, it also exemplified everything that’s great about this place. We’re a messy, complicated, diverse, incredible mix of people. We can do anything. And if one piece of music exemplifies it, maybe that’s George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” The son of immigrants, Gershwin might have done well anywhere. Might. In New York, though, he flourished.
The Big Question
If you had an Escape and had to replace it, what would you buy?
Top photo: Ford
“As a result, GTA6 will retail for $90”
I wrote a response to a cold start article a week or so ago about how Ford kinda screwed themselves by not really having a car that really fits the demographic of the typical Escape buyer. I won’t rehash it too much, but I think this proves the point. Which situation do you think Ford would prefer to be in – throwing $10k on the hood of an Explorer to keep a customer, or moving 200k units annually like Chevy is doing with the redesigned Trax? I know most here have a distain for Escape because it’s a 4-wheel appliance, but those appliance sales add a bunch to the bottom line, regardless of how un-exciting they are.