Making road-legal vehicles is generally really hard. For one, the bulk cash required to get through the difficult engineering process, establish a distribution network, and work through the pains of production on the path to profitability is simply immense, which is why so many fledgeling companies seem to have difficulties. This week, there’s drama at electric semi truck startup Windrose, with The Wall Street Journal writing “…Paychecks Are Missing—and So Is a Truck.”
Meanwhile, Bentley just released the first real teaser image of its upcoming EV, and more importantly, announced a name. It’s expected to share a platform with a model from a brand that may be cutting thousands more jobs. Oh, and if all that’s a bit too doom-and-gloom for you, I have a little tidbit of van news that ought to perk things up.
Welcome to the Morning Dump, where we serve up finger food-sized portions of the day’s important car news. I’m taking over from Matt for a few days as he’s at a water park and writing equipment generally gets a bit cranky when exposed to liquids.
What The Truck?
Despite the drawbacks of electric vehicles for high-speed, long-distance load lugging when compared to diesel, the electric semi truck race is on. From the Freightliner eCascadia to the Volvo FH Electric to the Tesla Semi, everyone wants a slice of the pie, so it’s understandable that startups are looking to jump in the pool. One of those startups is Windrose, and it already has fully-functional Chinese-built but locally-assembled trucks. Not only has it successfully made customer deliveries, it’s also been dubbed the “Tesla Semi’s biggest rival” by Forbes. While the brand has been moving fast, a new report titled “A Trucking Startup Aims to Challenge Tesla. Now, Paychecks Are Missing—and So Is a Truck” from the Wall Street Journal suggests they’re also breaking stuff. From WSJ:
By March, the company was in such disarray that Windrose’s chief executive, Wen Han, was demanding to know where one of his $285,000 trucks had gone.
Two former employees fired in January, Travis Waite and Harold Keller, refused to help locate the vehicle until Han paid them a combined $91,000 in unpaid wages and benefits. They still haven’t been paid, they say, and the truck remains at large.
The CEO disputes the reported unpaid wages and benefits, although chat logs obtained by the WSJ suggest a history of late payments. Plus, there’s the matter of an actual labor case that played out in Michigan. From the Wall Street Journal:
Last May, operations director Kyle Maki complained in a company chat about missing wages. By March, labor regulators in Michigan ordered Windrose to pay almost $10,000 in back wages and interest. Han said he would pay the money but disputes the amount involved and may file a counterclaim later.
Not a great look for a company that sponsors a football team. Also, how do you lose track of a rather distinctive aerodynamic heavy truck? It’s not like it’s particularly small or nondescript.
Alleged payroll disputes and a missing truck aren’t the only problems reportedly going on at Windrose. The company’s also reportedly drawn the scrutiny of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration due to claims of inaccurate vehicle identification numbers.
Of the four Windrose trucks in the U.S. today, at least two have Vehicle Identification Numbers assigned by Windrose that identify the trucks as having been made in Georgia. In fact, the vehicles were made in China, according to Han.
A representative for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the agency is seeking additional information from Windrose. Submitting false information could mean a civil penalty of almost $28,000 for each violation.
Yikes. I’ve reached out to Windrose for comment, and will update you should I hear back. Given how much of this is still to shake out, I’ll be following the Windrose saga as further developments arrive. While the company reportedly still has 150 orders and plans to go public via SPAC later this year, alleged payroll disputes and NHTSA issues cast serious doubt on the company. Oh, and if anyone finds the allegedly missing truck, drop me an email. I’d love to know where it’s been.
Hello Torcal
After years of rumor and a slight delay, the first electric Bentley is almost here. While we’re still going to have to wait until Sept. 23 to see the actual car in full, the crew in Crewe have finally released a name: Torcal. As you probably guessed, “Torcal” traces its etymological roots back to the latin “Torquere,” which translates as “to twist.” Rather apt for something powered by electric motors.
Don’t be terribly surprised if the Torcal shares an architecture with the new Porsche Cayenne Electric, just like how the Bentayga’s a cousin of the regular Cayenne. This should mean DC fast charging at up to 390 kW, a battery pack capacity well in excess of 100 kWh, and a load of different output options Bentley can choose from. Judging by the latest official teaser photo, cues like the taillamp detailling and rear glass treatment seem far less generic than on last year’s EXP 15 concept too. We should know a whole lot more in the next three-ish months, but for now, I’m just dreaming of what the depreciation will be like in a decade.
Porsche’s Reportedly Cutting Thousands More Jobs
Speaking of Porsche, the marque continues to find itself in a tight spot, and it’s been responding with austerity. After culling 500 jobs in May, more cuts are reportedly on the way according to Manager Magazin.
According to information obtained by the Handelsblatt newspaper, up to 4,000 more jobs could be lost in the announced further job cuts at sports car manufacturer Porsche . The report states that employees in management and administration are particularly affected. Around 30 percent of the capacity at the Weissach development site is to be reviewed.
A Porsche spokesperson declined to confirm the specific number of job cuts when asked by the German Press Agency (dpa), but referred to a comprehensive restructuring plan currently being developed to streamline the company. The plan is expected to be presented by the end of July.
This certainly isn’t the first time in history that Porsche’s found itself in a tight spot. Around the turn of the ’90s, the marque found itself in a serious profitability crisis, eventually rising from that so monumentally, it attempted to eat Volkswagen. Now though, the challenges are different than they were back then, as are the opportunities. Porsche’s last comeback was aided by new currency, a period of free trade expansion, the ability to find huge operational efficiencies, and getting in on the ground floor of an extremely profitable new segment, the luxury SUV. This time, the world is now a very different place.
Van Time
That was a bit depressing, so how about some slightly uplifting news? Kia has announced pricing for the 2027 Carnival minivan and it’s only $100 more than last year’s model across all trim levels. This means the base LX starts at $39,035 including freight, a pretty good deal for a practical family hauler. At the same time, mid-range EX and SX trims gain optional second row captain’s chairs, and while red is no longer on the color palette, EX-and-up trims get a fetching shade called Iceberg Green.
On paper, the sweet spot of the range is likely the EX Hybrid, which combines the 32-combined-MPG hybrid powertrain with hands-free power sliding doors and sunshades for $45,235. That’s a solid amount of van for the money, an honest machine at a rather sensible price tag.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Man, 112 is fantastic. I know “U Already Know” probably isn’t a song you’d play around your parents, but in a drop-top on a summer’s evening in the city, it’s a feeling.
The Big Question:
Let’s say that you were given the keys to the Porsche kingdom with the mission of turning things around. How would you do it?
Top graphic image: Windrose
TBQ: Hire Toecutter to make a superlight high-performance city/quadracycle EV; respin the Boxter as a hybrid with EV mode for city use; keep a mid-range stickshift in the lineup and promote it as an attainable “analog” halo car.
(Note: I’m kinda blasé about the survival of Porsche.)
You really need to stop with the clickbait headlines.
Windrose is not a primary competitor to anyone and Tesla is a rounding error in the Class 8 market.
TBQ: Grab the keys to a GT3 and do donuts until I got bored and/or nauseous.
Oh, you mean “turn Porsche around” in a business sense…
My answer for almost any failing company selling luxury products is right sizing. Porsche tried being a volume brand and it apparently didn’t work, mostly because Porsche as a brand no longer feels the slightest bit special. As a kid I really wanted a Porsche and just seeing a 911 was fun. Today, I see regularly see Porsches in the drive-thru at McDonald’s and they don’t even draw my attention away from the dollar menu. Porche is a great cautionary tale for brand dilution.
I don’t know if a smaller Porsche would be wildly profitable, but I suspect they could justify their existence by selling two “volume” models (the 911 and Cayman/Boxster) with high-margin special editions thrown in the mix. Plus, they could copy Harley-Davidson and Ferrari by selling a bunch of random, highly profitable merchandise to people that can’t afford the cars.
I’m not sure this would work, but I think it has a better chance that the current Porsche strategy of attempting to simultaneously be exclusive and a high-volume manufacturer.
I don’t think the trouble with Porsche is in the 911 range, much less the specialty GT cars or fancy editions.
The problem is the weirdness around the entry points to the brand, the 718 and the Macan (will they be all EV, will gas still be offered, etc) and consumers pulling back because of it. They are also losing Taycan sales fast, amid the general EV pullback.
Ultimately their reputation may depend most on the range topping 911s, but the success of the brand is going to be driven by the vehicles that relatively normal UMC professionals can afford. And right now there just isn’t a lot of clarity around what those offerings are and will be.
It’s an affordability problem as well. There was a time when a Porsche could be a stretch purchase for an upper middle class professional. Even the basest Macan you can find available on a lot is a $70,000+ proposition at this point. My wife and I/pretty much all of our friends are dual six figure income households at this stage and a $70,000 luxury car is what I’d categorize as a frivolous at best, reckless at worst purchase for any of us.
Whether or not you find $70K cars affordable as a $200-400K household really all comes down to housing prices I imagine.
The Midwest is full of Yukons and Platinum trucks that cost more than most non-911 Porsches, but maybe a Macan badge just doesn’t carry the same weight around here.
Torcal is Lacrot backwards…so let’s get one up to the salt covered roads of the northern US and see how it lives up to it’s name.
“Let’s say that you were given the keys to the Porsche kingdom with the mission of turning things around. How would you do it?”
Play the typical CEO cards. Fire a bunch of people, close some factories, make crazy promises, cut a bunch of programs in the name of austerity, hope those will jack up the stock price for a quarter then quit, leave, or get fired with a giant multi million dollar golden parachute and not care what happens with Porsche and then do it again someplace else.
“Torcal” traces its etymological roots back to the latin “Torquere,” which translates as “to twist.”
Word of Jason’s phenomenal record breaking run has traveled fast. All are clamoring to steal some of the valor that is Torch.
TBG – more licensing deals, whore the brand out to every developer and hospitality company that wants to pay an upfront fee + a percentage of gross receipts in perpetuity. Porsche Mini Golf & Family Fun Centers, Porsche Bowling Centers, Porsche Hotels & Resorts, Porsche Residences, Porsche Retirement Communities, Porsche Cafes, and then quickly retire before any of the negative results from that begin to surface, so it looks like the next guy’s fault the brand equity goes to shit and is no longer worth anything
Oh, and maybe explore the 911 platform a little more, why does the Panamera have to be the only sedan? Stretch that and make a rear engine Tatra tribute, also maybe do a slightly longer wheelbase coupe option with a tad more rear seat room and optional minibar
Porsche needs a new 914.
An Everyman Porsche!
Or a truck.
Look! It’s the new Honda CR-V…oh wait, that’s a Bentley? Meh, everything looks the same these days.
Also, no red is surely a sign of the ends times.
TBQ:
Porsche needs to step away from it’s 1 of 4 spec chasing fanbase of 1%ers and build something the middle class can afford and aspire to.
Sure the GT3 Cars are amazing, but I’ll never afford one, and a base spec 911 is still far to expensive. The Corvette (I hate to say this) is eating their lunch in the US on price/performance. Cut 30K off of the sticker price of everything and print money. I know this is unreasonable, but that’s what it’d take to get me into one.
You said this far more succinctly than I ever could
Ha!
It would be a really interesting study to see how much money is spent VS earned on some of these specialty cars. Every company needs a halo car, but Porsche has way too many.
Two former employees fired in January, Travis Waite and Harold Keller, refused to help locate the vehicle until Han paid them a combined $91,000 in unpaid wages and benefits. They still haven’t been paid, they say, and the truck remains at large.
Given the striking similarity to the plot of “Airwolf” I really hope these two guys have the truck painted black and are stashing it in a hollowed-out mountain, only going to get it when they need to be champions of justice for the downtrodden.
As a life long Airwolf fan, I support this message. I can see it now as the new “Highwayman” TV show. They are secretly receiving funding to transport cargo various clandestine locations across the US. Instead of the original Highwayman chopper, Airwolf comes out of the back. In this version, Airwolf has AI and is voiced by William Daniels.
So glad that Kia understood the assignment. Those Carnivals are everywhere and I am looking forward to getting possibly the Hybrid one in the future.
My sister and her husband, who are high earners that are very image conscious, just bought a Telluride. They didn’t even look at anything else (I suggested a certified MDX to no avail), they were like “this is what we want” and went out and bought one. I haven’t driven it yet but it sure looks great and they got a decent deal on a barely used one.
I found this fascinating. For context they’re in their mid 30s. I really don’t think millennials and younger have the same anti-Korean car bias that older folks do, and I’d imagine that’s where Hyundai and Kia are doing a lot of their damage. Hell I bought one in 2022…
Gen X and older remember when the movie Gung Ho could have been a documentary on Hyundai quality.
Porsche has too many fucking cars. I’m a dyed in the wool Porsche sicko and even I can’t tell you which 911 variant is which anymore…and if every one of them is special than none of them are special. Every time I see headlines about some new 992 variant I roll my eyes, as I do at every stupid “(insert 911 variant here) is THE 911 for the discerning enthusiast” take.
The boutique market is wildly oversaturated because there’s never been a better time to be wealthy, and while I understand the capitalist death march of doing everything to make line go UP, as I’ve said a few times Porsche has pushed their luck too far. The average person who wants a 911 already has one or several and they’re all grayscale because of MUH RESALE! It’s become the doctor equivalent of MY CORVETTE IS BEST CORVETTE!
While Porsche would take one look at my bank account and proceed to refuse to piss on me if I was on fire, they need something cool that’s vaguely attainable. Before the usual suspects go “if you factor in inflation they cost the same as always, work harder pleb”, wages have been stagnant for the last half a decade. There was a time when a Porsche was something an upper middle class person could aspire to and that’s no longer the case…and the volume models are what allow them to keep making 1,233,427 different 911s.
I really think they should make something on the same platform as the A5/A6 that starts in the low 60s. Make it look like a mini Panamera. Hell, just rebadge an S5 if you have to, it’s a Porsche engine anyway. That would at least give the people who are stretching to afford a Blackwing, M2/3, base C8, etc. something to consider…then they can subsidize leases a bit to make them $999 a month or whatever because Porsches don’t depreciate as badly.
Then put your industry leading certification program behind them once they come off leases and sell them to enthusiasts that’ll keep them long term. Porsche needs another Cayenne, badly…and unfortunately for their bean counters it’s going to have to be cheaper in practice than that car was, because people don’t have that kind of money anymore.
Your comment is my comment written with thought an clarity!
Not to mention the Corvette absolutely destroys the performance of many sport cars for way less money. Not saying the Corvette is everyones ideal sports car, but why does a base 911 cost so much more?
A C8 is still (barely) within “if you work hard and play your cards right you can aspire to one” range as well. No Porsche other than a base Macan is, and they’re working to do away with that as we speak.
It certainly didn’t use to, but, like a lot of vehicles, Porsche seems to have discontinued the idea of an “entry” trim level and starts 911 pricing about where the middle of the range maybe should be, and excuse it by pointing to everything that’s standard now
Is the truck really “lost” or is that Mercedes has been reviewing it for the last nine months like that electric motorycle from last year that they never picked up either? Someone needs to check her storage lots…
TBQ: Ruggedize the Cayenne and the Macan, but actually give them off-road chops. Copy the G-wagon’s homework.
Obviously, those two ex-employees who won’t help look for the truck have hidden it in a secret location until they get paid.
One cannot regard the issues with Porsche without looking at VW Group as a whole.
VW can’t seem to get a grip on it’s issues with quality and design – it needs the new EV Golf stat, and to spin the Jetta off that.
The Jetta brand in China – who thought that developing different styling of Skodas and Seats for China was a good way to spend money? Why not just change the badges from the underlying Seats and Skodas and call it a day?
Audi lost its chief designer to Genesis – and it shows. It too struggles with quality – since many of its systems are derived from VW. Ditch the A8.
Cupra should never have been spun off of Seat.
Skoda needs to be a world-car brand – sold in North America as a budget brand to compete with Hyundai and Kia.
Once VW gets the rest of it’s house in order, Porsche will fall in line – as every model that isn’t a 911 or 718 shares systems with VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda, and it needs those lower-cost models to sell to make Porsche’s limited and higher-end sales profitable.
However the Panamera – I think that line is toast. Time to discontinue it.
Of course discontinuing the A8 and Panamera means rough times for Bentley – Perhaps going all EV in the coming years would make the most sense there too.
“Skoda needs to be a world-car brand – sold in North America as a budget brand to compete with Hyundai and Kia.”
Volkswagen IS and always has been the budget brand, never mind their delusions of grandeur. The sooner VW corporate realizes that again, the sooner their fortunes will improve. Provide a quality vehicle at a very fair price and people will buy it.
OK, then, rebadge Skodas as Volkswagens for markets where the Skoda name is unknown/unestablished
TBQ: Bring back the 924/944 and boxster. Make a Dakar edition of the SUVs and go racing with all of them.
Bring back the prestige and glamor and sales will follow.
People have been lamenting how fast businesses move in China compared to the West. Perhaps it’s because they don’t give a f*ck about laws. Which I guess makes them like Silicon Valley.
https://youtu.be/6iLf2h_fo-w
This is a much watch for anyone who’s still on the fence about the ghouls in Silicone Valley and how they’re ruining literally everything….
James Bond should have let Max Zorin finish hit master plan…
But the plan didn’t make any goddamn sense, there was virtually no microchip production in Silicon Valley, and relatively little manufacturing of any sort, vs R&D, he wasn’t actually taking out any competition at all, but more likely damaging a lot of his own potential customers, if anything