While it may feel like there’s been a concerted effort by the United States to remake its environmental policy in such a way as to completely ignore the existence of the environment, the reality is that there are so many different initiatives being undertaken at the same time that they can sometimes be at cross-purposes. A good example is a recent decision regarding aluminum and steel products, which are necessary both for electric cars and your sweet aftermarket exhausts.
The Morning Dump is treading familiar ground today, so why not talk about Tesla? The company is likely to face a class action lawsuit over its self-driving claims in California, and this particular ruling sets a potentially worrisome precedent for the automaker. While TMD is in California (though your author is on the East Coast), let’s check out another electric carmaker there: VinFast. It just opened up its first dealership in the state as it pivots away from a pure direct sales model.
And, finally, Amazon is getting into the used car space, but the competition isn’t that worried.
Aluminum And Steel Tariffs Come For Aftermarket Products, Derivatives
I have previously discussed the logic of steel and aluminum tariffs here, so I won’t get into too much detail. It is not uniquely the viewpoint of this current administration that America needs to be able to produce some amount of its own raw materials. While there’s a cost savings to making things cheaper in other places, there are legitimate reasons why you don’t want to be reliant on distant countries for the basic building blocks of everything.
On the other hand, you can’t just suddenly build up a huge steel and aluminum manufacturing base in the United States overnight. There’s also questionable logic behind producing energy-intensive aluminum here when Canada is right there and has smelters running that can process aluminum at a much-reduced cost.
Nevertheless, the current administration has targeted both steel and aluminum for massive tariffs. The initial tariffs were focused on the raw material itself, but a new rule this week is taking aim at products made with aluminum and steel. Basically, if something is imported into this country and contains steel or aluminum (or both), it’ll get the 50% tariff on those materials, and then whatever isn’t steel or aluminum will be hit with whatever tariff exists on that country. You know what kind of products use a lot of steel and aluminum? Car parts!
You can read the full decision here in the Federal Register, but unless you’re an expert in trade, I don’t think any of the hundreds of codes will mean anything to you. Thankfully, Reuters has a reasonable translation (bold mine):
Evercore ISI said in a research note the move covers more than 400 product codes representing over $200 billion in imports last year and estimates it will raise the overall effective tariff rate by around 1 percentage point.
The department is also adding imported parts for automotive exhaust systems and electrical steel needed for electric vehicles to the new tariffs as well as components for buses, air conditioners as well as appliances including refrigerators, freezers and dryers.
A group of foreign automakers had urged the department not to add the parts, saying the U.S. does not have the domestic capacity to handle current demand.
My understanding of how politics works in the 21st century is that people can endure wages that only slowly increase, employment that slowly decreases, and basically any other concern, so long as prices don’t go up. How does this decision not cause prices to eventually increase? In theory, companies in the United States are looking to restart or expand facilities to process these metals, but in practice, it’s a little bit of a harder proposition, according to this report from S&P Global Mobility:
Of the four active US smelters, two are operated by Alcoa and two by Chicago-based Century Aluminum. In earnings calls for their Q1, neither company said they would increase production and restart idled capacity because of US tariffs.
“It’s hard to make a restart decision based on a tariff that can change. We have seen the volatility of discussions around the tariffs over the last 60 days,” Oplinger said on Alcoa’s April 16 call. “We wouldn’t necessarily make a decision to restart capacity simply based on tariffs just because they can change.”
It doesn’t appear to be changing, so perhaps this will get companies on the long and expensive road to building more domestic capacity. That the ruling seems to particularly call out the parts necessary to make electric cars is not great for Tesla, but Tesla has bigger concerns.
Tesla Might Have To Answer For Its Big Autopilot Promises
There’s a sense that Elon Musk, by virtue of his money and power, is made of Teflon. Or maybe mithril, since he’s such a fan of sci-fi/fantasy. It’s clear that Musk views himself as some sort of protagonist in a Sci-Fi universe, even if he’s more of an L. Bob Rife-type figure to some.
Either way, his recent foray into expanding his power via politics has not gone well, and the hundreds of millions of dollars he’s spent to influence the election haven’t resulted in limitless control for Tesla. In addition to increased costs in the United States from tariffs, the company is facing a class action lawsuit over its Autopilot claims. Specifically, that customers paid for something that was never truly delivered.
The most important part of this ruling, I think, is not so much that it allows a class action lawsuit to proceed, but that it holds the company accountable for what CEO Elon Musk says and what it promised in blog posts. From U.S. District Judge Rita Lin, via Reuters:
In her decision on Monday, the San Francisco-based judge also said thousands of people likely saw Tesla’s claim in the “Autopilot” section of its website from October 2016 to August 2024 that its vehicles contained hardware for full self-driving.
Tesla made a similar claim in a blog post, newsletter and quarterly earnings call, as did Musk at a 2016 press conference.
“While these channels alone may not ordinarily be enough to establish class-wide exposure for a traditional car manufacturer, Tesla’s distinctive advertising strategy warrants a departure from the typical approach,” Lin wrote.Tesla does not use mass advertising or independent dealers, and Lin said it was reasonable to infer that class members interested in Full Self-Driving technology went to Tesla’s website to get information.
Musk and Tesla have a history of making big promises that take time to come to fruition (if they ever do). If other courts agree with this interpretation, then there may be more suits to come.
VinFast’s First Dealer Opens
I wrote earlier this month that VinFast is an automaker that is not keen on giving up, even if its attentions are maybe shifting a bit more towards Southeast Asia. While Tesla has found success outside of the dealership model, that hasn’t been the case for the Vietnamese carmaker, so it just opened its first dealer in California.
Vietnamese automaker VinFast opened its first franchised dealership in California, ending its direct-sales model in the state and the U.S. after struggling to sell its electric vehicles.
The VinFast San Diego store is part of Sunroad Automotive Group, which sells 14 brands at nine locations and has annual sales of 30,000 vehicles, VinFast said Aug. 19.
VinFast opened distribution to franchised dealers in late 2023 but kept its 15 California direct-sales showrooms. VinFast said April 24 it would close those stores and seek dealer partners.
“We believe in VinFast’s strong potential to make a lasting impact in the North American market,” Uri Feldman, president of Sunroad Holding Corp., said in a statement.
If California decides to replace the $7,500 tax credit with its own, this may not be the worst idea.
The Internet Can Be A Strange Place
I had a great time at Car Week, and I feel renewed seeing so many young enthusiasts. At the same time, it made me realize how far removed reality is from the mechanics of the Internet. There is something fundamentally broken in the way people interact with websites. Layoffs abound in the media space, and everything feels like a dumb game.
In theory, this article from Automotive News is about how companies like Cars.com and CarGurus aren’t threatened by Amazon’s new foray into used cars, but something else caught my eye:
Vetter said dealership feedback from Cars.com suggests Amazon isn’t having much of an impact anyway.
“I have talked to a lot of the dealers … and the feedback thus far has been — there’s a lot of effort but not a lot of traction,” Vetter said.
Vetter said Amazon could make a bigger impact by partnering with Cars Commerce.
“I’d love to be a reseller of Amazon solutions to the industry and ship dollars away from Google, right? We’ve got the distribution already built,” Vetter said. “If Amazon’s serious about wanting to sell advertising into the automotive industry, I think we’re an established platform that could provide a lot of scale and help on that, just like we’ve helped dealers with Google … or buying traffic on Facebook using our first-party data.”
That’s Cars Commerce (Cars.com) CEO Alex Vetter saying the quiet part out loud.
If you’re not aware, the fundamental promise of free information being supported by advertising doesn’t really work anymore. Most of the sites you read are playing some sort of game to trick the system so it can filter more eyeballs through as many revenue sources as possible.
What I think he’s saying here is that he’d like to partner with Amazon to use their “solutions” and products to take money away from the Google ecosystem. He also admits to “buying traffic” on Facebook, which isn’t wrong in and of itself, nor is using “first party data,” which is the information you give websites when you go to them.
It’s all an arbitrage, really, and all “free” content is just a slippery slide trying to land you in the funnel for some sort of commerce. This is why we’re trying to build a membership business as fast as we can, because none of this feels sustainable. If you feel the same way, please consider becoming a member.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I lied, the song of summer is “Golden” from the Netflix show KPop Demon Hunters. I will not explain, and if you have a kid I don’t need to explain.
The Big Question
What do you read on the Internet? Where do you shop for cars?
Top Photo: Flowmaster
The Autopian, NYT, The Atlantic, EE Times, CT News Junkie. That’s basically it. I also read more than watch video’s, but I typically doom scroll Youtube at night.
I’m selling a car on Autotrader, but it was a mistake. I don’t have a Facebook account, so marketplace sucks for me and I don’t use it. recently been using cargurus and autotempest to search.
I am frustrated that everything is a video. There was a really nice decade where everything was about reading, and how-to’s were all written, which I love. Most of the time I’m looking for a very specific part of a procedure because I know the rest of how to do things. That is much more frustrating via video, but also kinda nice to have the visuals. So, I guess I’m adapting and am forced to.
Honestly, much of my life now starts on ChatGPT to get an idea on things, as it summarizes a google search pretty nicely. No real need to do that anymore when you can have the computer do it the first time, and follow up with more in-depth research on specific results.
Similar. Autopian, NYT, The Atlantic, Wired, Pro-Publica, Yahoo Finance. I refuse to do a facebook account. I bought my last car off the classifieds of a make-specific forum. I’ve bought off Cars and Bids as well. Craigslist has probably been the source of most of my cars.
As someone who’s in-depth writing-filled website got all of 37 hits last week,
felt
I enjoyed the song, so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PinCg7IGqHg
I primarily read the Autopian and 986forum, browse Facebook Marketplace for weekend cars (shitboxes/projects) and AutoTempest for daily drivers (for other people, as the 986 will remain my daily until I pop a kneecap or a rubber). Of course, I have to find time to do that in between my 12th and 13th rewatch of Kpop Demon Hunters with my wife.
Me currently shopping aftermarket exhausts for the GR Corolla and already thinking most of them are big $$$. Wonderful.
“While it may feel like there’s been a concerted effort by the United States to remake its environmental policy in such a way as to completely ignore the existence of the environment”
The term “it may feel like” isn’t necessary in that it’s objectively what’s happening; it’s an *explicitly* stated goal of the current administration.
“[T]he Netflix show KPop Demon Hunters. I will not explain, and if you have a kid I don’t need to explain.”
Uh, it’s not a show, it’s a film. Probably easy enough a mistake to make for people who don’t take animation seriously and just dismiss it as entertainment for kids. And that film has apparently already become Netflix’s most-viewed film of all time, with the viewing stats spread over all demographics regardless of whether one has kids or not. And it’s a film from Sony Pictures Animation Studios, not Netflix.
In any case, yeah, it’s highly recommended watching (& multiple watching, lol, especially for those who like the music though the animation itself, the directing itself, and the story itself are all great.)
My 24yo daughter will tell you they were watching/listening to K-pop before it was ‘mainstream/Cool’ in US and now it’s not as good. She was into group B.T.S. One year they appeared on a New Years Eve show and then at all kinds of US stuff right after that, not all music related. I told her someone caught wind that all these young American girls when into this Kpop/Jpop music on internet, so they wanted get in on the action. Sure enough….they, of course, tweaked the music to be more Americanized, so many moved on to something else. That’s what they didn’t want to listen to.
As someone who dated a few animators, THANK YOU.
Also, my 6 year old daughter was super into it. So I sat down and watched it. Honestly? Great movie with a killer soundtrack. No wonder it’s going Gangbusters.
What do you read on the Internet? –try to avoid anything about the current political situation…I already take medicine for high blood pressure, otherwise Auto stuff/House stuff and then local news type stuff.
Where do you shop for cars? –Since typically searching for cheaper used cars for kids/self: Start with the many sites on the internet: Facebook Mplace for owner direct cars (although ‘search’ function is highly frustrating, you find a car, but then you cant find it again! Why does it have to still have some kind of algorithm messing with the results??), sites that dealers post on such as carfax, cargurus, cars.com, etc. and then the local dealers own websites.
I always joke that new car shopping is much easier, just decide on your car and then see who has best deal. Used cars are always a crap shoot, you may or may not have gotten a fair deal, only time will tell. Haven’t bought a new car in this century and dont plan on it. Like them 1-2 years old and ‘shook down’ with 12k-20k miles on them.
Typically go with this site, the Race and The War zone and reddit for sports.
Also some industry specific news sites.
Current daily i got from a dealer off autotrader. And the 944 i had was through cars and bids, but local to me.
If Elon Musk was a Sci-Fi character, who would he be?
Ferengi/Pakled hybrid?
Jabba the Hutt
If you’ve ever read Ben Bova’s books, he always has a big industrialist of some sort as the antagonist with the primary protagonist as an altruistic industrialist of another company or department at the same big conglomerate. That antagonist is quite close to Musk actually.
Not the least of which because the characters are quite 2-dimensional and lack a lot of depth or real character development. So spot on really.
It’s been years, I should re-read some Bova.
Internet trading goes to … Reddit/Google search.
Car shopping used to be craigslist and auto trader (print edition!), but my last purchase was from Carvana over a phone.
Honestly this site is probably 90% of what I read on the internet. Otherwise, I go read a book.
I don’t exclusively browse one or a few sites when looking for cars. I go to dealer sites, aggregate sites, and Marketplace. I loath Marketplace and that it killed Craigslist, but there’s not much I can do about that.
When it comes to actually buying cars, I stick to new car dealers (within 50 miles), and private sellers (within 50-100 miles). I have no interest in the inflated prices that typically come from a Carvana or CarMax. And used-only car dealers… I have had absolutely zero positive experiences with and I avoid like the plague. If I’m going to go downmarket for a used car, I’ll deal with the owner, thank you.
“Where do you shop for cars?”
Dude, last week we spent $300 on back-to-school supplies, $400 on back-to-school clothes because my daughter has grown out of all her old fall wardrobe, and the next day my wife spent $250 on a partial grocery trip for just the three of us. What on earth makes you think I’m shopping for a car anytime soon.
It’s rough. We got lucky (I guess?) that our kids didn’t grow much since last year, so a lot of what we have is good to go. Though once we hit October, I’m going to be they’re going to need new winter coats (boooooo). At least my kids are young and have zero preference for branding, so we tend to go for midlevel stuff of decent quality that we can hand down to the younger one.
As for groceries, the local Aldi sure got crowded over the past year or two, didn’t it?
Last year our school district switched to the schools buying the supplies, with each family paying a share. Thanks to economies of scale, we only had to pay $50, and didn’t waste time at Walmart searching for blue wide-ruled notebooks or a specific pack of markers.
I’ve purchased 5 vehicles via internet. Both current vehicles were found on cars.com. F-150 was a dealer listing in MS. Purchased over the phone and shipped to FL. GTI was a dealer listing in AL. Purchased over the phone and shipped to FL. Wife’s previous car, a 2010 Jetta Wolfsburg was found on a CarMax listing on Cars.com in Jacksonville. CarMax shipped it to Pompano Beach for $50. My previous GTI, a 2012 Autobahn was found in private listing on Cars.com. Purchased over the phone and shipped from Vegas to FL. Prior to the 2012 GTI, I had a 2011 Golf TDI which was found on a dealer listing on Cars.com. Car was in FL in Lake Wales. Arranged sale via phone and drove 3hrs to pick it up. It’s an enormous country and there are a lot of really nice cars out there of you set your search parameters correctly.
Words.
Earth.
Pfft. The best deals are had on the Moon. Earthbound shopping is for filthy casuals.
The dead hooker in the trunk brings the value down.
I bought my Miata on cars.com in 2007, bought an S13 in Miami from a craigslist ad in 2001 and sold the S13 on autotrader in 2008. I think everything since then has been new cars where I did the research, settled on the model and then contacted dealers until I got the best deal.
That contact the dealers part was horrible. Dealerships can generate email faster than an ai spambot. I was clicking ‘unsubscribe’ for months after purchase.
I try to read a cross section of viewpoints and ideas from smart people. I much prefer reading over video, which makes me an outlier in this internet age, but an interesting long form piece will catch my attention almost no matter what it’s about.
I shop for cars anywhere they are sold, but most commonly FB Marketplace (for used) and Car Gurus (for new or newish).
I’m with you on reading over video. School taught us so well how to skim text for the important bits, and video throws that all in the garbage. I do appreciate though when a video is like “how to use a ____” and doesn’t last more than 30 seconds.
Can’t monetize those short videos so people stopped making them.
Now every 30 second trick will be hidden in 10 minutes of useless. If someone does ever post the 30 second trick video, it will be posted inside someone else’s 10+ minute nothing vid with better search optimization, making sure you will never again be able to find the 30 second version.
Ever googled for a recipe? You have to wade through pages of SEO slop before you get to the list of ingredients.
I’ve found that they often have a “Skip to Recipe” button. If not, I usually abandon them and look elsewhere.
Absolutely. It’s infuriating. It’s easier to dig through cookbooks and adapting something.
My favorite thing is digging deep on three or four different sites only to be rewarded with the equivalent of the recipe on the side of a soup can.
I think that video has its merits when it comes to certain forms of tutorial, but lately all the so-called tutorial videos (woodworking)I have been watching are just infomercials. Youtube was a great place to draw inspiration from once upon a time, but now we can’t have hobbies. Everything has to be maximized and monetized.
And I try to make you read my idiotic comments to balance it all out.
Lol, I inflict my share of questionable takes as well.
Now I’m picturing you declaring 10 cylinder superiority while standing in front of an angry mob of 8 and 12 cylinder fans.
Four cylinder turbo for the win. 🙂
I’m of the inline 6 superiority camp. I’m induction agnostic.
That’s the next Autopian membership drive. If they get 2000 new members by the end of September, they’ll fly David Tracy out to swap a CVT into V10omous’ Viper while he watches in horror.
I don’t think you’re an outlier at all. I’ve been trying to understand the world of website advertising (here and other sites as well). It seems the video content is a must because it generates more revenue for the site even if only a few eyeballs hit it.
Which is also why there is so much auto-playing going on. It is gaming the system but this is the system so you sort of have to play that way.
I think most of us come to read and the video is for revenue.
I hope that’s true, and maybe the provider side of things is driving the decisions rather than the audience, but either way I wish we had more of the Internet of 2010-15 rather than what we have now (in several ways).
I’ve been debating a full exhaust system (headers, link pipes, rear “boxes”) as the car doesn’t sound as good as it should. Bit of a charity mod, but also power, less weight.
At least if there’s tariffs, going full inconel for sound/weight will seem less insane.
LOL. I misread the title. I thought it said:
I was really interested to find out about these fake exhausts to add onto electric cars, and why they were getting more expensive.
I know there are things like that, but I didn’t think it was a big enough industry for reporting.
Really, there’s only one and they chickened out on releasing sci fi noises. Just poorly done mimics of gas cars that nobody wants, apparently.
Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust aftermarket is gonna be brutal for the dozen or so people that bought a Charger Daytona.
I read the title the same way. Makes me wonder if there was a typo that got corrected.
Either that, or we share a little bit of insanity. 🙂
I mainly read automotive sites. At work during down time, it’s Allpar, Mopar Insiders, that J site, Hagerty, The Drive, and then right here. Generally, I spend most of my time between here and Allpar though.
Otherwise, I don’t really go to specific sites to read stuff. I’ll see articles that seem interesting through the MSN feed, but my web browser access to read stuff is strictly automotive.
For car shopping, I don’t really do that either. I’ve owned a whole 2 cars in my life, and I’d rather have my own place to live and no student loan debt before I put myself into car debt buying multiple cars and whatnot.
My 7 yo niece showed me that show and told me I need to watch it and went through which character was which of her friends’ favorite, so I surprisingly have heard of this show.
As a kid my older brother would bring home Tradin Times and Auto Trader pretty regularly, so Autotrader.com had a lot of my brain share, but over time their results just got less and less reliable. Too many cars priced unreasonably low screwing up my search results, too many write-offs that I had to dive into the car fax to uncover etc, the whole changing of their model to having to buy through them just feels off and I don’t like their interface anymore. So I’ve been leaning on cars.com for about a year now, it’s where I found my 2013 Si last October. Overall their search results are easier to adjust, and there just seem to be a lot less sketchy ads, prob ably because they are mostly dealer driven?
I do miss the Craigslist of 15 years ago quite a bit though.
Golden didn’t hit the spot for me, but How It’s Done and Takedown are both good songs for aggressively doing something mundane.
I’m partial to Park Dayhe’s cover version of “Golden”.
I think the KPDH “Golden” is pretty great, but my favorite “Golden” is still the Cannons cover of the Harry Styles song.
I only read the Autopian and only buy cars from dealers.
PS Can you add Autopian to your built-in comment spellchecker dictionary?
My spell check is based on my web browser settings, had an issue last fall wherein my regional settings got messed up and it was auto-correcting everything to the Queen’s English instead of ‘Merican!
Didn’t realize it used a local dictionary. Thanks!
right click on the word and select add to dictionary
Didn’t realize it used a local dictionary. Thanks!
Coming soon,
The Autopian Marketplace: Where “Sort by cheapest” and “Peer Pressure” are the only search options.
Great idea for added revenue for this great site
An Autopian members only classifieds section would be awesome!
Huge bonus for using a photo of a Volvo Amazon in a segment about the online retailer of the same name. Volvo should sue!
Came here to say that!
Now we need Torch to write a Sonnett.
Are you sure? It’s going to be a real Saab story!
I like to shop for cars in-person.
Ergonomics are hugely important for something I’ll spend countless hours sitting in, getting in/out, and loading/unloading ‘stuff’ into/from.
Same, but I’ll narrow down the list of interesting options online first. When there’s maybe 3 strong candidates, then I go look in person.
Also looking at dealer inventory online helps me gauge the general size of the dealer and what they might be like to talk to. Like if there are 10 dealers for the same brand in a 20 mile radius, some online research helps determine which of those I go to, though a bad in-person experience can quickly pivot that, as it did with the Ford dealer down the road from me.
The fact this comment exists should give a pretty good idea. 😉
AutoTempest is a pretty useful resource that aggregates a very broad range of internet car sales outlets (at least for US-based buyers). I used that to find my last car. I also scan Cars and Bids and Bring a Trailer, but 99% of that is just for the novelty of it, not any serious car shopping. Hagerty also has a car marketplace with classifieds and auctions that seems to fly under the radar compared to other car outlets, and I found my DeLorean on there.