Electric Rod

Not sure what Steve Darnell will make of this story.

Steve Darnell is the one who isn't Richard Rawlings.

Richard Rawlings owns Gas Monkey Garage as featured in Fast'n'Loud while Steve Darnell owns Welder Up as featured in Sin City Motors (or, as it is known in America, Vegas Rat Rods)

And one thing Steve Darnell loves doing is sticking huge Cummins Diesel engines into Rat Rods.

But the story, from Autoguide today, tells of Cummins producing an all-powerful, all electric Semi.  (Note that in this case we are talking about a tractor unit not a suburban house or the start of an erection)

Here it is:

and here is another type of semi - a small one:

Very neatly erected in its own way.

 

But I digress.

 

The Cummins/Aeos truck is challenging Tesla who are working on an electric truck themselves.  Autoguide claim that Cummins have got there first since they put out this tweet yesterday at an unveiling:

Very impressive.

 

Does this mean that Steve will now have sparks rather than plumes of black smoke coming from his creations in the future?

 

It's already been done with a few examples coming up if you Google "Electric Rat Rod" but I reckon he will end up doing one too.

I'd put some money on it if I could just think of somewhere in America where it is legal to gamble.

Sex Plates

It is approaching September 1st which means that a new set of car registration numbers will be made available.

This means that a news organisation will do a report on numbers that the DVLA will hold back because they are "offensive".

This week it was the BBC's turn.

They use this depiction:

To be fair, rather than say they are offensive, they ask the question, Do these "suppressed" vehicle registration marks cause "upset or offence"?

 

The first looks a bit like "MURDER" and the second (and it took me a while to work it out) looks a bit like "NEGLECT" so the third one must be "NOGLMUM".

 

They claim that "NO MUM" has potential to cause offence irrespective of the numbers in between.  I'm not convinced that if you wanted to upset someone who had lost a parent that you would go to the trouble of transferring this registration to their car.

 

It may be more likely that the MUM, DAD and SON registrations are being held back to sell off at the next DVLA auction.

 

I'd like to know what will happen in two years time when ALL plates will be deemed offensive.

Does 200 Come With Fried Rice?

Chrysler 200 that is.

Looks like a local chip shop want to buy out Fiat Chrysler. 

You can't see that chip shop from space.  Various news sources have the story.  Here's what BBC Business have to say.

 

It would appear, though, that the Chinese are more interested in the Jeep part of Fiat Chrysler.

But they aren't ruling out a bid for the whole FCA she-bang.  If they'd gone for it last year, they could have got Ferrari too.

 

I chose the BBC story to link to because they picked up on something I had also thought - I can't see Mr.Trump being too happy with China owning a major US Car Corporation as well as a large chunk of the national debt.

 

Here's a Jeep toy that might make him feel better about it. 

As Mork would say...

Nano Nano.

Hoping To Clean Up

From this:

to this?

OK, let's step back a bit.

 

Not back as far as the very early 1900s when horse-drawn vacuum cleaners were "the thing" - but just as far as 2008 when Dyson - the vacuum cleaner and fan and blade hand-dryer company started by the chap in the second photo, James Dyson, denied that they were designing an electric car.

 

Fair enough.

 

But that was nine years ago and they didn't rule out working on battery tech for an electric car.

 

Anyway, skip back to May last year when Car Magazine told us that "Tech firm Dyson is secretly working on an electric car."

 

Oooh!

 

In fact, that's where I got that picture from.

 

Good, isn't it?

 

Anyway, skip forward to today, and Autocar announce that Dyson have now lured a THIRD important player from the car industry into their fold.  They announce that following on from Aston Martin product development director Ian Minards and Tesla communications executive Ricardo Reyes they have now got David Wyer, director of purchasing at Aston Martin.

 

This is the only photo they have of him:

I assume he's driving it.

 

Both Car Magazine and Autocar report that last year that an official government document read: “The Government is funding Dyson to develop a new battery electric vehicle at their headquarters in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. This will secure £174 million of investment in the area, creating over 500 jobs, mostly in engineering”.  And they both report that this document was quickly altered to say “The Government is providing a grant of up to £16m to Dyson to support research and development for battery technology at their site in Malmesbury.”

 

Well I for one, reckon that Dyson ARE working on an electric car - especially when I saw this: 

New Moaner

More of an "old moaner" actually.

But a very funny one.

He's recently put this on Instagram:

I refer, of course, to Jeremy Clarkson who in turn refers to James May in the photo.

If you can't see the text, it says "The only functioning member of the Grand Tour right now.  God help us."

Jeremy has somehow managed to contract pneumonia in Majorca.  Story Here.  New Moaner - pneumonia - geddit?  Never mind.

Meanwhile, Richard Hammond is still recovering from doing this to an electric supercar:

This may mean that the first couple of episodes of the new series of The Grand Tour may involve some slow driving in a Fiat Panda and the dismantling and remantling of a 1970s Goblin Teasmade.

What Do You Call Your Nose Injury?

I only ask because Autoguide say that an unfortunate man in Birmingham has an unnamed nose injury.

Their story is here.

They refer to the Birmingham Mail as their source and the story does indeed exist, and probably originate, from there but their Website, like all the British local newspaper ones that are part of the same group, is so irritating with ads and videos that I'll not bother linking to it.

It does, however, include the excellent line:

"Ward End Fire later tweeted pictures of the wrecked convertible which had come to rest in front of bricks, wonky lamppost, rotting bread and a wheelie bin."

So what are they talking about?

This:

Somebody has rented and crashed a Lamborghini Huracan Spyder.

 

Oops.

 

All we know is it was a 25-year old man and he has a sore nose.

 

But then, so does that Huracan.

 

It was on a Trading estate - somewhere that may be a bit quieter with wide roads as used by large commercial vehicles.

 

It was somewhere you might choose to go if you wanted to razz about at high speed in a 200mph supercar.

 

Can't imagine what could have caused this accident.