Elon Ruffled

 

A judge in Delaware has said Elon can't have his $55.8bn pay deal.

The story is covered by many news outlets including here and here.

The gist of it is that a Tesla share-holder thought that it was too much money for the company he has shares in to be paying out.  And also that Musk “enjoyed thick ties with the directors tasked with negotiating on behalf of Tesla, and dominated the process that led to board approval of his compensation plan”  They argued the huge pay award was designed to ensure that Mr Musk, "would continue to dedicate his attention to the company".

What!? You mean while he also continues to dedicate his attention to Twitter, SpaceX, The Boring Company and sticking microchips into people's heads?

And now Elon has taken umbrage in true Donald Trump style with some whining on Twitter (as we all call it)

He tweeted, "Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware.  I recommend incorporating in Nevada or Texas if you prefer shareholders to decide matters." 

Err - I think in this case a shareholder HAS managed to decide matters.

He then posted a poll asking his followers whether or not Tesla should "change its state of incorporation to Texas, home of its physical headquarters"

I don't know what the Venn Diagram of Tesla shareholders and Musk Twitter followers looks like but it doesn't sound like a particularly relevant bit of market research.

What amuses me most on this story though, is that the shareholder in question is a former thrash-metal drummer (according to Newsweek) who not only "made a mohawk that lights up while I'm playing drums" but who also only owns 9 shares in Tesla.  Brilliant.

Black Logos Matter

Ford US put out a cryptic tweet on Tuesday:

Circle, pawn, square, golf hole, spade, sunglasses, cross

That makes about as much sense as the emojis round in Richard Osman's House of Games.

Turns out that the only significant thing about the emojis is that they were black - like Ade Adepitan in that Osman clip.

The teaser, as Carscoops points out, is for a new "Black" package for the Mustang:

It even has a black logo.

Black packages and variants are nothing new, Mercedes Black Series is supposed to

"represent the performance limit of a model range, where everything possible is drawn out of that model. This creates a new quality standard. Black Series bring together everything that can be achieved in terms of driving technology at a certain point in time and put it on the road."

Ford want us to come up with a name for this new black accent package.

How about "The Car of the Black Horse?"

I'm banking on that winning but can't be sure why that idea popped into my head.

Flipping Chevrolets!

Earlier this week, Fox News asked the question, "Should you stay in your car during a tornado?"

The answer was "Probably not"

Just to sort of make their point...

The sixteen year old lad driving this Chevrolet Pick-Up had a scary experience.

It was turned onto the driver's side, spun around, then righted again by a tornado.

The local Chevy dealers though have offered him a brand new truck to replace it.  The story is here.

Meanwhile, on a lighter note, and also from Fox News this week, here's a funny story involving KFC, Mercedes F1 and Twitter:

Badvertising

First there was Bananaman:

Then came Banana-Girl:

This is apparently a VERY BAD ADVERT for the Audi RS4.

 

Audi used this still from an advert showing it as a family car on Twitter and had to apologise.

 

Now, in terms of showing off the speed and the attributes of the car, I can see that it is failing on all counts - but that isn't really a reason to apologise unless you are the advertising executive who suggested to Audi that they use it.

 

No, according to one Twitter user, it is sexually provocative:

 

"Let's add it up: Red=eroticism, sports car=substitute for potency, animal print mini-skirt=sex appeal, banana=phallic symbol. But sure this is all just accidental..."

 

Maybe I'm not as perverted as some of these Twitter users but I am really not seeing it.

 

Talking of getting offended by ads, the BBC had this story yesterday about how "A new campaign called 'Badvertising' is demanding an immediate end to adverts for large polluting cars."

 

They don't seem to mind small polluting cars.

 

The campaign wants the Government to clamp down on sports utility vehicle (SUV) car adverts in the way it curbed smoking ads. Now, I'd quite like to ban SUVs - including the electric ones - but that's nothing to do with environmental concerns.

 

I looked up Badvertising on Google - I don't think it's anything to do with this lot.  I eventually found them here.  They are also worried about the impact of outdoor advertising signage in its own right -

 

"Outdoor advertising such as giant billboards, digital screens, and panels placed at bus stops and other places for public transport, are particularly problematic because unlike other mediums, we have no choice over whether we view them or not."

 

But when you are out and about, you are in the marketplace - I'd much rather that than have the advertisers come round to my front door.

 

The group behind the campaign are a worthy enough bunch of academics and artists and I wish them well - but they aren't going to convince the Mail Readers if they haven't convinced a Leftie like me - although maybe the fact I'm a Leftie Car-lover has something to do with that.

 

Advertising doesn't work on me anyway.  Now, I could just go a banana.

I Don't Like The Tesla Cybertruck

No really - I think it looks stupid.

So why is this my third posting on the subject in under a week?

Probably because the World of motoring journalism keeps talking about it.

Twitter & Car+Driver, I'm looking at you.

Or maybe, more specifically, Car+Driver picking up on tweets.

Here's their story on the Dubai Police ordering one.

But the Dubai Police are all show-offs.

 

Here is the funnier and altogether more satisfying story of Lego taking the Mickey: 

It's better looking, it's windows won't shatter and it could go on sale well before the end of 2020.

Bully For You

We're three episodes in now.

Two to go.

Another short series.

It was starting to grow on me a bit.

But last night's show began to confirm my fears.

The bit last week when Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle and star of his new film Himesh Patel had to drive at speed at a closing barrier seemed a bit childish and unnecessary.

This week they had Olympic Horsewoman and Queen's Grand-daughter Zara Tindall together with her England Rugby star husband Mike driving a Jag at speed between two bollards for no good reason.

I suppose it makes the interviews a bit shorter for them but I'd rather know a bit more about the guests than see this.

 

I'm hoping that TG doesn't go the same way as Driven did during its death throes - that was such a shame.

But the bit that made me feel really uncomfortable was when Paddy and Freddie were stopping Chris from winning the stuff-as-much-stuff-into-a-family-car competition.

It looks like I wasn't alone with the word "bullying" coming into my head.  Here's the Metro (the Newspaper) report on the ensuing Twitter-storm.

 

I wonder if that is why they got shut of Rory Reid - they can cope with accusations of bullying but racist bullying would be going too far.

 

Chris has taken to Twitter himself to say that he didn't feel victimised and that the others are really kind people.

 

I suppose he had to do that or they'd have beaten him up.

Coming and Going

Am I into pornography?

All I'll say is that I don't own a pornograph.

But, like Elon Musk, I am aware that there is a very popular piece of pornography that has allegedly been produced in a Tesla Model X being driven on Autopilot.  I know Elon knows about it because Car+Driver have the story of his tweets on the subject.

Is the unnamed star of the film to be referred to as "Model X"?

And who has got their hands on the wheel?

Women Drivers, Eh?

Here are some:

The one on the left has just been given a new job.  She is going to be a test-driver for the Sauber F1 Team.

 

The one in the middle is rallying legend Michele Mouton.

 

The one on the right has recently criticised the one below.

But then again, I sort of did too - in 2015.  And so has Jensen Button now.

 

The recent criticism is about her ("her" being Carmen Jorda) claiming that a "physical issue" was the barrier preventing women from competing in Formula 1 or Formula 2.  Susie Wolff, the third woman in the top photo responded with a tweet pointing out that motorsport doesn't care about gender.

 

Susie Wolff became the first woman in 22 years to take part in a Formula 1 race weekend in 2014 - and is married to the team boss.

 

I'm not too sure that motorsport doesn't care about gender - especially given by the responses to her tweet and the fact that it has taken until 2018 to sort out the grid-girl situation.

 

However, if you want to see a really tough woman driver, please watch the video in this story. 

Her name is Charmaine Laurie.  I was very impressed when I first saw the footage which was before it had been identified that it was a woman driver.

After I knew it was a woman driver though, I was impressed at exactly the same level.

Talking of Donald Trump...

I've never posted twice on the same day before but Donnie's favourite news channel covered a car story about his favourite activity.  (That's Fox News and Tweeting, by the way - Meryl Streep overrated? - what a childish prat he is!)

Anyway, I'll not post the link to Fox because they have taken it word-for-word (albeit correctly crediting the item) from this Newser story.

The gist is that a Twitter user complained to Tesla founder Elon Musk about people leaving their cars at charging stations after they had charged up which prevented other electric car drivers from using the stations to charge up their own cars.  Within minutes, Musk replied: "You're right, this is becoming an issue. Supercharger spots are meant for charging, not parking. Will take action."

Six days later he had introduced a 40-cents-a-minute charge if the car is left there once charged up (with a five-minute grace period). This doesn't sound a lot but works out at about £10 for half-an-hour which I most certainly wouldn't pay for car-parking.

Hopefully enough to stop the selfish twits.

The Lighter Side of Car Crime

At least if you're not the owner of this Range-Rover that is:

Today's BBC story is here.  I seriously hope that whoever owns this is a love-cheat.  It's not even an ordinary Range-Rover - it's a Revere Range-Rover.  If you haven't heard of Revere (like I hadn't) they are one of these up-market tuner/bespoke customiser companies a bit like Overfinch.  The story first started trending on Twitter.

Meanwhile, yesterday, the BBC ran with this story.  It also involves Twitter.  It is about a car thief being disturbed while trying to perpetrate his crime.  This caused him to leave behind his bag.  This bag contained a balaclava, a glass hammer and a couple of packets of popular cheesy snacks.  Cheesy snacks that look a lot nicer  in real life than in this picture tweeted by the investigating police officer:

I have to say, I definitely prefer Quavers to Wotsits but since both appear in the picture, I'm sure the officers enjoyed them whilst also taunting the criminal on Twitter, first offering them back, then admitting they had eaten them whilst extracting his DNA from the balaclava.

Police with a sense of humour.

I like that.

I also like the New Zealand Police who have taken part in the current "Running Man" Internet challenge craze (Nope, never heard if it before tonight) whereby they dance to a particular track and then challenge others to do the same.

Here's their very good effort:

And they then went on to challenge several Australian Police Forces plus the NYPD and the Isles of Scilly Police.

The NYPD responded thusly:

But why pick on the Isles of Scilly Police?  After all, the Isles of Scilly are a very small group of islands off the Cornish Coast at Lands End.

Well their response is probably a clue:

I note that the gauntlet has been laid down by https://www.facebook.com/NZPolice/ for a dance off with us. I also note that they can draw on a supporting cast of thousands of officers and staff whereas we have a modest team of five and occasionally a cat. Our combined age on this small rock in the Atlantic (including feline years) is over 300. Ours is not to dance or body pop ever since the thespian PC Mat 'Flashdance' Collier left these shores several years ago. When we do so, we now do levity in the medium of cake.
We wish NZ Police the very best with their recruitment drive. It certainly is a remarkable career even if you have to do it upside down dancing on the ceiling.

Sgt Colin 'Dad Dance' Taylor

And their Facebook page is well worth a like.

Footballer Involved in Car Accident

Stephen Fry has left Twitter.

He got a load of grief after making a joke at a friend's expense at the BAFTAs.

He'll probably be back.

I don't tweet.

I've got nothing against Twitter, I just don't use it.  So I don't know how easy it would be to send a picture of an Scoupe by accident from my pocket.

Not that anyone would be that bothered about a picture of an old Hyundai.  I have accidentally 'phoned my wife a couple of times from my pocket. But only because by phone allows me to by-pass the screen lock with calls to my ICE contact.

But I've certainly never sent her a picture of a car.

Now, imagine if I were a famous Premier League footballer.  And I had just played in a game - as a defender - for the team languishing at the foot of the table.  And in that game, we'd been stuffed 6-0.  At home.

Then it probably wouldn't go down too well to tweet a picture of a Mercedes S coupe. (OK S-Class Coupé but near enough)

 

Well that's what Aston Villa player Joleon Lescott managed to do.

Here's his Twitter feed.

In it he apologises for the result and also apologises for accidentally tweeting the photo.

To his credit, he's left the photo there and kept the responses it garnered.

Such as, "Does this car go from 0 to 6 in 90 minutes?"

As part of his apology, he says "I'm not one for tweeting after games whether it's a good, bad or indifferent result..."

I'll mostly give him that although at the start of the Season he gave us, "Honour to have made my home debut (Boyhood dream) just gutted with the result. No time to mope tho with the biggest game of the season ahead." This was just after losing 1-0 to West Brom and then "Only thing that matters in a derby game is the result, glad we came out on top." just after beating Birmingham City.  None since though.

I wonder what Stephen Fry would say if he were still tweeting?

Actually not a lot, after all Villa are favourites to take up one of the three relegations spots.  Which means one less for Fry's team Norwich to end up in.  My own team is down there at the moment too so Joleon,

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

A Kind-Hearted Traffic Warden

That can't be right!

But it is. He took pity on a Falcon.No, not a Ford Falcon - the bird of prey type of falcon. He rescued it on New Year's Day in Birkenhead when it was knackered after being blown about in the gales. The story is covered here on the Liverpool Echo site with a nice comment added by a reader at the end. Being Birkenhead, it could be the same git who booked my wife a few years back when she was three minutes late getting back to her car with a load of shopping and two bickering children. I appealed against a £60 fine for three minutes but the Council weren't interested - and they wonder why traffic wardens need stories like this to try and boost their image. Here is the bird-loving one, his name is Lee Gallagher and he is releasing the bird back into the grey skies at Hamilton Square:
The BBC also had that story, but since I posted last month about how I am finished with the BBC - I can't really link to them now, can I?

Then, on Monday, I finally picked up the new copy of Top Gear Magazine which was delivered last week but I haven't had chance to look at, what with Christmas and everything, and I saw that the new series of Top Gear TV starts on January 29th. Yippee! Well, maybe not "yippee", maybe more "I'll quite look forward to that"

The Christmas special didn't grab me the way Top Gear usually does and I'm finding I'm enjoying Fifth Gear a lot more than TG nowadays - is my disillusionment with Auntie Beeb affecting my motoring televisual enjoyment - or am I just getting bored with TG? I don't know - I'll let you know after the new series.

Then, yesterday, I got my annual letter from Richard & James extolling to me the virtues of subscribing to my next year with Top Gear Magazine - they really ought to change that letter - it's getting very stale. Anyway, could this be a good chance to show my displeasure with The Beeb?

Damn it, I still really enjoy the magazine and I pay for it with Tesco Clubcard Reward tokens so they'll not be making much out of that so a new subscription it is.

I've given up on their blogs though now - I've found like-minded people (and so far no trolls) on Facebook which leads me, rather neatly, to the fact I've joined Facebook!

I've set up a Metro's Car Blog page but I'll just monitor how that goes along and see whether or not it's worth keeping it going. I've put my two favoutite pictures of Vicki Butler-Henderson on there for starters.

And, while we're on the subject of social networking, I think I finally understand why anyone who isn't Stephen Fry might want to Tweet on Twitter. "Friends" are actually interested and comment when you add stuff to your Facebook wall so it's the same logic. I've not played with Twitter yet - maybe a job for next New-Years but someone who does is NASCAR driver Kasey Kahne.

I'll leave you with this story from last week from Autoguide.com

Going Round in Circles

It's been two weeks since my last post. Normally I just wait for a suitable story to come along and then I comment on it. But, since it has been two weeks, I've gone out looking further.

I've found a very good American site, Autoguide.com, with probably the best car news section on the Web. They had a good story yesterday about how the LAPD are asking that celebrities tweet road congestion news.

Twits.

They also make some reference to a couple of Star Trek actors which went completely over my head. Levar Burton played a blind man who could see with the help of a futuristic hairband and Wil Wheaton played an annoyingly precocious boy and then went on to parody himself brilliantly in The Big Bang Theory. But I don't get the traffic news angle.

I then found this story in Autocar about the new Porsche 911. It was something I was going to comment on in March when I saw this picture on the CAR&Driver siteheralding the first spy-shot of the new Porsche 911. I mean what the hell is the point of a spy shot of a Porsche 911!? Everyone knows what it will look like - every other Porsche 911!!

And the story in Autocar goes on to prove it. I'm sure that under the skin, the new 911 is very different to the outgoing model but on the outside, you won't know, when one screams past you on the motorway, just how old it is.

The big story will be when they finally make it look like something different, like when Volvo stopped making cars that looked like the 144, or when Land Rover change the Defender - it is happening soon and it will be the end of an era.

But, the story I have chosen for my July 1st Post - is from the BBC Website. It is entitled "Is the British roundabout conquering the US?" I drove around a couple in New England on my first trip Stateside in '92 and I couldn't get to grips with going around them the wrong way. I was very glad that they were very rare. Strangely enough, I never had any problems after that when I drove around Majorca - another drive-on-the-right kinda place.

The article is about how the city of Carmel, Indiana, is ripping out traditional intersections with traffic lights and replacing them with good old-fashioned European-style roundabouts.

The locals seem positive - traffic moves better and fuel is not wasted although this idiot in Georgia has a different view. Any person who will willingly be quoted as saying, "The universe is out of whack when roundabouts are constructed and the economy suffers. Not one, but two industries are suddenly out of business. There’s no longer any need for stop signs or traffic lights. I ask you, in this economic climate, is this a time to put all those people out of work?" is clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic. I bet he believes the nonsense Fox News put out.

Maybe if he had a few driving lessons he'd be less scared of them.

It's not like the Americans will ever have to deal with this: