Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
The Cadillac Escalade-V Gets Ridiculous
If I’m being perfectly honest, nobody needs a 682-horsepower Escalade, but Callaway’s been making preposterously powerful Escalades for years so let’s see what GM can do on its own. Yes, more details have emerged about the Cadillac Escalade-V and oh boy, is it ever an exercise in excess. Let’s start with that engine, a variant of GM’s LT4 6.2-liter supercharged V8. While the engine is largely similar to the one in the CT5-V Blackwing, the Escalade-V variant gets a bigger 2.65-liter TVS supercharger to crank out 682 horsepower at 6,000 RPM and 653 lb-ft of torque at 4,400 RPM. Very stout figures, yet surprisingly peaky for an SUV motor. Power makes its way to all four wheels through GM’s 10-speed automatic gearbox, full-time all-wheel-drive and a limited-slip rear differential. Now, Cadillac says in a press release that all of this put together is good for a 0-60 mph time of under 4.4 seconds and a quarter-mile ET of 12.74 seconds at 110 mph. Does that sound a bit mid to you, or am I just jaded by the likes of the Alpina XB7 which does the 0-60 dash in around four seconds flat? Granted, even the fast Escalade is still an Escalade, so the cabin looks positively sumptuous. As the V-Series is the top-spec model, it gets all the toys from a 36-speaker AKG-branded audio system (another Harman International contraption) to massaging front seats. As is typical for a Cadillac, the Super Cruise hands-free Level 2 driver assist suite is optional and actually really nice to have. Super Cruise is one of the few Level 2 systems that’s actually competent on highway commutes, so it’s well worth the extra cash. Speaking of highway commutes, the Escalade’s up-level air suspension with magnetorheological dampers has apparently been re-tuned for the V-Series model. Hopefully this doesn’t negatively impact the Escalade’s incredibly precise body control and sublime ride comfort. Alright, so the Escalade-V is big and pretty quick, but what does this giant slab of Americana retail for? Well it’s certainly not cheap. Pricing starts at $149,990 which is a lot, but at least Cadillac’s had the decency to include the delivery and destination fee. That puts the Escalade-V up against some seriously stiff competition. The aforementioned Alpina XB7 starts at $142,295 including destination and is absolutely fabulous from a speed and comfort standpoint. A Mercedes-AMG G 63 may have an abominable wait time, start at $157,500 excluding freight charge, and only include five seats, but it’s likely to hold value insanely well. Then again, neither of these vehicles offer the immense space of an Escalade, so I’m sure the Escalade-V will find buyers. Expect GM’s muscled-up Escalade to hit showrooms late this summer.
Foxconn Picks Up The Hot Potato That Is GM’s Former Lordstown Assembly Plant
Electric pickup truck startup Lordstown Motors has officially handed off its assembly plant to Taiwanese consumer electronics manufacturer Foxconn, who will be responsible for building Lordstown’s allegedly-upcoming pickup truck. Honestly, it seems kind of insane for a company to base its entire brand around a former GM assembly plant and then sell the plant off, but hey. At an Automotive News-reported $230 million for a 6.2 million square-foot automotive assembly plant right in the heart of America’s northern auto corridor, Foxconn essentially scored the Lordstown, Ohio plant for $37.10 per square-foot. It seems like Foxconn got the better end of the deal here, gaining a fairly cheap factory and an assembly contract. Meanwhile, Lordstown will be responsible for everything else from engineering to homologation. Local news publication Cleveland.com breaks down the thought process behind the deal, writing: So far, the Lordstown and Foxconn deal sounds a bit like Fisker contracting auto parts giant and G-Wagen screwer-together Magna International to build the Fisker Ocean compact electric crossover. What’s Foxconn going to be doing with the plant? Well, let’s first point out that the companydoesn’t really have much automotive experience. Just last year, The Verge attended a Foxconn EV event where Foxconn chairman Young Liu said “Our biggest challenge is we don’t know how to make cars.” That statement coming from a soon-to-be automobile assembler just a year ago feels a bit like waking up mid-surgery and hearing your surgeon say, “Oh, so that’s what a spleen looks like.” Not particularly confidence-inspiring, is it? “The key theme in the entire transaction with Foxconn if it gives us a more flexible and less capital intensive business model,” Ninivaggi said. Then there’s the question of commitment. Foxconn has demonstrated some pretty sketchy behavior in regards to the company’s $10 billion, 13,000 employee Wisconsin-based LCD factory that’s now more like a $672 million, 1,454 employee factory. Oh, one last thing, let’s circle back to Fisker. According to Automotive News, Fisker’s sub-$30,000 Pear electric vehicle is supposed to be assembled by Foxconn in Lordstown in just two years. Yeah, this could get interesting.
Hyundai Re-Recalls Some Sonatas
While recalling product is bad enough, recalling a recall really doesn’t sound great. For 2013 to 2014 Hyundai Sonata owners, this recall of a recall will seem almost typical. Did I mention that not implementing the new recall could result in fiery death? Hyundai rushed headfirst like Leeroy Jenkins into direct injection engines about a decade ago, and it didn’t go so well. While engines blowing from casting issues is what everyone knows these older Sonatas for, this latest recall specifically involves the fuel system. Back in 2020, Hyundai identified premature degradation of the low-pressure fuel line’s junction at the fuel pump. At the time, the official fix was to replace the fuel line should it be cracked and simply apply heat-resistant tape at the fuel pump connection should the fuel line not be cracked. If you’re thinking that the second fix is some Mickey Mouse high school bodge behavior that won’t actually prevent the fuel line from cracking, you’re right. As a result, recall documents detail a new procedure of proper fuel line replacement and 215,171 2013 and 2014 Sonatas are affected. While only one percent of recalled models are expected to experience a fiery fuel leak, a one percent chance of possible fiery death is honestly a bit too high. Recall notification letters will be sent out to owners on July 5, at which point Sonata owners will be able to bring their cars in for repair and enjoy a nice cup of dealership coffee.
Canoo Is Up The Creek Without A Paddle
We at The Autopian are big fans of EV startup Canoo. Its tiny cab-forward prototypes are practical and endearing in all the right ways. Unfortunately, there’s a chance we might never see mass-produced Canoo vehicles. A recent regulatory filing paints a picture of the EV startup’s current state, and it really isn’t pretty. Two years ago, things looked cushy for Canoo. In 2020, the EV startup went public by merging with a blank-check company at a $2.4 billion valuation. Well, a lot can happen in two years. 2021 fiscal year-end reports show that over the past year, Canoo’s net losses have ballooned from $15.2 million to $125.4 million with no revenue to show. According to Canoo’s latest regulatory filing, “If we are unable to obtain sufficient funding or do not have access to capital, we will be unable to execute our business plans and could be required to terminate or significantly curtail our operations and our prospects, financial condition and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.” Yikes. While Canoo may be down, it isn’t out yet. TechCrunch reports that during an investor call on Tuesday, Canoo voiced expectations that a $300 million private investment in public equity will clear sometime this week, although that may not be enough to save the startup. Here’s hoping that Canoo can pull things together and we can see more funky electric vans that just the Volkswagen ID.Buzz rolling around in the future.
The Flush
Whelp, time to drop the lid on this edition of The Morning Dump. While the Cadillac Escalade-V looks awesome, I can’t help but feel that it’s a bit pointless. A 0-60 time of around 4.4 seconds isn’t lightning fast these days. It’s more Lightning fast, on par with estimates for Ford’s electric F-150. Moreover, an Escalade feels like an SUV for wafting and after driving the diesel model, I can’t think of a better seven-passenger road trip vehicle. Toys, space and the highway fuel economy of a turbocharged compact crossover? Yes please! I just don’t see any need for the Escalade-V but I’m glad it exists, which begs the question. What’s a vehicle you’d likely never buy but are still glad exists?
Lead photo credit: Cadillac
However, because I don’t have a use for most vehicles doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them*. I was following the Gridlife Sundae Cup cars on the One Lap Of America last week, and they looked like they had as much or more fun than some of the supercars or purpose built racecars.
*Except SUVs. SUVs can all be destroyed.
When it was GM Lordstown, they employed nearly 4,000.
As part of it, they sold Foxconn a 55% absolute-control stake in the “JV” for $55M. This is after they reverse-merged with an SPAC that valued them at $1.6B. Which was followed a few months later by absolute proof that all of Lordstown’s finances were lies and they hadn’t signed a single binding order. Not 3 months later, they amended their SEC filings to say they couldn’t afford to start production and were at risk of bankruptcy. GM dumped their $75M investment and any supply agreements over a year ago, too – at a loss. Oh, and they’re still under investigation by the SEC for insider trading and financial fraud. And have yet to book a single penny in revenue. Not a single one.
But hey! It’s not like Foxconn has outright lied to state governments for profit before, right? Oh. Right. That’s literally the playbook they’ve used for every single one of their US facilities. There’s no Fisker coming. There’s no Lordstown coming. There’s nothing. But now Foxconn owns real estate assets worth more than the state could even attempt to claw back, even if the state would. (Ohio won’t. They didn’t even try to recover the money from charter schools that were convicted of fraud.)
Here are some policies, statements, and quotes from these ‘politicians’: – Defunding Planned Parenthood and banning abortions on the basis there aren’t enough white babies – Abortion and bodily autonomy are not “legitimate health needs” for women – January 6th was instigated by antifa, the FBI, take your pick, and the election was rigged, fraudulent, etc, and we shouldn’t have elections because people vote “wrong” or “incorrectly” – No court can order or force them to run fair elections or to obey the law, even when voters overwhelmingly demanded fair redistricting – The party blocked multiple attempts to remove a state senator after he was arrested by the FBI for bribery, corruption, and racketeering tied to a deeply unpopular bailout – More of them than I care to remember have publicly called for all LGBTQ+ people to be banned from all public life or simply “dealt with,” often using slurs – Currently 3 or 4 bills in process to ban any teaching or even the mention of racism or discrimination against minorities (HB 616 is a lovely bunch of crying about ‘reverse racism’ for example) – “Show me in the Constitution where it says you have the right to an abortion.” There’s more than a dozen saying those exact words – Pregnancy from rape is an “opportunity” according to Jean Schmidt. As long as the baby is white. Yep, she’s a woman. – Abortion is reversible, especially ectopic pregnancies, according to Tim Ginter – According to Bill Seitz, it’s activist judges ‘illegally’ saying people who got in line before the polls closed still get to vote, and the fix is to just not let them have any voting unless they can pay a poll tax of hundreds of dollars a voter – “Fair, ladies and gentlemen, is in the eyes of the beholder.” Also Bill Seitz. Who by the way, is the subject of over a dozen sexual harassment complaints. Plus a public event where he spent the whole time degrading women. – According to Don Jones, the United States never had slavery, and teaching out is “flat-out wrong”. But also we should bring it back for certain people. (He’s an EMT and firefighter, by the way.) – Scott Wiggam didn’t cheat his way into office, the party just tried to illegally deny an independent candidate polling better than him from the ballot. Quote the judge: “I’m just wondering why we can’t have an election? Ron Amstutz held that seat (for 30 years) … why can’t people have a choice? What are people afraid of?” – You don’t want to know how easy it is to find quotes of them praising Nazis or Nazi policies
Just because you’re ignorant of what they’re doing – which is by design – does not mean they aren’t doing it. So yeah. Don’t tell me – or anyone else – that people who openly idolize Nazis, and routinely espouse Nazi ideology such as banning elections, not allowing the “wrong” people to vote, calling for opponents to be killed, openly ignoring and flaunting court orders, and a whole lot more, are not Nazis. They are Nazis. If you have 9 people at a table, a Nazi sits down, and nobody leaves, you have 10 Nazis at the table.
On another note: While the Eski is not exactly a value buy at that price compared to the competition, I still like it a lot. I’m a Caddy guy, for sure, and don’t even feel bad about how dumb that gut emotion is. I will always pick one over any other car, given the choice.
Hopefully it will eventually trickle down to a Tahoe/Suburban SS lol
It sounds scary, but any company that doesn’t already have in hand every dollar they expect to need over the next accounting period for a major project is likely to have a similar statement in their public disclosures.
I’ve seen that phrase, almost verbatim, in dozens of disclosures and I don’t even follow startups much.
Inexperienced investors who bought without doing research sometimes sell when these risk warnings are published, regardless of the real prospects of the company behind it.
Canoo may be in trouble, or this may simply be a CYA notice to avoid potential shareholder lawsuits in the future.
