Here are some recent automotive news stories you might have missed.
Welcome back from the Christmas break. While the news cycle is still warming back up, there are still some interesting car-related stories you might have missed involving new inventions, Twitter engineers, Teslas, and Elon Musk.
Jaguar Land Rover wants to hire laid off Twitter engineers.
Some people are still really mad Elon Musk bought Twitter and laid off so many employees. There have been predictions the site would absolutely fall apart and other such things, but none of that has come about as of yet. In an interesting move, Jaguar Land Rover is trying to hire some of the fired Twitter engineers. The result might be navigation will no longer take you to grandma because she’s posted too many right-of-center things on the internet. Seriously, though, with the company’s sketchy reputation when it comes to reliability, this might not be the masterclass move they think it is.
Read more about it here.
Learn about the legacy Ken Block has left behind here.
CES showcases heated seatbelts and other ridiculousness.
That’s right, the Consumer Electronics Show caused a big stir among automotive journalists yet again as plenty of weird, cumbersome, or just plain useless technologies are shoved in the faces of readers. There were color-changing cars, plenty of touchscreens (because everyone just LOVES all the touchscreens in cars), and heated seatbelts for EVs. No, that last one isn’t a joke but instead is a supposedly a way to improve EV range in cold weather. Why not just do heated seats? Sometimes brilliant people miss the nose on their own face.
Check out some details about this heated seatbelt idea here.
Tesla owners get left in the cold.
With some serious winter storms hitting the northeastern US and parts of Canada around the holidays, some Tesla owners had frustrating experiences with their newer EVs. A meteorologist in Ontario posted to Twitter video showing how the door handles on her Tesla were frozen shut after she parked it outside overnight. Other people clued her into an update for the phone app which allowed her to open the car door without using the handles. Another Tesla owner in Virginia said his car wouldn’t charge at all when temperatures were sitting at 19 Fahrenheit. However, some conclude his car likely has a defect.
Read more about these problems here and here.
Someone put a hit out on Musk.
Have you seen all the hit pieces on Elon Musk’s character lately? It’s one thing to point out problems with how Teslas function, but these are focusing on how morally bankrupt he is as a person. Many automotive news sites are publishing articles about how horrible he is, making only a brief connection to Tesla and the auto industry, if one at all. This kind of behavior is concerning and revealing, plus it will probably continue for some time.
Image via Jaguar Land Rover
