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.
Jeep Will Announce More Electrification Plans On September 8th
Sure, we’re going to maybe get an electric Dodge Charger and an electrified Dodge Hornet. Eventually, all of the Stellantis brands will offer something electric. They may be great! But the only successful electric brand from the company formerly known as DaimlerChryslerCerburusFiatChryslerHomeDepotGasStationTV is Jeep. Seriously! One could argue it’s the only successful brand at all from Stellantis. Toyota was the leader in plug-in hybrids (PHEV) for many years and the RAV4 Prime is the vehicle you buy if you want a good, efficient hybrid all-rounder. And then Jeep came out with the Jeep Wrangler 4XE and absolutely smoked it. Jeep followed that up with the Grand Cherokee 4Xe in North America, and 4Xe versions of the Renegade and Compass for markets outside of America. What’s next? Jeep teased even more plans. We’ll find out soon but, given that America loves Jeeps, there’s no better brand to lead the company’s EV plans than the one seven slats in the front.
— Jeep (@Jeep) August 31, 2022
Ford And Rivian Want Easier Access To American Battery Materials
Speaking of EVs. While the Inflation Reduction Act has clear stipulations on battery material sourcing, it could be years before a stable domestic battery material supply chain is established. In an effort to speed things up a touch, Automotive News reports that Ford and Rivian want the U.S. government to expedite mining permits for EV battery materials. A lead time of up to a decade to grant mining permits would put America’s plan for home-sourced battery materials on the back foot. While it’s definitely possible to source battery materials from friendly countries like Canada, a steady stream of American-sourced battery materials would ensure domestic supply chain security and likely create jobs. “Today’s lengthy, costly and inefficient permitting process makes it difficult for American businesses to invest in the extraction and processing of critical minerals in the United States,” Chris Smith, Ford’s chief government affairs officer, said in a letter to the department. Current U.S. permitting requirements for critical mineral production can take up to 10 years, he said. “In contrast, Canada and Australia have adopted mineral permitting policies that enable producers to complete the process in two to three years, while maintaining stringent environmental standards.”
GM And LG Start Ultium Battery Production In Ohio
Speaking of making batteries, The Detroit Free Press reports that GM and LG have started making batteries in their Ohio-based Ultium battery plant. As the name suggests, this Ultium plant manufactures batteries for the Ultium-powered vehicles like the GMC Hummer EV. While an expected 1,300 new jobs is good news, the United Auto Workers union is reportedly running into some opposition in its attempt to unionize the plant. In a media statement, Ultium said it “continues to remain focused on training as it prepares to ramp up.” Once at full production, the plant expects to have created 1,300 new high-tech jobs. A card check is otherwise known as a majority sign-up, and it often expedites unionization. If at least 30 percent of employees sign an authorization form, that form gets sent to the National Labor Relations Board for verification, and a secret ballot is arranged should verification prove successful. There are a handful of exceptions, but a card check is generally a simpler method of organization than attempting to unionize exclusively by ballot. Unionizing may be worthwhile given its historical benefits for auto workers, and battery plant employees should be allowed to unionize and enjoy the same benefits as assembly plant employees if they wish to.
Multi-Vehicle Crash Spills 300,000 Tomatoes
No, that’s not a typo. USA Today reports that a truck carrying tomatoes collided with another vehicle on Monday, spilling 300,000 of the fruits onto the highway. If a coating of slimy pulp all over a road sounds extremely slippery, you’d be right. USA Today reports that seven vehicles in total were involved in the crash, with three people suffering minor injuries and one ending up in hospital with a broken leg. Cleanup reportedly took several hours, with both eastbound and westbound lanes of Interstate 80 shut down. While it’s unlikely you’ll run across spilled tomatoes on the roads, this incident serves as a reminder to leave plenty of following distance as road conditions can change at any time. Tyhurst told USA TODAY a truck carrying 50,000 pounds of tomatoes collided with a vehicle and swerved, striking another vehicle before driving into the center median. The force was so strong it spilled about three-quarters of the load onto the highway, Tyhurst said. Passing vehicles ground them into a slimy pulp.
The Flush
Whelp, time to drop the lid on today’s edition of The Morning Dump. Happy Thursday, everyone. Friday is right around the corner. While everyone remembers their first car, our first cars weren’t always our first picks. I’d love to know what car was almost your first car and why it didn’t work out. Believe it or not, I almost dragged home a first-generation Mazda RX-7 as my first car but didn’t really have the space.
Lead photo credit: Jeep
As for the first car I would have almost bought with my own money, that was a 2003 Toyota Matrix XRS, and again because California sellers of Toyotas think their shit don’t stink, I walked.
YAY…
The first car I bought on my own was a Mitsubishi Mighty Max, which was not mighty. It could barely get out of its own way. It had a radiator from a Dodge Caravan that someone custom mounted in there. The engine ended up blowing at 106,000 miles and my dad towed it to the junkyard.
The actual first car that I bought with my own money was a Mercury Montego with a Ford 351 Cleveland V8. I needed transportation badly, and although it ran badly, it was almost free.
1967 Triumph Spitfire was the first car that I bought purely because wanted to buy it. I wanted a TR250 (or a TR3a), but the asking price for the Spitfire was just over half what I was willing to pay and decent examples of the others were more than I had at the time.
What should have been my first new car purchase was a first year Mazda Miata, but they delayed the release twice. I ended up buying something else because I needed a reliable car in a hurry and wanted a factory warranty because at the time, I had bad experiences with used cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeZJ6WSVVAk
Also agree with Rootwyrm on the mining deal, they’re wanting to add a lithium mine in the Charlotte region now, and the citizens are fighting it, but of course it’s a more rural area with lower income so the industry and state people are rolling right in saying how great it will be, just like how great the Duke Energy coal ash spill into the waterways was. Wait I’m hearing those are bad things? Someone should be watching over this stuff!
For first car, let’s go with first car I actually bought first, as first 2 were provided or lent so couldn’t really complain. Could’ve had a nice S10 pickup, shady dealer steered me towards a 1990 Sunbird 2-door. With all that horsepower just sweating out the valve cover gasket. At least it got decent mpg which was not really a thing we cared about in the 90s. Barring any accidents that S10 would’ve probably been much more useful all around.
