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BRAKING NEWS: Donkey dines on McLaren supercar

A biweekly roundup of automotive news, good, bad and just plain weird: Donkey eats McLaren Goats are most commonly considered the garburators of the animal kingdom, but your average donkey isn’t all that discerning either.
McLaren
The McLaren 650S Spider is a gorgeous automobile, but that didn’t stop a donkey in Germany from hopping in and having a little snack. photo McLaren

A biweekly roundup of automotive news, good, bad and just plain weird:

Donkey eats McLaren

Goats are most commonly considered the garburators of the animal kingdom, but your average donkey isn’t all that discerning either. Mostly, they enjoy grass, apples, and the occasional carrot.

Or, in this case, a German man’s carrot-coloured McLaren 650S Spider. Having parked next to a paddock, Markus Zahn of Geissen returned to his car, got in, and noticed a set of ears poking up in the rearview. Then he heard a crunch.

The big-Mac-loving donkey, named Vitus, managed to do some $30,000 worth of damage to the 650S, which the donkey’s owner had to pay for. In my opinion, you park your root-vegetable-coloured supercar next to a farm, you take your chances.

Tesla misses Model 3 production numbers

There is little more poisonous to a good car, in my mind, than hype. Hype ruined the return of the Scion FR-S as a modestly powered rear-wheel-drive sports car. Hype wrecked the impact of the reborn Acura NSX. Hype creates expectations which almost no car can live up to.

And probably no car company exists in more of a state of constant hype than Tesla.

Its charismatic CEO, Elon Musk, is basically the benign version of a James Bond super-villain, one step away from a hollowed-out volcano lair. Its cars produce superlative straight-line acceleration. Tesla has that new car company sheen, a glimpse of what the future might hold.

Except that, you know, building cars for the mass market is quite difficult. Many have tried and failed. If you’re a fan of Tesla specifically, or EVs in general, the numbers released on current Model 3 production levels should be worrying.

Tesla projected that 5,000 Model 3s would be getting built every week towards the end of 2017, part of a ramp-up that would see some 400,000 (fully refundable) reservations being fulfilled. So far, over the course of several months of production, they’ve managed 220. Also, it looks like the FM radio doesn’t work yet, nor does the Bluetooth.

On the plus side, Model S and X production levels are up slightly. However, those speculating that Tesla was on the verge of out-manoeuvering the established car companies might want to hold back before they roll the dice. The Model 3 might turn out to be a decent-enough car, but it’s still just a car. The realities of manufacturing can’t be overcome by sheer optimism.

BMW and Mini to offer in-car Amazon Alexa

Let’s not sugar-coat things: here’s the worst idea yet. Having brought gesture controls to their cars, BMW seems bound and determined to make things ever more complicated by partnering up with Amazon. Yes, you’ll soon be able to order stuff from your car while you’re driving home.

Picture a world of dull-grey skies and brightly lit towers, the roads crammed with traffic. Clouds of drones flit through the air, like flocks of starlings. Ninety per cent of the traffic on the road is cardboard recycling trucks crammed with single-use boxes. Miserable peons fidget in traffic, incapable of resisting the impulse to purchase again, and again. In a building that towers high above all others, Jeff Bezos chuckles in his exoskeleton, made immortal by feeding tubes filled with re-animated sabre-tooth tiger blood.

Or, you know, we could actually pay attention to driving, maybe listen to the radio or something.

Nissan creates sweat-detecting seats

Meanwhile, in gross news, Nissan has teamed up with a Dutch company called Droog to create materials that can detect whether drivers have become dehydrated. The material, called SOAK, turns yellow when it detects the sweat of a dehydrated person, and blue when the sweat indicates you’ve been getting enough fluids.

Let’s just all take a moment to remember the last time we grasped the steering wheel of a rental car in our bare hands, and then all rush to the bathroom to scrub like a germaphobe. Ew. Ew. Ew.

On one hand, maybe helping people understand when they need to grab a sip of water isn’t a bad idea. Dehydration can sap your concentration.

On the other hand, this sort of thing means we are probably three to five years away from someone building a seat that will detect if you’ve farted in it. Emissions controls? It’s the end of he-who-smelt-it-dealt-it.

Ford creates Team Edison to take on Tesla

It’s a bit obvious, really. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were longtime friends, and originally had plans to mass-produce the electric car. Tesla takes its name from Nikolai Tesla, a brilliant inventor who had a fierce rivalry with Edison. What else would Ford call their new electric vehicle team?

Splintered off from the main Ford group, Team Edison will be able to react a little quicker without having to worry about what’s going on with F150 sales and so-on. With several countries threatening bans on new internal combustion engine sales – including China, which would have a huge impact – Ford is taking the future of EVs seriously.

Why didn’t Ford get the electric vehicle off the ground at the beginning of the 20th century? Edison’s batteries weren’t up to the task. Now, they’re having another go at it, and another stab at the rivalry.

Will the upstart get a grasp on mass-production first, or will the blue oval that perfected the production line be able to start churning out electric vehicles first? Either way, the electric vehicle market is about to see greater choice.

Watch this space for all the best and worst of automotive news, or submit your own auto oddities to mcaleer.nsnews@gmail.com.