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From The Mobilist Inbox This Week
Volkswagen’s looks, Tesla’s quality problems, Elon Musk on SNL
Each Wednesday, The Mobilist highlights reader articles on Medium, comments, and updates.
A mandate for style: Last week, I wrote about a week’s test drive of Volkswagen’s electric crossover SUV ID.4. The car is mechanically outstanding. Physically, it is meh. Why are this vehicle’s looks so important given the industry’s overall penchant for frumpiness? Because of the very specific interregnum in which it finds itself. This is the expensive transition period before sticker-price parity with combustion vehicles — for the next four or five years, automakers, if they want to sell their EVs, need to put extra effort into design and style.
On the larger canvas, the legacy automakers and Tesla have opposite advantages and disadvantages: The traditional automakers produce reliable, high-quality EVs lacking pizazz. Tesla makes highly stylized EVs with huge quality issues. Both have work to do. See the next item for more.
Clarification: In the story, I wrote that VW’s charging network, Electrify America, only has a working app for the iPhone. Though that’s what I thought I was told, it turns out that there is a separate app for Android. Here is the app in the Google Play Store.
