If self-driving theater is the new security theater, then last season's two-part finale was quite a shocker. Between the Uber crash in Tempe and the Phantom.ai crash mistakenly attributed to Phantom Auto, every season has upped the mystery. The greatest riddle? What all the buzzwords actually mean. Now that "micromobility" is taking off, I've decided to release Part 2 of my Honest Tech Glossary, with some updates to old terms and my best guesses at some new ones.

Autonomous/Autonomy

• Anything with flippers, wings or 2+ legs.
• The French word for range, commonly used to describe electric vehicle range. This often causes initial confusion when English and French speakers discuss automation/autonomous technology.
• What people who don't know the difference between autonomy and automation use to describe the latter.

"On Autopilot"

• A good way to describe mobility consultants whenever they cite C.A.S.E. (Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric) passenger vehicles as the future, indicating the absence of creative or original thinking, and/or a realistic understanding of deployment timelines for four distinct technologies.

Bird

• Also known as avians, birds are a group of endothermic vertebrates, characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton.
• An electric scooter company based in Santa Monica, California.

Bird Poacher

• People who steal idle Bird scooters, hack/break them, and use them for free.

Bird Charger

• Independent contractors paid to locate and charge Bird scooters with low/dead batteries.
• A job you can't believe exists in 2018.

Bird Catcher

• Unofficial term for Bird Chargers who track down hacked/stolen Birds—often at their own risk—for a premium of $5 to $10 per Bird.
• Another job you can't believe exists in 2018.

Cactus Effect

• The opposite of a Network Effect.
• Also called "Cactus Internality" or "Supply-Side Deployment Friction," this is the negative effect described in economics and business whereby adding additional unnecessary or unrelated functionalities to a good or service impacts the deployment timeline of that product. When a Cactus Effect is present, the deployment timeline of a product or service increases according to the number of disparate additional functionalities deemed necessary for release.
• What happens when car makers plan for a future where passenger vehicles are all C.A.S.E. (Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric). For example, many shared vehicles are on the road now. Some are electric. Few are connected, and none are autonomous. There is no reason profitable businesses can't be built around individual legs of C.A.S.E., or some combination of its elements, and yet billions are being invested on the assumption that all four legs of C.A.S.E. will yield vast network effects.

Cactus Internality

• What happens when you try to swallow a cactus.

C.A.S.E.

• A Cactus Effect trigger.

E-Tron

• The name for Audi's seemingly cool electric SUV.
• The name that cost Audi low-to-mid six figures in branding consulting, but a random person off the street could have come up with for free.

EQC

• The Mercedes equivalent to the Audi E-Tron—not in terms of the vehicle, but in terms of the creativity in naming.

Fraudboy

• What Tesla's least creative trolls call Elon Musk.

Geotonomy

• A term intended to replace the disastrous SAE Level 4 terminology, clarifying both capability and limitation in a single word; geotonomy is a combination of geographic and autonomy, implying autonomy within a geofence.

Geotonomous Car/Vehicle

• An automated vehicle capable of functioning without human input within a clearly defined geographic area.
• A term I came up with in this amazing article.

Geotegic

• A clear high-level thought process around the development and deployment of automated vehicles, based on location.

I-Pace

• Jaguar's equivalent to the E-Tron and EQC—not in terms of the vehicle, but in terms of the creativity in naming.

Mobility Floor

• A Minimum Service Guarantee for transportation options; i.e. Mobility Modes.

Mobility Modes

• The term for individual forms of mobility, i.e. cars, scooters, light rail, uniycles, etc.

Mobility Equilibrium

• When any given area has sufficient mobility modes to satisfy 100 percent of its residents.
• Any municipality in which transit deserts are eliminated.

Modal Equilibrium

• The state in which an individual settles into a unique mix of modes over time (this may or may not be optimal for the community at large).

Micromobility

• Coined by the Nostradamus of transportation, Horace Dediu, to describe urban transport modes weighing less than 500 kg (1100 pounds), and predominantly electrically powered—like Bird scooters.

Megamobility

• SpaceX, Blue Origin, NASA, Hyperloop, the Hindenburg.

Pedo

• What Elon Musk called the diver who mocked his plan to use a submarine to save the kids trapped in the cave in Thailand
• GROSS

PedoBear

• An Internet meme that became popular through the imageboard 4chan. As the name suggests ("pedo" being short for "pedophile"), it is portrayed as a pedophilic cartoon bear. It is a concept used to mock pedophiles or people who have any sexual interest in children or "jailbait." The bear image has been likened to bait used to lure children or as a mascot for pedophiles.
• Anyone who shorted $TSLA after Elon Musk called that diver a pedo.

Pedofile

• What Elon Musk keeps on haters who spend too much time in Thailand.

SEC

• A place full of busy people.

Segway

• What Tesla's comms people want to do whenever journalists call.
• What Tesla's lawyers want to do whenever the SEC calls.

Teleop/TeleOperation

• A fancy word for "remote control".
• What anyone deploying geotonomy will need in the event the vehicle cannot make a driving decision, unless they want to lose customers.
• An idea I think will be bigger than self-driving for decades, or at least until geotonomy expands to cover the majority of places humans currently drive
• The best way to move taxi and truck drivers out of vehicles, once redundant connectivity can be guaranteed.
• See Phantom Auto and Starsky Robotics.

Universal Basic Mobility

• The idea that public/private partnerships should guarantee a Mobility Floor as a form of investment in local communities.
• See Forget Universal Basic Income. We Need Universal Basic Mobility.

Alex Roy is founder of Geotegic Consulting and the Human Driving Association; editor-at-large at The Drive; host of The Autonocast; co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports; and author of The Driver. He has set numerous endurance driving records, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

I recently watched some of my old Cannonball Run videos, and I couldn't stop thinking how much safer I would have been if no one else had been driving. Those pesky untrained commuters. So dangerous. Actually, everyone would have been a lot safer if I hadn't been driving either. If everyone else had been in a self-driving car at the speed limit, and I had been in a self-driving car I'd hacked to go 140 mph, I could have helped my co-driver look out for police trying to stop us. Two sets of eyes are safer than one, and there's no rule that says a human has to be driving, although there should be. For now.

But human driving will never die.

Let's be clear: I love technology. ColecoVision with the tape drive? Uh huh. Vectrex? YES. Capsela? Of course. When the Kenner X-Wing toy came out in '78, I wore my kiddie brown belt so no one would try to cut in front of me in line. That Sony Aibo robot dog that cost $3000 in 2000? Of course it was terrible, but I had to have one. Palm Pilot with cellular add-on? Apple Newton? Mini Disc? LaserDisc? Gotta collect 'em all.

The biggest technology fans on the planet—and I'm talking about those investing in and working on self-driving cars—don't want human driving to die. I mean they do, but to them all those shared, self-driving cars are for the little people. The investors and engineers? If they don't already own Porsches, Ferraris or McLarens, they're just waiting for their acquisition or IPO.

If you don't believe me, you haven't been keeping up with sports car sales in Silicon Valley, which has Ferrari, McLaren, Porsche and Lamborghini dealerships, and is home to the largest Corvette dealership west of the Mississippi.

But sports cars and human driving will become like horses, right? Please. If all the people invested in self-driving really believed that, Skip Barber wouldn't have gone bankrupt and the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) would be bigger than the NRA. Sorry, but the horse analogy doesn't work, because a much higher proportion of people own cars than ever owned horses. Forget peak oil; let's talk peak horse. We hit peak horse about a hundred years ago, and the proportion of the total human population who owned horses was miniscule. Cars? Sales have never been better, and cars are a lot hardier than horses. Also, a lot harder to kill, and they don't run away.

What is self-driving supposed to solve, anyway? Pollution? Electrification solves that. Sharing does too. And trains. Or bikes, scooters and walking. Safety? Skip Barber's one-day driving school costs $1,000. Will I be able to buy a self-driving car that can drive anywhere I can, as safe as or safer than I can, in my life time? Unlikely. But even if I could, the self-driving option is going to cost a lot more than $1,000. It has to. Even if the cost of all the necessary sensors falls well below $1,000, the R&D necessary to make it happen—now surpassing $80 billion—must be recouped. That's not going to happen by selling it one time for $1,000, or even $2,000. BMW tried to charge people $300 for Apple Carplay. Then they dropped it to $80 a year (still criminal). Worse, it's insulting. Anyone with a brain will just bluetooth into the car using iTunes on their phone. Because people are smart.

What do you think BMW would charge for self-driving as a standalone option?

The only way self-driving "works" is A) it's deployed only where it works, and B) it's profitable to deploy. That means geofences, and you can't buy it. Self-driving will become part of rentership culture, which is what the toxic wing of capitalism has been trying to foist on hardworking Americans for decades. When you rent everything and own nothing, your life isn't your own. Add cars to that mix—and especially a car that limits where you can go—and your destiny isn't your own either.

The future is almost here, but it will be tightly geofenced. Human drivers will be the only ones not trapped in its invisible cage.

Let's get real. What do people really hate? Is it driving? No, it's boredom. Driving is fun. Driving in traffic is boring. Also, it sucks. No one in their right mind likes traffic. Traffic is why I take the subway. Or a train. Or a bike. Or a scooter. Or I walk. If I'm going to drive, it's because I have to—in which I case I'd welcome a self-driving mode in traffic—or because I want to, specifically because it has a steering wheel.

Which brings us to the big secret.

Even if self-driving cars work perfectly, human driven cars—and especially human-owned cars—serve a purpose no AI-controlled pod can, at any price, even for free. It's not hard to understand what it is, or why it matters so much. Cars aren't just tools, or even beautiful tools. They are organic forms, speaking to us literally, figuratively and subliminally. Cars help us see the world, and be seen within it. They expand our boundaries, and close the gap between our true and perceived selves.

More simply, what does a Jaguar E-Type look like?

You know exactly what it looks like. You also know exactly why people want to drive them. It looks like the male organ that serves two distinct and necessary functions. One of them is very pleasurable. The other, not so much. Just like owning a Jaguar.

What does this Pagani Huayra look like?

The Huayra doesn't look like the same thing an E-type looks like. The Jaguar is clearly male. The Pagani is clearly female. The Huayra, like every Italian sports car designed before the Lamborghini Countach, looks like a beautiful woman lying on her stomach, having just woken up, about to get up. She is very expensive. I refer to the Pagani, of course.

What does a Porsche 911—perhaps the most iconic sports car of all time—look like?

There it is. A beautiful German woman lying on her stomach, having just woken up, about to get up. If you question the accuracy of this metaphor, then, like jazz, you'll never understand.

How about the Citroen SM?

Beautiful. Confused. This French classic somehow manages to combine the aesthetic of both male and female organic forms, in one car.

What about Morgans?

There is absolutely no reason Morgan should still be in business. Trust me, I own one. But wait, there is one reason. Morgans look exactly like cars used to, back when car designers chose only the most sexualized organic shapes. Morgans speak to us on a fundamental emotional level, which cannot be said of...

This.

Cars serve two purposes: Transportation or Transformation. A Prius is the perfect solution for transportation. If that's all we ever needed, self-driving would solve all problems. But it can't, because human nature dictates that we are social animals. Like peacocks, we both see and need to be seen, which is why we crave vehicles that are terrible at transportation, but awesome at transformation.

Vehicles like THIS:

There is not one good reason for car doors to rotate vertically. That they can is the point. Not coincidentally, scissor doors look like wings. Scissor doors don't make very good doors, just like peacock wings don't make for very good wings. Transformation requires sacrifice.

How much are people willing to sacrifice to achieve transformation? Here's the Porsche 911 Turbo.

The Porsche 911 Turbo is awesome. It's perfect. There is absolutely nothing to be improved upon.

So why do people pay more for this?

The Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet is inferior to the coupe in every way. Cost. Handling. Rigidity. Safety. That is, every way but one: visibility.

Not the visibility out. The visibility in.

Let's apply that logic to the Tesla Model X.

The Model X is a fascinating vehicle. It's the most ambitious transportation device ever made—packed full of awesome yet totally gratuitous technology—and it's priced far higher than transportation devices of similar functionality. It exists at the surreal nexus of transportation and transformation, forgiven its ungainly proportions for only one reason...

This.

Falcon wing doors. Conveying all the transformative messaging of Lamborghini scissor doors, at a fraction of the price. Those who say the X is overpriced are wrong. It's vastly underpriced, delivering glowing mountains of transformative power to the owner/driver/passenger.

If humans were totally rational, and the logic of the self-driving lobby were sound, consider how different the world would be even in the absence of self-driving cars: Everyone would carpool, share and borrow. Fractional ownership or rentership would be the norm. Lamborghini, Porsche, Ferrari, Pagani, and Koenigesegg would all be bankrupt. Top Gear would never have been the most popular show in the world. Chris Harris would be selling hats in a second-tier manufacturing sector somewhere in England. The NYC subways would run on time. Everyone would drive a Prius, or the equivalent. Buick wouldn't be a luxury brand in China.

Or maybe people are rational, and the cars they buy and drive fulfill a purpose the self-driving lobby cannot quantify, but we can. I can't wait for a self-driving button on a car I own. But until it can drive anywhere, everywhere—including saving me from a hurricane, volcano or power outage — and even if it can—I'll keep my wheel. Actually, make that the whole car. Because there are times I don't want to be driven.

And if you have to ask, then, like jazz, you've got a lot to learn about human psychology.

Alex Roy is Editor-at-Large at The Drive, host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports, — founder of the Human Driving Association, and author of The Driver. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Love him or hate him, you can't say Elon Musk doesn't have a great sense of humor. Dive into that big Tesla central display, poke around the Easter Egg screen, and you get all kinds of fun options: More Cowbell, Mars Rover, and something that resembles a primitive version of Microsoft Paint. That's all cute, but the best Easter Egg is somewhere else, hiding in plain sight, and it saved my life on a brisk and lonely night during Monterey Car Week.

Yes, every Tesla comes with free housing. And I'm not talking about the frunk.

I'd like to say every Tesla comes with an apartment, but it's really the world's second best temporary lodging, right after a wealthy friend's spare bedroom. Sooner or later, you have to leave. How did I discover the holy grail of Tesla Easter Eggs? I'd like to say it was a hack, but that would suggest skill rather than ingenuity and desperation, which would be a lie.

It all began two years ago during Monterey Car Week.

I love Car Week. If you're a car person, it's one of the best events in the world. But there's a major problem. It's in Monterey, and there are very few places to stay, at any price. If you're a top-shelf automotive journalist, B-class influencer, or C-level celebrity, a car manufacturer will pay for your five star hotel, your airfare, and tickets to private events like The Quail, which start at $950. The whole package is really a paid vacation worth $10,000. If you include the oysters, cars, chauffeurs, and open bars, it's probably more like $15,000.

Alas, there are only so many paid vacation slots to go around, so if you cracked one too many jokes about the last model from [insert car car manufacturer here], you're not going for free.

I'm fine flying coach. I'll find a way to expense it. I can get press passes to any event. But lodging?

Welcome to the nightmare of Monterey Car Week. Here's what the Expedia hotel map looks like for 2019. Yes. 2019.

Almost everything is sold out already. There's a few places left, from $441-$1500/night. I know what you're thinking. What if I stay further away?

One year out, there's a motel in Salinas for $190/night. But there's a big catch. It's 25 miles away from almost all of the events you'd want to attend. Twenty-five miles may not seem like much, but Car Week brings traffic to a standstill. What normally takes forty minutes can take two to three hours.

Salinas might as well be San Francisco.

Back in 2016, I didn't have the wisdom I have today. I booked a room in Salinas, checked in and attempted to drive into Monterey. Never again. You haven't seen traffic until you've been in a row of brand new wrapped Lamborghinis, vintage Ferraris and pre-war French cars even I couldn't recognize, all of them inching forward at 1 mile an hour. The smell. The barking. The rumbling. The leaking. And that's just the owners.

Are you scared of self-driving cars? You will beg for them after one day in Car Week traffic. Unless you're in a show car, which is the whole point of going to Car Week. I was in a Tesla Model S 90D, which has many huge pros, and one big event-specific con. The biggest pro is that every Tesla comes with arguably the world's most advanced semi-automated driving system: Autopilot. I've posited that Cadillac SuperCruise is better in many ways, but that's not true during Monterey Car Week. Tesla Autopilot will engage and re-engage in the worst traffic conditions. SuperCruise? Not so much.

That's the pro. But what about the con? You know what it is. It's charging during Monterey Car Week. Charging a Tesla is fairly easy the rest of the year. Charge at home. Charge at work. Charge at a Supercharger. But that doesn't work during Car Week. If you think booking a hotel is a problem, try finding one that's both affordable and has what Tesla calls Destination Charging. Slower than Supercharging, it's great...if you can leave your Tesla plugged in overnight. Besides, if you're getting back at midnight and leaving before dawn—which is the point of Car Week—it's just not fast enough.

Why wasn't I in an AirBnb? Because I couldn't find one with parking and fast charging. By fast charging I mean anything better than an AC outlet, which is glacial.

I needed Supercharging, which remains Tesla's ace in the hole.

The Tesla Eureka Moment

By the second night, I knew I needed more power. My car week schedule was full. I did the math. If I drove to Salinas and back every day with multiple detours for events, my state-of-the-art Tesla Model S 90D wasn't going to finish out the week.

It was getting dark. I was tired. I was hungry. Free dinner was waiting for me somewhere, but it was charge now or range anxiety until I did.

Luckily, the Tesla store in Seaside, just a few miles from downtown Monterey, had a Supercharger.

Supercharger spot 1A, which I'd been told is faster than the others, was taken. I took 1B, plugged in, reclined my seat, and fell asleep.

I woke up four hours later, too late to crash any parties or track down the best free oysters. I also needed a bathroom. None of the hedges offered enough cover. The back of the building? Beneath me. Also, too disrespectful of Tesla. Activity often delays the inevitable, so I checked the GPS for options.

And then I saw it.

Entry code? ENTRY CODE. A four digit code. I spied a keypad on the wall by the Tesla store's side door. I limped out of the Model S, entered the code, and the door opened. I'd been to hundreds of car dealers with customer lounges, but I'd never been to one that was open at night.

This is what the Tesla Seaside store lounge looks like.

Take a look around. Spotless. Lounge chairs. Reading materials. A partially stocked fridge. Light snacks. A coffee machine. Free wifi. A big screen television. Cable. A daycare area.

The bathroom is bigger than most hotel rooms.

This place was a palace. Infinitely superior to the dump I was staying in. This was easily equivalent to what passes for a 3-star hotel these days. And the Tesla Lounge was free. Store hours were 10AM to 6PM, so as long as I was in and out overnight, I was presumably golden. Was it possible? Could I move in? What could go wrong? I was a well-dressed Tesla driver who fell asleep, right? Might I save $1000+ in hotel costs? $2000? How long could I stay? Was anyone monitoring the security camera in real-time? How many other Tesla owners might come by? Would they care?

There was only one way to find out.

The first night was pretty good. I slept in a chair. I had no bedding, so there was no point laying out on the floor. It might look suspicious, even moreso in my white suit. I was only interrupted once, by two women who pretended not to notice me. There must be some sort of pact between Tesla owners. If you can afford one, you're probably not dangerous.

A little French shower in the morning and I was off.

I brought my luggage for night #2, but left it in the car. No reason to raise suspicions. I was interrupted twice by Tesla owners, and so returned to my Model S so as not to appear creepy. In the morning I fully disrobed in the bathroom, wiped myself down and put on an entirely new outfit.

On night #3 I went to the nearest shopping center, bought a pillow and blanket I intended to return a few days later, and headed back to Seaside after a wonderful free meal on (insert unwitting German car manufacturer here).

And then the phone rang. A friend had a friend who bailed on his junket room at the Intercontinental, arguably the best-situated of the luxury hotels in Monterey.

I'm not saying that I took that free hotel room. I'm also not saying I didn't. And I'm also not saying I haven't gone back to enjoy the amenities at that Tesla store. What I am saying is that if you need a free place to stay, Tesla Seaside isn't the only store with a lovely lounge, a Supercharger and low nighttime foot traffic. Some say that automation will destroy jobs and exacerbate our homelessness problem. If you're willing to put up with some minor inconvenience, you're only a salvage Tesla away from a decent solution.

At least you were, until this article came out.

Of course, if anyone objects, you can always sleep in the trunk. I've done it.

Alex Roy is Editor-at-Large at The Drive, founder of the Human Driving Association, host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports and author of The Driver. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

When people ask me why I have not yet weighed in on [insert preposterous or divisive or mystifying Elon Musk statement here], my answer is always the same: I'm thinking about it. The pace and timing of Musk news is too fast for meaningful instant analysis. Perspective is hard to glean, even on the second day. I pity those working on books about Musk and Tesla. Where to end them? When? Musk isn't just disrupting the automotive sector, but traditional publishing's ability to acquire, edit, schedule, market, and sell anything that won't be out of date before (or even hours after) release.

Imagine being the person behind this 1996 story:

Can you imagine publishing a book about Theranos before its implosion? Before Bad Blood came out, Theranos was thought to be in its second act, also known as the dark night of the soul, during which the stage is set to transcend tragedy and self-doubt. It took one serious journalist to reveal it was actually the third and final act.

Where are we in the Elon Musk narrative? What happens next?

That depends on what day of the week one chooses as a narrative bookend. Musk's disastrous August 16th New York Times confessional interview caused a swoon in TSLA share prices and gave global media's finest thinkers everything they needed to weigh in. Musk hadn't secured funding to take Tesla private. Musk appeared depressed. Musk was exhausted. Musk choked up. The SEC is poking around. The Tesla board is worried about him. Unnamed sources are worried about his recreational drug use.

Recode's Kara Swisher took to the Op-Ed pages of the Times to try and answer the question: Is He Crazy? Not really. He's the id of tech. And he shouldn't tweet. Financial Times stalwart Jonathan Guthrie is correct when he draws the parallels between Musk and truculent teens. Also, he shouldn't tweet. Slate's Felix Salmon is correct when he says Elon Musk Needs Sleep. Arianna Huffington echoed Salmon with this tweet and accompanying article:

Dear Elon, please change the way you work to be more in line with the science around how humans are most effective: You need it, Tesla needs it and the world needs it. https://t.co/vy6hdnYKzt

— Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) August 17, 2018

Most people need sleep, though it must be said that many brilliant, driven figures throughout history didn't sleep much (Nikola Tesla, to pick an apt example, slept just 2 hours a night). Anyway, does anyone believe sleep will change Musk's behavior? Please.

What about the drugs so many are worried about? I used to do a lot of drugs, too. Mostly legal, some not. I'd sleep two days then play Civilization IV for two days. (I hear Civ is one of Musk's favorite games.) My Civ box and display sat right next to my workstation. I was so productive, I wrote a book. When I went cold turkey, my sleep schedule changed, but my waking output didn't. It was just less Civ, more work. That was before Twitter, which is as addictive as any drug.

Is Ambien a problem for Musk? I doubt it. If anything, he's not taking enough of it. Cocaine? I doubt it. Users disappear for days at a time. Musk couldn't conceal that. How did Aaron Sorkin, the wildly successful writer of "The West Wing," get away with 15-plus years of cocaine addiction? Answer: he didn't. Alcohol? Almost everyone drinks. Musk's behavior doesn't line up with alcoholism. What about some combination of addictions? Anything is possible, but speculation is worthless when confronted with evidence of something else.

What is telling is how Musk seemed so defensive about weed:

Who says "on weed"? One says "on crack" or "on coke." "On weed" is for those who don't smoke it, let alone enjoy high-quality edibles, which is how Californians of means actually consume it. But Elon's problem isn't with weed as a drug, but with weed's deleterious effect on productivity, which is Elon's self-imposed raison d'etre.

You know what might explain Musk's behavior? Adderall. Provigil. Nuvigil. Dexedrine. All legal. Ask anyone who keeps crazy hours how they do it. Pilots, college kids, FOREX traders, Cannonball drivers. If they can get a prescription, so can Musk. People like Musk will find a way to self-medicate, which is code for treatment, not cure. You can't cure human nature. Here's Elon's 2:32 AM PST response to Huffington:

Ford & Tesla are the only 2 American car companies to avoid bankruptcy. I just got home from the factory. You think this is an option. It is not.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 19, 2018

Musk is convinced he's the only one who can execute his Master Plan, which is why all of the sleep advice and concern about drug use is lost on him, and ultimately irrelevant.

In fact, triggering it may be part of Musk's plan, whether he knows it or not. I think he does.

Elon Musk Versus The Art Of Storytelling

When I was Chairman of The Moth storytelling series in its early days, we had fiery internal debates about format and rules. How long should a story be? How do we keep storytellers from going over time? How to elevate the quality, consistency and variety of the storytellers and their stories? As we grew, we observed what some joked was the Powerpoint-ization of stories. Everyone wanted to hit those beats, but not always in a good way. Word got out that storytellers were getting book deals. One even got a TV show. We were swamped with stories of coming out, therapy and recovery. We marveled at how people could stuff a three-act structure into five minutes. The Moth was too young and humble to call it Mothification, but every content platform reaches a point where voices are optimizing for the format rather than organizational goals.

All we could do was enforce a set of deceptively simple rules, which remain in effect today: stories have to be on time, on topic, true, and we care.

Structure matters, not just to the storyteller, but to the audience.

At a traditional company, the story is told through earnings calls, product launches and press releases. News, good or bad, is highly filtered and released on a set schedule. Teamwork matters. If there is a cult of personality, it lives behind a wall, its narrative synchronized and subsumed to corporate necessity.

At Tesla we are witnessing the greatest business theater of modern times, and not in a good way. Will Tesla succeed because of Musk, or despite him? Musk might be forgiven his alleged sins if he were just the director, or the writer, or the star. Instead he's all of them, and the producer, and a major investor, and the publicist, set designer, songwriter, soloist, backup singer, conductor, musical director, usher, merchandise designer and bathroom attendant.

If all of these jobs were being done well, no one would care. In fact, a show as good as Tesla could go on forever even if the jobs weren't getting done—as long as talent showed up on time. New Order is terrible live. Siouxsie Sioux can't sing. The Cure's Robert Smith can't solo. Genius is allowed its flaws. We need genius to be flawed. Flaws make us human. A critical flaw is the hinge upon which empathy, understanding, and identification swings.

But there is one thing every show needs, and without which genius will fail and the show must close: narrative structure. Every story needs a beginning, a middle and an end. The ticket buying audience will need to go to the bathroom. That's why intermission exists. People need to go home sooner or later. How long is the average song? Three minutes, thirty seconds. Movies? Ninety to 100 minutes. TV shows? Twenty-two or 44 minutes. Even Netflix and Amazon shows, unconstrained by commercial break requirements, follow these examples. Books, symphonies, articles, tweets, Instagram's 60-second video limit, how many lines of text Facebook and LinkedIn display above Read More...an ever changing universe of platforms offer a wide variety of formats waiting for storytellers to exploit them.

The very best storytellers optimize narrative to format. They have to, because expectations matter.

When it comes to Tesla, if your expectation is that Musk will conform to the format, platform, and cadence of traditional business storytelling, you will only ever see failure, misdirection, and deceit. If your expectation is that Musk will execute his Master Plan on any timetable, then everything is a road block, every confessional fuel for renewed faith, and every missed deadline becomes a footnote in a optimism-fueled "leaning forward" narrative.

Love him or hate him, step back to observe Musk's arc over time and you can't help but see an almost inconceivable narrative agility, his story beats sprinkled across multiple platforms, each targeting a different audience, timed to counteract negative fallout from stories he can't control.

Example: Less than 24 hours after the New York Times interview broke, when the catastrophic response to it began to take shape, Marques Brownlee—a YouTuber with 6M followers—teased something big coming out that very night, and boy was it:

This 18-minute interview had to have been scheduled in advance of the release of the Times interview. Brownlee, a Tesla owner/fan straight out of central casting, threw softball after softball, and Musk whacked them all over the Gigafactory's fence. Depending whom you ask, Musk looked tired or human, which lines up with David Gelles' NYT Sunday follow-up, which all but praises him for his transparency and vulnerability.

What happens next with Elon Musk?

Love him or hate him, Musk isn't crazy, he isn't stupid, and he isn't quitting. He knows he can't hide his feelings, and so he's decided to add them to his communications arsenal. He's waging full-spectrum asymmetric warfare to stay in the seat. He has to. Tesla is Musk's Kobayashi Maru. Musk can't lose, or even appear to lose.

That leaves only two possibilities:

1. Musk passes out on the Fremont factory floor and is temporarily replaced.
2. Musk stages passing out on the factory floor, and an interim CEO is found until Musk stages a comeback, a la Steve Jobs.

I hope it's 2. I'm not invested in Tesla, but I love the cars. I also love an underdog story. If the second option sounds crazy, go read Philip K. Dick's Now Wait For Last Year before posting in the comments.

Or, by the time you're reading this, I could be completely wrong. But I doubt it.

Alex Roy is Editor-at-Large at The Drive, founder of the Human Driving Association, host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports and author of The Driver. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

"No one is coming," said my older brother Jack. He was nineteen. I still miss him.

The explosions were coming closer.

"We wait," said Tata. "We wait for the Edelmans."

A neat row of five battered pieces of overstuffed luggage—one for each of us—lined the wall by the front door.

"The train," said Mama. "What about the train?"

"Are they going to kill us?" asked my sister Janette. She was sixteen. She was so beautiful.

"Everything will be ok," I lied. I was fourteen.

BOOM. A glass fell to the floor.

"Dr. Edelman will come," said Tata.

"It's too late for the train," said Jack, pacing around our small dining table. Tata sat at its head, of course. My sister Janette sat across from me, her face white. Mama stood on a chair and reached for something in her favorite hiding spot atop the bookcase.

"Maybe the English will stop them," said Janette.

"Maybe the English Channel will stop them," said Jack. "We can't wait for the Edelmans...I've got an idea. I'll be right back."

The Edelmans had a brand new Renault. My best friend Jojo's father was a doctor. Jojo was so proud his family had a car. I was jealous. When his father got it he even let Jojo and I stencil his name on it: "Dr. Edelman." I painted one door, Jojo the other. When we were done his father came down to look at our work. Jojo's door was better than mine. I was hoping he'd inspect Jojo's and walk away, but instead he just looked at Jojo's angrily and shook his head.

"I didn't spend all those years in medical school," Dr. Edelman had said, "just so I could drive a car with my name on the door calling me Mister."

That had been a month ago. Last night, Dr. Edelman promised Tata to pick us up on the way out of Brussels. We were all going to Paris together. Tata had friends there. Tata said they had room for the Edelmans, and Dr. Edelman said he had room in the Renault for us. I didn't think either was true. I wanted to believe Tata was right. Jojo would come if it was up to him, but Jojo was only fourteen, like me. But his feet couldn't reach the pedals. And he didn't know how to drive.

The windows exploded, the heavy drapes billowing inward, and Mama fell to the floor.

Silence.

Wailing in the street. Wailing down the hall. Footsteps bounded up the stairs.

"We have to go!" Jack yelled. "German planes are coming!"

I thought Mama was dead, but closing the heavy drapes had saved her life. That had been Jack's idea. He was always so smart. He and I lifted her by the arms and carried her into the hall. She gestured at the luggage. Tata shook his head, and the five of us slowly descended to the lobby.

"What about our bicycles?" said Janette.

"There are five of us," said Tata.

"We only have three," I said.

"Maybe we could all fit onto them!" said Janette.

"We only have one," said Jack, "someone stole the other two!"

"I told you," Tata glared at me, "to lock them up."

"Everyone wait here," said Jack. "Andre, come with me."

"Where are we going?" I said. "Dr. Edelman—"

"Forget them," he said, wheeling our remaining bicycle out onto the sidewalk, "and get on."

We rode east through streets filled with broken bricks and glass. People stared at us through windowless panes. "Turn around!" someone yelled. "You don't want to go that way! The Germans—"

But we did. Because Jack had a plan. He always had plans. And the further and faster he pedaled, the more I knew he was going to save us. I loved him so much. Everyone did. I could see the Citroen dealership in the distance. We were going to steal a car! Then a man ran out, but not from the front door. All the windows were smashed, but not by bombs. Another man ran out, and another. We skidded to a stop.

All the cars in the showroom were gone.

I could feel the rumble of heavy vehicles. The drone of distant planes. I could feel the light inside me going out. I would never see Paris. None of us would.

"Follow me!" said Jack, dropping the bike. I stumbled after him as he ran inside. There was a brilliant star inside him. I chased him into the garage. There was one car that wasn't in pieces. It had to be at least ten years old. It had a hand crank. He was already behind the big steering wheel.

"You can drive?" I said.

"Yes."

"When did you learn to drive?"

"Trust me," he frowned at the gauges, "I can drive."

"But can you drive...THIS car?"

"It's old." He played with the knobs. "I drove a new one once."

"Is it the same?"

"No." Jack peered at the pedals. "But I'm a fast learner."

"But can you...start it?"

"I don't know," he said, checking the lever.

"Can I help?"

"I can't do it without you."

"Really?"

"Sit in the drivers seat and do exactly as I say." Jack jumped out. "And I'll turn the crank!"

Jack. My poor brother. He saved us all. I still miss him.

That's as far as my father could go—sixty years later, right before he died—without bursting into tears. I filled in the gaps from other family members. Jack and my father picked up Tata, Mama and Janette, and joined tens thousands of refugees on the road to the French border. They caught up with the Edelmans, but the Luftwaffe strafed the defenseless convoy and Jojo died in his father's Renault. They made it to Paris, then drove south to Toulouse, where Tata sold the car for forged visas that might get them into Spain. Mama and Janette were captured by the Gestapo and disappeared. Tata, Jack and my father made it to Madrid, then Lisbon and Canada, where Jack joined the Air Force. He was shot down and killed over Germany. My father joined the US Army, received a Purple Heart in Germany, then returned to New York City to open a car dealership. He imported a wide variety of the European cars he loved, starting with the French brand that saved his life.

He rarely left the island of Manhattan, but he owned a car for the rest of his life.

What is the future of transportation? Self-driving evangelists and "experts" would have us believe it is made up of vehicles that are connected, autonomous, shared and electric, or C.A.S.E.. Steering wheels and car ownership? Finished. Some have even claimed the last generation of children who will need a driver's license has already been born.

Nonsense. Ask anyone who escaped Hurricane Irma if they'd bet their children's lives on a self-driving Uber showing up.

I LOVE technology. I make other first adopters look slow. But I'm for technology as a means, not an ends. I support technology that augments human will, not that which limits it.

Technology changes, but human nature doesn't. Even if the evangelists are right, self-driving cars work perfectly, cost-per-mile plummets, and pollution, traffic and safety are solved, steering wheels and car ownership will survive, and deserve to. Why? Because history repeats itself, cultural memory is long, modern society is brittle, and the survival instinct doesn't care about efficiency or cost.

The war that killed most of my family 78 years ago wasn't an anomaly. Wars, floods, fires, volcanoes, and earthquakes happen all the time. For those who haven't read thousands of years of religious texts or watched Battlestar Galactica, all this has happened before, and will happen again. From Hurricanes Irma and Harvey to Fukushima, the California wildfires and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, a car is often the difference between life and death.

Not a car you summon with an app. Your car. Waiting for you. Outside.

There is no freedom but the choice of life or death. When convenience is conflated with improvement and wants are mistaken for needs, survival rests on a brittle surface.

Let us suppose the Ubers, Lyfts and Didis of the world execute perfectly. Autonomy is a fact. Two mobility providers have exclusive rights in any given city. In other countries, it might even be one. No one owns a car; it's cheaper not to, or maybe it's illegal. Street parking has been eliminated for bike lanes anyway. Garages? Too expensive. Mass transit has been gutted and largely replaced by shared fleets. All vehicles are electric, so pollution has been moved elsewhere. Road deaths are now zero. Traffic is when a child runs into the street and everyone stops so a parent can retrieve them. We love the strangers we meet in shared vehicles. Small single-seat vehicles can be summoned. If we want a whole car to ourselves, we can pay a surcharge. Rides are discounted or free, if we're willing to watch ads. No one owns bikes or scooters either, because they're available through the same app as cars.

Life is good.

Then something happens. Insert Outside-Context Problem (X). Lava. Alien attack. Zombie horde. Plague. ISIS. 9/11. Cyberwar. EMP weapon. It could be as simple as a blackout that lasts too long. You may not even know what's happening. You need to get out of the city. As fast as possible. As far as possible. You try to summon a car on Uber, Lyft or Didi. You can't get on a plane if you can't get to the airport. But you can't afford a ride to the airport if surge pricing is 100x. Or if there aren't any cars available.

Even if cars are available at any price, will an autonomous car drive through a fire to reach you? Gunfire? A flood? Debris? Rocks? How about a crowd of screaming people?

Will an autonomous car let you pack your third child inside? What about that niece who showed up? Will it be like Sophie's Choice? What about your neighbor's family?

Does everyone die in the crisis zone if one of the sensors is covered or damaged?

Will these cars even operate if the power is out? Without connectivity? If not, why are so many insisting upon self-driving cars that require external infrastructure?

If shared autonomous vehicles are owned and operated by third or even fourth parties, will they risk them to evacuate passengers who would otherwise die? Will fleet insurers reimburse for damage or loss if a fleet manager sends the vehicles into a danger zone to save lives? If not, what will that fleet manager do? What is the company policy, and will they disclose it?

These nightmare scenarios will not prevent the inevitable rise and popularity not only of self-driving cars, but of mobility apps aggregating everything from subways to bikes, cars, ferries and even air travel. I'll be the first to sign up. Who wouldn't? I'm absolutely convinced the future of civilian transportation will look like a hybrid of cell phone plans and medical insurance, mostly for better, but definitely for worse.

What's the "worse" part? The second-order consequences of giving up not only ownership of mobility, but access to it. A rentership society based on maximizing efficiency and convenience is the most brittle of all. The further removed we are from generations like my father's, or the victims of the California wildfires, or Katrina, Irma and Harvey, or refugees from wars anywhere in the world, the more we unconsciously retreat into the fantasy that modernity equals robustness.

Those too far gone may find shared bicycles and scooters to be wonderful, but without connectivity they are as useless as shared autonomous vehicles. How do you unlock a shared bicycle? A dockless scooter? You don't. Forget about fixing them.

Connectivity, autonomy, sharing and electrification all have bright futures, but they're not on the same timelines. Someday, in unison, they may even reduce problems that have been plaguing us since Roman times. But there's absolutely no reason they can't safely coexist with steering wheels and ownership, if we get creative. The utopians will claim we won't reap the full benefits of going all in with technology, but that only highlights the limitations of their thinking, which is as myopic as the Luddites who would deny the inevitability of progress. Beware the seductive power of technological panaceas, for binary thinking is slavery.

The utopians don't get out enough. Or maybe they're too young. Or maybe they haven't seen system wide failure on a societal level. Convenience is a thief that can make no promises. For every disaster that exposes the increasingly brittle life of comfort we take for granted, there are survivors who would trade a lifetime of conveniences for another day with a lost loved one.

Here's a scenario for the utopians: force people into shared autonomous fleets, price them out of car ownership, compel them into mobility plans, then cut their power and connectivity for 72 hours. Anyone who shorted the shared fleet providers will make a killing. So will anyone long Ford and GM's human-driven car divisions, which will have been spun off by then.

I can't wait to buy my first Multi-Pass, but no matter how much money I save, I'm going to have a bicycle in my Manhattan apartment and a car at a garage within biking distance.

Because you can't put a price on your loved ones.

Because sometimes, no one is coming.

Alex Roy — Founder of the Human Driving Association, Editor-at-Large at The Drive, Host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports and author of The Driver — has set numerous endurance driving records, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The wild rollercoaster ride that is Trump administration trade policy suddenly lurched in another direction on Wednesday, when European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker participated in an unexpected press conference with the president during a visit to the White House. Less than one week after representatives from across the auto industry pleaded their cases against tariffs to officials from the Department of Commerce, Donald Trump and his EU-level counterpart agreed to make an agreement, at some future date, regarding imports and exports between the United States and the European Union.

Chances are good that this news, which resulted in an immediate sigh of relief from industry interests eager to see talk of tariffs disappear, will result in a yawn amongst some readers. But in the wake of steel and aluminum tariffs imposed last month (and considering the Trump administration had just announced what was essentially a $12 billion bailout for soybean farmers affected by retaliatory tariffs levied by China, the EU, Canada, and Mexico), the clamor by auto industry players against further tariffs has reached a crescendo. At last week's hearing—in which the tariffs proposed by the Trump administration were justified by posing automobile and parts imports as a potential national security threat—a range of organizations from the Auto Alliance and SEMA to the Korean Automobile Manufacturers Association and the EU itself said that tariffs would cut jobs, disrupt the global economy, and isolate the US auto market at a time when technological changes are barreling down the pike at lightning speed. The administration's national security argument was also widely questioned.

Yesterday's détente, likely brought on by a rising tide of discontent among Republican lawmakers regarding the direction of the Trump administration's trade policy, resulted in a promise by Juncker that the EU would buy more soybeans—a product near and dear to the most fervent parts of Trump Country. The announcement was, however, light on details.

"This seems to be an ongoing pattern where the administration—specifically the president—talks about negotiating deals, but no one has any idea what the objectives are," Erik Autor, president of the National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones, said in an interview. "I guess it boils down to whether the president is more interested in negotiating a deal or picking a fight."

Trade groups were quick to respond to the late afternoon announcement. The American International Automobile Dealers Association, which represents dealers for overseas-based brands, and the Auto Alliance, which includes all three American automakers among its membership, praised the agreement on Wednesday evening, soon after it was announced.

“We are pleased to hear that the US and EU have reached an agreement to work together to facilitate trade on both sides of the Atlantic, and we look forward to learning more," the Auto Alliance said in its statement. "Today’s announcement demonstrates that bilateral negotiations are a more effective approach to resolving trade barriers, not increasing tariffs."

The lynchpin of the Trump administration's tariff proposal is a component of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 called Section 232. It gives federal agencies the power to prompt the Department of Commerce to investigate the national security implications of specific imports. Section 232 was invoked as justification for the steel and aluminum tariffs levied last month, and if automotive tariffs are pursued by the administration, it will be the basis for that trade policy shift as well.

Not many in the industry were convinced that the national security hook was justified. Speaking to a panel of Commerce officials at last week's hearing, Autor was among those to question the administration's tack.

"There is simply no evidence that the US auto and auto parts sectors face an imminent crisis so profound as to imperil their continued existence and ability to supply vehicles and parts to the U.S. military,” he said, adding that protective tariffs would harm a strong, healthy multi-national auto industry. "These are costs the country can ill afford, all to address a nonexistent problem.”

Among the automakers, trade groups, and foreign governments that spoke at the hearing, there was widespread agreement that tariffs would hit consumers hardest. This is in large part because the idea of an "American" versus a "foreign" car is antiquated in the modern global economy—imported cars contain American parts and vice versa, and many import brands are built at US factories by American workers—but estimates for price increases on new cars averaged a couple thousand dollars for domestic marques and several thousand dollars more for import brands. It's a difference many Americans would likely notice at bill-paying time.

Sam Abuelsamid, senior analyst for Navigant Research, said the administration was pandering to the Trump base—that great swath of America disillusioned with the steady, decades-long flow of formerly US-based manufacturing jobs to overseas locations.

"The administration is looking for simplistic solutions to complex problems," he said. "The goal of trying to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US is a laudable one, but this approach is wrong-headed and will more likely to lead to a recession than any significant amount of job growth in the near to mid-term."

Abuelsamid contended that addressing low wages and poor safety and environmental protections in countries to which manufacturing has been relocated would do more to help domestic manufacturing than would tariffs.

"As for the whole national security argument, that is a sham to come up with some legal justification for an economically negative policy that is purely politically motivated," he said. "They probably had interns searching through the law books for months trying to come up with something."

Abuelsamid's comments on suppressed laborer wages echoed the testimony offered by the United Auto Workers union at Commerce last week. Among those who spoke at the hearing, UAW was alone in its support of the Section 232 investigation, panning automakers' use of low-wage foreign workers that, the union said, killed American manufacturing jobs.

"Decades of disinvestments and offshoring of US jobs by multinational corporations has weakened our economic security as a nation and has inflicted great harm on American workers and communities," Jennifer Kelly, director of UAW's research department, said in her testimony. "Massive job losses have had ripple effects throughout our communities, idling able-bodied workers, tearing apart families and communities, and diminishing tax revenues."

Autor countered that, as manufacturing in countries like Mexico and China has blossomed, economic benefits have boosted wages. When he visited China in 2000, he said, average manufacturing wages were $1,700; when he returned in 2009, that figure had risen to $7,000. Still, he said, wages and worker benefits in developing countries are always a concern.

"It's a thorny issue, but you don't address it through trade restrictions," he said. "That isn't going to help workers. As the economy grows, wages increase."

As Abuelsamid noted, trade relationships are complex. Beneath the roiled surface of the Trump administration's tumultuous handling of trade policy lies a cry for help from a system many say needs fixing. But if Trump's bullying and blustery rhetoric tends to obscure what's really going on, keep in mind that talk of modifying trade policy is nothing new. Several years ago, everyone from Elizabeth Warren to the libertarian policy wonks at the Cato Institute offered their views on the subject.

What we're seeing now could be the cracks in a free trade system that has been based upon cheap labor provided by workers who haven't yet called for better wages and conditions. When David Ricardo published the original free trade manifesto, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, in 1817, free trade consisted of imperial nations specializing in manufacturing that made use of cheap domestic labor and natural resources extracted from subordinate states. Mistreatment of laborers and use of slavery to reduce costs was glossed over. As Zach Carter pointed out in a recent piece in the Huffington Post, this modus operandi still existed nearly two centuries later. Flying the banners of free trade and corporate responsibility, the Reagan administration tried—unsuccessfully—to block regulations aimed at US-based companies building profits upon the backs of exploited laborers in apartheid South Africa.

The UAW's comments about low-wage foreign workers may be less in the foreign workers' interests than in the interests of the dwindling cadre of American auto workers that form its membership (and who, as Paul Ingrassia suggested in his 2011 book "Crash Course: The American Auto Industry's Road to Bankruptcy and Bailout—and Beyond," may have been given too much at the peak of the US auto industry) but it acknowledges the impacts that worker exploitation abroad can have at home.

A recent study published by David Autor, an economist at MIT, says that the Clinton administration was aware that negative short-term impacts would hit US manufacturing when it lowered trade barriers with China in the 1990s. Low wages and cheap Chinese currency were irresistible incentives to many US-based companies that ended up moving production and research overseas, crippling US manufacturing. There have been repeated calls in recent years to renegotiate trade deals with China and others.

Erik Autor, of NAFTZ, said that although his organization would like to see some NAFTA policies adjusted to remove disadvantages from US manufacturing, international trade and foreign investment have been a good thing in North America. Autor said that as increased manufacturing has boosted the economy in Mexico, the US and Canada have become more competitive globally.

But the the hollowed-out middle of America—the former core of US-based manufacturing—formed the basis of the populist wave that propelled Donald Trump to victory in the 2016 election.

Details on what the agreement would accomplish were sparse. The announcement may have sounded resolute, but the EU is comprised of many sovereign nations, all of which have a different angle in the trade game at a time when nationalist politics are on the rise across the world. The focus has already moved, if ever so slightly, from the auto import track into the Byzantine warren of trade issues that surround it.

"Overall, the agreement seems mostly to benefit Germany, and the French seem unhappy about the agricultural goods component, which includes EU imports of American soy," Abuelsamid said. "If the Europeans can’t agree amongst themselves, it could be a problem for the whole deal."

An EU decision may have moved a little further off, but trade relationships with China, Canada and Mexico—toward whom the president's language has been bellicose of late—still loom.

"Where this goes is anyone's guess at this point," Erik Autor said. "We just hang onto our seats and see what the next round of tweets brings us."

There is no good reason to compare an electric Bird Scooter to a $200,000 Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG, but there is a fundamental one: both move people from A to B.

That they do it differently doesn't make a comparison less relevant. It makes it more relevant.

Welcome to mobility. Forget the shills, consultants and experts. Mobility has and always will mean the ability to move or be moved freely and easily. Mobility began with sandals, greatly improved with the advent of the wheel, and now extends all the way to commercial aviation. If it helps you get from A to B faster than walking barefoot, it's a mobility solution.

But there's a catch.

Modern American society was created by, for, and around cars. The more cars on the road, the worse the traffic, and the worse cars become as a mobility solution. In cities like LA, where public transit sucks, your alternatives are motorcycles, biking, and walking. Each bring their own set of pros and cons.

Enter Bird, a dockless electric scooter rental startup that seemed to come out of nowhere and has raised $400 million at a valuation of $2B, to the consternation of anyone who didn't invest in the friends and family round. Bird launched earlier this year in Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Santa Monica. Yadda, yadda. If you don't know the details, you already missed your chance to get in on the latest bubble to come out of Silicon Valley. I'd love to discuss it, but we're here to answer a much more fun question: Is a Bird scooter rental better than a Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG when it comes to getting around Santa Monica?

In order to find out, I took a 2018 S63 AMG Coupe to Bird's native habitat and spent the weekend comparing LA's favorite German lease to something I wanted to hate.

You won't believe what happened next.

PRICE

A 2018 Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG Coupe is an expensive car. We could talk about value, but if that word means anything to you, you wouldn't be looking at anything with an AMG badge. The one I tested was $208,295 with options. Base examples start at $167,700, but that's irrelevant because no one has them in stock. If you want one, you'll have to special order it. Which no one does, because the kind of person who wants an S63 AMG isn't going to wait. Because they're not actually car-shopping, they're badge-shopping. Because they don't actually like cars. Or driving—if they like driving, they own something else.

A Bird scooter has no price, because you can't put a price on happiness. Well, you can, but it's not a 1-to-1 correlation to an actual Bird scooter. If you wanted to buy the example I used—a Xiaomi m365—it would cost you approximately $499 on Amazon. But then you'd have to chain it up every time you stopped, or carry it inside with you, which is annoying. If that made sense, Xioami wouldn't have any excess product to sell to Bird.

Winner: Bird

COST-PER-MILE

Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG Coupe: If you have to ask, stop reading now.
Bird Scooter: $0.15

Winner: Bird

AVAILABILITY

An S63 AMG Coupe is almost always available at Mercedes-Benz of Beverly Hills, which requires an Uber or Lyft to take you there. After initial delivery, it's always available if you're willing to wait for the restaurant valet, which will cost at least 15 bucks, every time. Or $20 if you tip them to leave it in front of the restaurant, assuming no one showed up with a cooler car, which is always a possibility in LA. (AMG? No. One. Cares.) Or you can just walk to the parking lot where you put it. Not a lot of lots in Santa Monica.

Bird Scooter availability is very good. Open the app. Find Bird. They're usually close. If not, take an Uber. No need to walk anywhere or tip anyone. Womp. Womp.

Winner: Bird

ONBOARDING

Onboarding with Mercedes-Benz sucks, because you have to go to a car dealer, but it sucks even more because you will likely meet other Benz shoppers. And at least two people who work at Mercedes-Benz of Beverly Hills. At least you only have to do it once every 24-36 months, depending on the length of your lease. You could buy your AMG, but that would be insane because of Kelley Blue Book and Tavarish's work on Youtube. The day after a lease ends, the only thing more worthless than an AMG is any Maserati ever made.

Another hassle of onboarding a Benz? Insurance. You have to call someone. If there's a crash, you have to call someone else—probably a few people. Driving a Benz (or really any car) in Santa Monica is nothing but a hassle. You're always in fear of having to call people you don't want to, none of whom want to talk to you, either.

Onboarding with Bird is amazing. You download the app, you open it, and—voila! Birds are available. Also, if you have a crash, drop it, run two blocks away, call 911 and tell them someone stole the Bird from you ten minutes earlier. We'll cover this in great detail in my upcoming article, Offboarding.

Winner: Bird

EXTERIOR

The exterior of the S63 AMG is gorgeous, but it has a major problem, in that it exists. So much busy bodywork for no purpose except to excite teenage boys, other owners, and the guy holding the tip bucket at the local car wash. The only time you want an exterior in Santa Monica is if it rains, in which case no one is looking at your car anyway, and you might as well take an Uber.

Bird scooters don't have or need an exterior, which would only get in the way of slicing through traffic, parking, and ditching it once you're done with it.

Winner: Bird

INTERIOR

The Bird scooter has no interior because it doesn't need one.

The S63 AMG's interior is both comfortable and stunning. It's also stunningly irrelevant if you consider whether you'd rather be comfortable, or already at your destination. It's a beautiful bow on a failed mobility solution; in LA traffic, being in an S63 AMG is like being stuck on the runway in a private plane. If the goal is driving for pleasure, buy an AMG-GT for Sunday morning drives to Malibu, and use a Bird the rest of the time.

Want to go out with a friend at night? Neither work if you're drinking, which you probably are, in which case it's back to Uber or Lyft.

Winner: Bird

RIDE QUALITY

The S63's ride quality is excellent, especially when stopped, which you will be much of the time because you are at a red light or in LA traffic, which is basically the same thing.

The Bird scooter's ride quality is terrible, encouraging one to exploit its small size and agility to reach your destination as quickly and efficiently as possible, fulfilling the goal of mobility.

Winner: Bird

HANDLING

The S63 AMG's handling is as good as a 4,586-pound car's will ever be. Actually, that's not true, because there several cars of similar weight that handle better, and many cheaper cars that do, too—none of which matters, because if you're pushing the handling limit of any car on the West Side of LA, you're an idiot.

The Bird scooter's handling is only as good as your abilities, fulfilling Neitzsche's desire for each and every one of us to reach our full potential—or die trying—on the glorious road to mobility.

Winner: Bird

STORAGE

The S63 AMG has tons. The Bird, none.

Winner: Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG

SOUND SYSTEM

If the S63 AMG's stock sound system is an embarrassment, the $6,400 Burmester upgrade is pure criminality. I own a high-end home audio showroom in NYC, and can confirm that 1) Burmester looks cool; 2) Burmester is overpriced; 3) Burmester in-car systems don't sound as good as their home gear; 4) no one buys it for the sound quality, anyway; and 5) nothing that says "high end" on it actually is high-end. All it does is remind me that luxury cars are rarely equipped with sound systems anywhere as good as the best home audio, at any price.

The Bird doesn't have a sound system, which is good because you shouldn't be listening to music while riding one.

Winner: Tie

VISIBILITY

The S63 AMG's visibility is terrible. With its high belt line, hardtop, and the sun reflecting harshly off the windows, no one can see you in it, which is the whole point.

The Bird scooter? Total visibility. You can see everything, and everyone can see that you had the good judgment to use a scooter to get where you want to go. Quickly, and on time.

Winner: Bird

SOCIAL LIFE IMPROVEMENT FACTOR

The likelihood of running into friends in Santa Monica is high. In the S63 AMG, you can't stop to talk to them. You could, but you'd have to double park and/or stop traffic. In SoCal, this will likely lead to someone throwing their smoothie at you. If you're on a Bird, you can simply stop, profoundly increasing the likelihood of maxing out your social calendar and improving your social life.

Winner: Bird

HVAC

The S63 AMG's aircon is terrific, which is good, because you're basically riding around in a gilded sarcophagus with wheels. If you roll the windows down you barely get enough airflow to keep you alive during three out of four seasons. Switch to A/C and you look like the jerk who couldn't wait for the convertible version to show up at the dealer. Impatience is unattractive.

The Bird scooter has the world's best HVAC, provided by mother nature. You're in Santa Monica. Enjoy it.

Winner: Bird

NAVIGATION/GPS

The S63 AMG's nav/GPS systems sucks, at any price. You're better off using Waze or Google Maps. Buy a good phone mount, because there's nowhere good to put your phone in the center console area.

The Bird scooter doesn't have a built-in nav/GPS, but there's one available to you, anyway. Just yell at anyone you see and ask for directions. They'll be happy to help, because they don't want you dumping your Bird in front of their house.

Winner: Bird

PERFORMANCE

The S63 AMG's performance is incredible—as a symbol. As a mobility solution, it's terrible. Specs won't get you to your destination any faster anywhere in LA, and certainly not in Santa Monica.

The Bird's performance is off the charts, and improves relative to how bad is the surrounding traffic.

Also, an AMG spec racing series would be incredibly boring. A Bird series? Awesome.

Winner: Bird

WARRANTY, SERVICE & SUPPORT

Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG: has a warranty, which requires going to the dealer. Dealers suck.

Bird Scooter: if it breaks, ditch it and get another one.

Winner: Bird

FIT & FINISH

The S63 AMG is built like a tank.

The Bird/Xiaomi is a toy. Unless you find a new one, expect them to be in rough shape. The good news? You can always ditch it and find another one with almost zero hassle. Try that with an S63 AMG.

Winner: Tie

ADAS/DRIVER ASSISTANCE

The S63 AMG's ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) includes Mercedes-Benz's excellent Distronic radar cruise control. The rest of it is junk. I'm not joking. Their storied history of safety and technology may lead you to believe you're using the state-of-the-art. That would be a mistake. If and when you crash, your life may be saved not because of the system, but despite it.

Technically, the Bird offers no assistance of any kind. Practically, every Bird comes with the world's most advanced ADAS, which is you. At current levels of technology, the human eye is a more reliable sensor than anything mounted in any car. In conjunction with the human mind—still the most intelligent computer available—it is possible to achieve safety levels far beyond that of any ADAS system. You just have to turn it on. Also, it's free.

Winner: Bird

SAFETY

The S63 AMG is a very safe car. Probably one of the safest ever made, especially at the average speeds you will experience in Santa Monica.

Bird scooters are dangerous at any speed. Although the app suggests you wear a helmet, no one does. You better make your trip a quick one, because every minute on a Bird is life on the edge.

Winner: Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG

GREEN FACTOR

Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG Coupe: Make enemies wherever/whenever you drive.

Bird Scooter: Like jazz—if you have to ask...

Winner: Bird

RANGE & INFRASTRUCTURE

I know what you're thinking. The S63 AMG has to win because gas stations are everywhere and its range is anywhere from 200 to 567 miles, depending on your maturity. You're wrong, of course, because no trip on the West Side of LA is more than a mile or two long.

A Bird Scooter always has enough range in its native habitat, because Bird users don't have to worry about infrastructure. Charging is Bird's problem, outsourced to people who get paid weekend money to do it. If only fueling up your car was so easy.

Winner: Bird

GLOBAL MOBILITY SCORE

Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG: 2
Xiaomi/Bird Electric Scooter: 17

SUMMARY

If you're lucky enough to live and work in Santa Monica, Bird is the clear winner. If it rains, you're drunk, or you want to bring friends, get an Uber/Lyft and skip the parking hassle.

If you work more than a mile from home, or want to leave Santa Monica for any reason, you need a car. Whether or not you need to own one depends on something for which the Mobility propagandists have no answer—but Mercedes-Benz does.

It's not cost, it's agency. It's freedom. Not the freedom to use an app to summon a car; the freedom not to need an app, to do something Bird, Lyft, and Uber can never offer, which is guarantee that you can get from A to B, whenever you choose, without relying on external factors like an app, connectivity, a human driver, or available inventory.

What's the ideal solution? Unless you want to be confined to the West Side of LA, you need to own a car. The good news? Uber's partnership with Lime — Bird's competitor — means there are more such deals coming. If only Uber would partner with Turo, then you could book cool cars on weekends, use Lime and hailing the rest of the time, and you'd have everything you need.

Unless there's an earthquake or tsunami, in which case you're really going to regret not having your own car in the driveway.

I can't wait to see whom Bird partners up with next.

[CORRECTION: Uber partnered with Lime and acquired Jump. It's hard to remember all the acquisitions in this space sometimes.]

Alex Roy—founder of the Human Driving Association, editor-at-large at The Drive, host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports, and author of The Driver—has set numerous endurance-driving records, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

A Lowell, Massachusetts man stands accused of breaking and entering as well as stalking, including using a GPS tracking device he allegedly attached to his subject's car, reports 7 News Boston.

On June 19, the woman gave police surveillance video of the man allegedly trying to break into her home in Winchester, as well as crawling underneath her car. Police investigated and found a GPS tracker attached to the underside of the woman's car. Analysis of the device reportedly linked it to Shaun Tyman of Lowell. A search warrant was executed on his home, and evidence found during the search led to his arrest. He was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday in Woburn District Court.

The ability to track a car's location remotely used to be the stuff of James Bond and Knight Rider stories. But today it's frighteningly easy to do. For just $49.95 on Amazon, you can pick up a Spy Tec STI GL300 GPS tracker. This handy device can attach to a person, vehicle, or item and report its location to you in real time. The intention of this tracker is to help you keep tabs on your kids, elderly relatives, or your own cars, but it's just as easy to use them for nefarious purposes as well. It is not known what device was allegedly employed in the Shaun Tyman case.

For something more low-tech and difficult to trace back to the owner, a basic radio transmitter can be used. This, along with simple radio direction finding techniques such as triangulation, may not provide the instant gratification of a GPS tracker but are still extremely effective for tracking down pirate radio stations or people jamming public service frequencies. As an amateur radio operator, I've even done this for a sport called "foxhunting" which involves competitors racing to be the first to find a hidden transmitter. (To anyone I've ever dated, I promise I've never done this to you.)

No matter how it's done, modern technology makes it frighteningly simple to erase the lines between cyberstalking and the real world.

Hyundai has launched a "digital showroom" within the greater Amazon Vehicles research hub. Amazon launched the car-buying section of its website in August 2016, but Hyundai is the first automaker to carve out a brand-specific niche within it.

Like the rest of Amazon Vehicles, the new Hyundai portal allows customers to research cars, but directs them to dealerships for the actual purchase. Customers can get vehicle information, rear reviews, see a breakdown of pricing for a model's various trim levels, and book test drives. Shoppers are also directed to HyundaiUSA.com, where they can check local dealer inventories.

The digital showroom also includes videos on Hyundai tech features, such as the automaker's Blue Link telematics services and Amazon Alexa integration, as well as the Shopper Assurance program. This provides customers with perks like flexible test drives and a three-day money-back guarantee. The program helped convince Amazon to direct shoppers to an outside website, something the retail giant wouldn't normally do, Dean Evans, Hyundai Motor America's chief marketing officer, said in an interview with Automotive News.

Hyundai previously partnered with Amazon in 2016 on "Prime Now, Drive Now," which let customers set up personalized test drives through the Amazon Prime Now delivery service. A 2017 Elantra was delivered to a place of each customer's choosing for a 45- to 60-minute test drive.

The poor reputation of car dealerships provides the perfect excuse for shifting car sales online. But, as Tesla has learned with its direct-sales model, franchise laws and powerful car-dealer lobbies are major obstacle to cutting dealerships out of the transaction. By allowing customers to browse online, Hyundai may strike a balance between making car buying less stressful and keeping its dealers pacified.

A couple of weeks ago, the AAA Foundation For Traffic Safety released what’s becoming an annual study of car infotainment systems, or, as I like to call it, The “your dashboard display is going to kill you eventually” study. Most of the headlines from the study, conducted with researchers from the University Of Utah, announced that car infotainment systems that work in conjunction with Android Auto or Apple Play are safer than “native” in-dash car tech. This is terrific news, until you dig a little deeper into the results.

This year’s study piggybacked onto last year’s alarming results, adding new cars. Infotainment systems that required “very high” demand from drivers include the BMW 430i xDrive convertible, The Buick Enclave Leather (whose sexy name alone is extremely distracting), and the Nissan Rogue SV. But even the cars that did well in the study, like the Chevy Silverado and Kia Sportage, require a moderate amount of demand. In the end, it doesn’t really matter whether or not you can mind-meld Siri into the dash of your Ram 1500 Laramie. Infotainment systems are still not safe.

Against my will, I’ve driven a majority of the new cars on the road today, and when it comes to infotainment systems, I’m still like an 80-year-old trying to program a VCR in 1985. So this round of results caused me to wonder: What exactly is being tested in these studies? I spoke to Bill Horrey, who manages the program for AAA. “A lot of the measurements used in the study are a reflection of the revolving science around cognition and distraction," he said. "They’ve been administered in different laboratories. Used so much that they’ve become standardized."

But when it comes to driving, standard situations can vary quite a bit. Frederick Kunkle, a travel writer for The Washington Post, recently published a useful piece where he describes the distressing circumstances of the AAA road test. Equipped with a button to press, a flashing light, and a buzzer situated on his collarbone, Kunkle had to respond to the stimuli while also repeating a random sequence of numbers.

“On another run,” he writes, “I had to drive, watch for the light, respond to the dang buzzer and perform a separate task on a touch screen mounted to the dashboard. In each case, it soon became clear why we had to sign legal waivers to do the test. It drove me batty. It felt like complete overload.”

And lest you think that the test has been designed specifically to baffle old fuddy-duddy car writers who miss their dashboard 8-Track players, AAA has provided this B-roll video of test results, where drivers are clearly in their 30s or younger. Gaze in horror as the drivers, busy fiddling with a bunch of designed bleeps and bloops, nearly blow through Stop signs, swerve out of lanes, and run over pedestrians in clearly-marked crosswalks. The second half of the video, where drivers are using Apple Car Play or Android Auto to make phone calls and find directions, frightens a little bit less. But I also found myself thinking, as I often do when interacting with the car computer: Don’t we already know where the dry cleaner is?

Car tech adds another layer or three of distraction onto a populace that increasingly seems to consider the act of driving to be the main distraction. Bill Horrey from AAA admitted to me that “there’s a whole lot of other things that people could be doing that weren’t part of the evaluating.” No kidding. A truly accurate test would have had people trying to change the AC temperature from a poorly-calibrated dashboard screen display while simultaneously talking on the phone, drinking a 64-ounce Big Gulp, playing with themselves, eating a sandwich, applying makeup, petting their dog, trying to get their kids to settle down, fishing a phone from the crack in between the seat and the console, and huffing meth out of a balloon. These are all things I’ve seen people doing on the highways in the last six months. I’m amazed that the hospitalization rate from driving isn’t upwards of 70 percent.

Just look at the road fatality numbers in the U.S. They hit their absolute peak in 1972, the height of the “Unsafe At Any Speed” era, topping out at more than 54,000. From there, the numbers declined sputteringly, but they definitely declined, hitting 32,479 in 2011, the lowest number since the 1940s. And then they started to rise again. Between 2014 and 2015, fatalities rose by ten percent. By 2016, they had risen to 37,461.

So what changed between 2011 and 2016? Did the quality of automotive safety systems decline? No. In fact, they improved. Did states raise their speed limits? Only on certain roads in Texas, a place where human life doesn’t matter. Did people suddenly become more drunk? Probably not. The only differentiating factor is technology. People with older cars live on their phones while they drive. People with newer cars integrate their phones with their cars, or use phones while simultaneously playing with complicated tablet displays. We are infotaining ourselves to death.

Solutions to this problem seem obvious but also totally impossible. Cops need to enforce existing distracted-driving laws. And people need to get off the tech and focus on the road. In the meantime, AAA will continue to study the vast limits of human-driven cars, and people will continue to disappoint, as they always do. Soon enough, but also not soon enough, the computer is going to take over everything so you can play Toon Blast while on the freeway.

“If you look at it as a long-enough time horizon, the role of the driver is going to evolve,” Horrey says. “A lot of this stuff will be blips on the radar, but we have a long way to go before we’re there.”

Neal Pollack is a regular columnist for The Drive and a best-selling author of, most recently, Keep Mars Weird.

You can kill a person, but you can't kill an idea. It's no secret that I love Teslas. Not the company. Not the vision. Not Elon Musk. And certainly not his tedious, rabid supporters. I love the cars. It seems like a lifetime since the first Model S showed up. I remember seeing one in the basement of the New York Auto Show. Was that 2012? I can't remember. That was 3,500+-plus press cycles and 5-plus "Tesla Killers" ago. I thought Tesla was doomed. That gratuitous screen. The Fisher-Price interior. The ghetto placement near the retired NYPD cruiser display. There was a Fisker Karma outside. Talk about gorgeous. The Models S? I didn't get it.

But I do now.

(My usual disclaimer: I don't have a position in $TSLA, and never have. I derive no benefit from Tesla, nor from ad sales on this site. I'm paid a flat fee for this column, and don't care what Tesla's friends or foes say about me. Bring it.)

What is the idea behind Tesla? Forget the war being waged in the media. Forget Elon Musk, if you can. He's selling narrative, but Tesla makes cars, and those cars are based on one idea: cars can be better. Start with a clean sheet and zero baggage. Why shouldn't cars be electric? Why can't charging be faster? Why do we need franchise car dealers? Why can't car software be wirelessly updated? Why can't EVs look good?

Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check.

In what universe would we better off without Tesla? What happened to the spirit of ingenuity and innovation? Would anyone be happier waiting for the people behind Dieselgate or Takata or GM's ignition switch scandal to actually take a business risk on our behalf rather than at our expense? Hundreds of thousands of people have died from crashes tied to OEMs glacial adoption of safety technologies. How do you like your lung cancer? Take a look at the Diesel smoke-stained exterior walls of every major urban center in Europe and Asia.

Major forces are aligned against Tesla's success, as they should be. If even one OEM had any balls, Tesla would never have existed. But now they do, and it's do or die. Soichiro Honda predicted only six car companies would survive in the future. A lot of companies need to die or get acquired. Business is war. Big business? Nuclear war. There are no nice people launching companies at this level. Rules will get bent and broken until they fail, grow up, or are forced out because the business cannot otherwise graduate.

In the meantime, we have these glorious cars. I'd like to say take your blinders off, but given the BS levels around Tesla, you need to put them on to truly understand them.

Don't tell me I've drunk the Tesla Kool-Aid. I'm a car guy. I still own an '87 Porsche 911, a '00 BMW M5 and a '14 Morgan 3-wheeler. I just sold my '73 Citroen SM and '90 Porsche 928. I love them all, the louder the better. But I also love the cars coming out of Fremont. Forget what Teslas represent. Focus on what they do and how they do it, and you can't help but appreciate the core idea on its merits.

I hate car dealers. I hate gas stations. A big exhaust has its time and place. Quiet is good, especially on a long drive. The base models are quick. The P models will out accelerate almost anything on the road, at any price. Handling? Yes. Track work? No one cares, and nor should you. Massive GPS screen? Love. Voice control? Excellent. I just drove a $200,000 Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG; its voice control was garbage, its GPS an embarrassment. If you can't see that Tesla is on to something, you enjoy being insulted by the "innovation" coming out of an industry that was sclerotic until the Model S was in its third year of deliveries.

Except for Morgans, all future cars will be based on the Tesla template. The core idea makes sense, and the cat is out of the bag. If a Space X rocket crashed into Fremont tomorrow, killing Musk and burning down the tent housing the third Model 3 production line, the core idea will survive. The 2019 Porsche Mission-E/Taycan? It exists because of the Model S. The wonderful new Jaguar I-Pace? Birthed by keen observation of the Model X's exotic but flawed packaging.

Exciting stuff, but I can't buy a Taycan today, and I don't want a crossover. Also, I want to be able to go on road trips, so I need a fast charging network. The world's best cruise control would be good, too. Guess where all of that leads me?

Back into a Model S. But you won't hear anyone saying that, because the S is allegedly "old news" and the discourse has shifted to the 3, which, unless you're deaf and/or blind, is either terrible or the best car ever made. How many critics have actually driven a Model 3, let alone been in one? I've put thousands of miles on several different 3's, and love it more each time.

Don't like the 3's center display? Get a used Model S.

Don't like the 3's interior? Don't buy one. There's a waiting list anyway. Womp. Womp.

Defining the Tesla Effect

In the five years since Tesla started delivering the Model S, it's become almost impossible to have a rational conversation about anything they make. Tesla's cars are victims of what I call The Tesla Effect; every Tesla is trapped in a garage of mirrors, surrounded by fans/investors who believe in the Tesla/Musk vision, and foes betting against the stock. What is the relationship between the Tesla discourse and actual ownership?

Almost zero.

Let me sum up that discourse for you:

Does Tesla have production issues? Sure. Is Musk a narcissist micromanager? LOL. Should Musk have called Autopilot something else? Yes, but that ship has sailed. Is Autopilot useful if you pay attention and keep at least one hand the wheel? Yes. Is it dangerous if you don't? Yup, just like driving without Autopilot. Should it have a real Driver Monitoring System? Yes, and Tesla needs to resolve this ASAP. Is it autonomous, or semi-autonomous? No, it's semi-automated, and the Autopilot web page is misleading to the uneducated. What is Full Self-Driving? Word soup meant to extract cash from optimists. Can Tesla get to Level 4 autonomy—or what I call geotonomy—without LIDAR? Sure, if you geofence it really tightly. When will Tesla get there? Not before Waymo. Are battery fires a real thing? Sure, but have you seen a gas tank fire? Don't be an idiot. Are Falcon Wing doors dumb? Yes, and awesome too. Are there parts shortages? Apparently. Repair backlogs? IFTTT.

All of these things appear real, but how real? Real enough that real journalists have written about it. Real enough that $TSLA-owning "journalists" are trying to gloss over them. Real enough that people complain on forums. Not real enough to deter happy owners from moving on to their second or third Tesla. Not real enough for me to want anything else when I need a car on the West Coast. Not real enough to deter hundreds of thousands of people from placing deposits on Model 3's, and for the overwhelming majority of them to wait years for their cars.

Because they're Teslas. And no one else makes anything like them.

Worried about reliability? Don't buy one. Worried about them staying in business? Lease. Worried about Autopilot? Don't pay for it. True fact: Tesla was selling cars before Autopilot was available. And people loved them.

Because they're Teslas, and they remain brilliant.

Who is filling up Tesla's garage of mirrors? Pretty much everyone, including Musk himself. You won't find that many car enthusiasts, who should be Tesla's biggest supporters. Funny that, because all the hypercar manufacturers—Koenigsegg, McLaren, Ferrari, Porsche—have pure EVs are coming. Heard of Rimac, the coolest of all of them? Porsche just bought 10%.

Interestingly, most of those packing the garage of mirrors don't seem to know that much about cars. Yes, there are a handful of brilliant journalists at major publications covering the production story, which looks hairy to anyone who can do math, and which always comes back to Elon needs to raise money, but that has nothing to do with the actual cars.

Then you've got the $TSLA shorts, most of whom have never driven one, and who only want to talk about Autopilot crashes and reliability issues. They have to. If they acknowledge any good out of Fremont, they'll lose their shirts. If you want to have some fun, ask one why—despite so much hostility—Tesla topped Consumer Reports' Owner Satisfaction Survey. Again.

Better set up a dummy email address, though.

Then you've got the $TSLA longs, true believers and stock manipulators, who will omit and/or ignore anything that doesn't align with the Elon is God narrative. They have to. If they acknowledge any bad out of Fremont, they'll lose their shirts, too.

The saddest thing about both sides is that neither seems to understand the technicalities of Autopilot or self-driving technology, which are prime movers not only of $TSLA, but of $GM, $FORD and many others.

These are really toxic, deceptive people, all of them orbiting the steaming pile of discourse whose hazy stench obscures the only questions that matter:

Should I buy one? How does Autopilot work?

If you're interested in a Tesla, skip their wonderful stores and go to the nearest Supercharger station during rush hour. Here's a map. Walk down the row of cars and start asking questions. I guarantee you will learn more about the ownership experience than you will ever learn online, from people whose honesty you can gauge. Make up your own mind. If you want a car, buy a car. You don't need to buy into the company, the narrative, or the stock. And you certainly shouldn't trust anyone trying to sell you on anything but the car.

We are not what we buy, nor should we be. But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy a really great piece of our automotive future, packed with a lot of good ideas. For now, it still starts with a T.

Alex Roy — Founder of the Human Driving Association, Editor-at-Large at The Drive, Host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports and author of The Driver — has set numerous endurance driving records, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

A U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft launched out of Long Beach Airport this evening and set up shop in some of the busiest airspace in the United States—20,000 feet over Downtown Los Angeles. The P-8 has flown continuous circles roughly 15 miles in diameter for three hours now over the Southern California metropolis.

Our friend and master airplane tracker @aircraftspots first posted about the peculiar flight. The militarized 737 derivative, callsign TIGER14, took off from Long Beach Airport just before 6pm local time and is still tracing the same precise orbit around downtown Los Angeles.

Well this is very odd! ???????????

US Navy P-8A Poseidon orbiting over Downtown Los Angeles at 20,000 feet!!

?? P8 168854 TIGER14 pic.twitter.com/2qeKWSMCHo

— Aircraft Spots (@AircraftSpots) February 5, 2019

The P-8 is primarily known for its anti-submarine, anti-surface warfare, and sea control roles, but the reality is that it's cutting edge mission systems are capable of quite a bit more than that. The aircraft is equipped with electronic surveillance systems capable of classifying and geolocating enemy emissions, such as those from air defense systems and enemy communications nodes. It can also intercept communications and work as a communications relay.

In addition, the P-8 is equipped with a very powerful Wescam MX-20HD electro-optical turret that is capable of capturing high definition moving video of surface targets far below its flightpath and it can stream that video to users around the globe if need be. This is all in addition to its traditional maritime patrol systems as the P-8 was built to replace the venerable turboprop-powered P-3 Orion. You can read all about what it's like to fly the P-8 on real-world missions in this past feature of ours.

Other capabilities can be fitted to the P-8 for special missions, including the incredibly capable Littoral Surveillance Radar System (LSRS), also known as the Advanced Airborne Sensor (AAS), that is bolted on to the lower forward fuselage of the aircraft. You can read all about this system here. Other modular surveillance payloads remain undisclosed, but an advanced communications intelligence system has been spotted bolted below the aircraft's chin. But thanks to a local aviation photographer who captured the P-8 departing Long Beach on its mission, we know none of these systems are installed on the aircraft in question.

Making things even odder, the weather in the area is somewhat dismal right now, so it's not like conditions are ideal for certain types of surveillance missions. Even the airport the P-8 launched out of is odd. Why would it use Long Beach instead of Naval Air Station Point Mugu to the north or Naval Air Station North Island to the south?

So the big question is, what is this aircraft, which is most at home operating over water, doing making precise circles at 20,000 feet over Los Angeles? We have seen other, far more shadowy military aircraft execute similar missions, but not the P-8. The truth is that there is no way to say for sure at this time, but it is likely training to support operations in dense urban areas. This is where the Pentagon sees wars being fought in the future and special operations forces, in particular, have to train in real cities to get critical experience on the challenges they will face when fighting in such a complex environment. This often results in everything from high interest and to panic from the uninformed inhabitants of the area. You can read all about this training, and the stir among the public it usually causes, in this past article of ours.

There has been a large special operations exercise ongoing throughout Southern California with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, more widely known as the Night Stalkers, descending on the area with their tricked-out helicopters. This P-8 could be providing overwatch, communications relay, and electronic surveillance duties for training occurring in the metropolis below. It's also possible that the P-8 is executing a training or test flight on its own, but that does seem far less plausible as we really haven't seen this type of aircraft execute similar missions in the past.

We will reach out to the Navy tomorrow to see if they have any comment, but for now, the reason behind this odd flight remains a mystery.

UPDATE: 10:30pm PST—

Just as we thought, this mission was in direct support of an ongoing special operations exercise in Southern California dubbed Emerald Warrior/Emerald Trident. Below is the official release, that was released either moments before or shortly after the helicopter raiding exercises in the downtown area began. This is all too regular a custom when 160th SOAR is in town for urban warfare training.

Video of the helicopters in action is already hitting the web. Here we see a standard quartet of MH-6 Little Birds that is followed by a lone MH-60. These aircraft will be landing on ledges of high rises throughout the city and dropping off and picking up special operators. Once again, you can read all about this training and seen videos of it from multiple events across the U.S. in this past piece of ours.

MILITARY EXERCISE: The U.S. Army is conducting military training in the greater Los Angeles and Long Beach areas tonight until Feb. 9. Downtown LA residents are reporting seeing helicopters and hearing explosions. @MizSkellington pic.twitter.com/8Mmgn2FdTK

— CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) February 5, 2019

UPDATE: 10:45pm PST—

More video of the 160th in action over the City of Angels:

I was part of this.
Military Helicopters Conduct Covert Exercises Over Los Angeles, Californ... https://t.co/Tcp45aySng via @YouTube

— Henry Solstice (@HenrySolstice) February 5, 2019

Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com

Canadians who tuned in to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday were treated to a 30-second ad from Unifor, the country's labor union representing auto workers, that called for a boycott against General Motors. The ad criticized the automaker for shutting down the Oshawa, Ontario plant as part of its massive restructuring announced in November despite the $10.8 billion bailout it received from Canadian taxpayers back in 2009.

On Friday, Unifor received a cease and desist letter from GM Canada lawyers demanding the ad be taken off of YouTube and broadcast TV, reports CBC News. The union, however, appears unfazed and the clip continues to be online as of Monday evening.

"The commercial points out that Canadians have been loyal to GM and now the company is leaving us out in the cold," said Unifor president Jerry Dias. "We stand by the belief that if GM wants to sell here then it needs to build here and we will not be intimidated from sharing that message with Canadians in this ad."

Shame on @GM for wanting to silence thousands of Canadians who stand to lose their jobs because of #GreedyMotors. As @SuperBowl LIII kicks off, so does the next phase of our #BoycottMexicoGM campaign! https://t.co/qrsdq1cVcy

— Jerry Dias (@JerryPDias) February 3, 2019

Unifor's Canadian Super Bowl spot, titled "GM Leaves Canadians Out in the Cold," equates the massive bailout to $300 out of the pocket of every Canadian and calls out GM's decision to set up shop in Mexico, "a move that's as un-Canadian as the vehicles they now want to sell us." Chevrolet's new 2019 Blazer is being built south of the border at the Ramos Arizpe plant in Mexico.

General Motors, however, is calling the ad dishonest, pointing out that the company's debt to the Canadian government has since been paid back and taking the opportunity to highlight the economic growth the automaker has created for the country.

"While GM respects Unifor's rights to protest, we cannot condone purposely misleading the Canadian public. The new Unifor advertisement scheduled to air during the Super Bowl is misleading and inaccurate," said GM communications director Jennifer Wright. "Unifor knows that GM Canada repaid its 2009 loans in full and that the restructured GM fulfilled all the terms of its agreements with the Canadian government many years ago."

Wright adds that the company "contributed over $100 billion to the Canadian economy including $8 billion invested into worker pensions."

In response, Dias says Unifor is considering running the ad during the Academy Awards in February, among other televised events.

Move over hot-hatches, here comes a new class of cars: performance crossovers. Volkswagen is taking full advantage of booming crossover sales in the United States by launching a compact SUV called the T-Roc. In a video teaser, VW announced that it will append its coveted R badging to a souped-up version of the vehicle, aptly naming it the T-Roc R.

The T-Roc will seemingly fill the market space between the Tiguan and the Golf; enabling a little more room for those who need it. In 2017, Volkswagen officially axed the Touareg in the United States and introduced the American people to the mid-size Atlas SUV instead. But because the Germans brand the Tiguan as a SUV (not crossover), the void that the Tiguan once filled is empty yet again. This is where the upcoming T-Roc will shine.

No details on the engine or drivetrain have been released, but based on Volkswagen's history of making modularity a staple of its brand, we would expect to find the same 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder found in the Golf R. Being that Volkswagen has recently been keen to dropping the third pedal, it's very likely that the automaker may make an executive decision to ship the T-Roc R with its dual-clutch DSG gearbox, a move seen before with the R32 performance trim. As per usual, the R package will likely include a set of larger brakes, more competent suspension, and a subtle facelift to distinguish it from base models.

Needless to say, VW has the ability to target many segments with the T-Roc. Noteworthy competitors include everyday players like the Mazda CX-3 and Kia Soul, but also niche vehicles such as the Mini Countryman and Volvo XC40. Volkswagen is also giving it a cabriolet option, so lovers of the long-defunct Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet and Range Rover Evoque will now have something to lust over once again.

Volkswagen may be on to something with the T-Roc R, exposing a new market segment that would otherwise leave enthusiasts stuck with something drab and boring. Ford recently took a similar approach with the Edge ST, albeit a larger SUV, in order to show that big vehicles can be fun too. But if the performance subset of crossovers and SUVs become prevalent, it may coup the station wagon revolution.

Ex-Formula 1 team owner Vijay Mallya, currently residing in the United Kingdom, has been cleared for extradition to his home country of India to stand trial.

Mallya defaulted on over $1 billion in loans, and fled India in March of 2016 to the United Kingdom. Indian authorities have since attempted to have Mallya extradited home to stand trial, and in early December, London's Westminter Magistrates Court ruled Mallya eligible to be extradited. It handed off the decision to UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid, whom the BBC reported Monday to have approved the extradition. Mallya reportedly has 14 days to file an appeal.

The Indian mogul has denied fleeing his home country, and contested the charges leveled against him, claiming to have offered to pay off his debts in July of 2018. He also alleges that Indian authorities' extradition attempts are politically motivated.

Mallya built his fortune on India's Kingfisher Beer, and later attempted to expand into the air travel business with Kingfisher Airlines, though that venture went belly-up. With his wealth, he purchased the Spyker F1 team, and changed its name to Force India. Mallya lost control of the team during the summer break of the 2018 F1 season, when one of Force India's creditors attempted to gut the team to get the money they were owed.

One of the team's drivers, Sergio Perez, filed a countermeasure that instead placed the team's assets on the market. These were snatched up a group of buyers led by Lawrence Stroll, father of Lance Stroll, who will race for the newly-renamed Racing Point F1 in 2019. It is unknown whether Racing Point will keep its predecessor's VJM-prefixed car naming scheme, or adopt a new naming system for the reveal of its car on February 13.

The formula seemed simple enough: take one iconic off-road nameplate, modernize it for a truck-crazed market, and make it rain. Grab some of those buyers who've propelled rugged rigs like the Toyota 4Runner and Jeep Wrangler to sales records this decade. But instead of following the trail blazed by the 2020 Ford Bronco, General Motors made the 2019 Chevrolet Blazer a roadgoing crossover. We wanted to know why.

During the media launch for the new Blazer, Chevrolet representatives said up front that bringing it back as a body-on-frame truck on the Colorado platform was never in the cards. They contend that's not what buyers in the lucrative midsize, two-row SUV segment want, brandishing market research showing "overall exterior styling" as their number one concern.

"For this vehicle, with the midsize, two-row customer really being design forward, we looked at the business case, and those customers aren't necessarily looking for the body-on-frame," Chevy spokesperson Maureen Bender said. "So we kind of have a modern interpretation of a Blazer with this being a crossover. It was never intended to be anything else."

In other words, GM thinks more people will buy the Blazer as another Matryoshka doll of a unibody CUV than one built with off-road duty in mind, like the old K5 and S10 used to be. That's a little unfair—the Blazer's design is nothing if not distinctive—and if you consider its current competition to be things like the Ford Edge and Nissan Murano, that strategy makes sense. But the reasoning is thin.

There was another desired rival bandied about during the conversation: the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which sold a mighty 225,000 models in 2018. Problem is, the Grand Cherokee also makes an effort to stay true to its capable roots. Then there's the two midsize, two-row, body-on-frame SUVs mentioned up top: the Wrangler and 4Runner both outsold the Edge and Murano last year.

That's why in today's age of hybrid this and electric that, the upcoming 2020 Ford Bronco is drawing on its heritage and using a truck frame with off-roading in mind. Pressed on that obvious comparison, and why Chevrolet wouldn't want to revisit that historic rivalry, Bender held firm.

"It was never on the radar. We thought there was opportunity here with the two-row segment. This area of the business is growing, so that's why Blazer is what it is," she said.

Two paths diverge in the woods. One leads to a rough road rich in history; the other, a smooth, anodyne moving walkway. I suppose you can't blame General Motors for taking the easier route. Ford's decision to go all-in on trucks and SUVs means it needs to expand its lineup, lending space for a body-on-frame Bronco to develop. Meanwhile, GM sees the magic carpet—efficient, quiet, and for that first second, fun—as a simple path to the future.

"Our intent all along was to be about dry-road handling. Kind of like a sports sedan, you know, drawing on that performance DNA," Blazer lead engineer Larry Mihalko said. "As people are converting from sedans into crossovers, this provides something a little more sporty in this segment, versus something you'd just use in a utility way."

So ultimately, the 2019 Chevrolet Blazer is what it is because GM wants to offer the same kind of variety in crossovers that you used to find in its sedans. It's leaving the tough stuff to the Colorado ZR2—which, to be fair to the company, is a more technical off-roader than anything Ford currently offers.

As to why this sport-ish CUV is wearing such a weighty name, well, that's a conservative shop like GM for you. I'll admit it's annoying, especially as the owner of a 1988 K5. (Though if it somehow increases the value of my truck, hey, go for it.)

But the bigger problem is how this approach could spell trouble for the automaker. Signs are growing that we're headed toward at least a small economic slowdown, if not an outright recession. Six out of the top ten best-selling SUVs in America saw significantly worse numbers in January compared to a year ago; with little apart from style to really distinguish it from the hundred other blobs sold across General Motors brands, an extended, industry-wide sales slump could leave the Chevrolet Blazer dangerously exposed.

The Blazer will sell as long as people keep buying right-sized crossovers. But just as the last recession cleared out GM's bloated portfolio, so too could the industry's current instability kneecap the thing right out of the gate. And it's here that the ancient Toyota 4Runner and Jeep Wrangler have one more lesson to impart: it's easier to weather economic headwinds as a specialist. Both survived the 2009 crisis in large part because they're unmatched as daily-driveable off-roaders in the market.

Time will tell if the Chevrolet Blazer's flashy design and sharp handling lights a fire large enough to keep warm through the cold winter. But this much is certain: it didn't have to be just another crossover in today's day and age. The General just wanted it so.

A coincidentally timed gathering of historic mid-engined Chevrolet Corvette prototypes has led to rumors that General Motors will reveal the next generation of Corvette, the C8, at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show in March.

According to a social media post published by Corvette Online, several of GM's historic mid-engined Corvette prototypes will appear together at the 2019 Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance, on Amelia Island, Florida. This event is dated March 7-10 and starts a day after the final media day at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show. Corvette Online speculates that GM will reveal the C8 on either March 5 or 6 and then display it in Switzerland and Florida that following weekend, using the C8's mid-engined brethren to promote it.

Contrary to the publication's speculation, General Motors told The Drive that it doesn't have any plans for the Geneva Motor Show.

Test mule sightings, a near-constant stream of alleged leaks, and even key fobs have added fuel to the bonfire that is speculation about the C8 Corvette. Camouflaged, mid-engined, V-8 sports cars with Corvette-like styling have been spotted testing at racetracks for years now, leading many to conclude that the C8 will become a mid-engined car—the only thing seemingly certain about the C8, along with its V-8 heart.

A Cadillac-badged key fob (and a Chevrolet bowtie variant thereof) depicting a mid-engined sports car with a convertible roof has many questioning the body styles in which the C8 will be available. Reported powertrain options include both traditional and naturally aspirated pushrod V-8s and modern, twin-turbo, overhead-cam engines, and there is even word that the Corvette could become a spinoff marque like Cadillac.

One report claimed that the C8's electronics are so complex that testing has revealed a need to re-engineer the vehicle's electrical system, causing an alleged six-month delay until the car's reveal. That doesn't necessarily preclude a C8 reveal in early March, but it doesn't make it look likely.

Nissan's Pathfinder might not be as rugged as the old Xterra (or the current Asian market Terra), but it is a capable SUV that can skillfully deliver you to our campsite or adventure activity. To help emphasize the fun, outdoorsy nature of the Pathfinder, Nissan is offering a new Rock Creek Edition on the 2019 year model.

The package adds $995 to the SV or SL Pathfinder in either two- or all-wheel drive. Seven exterior colors are available, but this swanky green on the official release vehicle looks quite nice. The package includes dark 18-inch wheels, black mesh grille, black roof rails, and blacked-out door handles and outside mirrors. Also, there are black front and rear fascia accents and even a black license plate finisher. Of course, there are black 4WD badges and overfender finishes, in addition to unique badging.

“The Rock Creek Edition name was chosen to connect to Pathfinder’s family outdoor adventure-minded target customers,” said Scott Shirley, vice president, CMM & Marketing Operations, Nissan North America. And while it doesn't say it was named after any particular creek, but this author grew up near a Rock Creek, so let's go with that.

Inside the cabin, buyers are treated to unique two-tone seating surfaces and badging, high contrast stitching and premium metallic trim. As for outdoorsy hardware, the Rock Creek Edition has standard tow hitch and harness plus splash guards. The Pathfinder has a 6,000-pound towing rating in both drivetrain configurations, which is not only good, but also best-in-class.

Lastly, buyers can add the technology package for $980 and get heated mirrors, steering wheel and seats, plus navigation. A $2,110 premium package boasts a 13-speaker Bose stereo and a power panoramic moonroof.

The Rock Creek Edition goes on sale later this spring. Now, we just need to see if Nissan pronounces it "creek" or "crick."

Making a car quieter on the inside is much more difficult than just applying a bunch of sound-dampening foam and then going to lunch. For the new 2020 Ford Explorer, building the entire platform from the ground up gave engineers many opportunities to make the new SUV quieter than ever before, but it wasn't an easy task.

Having a quiet interior is important for a may reasons: it makes it easier to hear the nuance of a higher-quality stereo, it helps reduce fatigue on long drives, it makes it easier to hear your kids bickering in the back seat, and it makes it easier for them to hear you yell, "don't make me pull over!" After all, the Blue Oval is touting road trips with the new Explorer, so that last example is probably the most important one.

I recently got a behind-the-scenes look at the new technology that Ford is employing to make the Explorer interior quieter, and how it will be applied to future Ford models. Its new driving dynamics lab includes a semi-anechoic chamber with a dyno that can simulate different road materials for testing road noise inside a car. And because Polar Vortexes happen, and materials shrink and expand depending on drastic temperature changes, the complex rig can even perform its test procedure at temperatures ranging from -40 degrees to 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

The 2020 Explorer also gets active noise-canceling on the Limited Hybrid trim, which in itself is nothing new in the automotive industry, but it's a first for the Explorer. This technology works similar to how noise-canceling headphones work, meaning that the car listens for exterior noises and then plays the opposite of those sounds through the speakers. The sound waves essentially cancel each other out, creating silence. Combined that with acoustic, thicker glass, and the cabin remains nice and quiet.

New Explorers also get a new piece of clever engineering called the dual-wall dashboard, which basically creates an air gap between the engine and the cabin to keep sounds out. Think of it as a vacuum that uses air to isolate vibrations.

"This innovation is very similar in theory to an insulated thermos or mug,” said Parker Lewis, Ford's NVH engineering manager. “The multiple layers of a mug keep unwanted ambient temperatures out, while the multiple layers of this dual-wall dashboard keep unwanted noise out of the vehicle cabin.”

The bulkhead that connects the dash is relatively familiar, but on the other side of the air gap is the second wall. This wall is made of sheet-molded composite material and it actually mimics a semi-anechoic chamber. The chamber has some thermal material to prevent it from getting too hot (it is right next to the engine) but its purpose is to reduce noise from the engine making its way to the cabin.

Lewis also shared that something like this would be nearly impossible on a mid-cycle refresh, as the component itself isn't heavy, but it is a unique shape that is better functioning when it's actually engineered as part of the engine bay when the vehicle is being designed. While Ford folks were only speaking to the Explorer, it's clear that this tech will make its way on future products.

While it might not look like much, a lot of clever engineering went into something that you might not think a lot about, and you'll definitely never actually see if you drive an Explorer. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to driving the new Explorer to see how well this actually works.

Shortly after 3 o'clock on Tuesday morning, a boxy delivery truck crashed into multiple vehicles and a house in Brooklyn, New York, in what the driver described to authorities as an attempt to avoid a cat. It would have been an entertaining but otherwise not particularly notable occurrence of feline protection in New York City, but for one unusual detail: The truck happened to have the face of actor Ryan Reynolds smugly peering out from three sides of it.

The box truck, you see, was clad in an advertisement for Aviation Gin, a liquor distillery owned in part by the Canadian actor, motorcycle enthusiast, and insufferably charming husband of Blake Lively. Which meant Reynolds's giant face wound up 10 feet above the ground in the middle of the sidewalk in front of 164 Russell Street in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint after the delivery vehicle smashed through the parked cars and into the three-story residential building.

That address, unfortunately, happened to be occupied by residents who, in spite of New York's reputation as a city that never sleeps, were deep in dreamland when the truck plowed into the front of their home and woke them up to the sight of Van Wilder's giant face right outside their window.

"It literally, really, just shook the house," a woman identified as the owner told News 12. "It was kind of like an earthquake. The first thing that went through my mind was that maybe a house blew up around us."

"I certainly didn't expect it to be a truck."

In spite of some early reports to the contrary, no one was injured in the crash, according to Spectrum News / New York 1, a statement that presumably also applies to both the cat and Reynolds's reputation. That said, a Subaru Outback and a Nissan Rogue both appear to have suffered significant damage from the crash.

No one was injured when this truck crashed into two cars then into a home on Russell in Greenpoint around 3. No one injured. The driver told me he was trying to avoid a cat when the crash happened! @ABC7NY pic.twitter.com/CIIWcHtWUt

— Candace McCowan (@CandaceMcCowan7) February 5, 2019

(Greenpoint, Brooklyn) Truck Collided With Building — A car was also involved in the crash. At least one person is being treated for non-life-threatening injuries. Firefighters are assessing structural damage. #CitizenApp #CitizenApp_NYC #ProtectTheWorldhttps://t.co/A5UNcDCI82 pic.twitter.com/dTQg7DK87c

— Citizen NYC (@CitizenApp_NYC) February 5, 2019

The residents were order to vacate the property after the crash, in order for the New York City Department of Buildings to inspect it. (The city said the American Red Cross will provide shelter to those forced out due to the crash.)

It's not yet known whether the driver of the truck will face charges. Considering how shaken up said driver presumably was after the accident, however, here's hoping Reynolds won't mind if the driver helped himself to a bottle of Aviation from the back after the DUI testing was completed.