The motoring world is in flames: Diesel is falling, zones are rising and Volkswagen is burning
- Mar 23
- 4 min read
🚗🔥 A week has passed and The motoring world is in flames is back to speak out! This time you'll read that diesel is cheaper than ever, but the gas station attendants pretend not to know anything. Prague is unleashing a blue hell, People are falling asleep in Tesla, and Volkswagen is discovering that "green" can also mean trouble.
Fake news live: Fuel is flying up! (It's not flying...we tested you)
Last week we allowed ourselves a little experiment. We threw the news out into the open that fuel prices were brutally rising. And the result? Silence. Zero reactions. And the reality? Diesel has fallen to its lowest levels since Covid and gasoline is sliding down as fast as women's panties at Woodstock.
But you know what? People want to read what fits their frustration with gas stations. Nobody cares about the truth if it doesn't fit in the shop. And so it goes around and around – when the world gets used to overpriced diesel for, say, forty, reality stops hurting . Gas station attendants will mostly rub their hands and we will fill up at the old prices, even when the stock market is falling. This is exactly how fake news is born, what about you, when no one even blinks!
Blue Death in Prague: You can't even park in a cemetery without a resident permit
Prague is launching another wave of war against those who still brazenly allow themselves to own a car. The expansion of blue zones in Prague 4, 5, 6 and 8 is just further proof that the city no longer counts on us, the plebs on four wheels.
Hundreds more streets will become visitor traps , a place to send fines. Don't have a permanent residence? Leave your car at home. Or go straight to the cemetery – it's not blue there yet. But don't worry, when the city finds out how many cars are there, even the coffin with the car will get a blue sticker.
While other cities are dealing with P+R parking and how to help traffic, Prague is figuring out where to make people go even more. Parking will no longer be about where you get to, but who you know who has at least a little space in their garden where you can "put" your cart.
Volkswagen is drowning in its own green mush
Until recently, Volkswagen seemed like a confident player who would jump headfirst into the electric world and emerge as king. But now it has come to a harsh admission: "It's screwed."
Electric cars are not selling, production lines are stopping, the factory in Zwickau is running at half-speed , and the famous ID.2 project, the people's electric car that was supposed to save the planet and wallets? It is being postponed indefinitely.
People have simply stopped believing in fairy tales about a cheap electric car that will travel 500 kilometers and cost no more than their house. Volkswagen, for its trillion-dollar investments, is reaping nothing but overheating batteries and lukewarm interest. Diesel with DPF suddenly looks like a good old certainty.
We were very amused by the conversation with one of the sales managers of an unnamed dealership, who had just returned from a training course with "comrades from the GDR" and, to the classic question: "So tell me, where did the comrades make a mistake again?", he replied prosaically: "Hey buddy, a Czech is walking and sees a three-meter hole. So he goes around it and tells everyone, watch out, there's a hole! A German from the concern is following him, falls into it, spends the whole day scratching himself out, comes out completely battered, torn and says that there is no hole and everything is fine". So we now have a clear idea of how things work in the once largest concern...
Tesla Autopilot: A revolution in microsleep behind the wheel
For years, Elon Musk has been promising us that we'll be able to take a nap in our Tesla while the car safely takes us to our destination. Reality? Rather than a revolution in autonomous driving, we're witnessing a revolution in microsleep behind the wheel.
Cases that speak for themselves:
• A Swedish driver decided to test the comfort of the Model X seats so thoroughly that he fell asleep at the wheel. The car drove 40 km on Autopilot while police tried in vain to wake the driver.
• A German driver fell asleep at 110 km/h on the highway. The police woke him up for 15 minutes before they managed to stop him.
And what are Elon's promises and reality? Since 2015, Musk has repeatedly promised fully autonomous Teslas "next year." In 2019, he even claimed that there would be a million robo-taxis on the roads within a year. Today, several years later, we are still waiting, while cases of drivers taking "Autopilot" too literally multiply.
So if you're planning to sleep in your Tesla, you'd better stay in the parking lot. Autopilot is a great helper, but it won't replace a fully awake driver just yet. And Elon's promises? Maybe we should take them with a grain of salt and have a coffee before driving.
The end of TikTok? Good news for Mustang and common sense
The US and Europe are plotting to ban TikTok. And while influencers are screaming, car companies are secretly celebrating . Why? Because with TikTok, an entire generation of “drivers” who drifted Mustangs around the parking lot only to end up in a wall or on the curb will disappear.
How many Mustangs have ended up in the junkyard because of a stupid video with the hashtag #carsoftiktok? Now, perhaps the days are coming when Mustangs will stand proudly in the garage, not on the scrapyard.
It's a paradox - the internet put cars on our phones. And now it might bring them back to the roads where we should be enjoying them. I wish it would.
So you see, there's always something going on in the world of cars, and not only in it. We hope that with the drop in fuel prices, you've thoroughly swept out all the cobwebs in your pets' tanks, you're not taking Rohypnol when you get into your Tesla, and that your phones are properly connected to your car's HF and you're not constantly staring at it while driving like hockey players at a puck.
See you in a week with news from the Motoring World in Flames! 🚗💨🔥
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