Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
Nissan Will Now Sell You A Ten-Year-Old Certified Pre-Owned Car
Despite supply and wholesale values of used cars easing, prices are still incredibly high. It makes sense, then, that Nissan would follow in Honda’s footsteps by expanding its certified pre-owned program to include models up to ten years old with up to 100,000 miles. Dubbed Certified Select, Nissan even says that this program will even include certain non-Nissan models, although each Certified Select model will only be covered by a six-month, 6,000-mile warranty. However, arguably the most important part of this program is online sales. Retailers like Carvana have made huge inroads by offering detailed online pricing and shopping options, so Nissan’s adapting to fit these new consumer demands. From Nissan: While there’s nothing like being able to check out a car in person to make sure panels are straight, paint matches, and mechanicals are in good condition, we now have the technology to offer transparent pricing online, so why spend more time on a dealership lot than necessary? Expect Certified Select models to go live on Nissan’s Nissan@home e-commerce platform shortly.
Stellantis Wants More Recycled Content In Its Cars
Pricing for commodities like steel is quite high right now, so it’s not surprising to see Reuters report that Stellantis wants to substantially increase recycled content in its new cars. Higher recycled material content is all well and good, but the “reman” part of Stellantis’ plan is particularly exciting. Does this mean remanufactured cars or just remanufactured parts? Either possibility is quite interesting as manufacturers historically haven’t been keen on taking on projects like that. Many remanufactured auto parts just aren’t remanufactured well, so if Stellantis can do better, have at it. “We talk about having a minimum target of 35% of recycled materials in our vehicles, it will vary by vehicles,” Jones said. “Of course we’ll look to increase that, because we want to make sure we take more material and put it back in our vehicles going forward,” she added, without specifying what the percentage might rise to. Presenting Stellantis’s Circular Economy business at on online press conference, Jones said the project – based on “reman”, “repair”, “reuse” and “recycle” – would help the group meet its carbon net zero target set for 2038.
Alpine Has A Fun Way To Use Hydrogen
Just because the era of fossil fuel-powered cars is slowly coming to a close in developed nations doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end of the road for the combustion engine. Alpine recently revealed a new concept car that turns hydrogen into power, noise, and steam. Called the Alpenglow, it’s a hydrogen-powered supercar concept meant to preview some themes of Alpine’s LMDh race car coming in 2024. Hydrogen stored at 700 bar gets burned in a combustion engine to produce clean tailpipe emissions and the unmistakable roar of a traditional performance car.
While the Alpenglow is far from the first vehicle to burn hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, it’s the first concept to do so in a while. BMW experimented with a hydrogen-burning bangle-butt 7-Series but found combusting hydrogen to be rather inefficient. Despite featuring a six-liter V12, the Hydrogen 7 only mustered up 256 horsepower, far from an impressive number. Power output for the Alpine Alpenglow hasn’t been announced yet, although I’d be interested in hearing exactly what powertrain it uses and what projected output might be. If significant improvements have been made to internal combustion hydrogen powertrains since the 2000s, they could be a viable way of keeping some automotive pantomime going in the future.
More Details On That Honda And Sony Partnership Emerge
Hey, remember how Honda and Sony plan on making a car together? Well, more details have arisen regarding this joint venture and they’re not all positive. Reuters reports that this new car will support digital microtransactions. Tread carefully with this one, Honda and Sony. So long as subscriptions don’t just activate hardware already installed in the car, they should be just dandy. However, putting digital transactions aside, the electric vehicle itself sounds quite neat. It’ll have Level 3 autonomy, which is a confusing step in the automation process but an important development in the grand scheme of things. Expect to see this new EV on the market in 2026. The update from the joint venture, Sony Honda Mobility, is the first since the two companies launched the project in June.
The Flush
Whelp, time to drop the lid on today’s edition of The Morning Dump. Happy Thursday, everyone. The weekend is just around the corner, which means that it’s almost time to head out for a bit of an autumn drive. For me, autumn drives often mean cranking up the heated seats, which begs a question: What’s one in-car gizmo you simply can’t live without?
Lead photo credit: Nissan
As far as things I can’t live without in a car, probably just a heater. I love a good stereo, and air conditioning is awesome, but I have done without all of those in the past. Prior to moving up north, the heater was also something I got by without when my heater core rusted out.
At this point when I see one blasting anywhere near me I get the hell out of the way. The Big Altima Energy is real…and it would be funny if it didn’t put so many people at risk. Not everyone is responsible enough to be handed the keys to a car, and that’s fine. Nissan needs to stop enabling those people though.
The one feature I can’t live without is keyless entry. I didn’t have it until this summer because I drove a hooptie Suburban for years then got a base GTI, which had manual keys until the MK8s came out. I had no idea what I was missing…just being able to walk up to your car, hop in, start it, and go without touching your keys is amazing. It’s just so much more convenient, and when I’m in a waiting for the coffee to hit daze at 7am leaving for work everyday it’s a godsend…because my pre caffeine monkey brain doesn’t have to strain itself too much.
Everyone talks about the “Camry dent,” but around my area at least I see far more “Altima gouges” and “Altima bashed-in quarter panels” and “Altima kinked hood or trunk that won’t close” and “Altima crumpled front and rear doors on the same side.”
Fine by me as long as its 100% optional and I can completely ignore it* in leu of my already extensive MP3 collection.
*meaning no “helpful” reminders, no proprietary music players, no crippled features, etc. They can ask once, and take FUCK NO!!! as an answer.
I miss the rain sensing wipers my Volvo had, so would go out of my way for them in future, although not an absolute requirement. I’d also have a hard time buying another car with halogen headlamps or no back-up camera
Even worse it got 4.7MPG on H2 vs 16.9 MPG on gasoline:
The Hydrogen 7 uses more fuel than many trucks, consuming 13.9 L/100 km for gasoline (petrol) and 50 L/100 km for hydrogen. The following table shows the consumption (L/100 km) and fuel economy (mpg) for both Imperial and US gallons. Fuel Consumption Table for the BMW Hydrogen 7 Gasoline (petrol) Hydrogen L/100 km Imp. mpg US mpg L/100 km Imp. mpg US mpg 13.9 20.3 16.9 50.0 5.6 4.7
The difference in fuel consumption is largely due to the different energy density with gasoline (petrol) yielding 34.6 MJ/L and liquid hydrogen yielding 10.1 MJ/L. Based on these energy density figures, one would expect 47.6 L/100 km for hydrogen based on 13.9 L/100 km for gasoline (petrol); which is very close to the stated 50.0 L/100 km. Using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine as a source of energy is far less efficient than fuel cell technologies; however, this is a system that is in production (albeit limited) now.
The hydrogen fuel is stored in a large, nearly 170-litre (45-US-gallon),[6] bi-layered and highly insulated tank that stores the fuel as liquid rather than as compressed gas, which BMW says offers 75% more energy per volume as a liquid than compressed gas at 700 bars of pressure.[7] The hydrogen tank’s insulation is under high vacuum in order to keep heat transfer to the hydrogen to a bare minimum, and is purportedly equivalent to a 17-metre (56 ft) thick wall of polystyrene Styrofoam.[8]
To stay a liquid, hydrogen must be cooled and maintained at cryogenic temperatures of, at warmest, −253 °C (20.1 K; −423.4 °F). When not using fuel, the Hydrogen 7’s hydrogen tank starts to warm and the hydrogen starts to vaporize. Once the tank’s internal pressure reaches 87 psi, at roughly 17 hours of non-use, the tank will safely vent the building pressure. Over 10–12 days, it will completely lose the contents of the tank because of this.
The car is powered by a 6.0 litre V12 engine capable of running on both premium gasoline and hydrogen fuel. It is rated at 191-kilowatt (260 PS; 256 hp) and 390 N⋅m (290 lb⋅ft) of torque using either fuel.[4] The car accelerates from stopped to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 9.5 seconds. The hydrogen fuel tank holds roughly 8 kg (18 lb) of hydrogen, enough to travel 201 kilometres (125 mi).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7
Old tech I don’t want to lose is a manual transmission unless it’s a single speed like with an electric since I find modern too-many-speed automatics to be insufferably frustrating with the constant hunting and the shifting delays and I don’t trust the longevity of CVTs. Maybe if they went back to 3-speed autos with OD—inefficient as they were, they didn’t actively piss me off.
The one thing I can’t live without in a car is bluetooth. Terrestrial radio is simply awful with it’s always repeating playlists and commercials and sadly a lot of satellite radio has fallen into the same trap (I’m looking at you Lithium and Turbo).
As a “nicety” but certainly not essential, the ’97 conversion Econoline had some kind of plush, cloth seats. Not leather. And I’d do decidedly unholy things to get those back. It was like driving from a goddamn recliner. Back then and still now, I see no need for heated nor ventilated seats with that material. They were the perfect unpowered compromise seats.
This is tough, but my top 3 are heated seats, remote start, and blindspot monitoring. Living in the snow belt, starting the car 10 minutes before I go out to clean it off makes life easy. The heated seats are great until the heater gets to operating temp.
The blindspot is because I have cleared a lane, start to move over, then someone goes “Not on my watch” and slams their foot to the floor. This has saved me a few times and gives me time to prepare my signal finger.
I am OK with blind spot monitoring if the warning lights are inside the car where only the driver can get a clear look at them. Otherwise, they’re at least as much a disadvantage as they are an advantage in heavy traffic.
Besides, I keep my mirrors adjusted so I don’t really have blind spots. Things next to me, I turn my head for. Things in traditional blind spots are viewed in the side mirrors. And things behind me are viewed in the rearview mirror.
In my experience, blind spot monitoring is only necessary if your mirrors are set too far in, the way most people set theirs. There’s no need to see the side panel of your own car.
There have been plenty of times where I go to change lanes, the person is 5 or more car lengths back, then decides to make it a race as I sweep my eyes to from the mirror to the road. Or the jerk who decides that moving when I start is good idea.
I have my mirrors adjusted to reduce the blindspots as much as possible but cannot eliminate it or deal with the a-hole factor. I see it as another tool to make me aware or for sudden changes between my constant eye/head sweeps.
The one gadget I won’t live without anymore is cruise control. Old fashioned or adaptive is OK with me, as long as the adaptive can be set to old style when I want to.
I rarely use a radio, so all the entertainment options are of minimal value.
Everything else can be nice to have, but there’s not much else I’d pay extra for now that back-up cameras are standard safety equipment.
Seriously, more than once I’ve seen a 10-year-old Altima exactly as you describe. An acquaintance of mine even drove one, rolling on a bald donut spare, trash bag over a missing window, bong water smell included. Someone broke into it to pop the hood open and steal the battery, the wheels got stolen a week later(he was only able to find 3 from a junkyard, and the spare was bald when he got it out the trunk) and the owner didn’t have money for window repairs so he taped a trashbag over it to keep the interior from getting soaked in the rain. And the car smelled like bong water because we hotboxed it many times before all of that happened.
Your post brought back some fond memories.
Eventually, the car got totaled after someone who was driving like a jackass in a late 2000s Dodge Charger rear-ended it.
We put a bootleg copy of Insane Clown Posse’s “The Great Milenko” into the CD player, and heard this unsettling grinding noise. The radio was full of dead cockroaches. We later found so was the glove box and inside the door panels.
