Two car brands couldn’t be more opposite in German industry news, Mercedes luxuriates while Tesla dies.

Mercedes has announced a new record high in profit sharing.

Mercedes-Benz’s 93,000 German Employees Getting €7,300 Bonus. Mercedes-Benz’s latest bonus payout to its employees is even higher than last year’s €6,000

The German car company has demonstrated several major industry leading innovations already being made available.

Last May, Mercedes-Benz became the first OEM in the world to receive international certification for conditionally automated driving.

Some may remember Mercedes developing driverless technology in the 1980s, which partly is why they’re so far ahead of everyone today.

…W140 S-Class that technically drove almost entirely by itself over 1,678 kilometers (1,043 miles) from Munich to Copenhagen back in 1995…achieved a speed of up to 185 km/h (115 mph) while driving by itself on the Autobahn, managing to pass other cars and having little to no human intervention…

In related updates, Mercedes is set to share its massive high capacity North American charging network with all cars.

This is great news since Europe is already so far ahead of America on charging deployment and interoperability.

In 2021, the continent had an estimated 375,000 charging stations. …even the most conservative scenario—the EU-27 will need at least 3.4 million operational public charging points by 2030.

It’s all stark contrast from the bitterly shrinking and unpopular Tesla crashing all the time, which has struggled to attract workers in Germany and pushed an oversubscribed, dirty and proprietary charging network. (By 2021 Tesla had managed to get up barely 6,000 charging stations — 1% of the market).

Obviously when the EU banned non-interoperability for chargers, they should have banned Tesla.

Those who did make the mistake of accepting a job from the notorious South African-run abusive brand have reported unfair and chaoticly cruel mistreatment, just like every other Tesla workplace. It’s basically a dead brand, unsafe at any speed.

…alienating its customers, bringing in less revenue, and falling behind legacy carmakers.

After all, who in Germany would want to work for a racist dictator known for things like poisoning children?

Impressive work. A new report focused on corporate disinformation practices found that Exxon undermined science to profit from harm.

“We’ve dug into not just to the language, the rhetoric in these documents, but also the data. And I’d say in that sense, our analysis really seals the deal on ‘Exxon Knew,'” Supran said. It “gives us airtight evidence that Exxon Mobil accurately predicted global warming years before, then turned around and attacked the science underlying it.”

[…]

“It was clear that Exxon Mobil knew what was going on,” Wuebbles said. “The problem is at the same time they were paying people to put out misinformation. That’s the big issue.”

There’s a difference between the “hype and spin” that companies do to get you to buy a product or politicians do to get your vote and an “outright lie … misrepresenting factual information and that’s what Exxon did,” Oreskes said.

Is there really a difference? Exxon is using disinformation to get people to buy its products and put its politicians into office.

The outright lies maybe used to be different back in the WWI Propaganda Office days of Woodrow Wilson, but by the 1930s (e.g. the inexplicable rise of petroleum cars instead of electric at that time) surely it’s been the same thing.

I wish I was making this up. A man named Boner, who obviously has a hard time understanding EV technology, thinks of himself as a political genius.

Unlike California’s ban on gas-powered cars, the resolution’s co-sponsor, Sen. Brian Boner, R-Douglas, said the Wyoming resolution would be meaningful in making a statement if passed, but it would be entirely symbolic. “One might even say tongue-in-cheek, but obviously it’s a very serious issue that deserves some public discussion,” Boner said. 

Boner says his resolution is trying to be tongue-in-cheek when he screws his own state.

His basic strategy? Write dumb resolutions in Wyoming opposing whatever California does, so people can say he “promoted discussion”.

Far more intelligent voices in Wyoming spit out the resolution as harmful.

…Allen referenced Cadillac, which plans to produce only electric vehicles between 2025 and 2030. For dealers to keep selling the brand, they would need to make a minimum investment of $250,000 in infrastructure for charging stations and stronger lifts, as EVs are heavier than conventional vehicles. She said she spoke to one dealership in Wyoming that is spending more than $500,000 to meet the manufacturer’s requirements. Allen said that even though SJ 4 was just a resolution meant as a statement, even making that statement would negatively impact dealerships in Wyoming. Besides asking them to violate agreements with manufacturers, it encourages people not to buy EVs from them. “Casual statements can cause real harm,” Allen warned. 

Investment in infrastructure. The resolution was trying to symbolically ban investments in Wyoming infrastructure.

It doesn’t get much dumber.

[Senator Cooper] referenced the oath of office he took when he was sworn in as a member of the Wyoming Legislature to protect the state of against all enemies — foreign and domestic. Phasing out gasoline-powered vehicles, he said, is a direct attack on Wyoming.

Oops. I was wrong. Cooper is much worse than Boner.

Cooper, who only just became an elected official, wants to call investment in Wyoming infrastructure by American car companies the same thing as a direct enemy attack?

Boner may be silly and easy to poke, but Cooper appears to be in a stupor.

Now I’m curious just how much foreign versus domestic influence is behind Cooper’s “Self Employed Oil and Gas Consultant” business, besides frequently getting tax delinquency notices. Even if he’s just a shill for domestic oil and gas, a fox who goes into a hen house to scream that eggs are the enemy… is a strange sight indeed.

The automobile industry very cruelly aborted train services in Montana.

The coming of the transcontinental railroads to Montana Territory in the 1880s is the single most transformational economic development in the entire history of Montana.

Such a disasterous anti-development decision (Montana ran innovative electric and even “snow powered” engines) stands to be reversed, given some very subtle signs of rail rebirth.

First, buried in a 2023 award interview, Katie Farmer (CEO of BNSF) calls out a Montana project as a top priority.

One of our challenges is communicating that relevancy and the importance of the rail industry to young people, because it’s not natural, per se, for people to think about it. We’re kind of unsung heroes. […] Also, while it’s not yet complete and yet to be approved by the Surface Transportation Board, bringing back Montana Rail Link into the BNSF network is something that all of us at BNSF will be proud of.

Second, some local editorials suggest rising support for a major passenger rail corridor.

…this state was built on railways. Beginning in 1880 when the tracks first linked us to the rest of the nation… For 100 years the major population centers of Montana were connected by passenger trains until service was cut in 1979. I can imagine the excitement of watching the “North Coast Hiawatha” pull into the local station. Before the cancellation of passenger service, Missoula, Butte, Bozeman and Billings had a train running through them three times per week. […] Of any route which wandered through Montana, why would we cut the one which passed through four of our biggest towns? Amtrak, with the help of growing ridership and a refortified budget, seems to have halted its retreat and is looking to regain lost ground.

All that being said, here’s the real buried lede: cars have proven to be death traps killing Montana.

The highways of Montana are among the deadliest in the United States; with the presence of a passenger rail route offering an alternative to highway travel, many anxious families seeing their children and loved ones off wouldn’t have to worry nearly as much about bad weather conditions, deer running onto the road, or reckless drivers.

Rail is showing other countries developing and moving ahead of America. China is just one example where 40 hour trips have been reduced to 8 hours by modern rail, high-throughput low-risk movement transforming their economy.

“I could feel the change in temperature from — 10 C in Beijing to more than 20 C in Guangzhou. I understood how the speed cut the journey time and distance, and how the high-speed railway brought people closer.” In the decade since it opened, the world’s longest high-speed railway line, running 2,298 kilometers, has recorded 1.69 billion passenger trips, according to China State Railway Group, the national railway operator.

Let me put it this way. One and a half billion trips at 350km/hr (217mph) for a decade where people could use the time to sleep, eat, work… with how many fatalities?

…there have been no serious incidents on the network since 2011.

Cars will never, ever achieve that level of performance or safety innovation.

Two kids among six dead in tragic 21-car Montana dust storm pileup.

Weather. Cars can’t handle it. Driverless cars? Forgetaboutit.

What’s the cost of the train? The better question is what’s the cost of not having a train. Montana has suffered extensively.

‘Fatality markers’ remind Montana drivers of tragic consequences. There are more than 2,500 of these white markers across the state. Wherever you go in the state of Montana, you can see little white markers along the road, shaped like a cross. Each marker stands where someone lost their life.

Montana has become a giant graveyard.

So many dead.

After dumping a huge amount of money into gasoline and cars, all if it gone in an instant — thousands of gravestones. So unnecessary.

It would be interesting if Montana reversed its steep taxation and abortion system known as automobiles, and instead developed freedom of movement into rail leadership in safety and efficiency. Someday it would mean a mesh design, and a corridor is a significant start.

If you’ve ever studied West Berlin’s Cold War rail routes interlocking with airstrips, and its “honor” ticket system, you know what real freedom of movement is all about.

There’s no question a modern passenger train with a proper path and timetable would make Montana the most attractive state for economic growth among it’s neighbors. With heavyweight BNSF throwing its giant hat in the ring, it even could become a global leader in transit innovation.