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Buckle up for full English coverage of the Paris Motor Show from a 2-bdrm apartment in Quebec, Canada.

michael banovsky

Oct 17, 2022 — 4 min read

Yep, back on my AI art bullshit. After running a few new prompts through Midjourney, I was able to iterate a series of Volvo x Porsche mashups…that ended up looking more like Saabs.

Sharing AI art on Twitter is hit and (mostly) miss; I quickly selected one of the series, tweeted, and…

It did well! I can see why there are many new AI car design-related accounts on Twitter and Instagram especially. Just as there are many talented CG artists like Davide Virdis, Khyzyl Saleem (@the_kyza), and many others…expect to see AI car design filling your social media feed for years to come.

I was having trouble accessing Renault’s media site today, and I’ll place blame on the horde of fans crashing the site. Must have been its concepts for the Paris Motor Show, all part of the badly-named ‘Renaulution’. (Why not Avant-Renault?)

BECAUSE JUST LOOK at the Renault 4EVER Trophy show car. Who’s leading design these days? Hyundai, Kia, Citroën, Renault…then take your pick. Granted, the backpack, racks, and off-road details have been seen in dozens of concepts by Nissan, MINI, Toyota, Fiat—even production models back to the Pandas, Volkswagen Golf Countrys, and other cute-utes.

This time, how’s it different? Its laurel wreath-echoing headlights are cute. But my money’s on the four wireless inflators built into each wheel and capable of filling or venting air from the tires…without leaving the driver’s seat.

I could see that feature being quickly copied and brought to the world of side-by-sides and off-roaders—anywhere the inflator can be protected by a wide lip’d rim.

RENAULT 4EVER TROPHY, AN ICON REBORN • Renault

Both extremely impressive (he goes through a large, multi-lane roundabout and tunnels) and simplistic (endless beeps, chimes, and the cartoon-like “Surrounding Reality System”), Wheelsboy’s Ethan Robertson tours a city of 15 million people while letting an XPeng (pronounced “X-Pung”) P5 drive itself to the destination.

During the day, with XPeng handlers silently onboard, Ethan gets cut off by other motorists and the City NGP (Navigation Guided Pilot) system handles it perfectly. At night—with visible rain on the windshield and more traffic—it’s arguably more impressive.

Don’t forget: this is an actual car people have bought—the system is being enabled for a small group of Guangzhou, China-based XPeng P5 owners before rolling out to other cities.

If it can handle Guangzhou, would a Boise, Brampton, or Buffalo stand a chance of tripping it up?

It’s too early to wonder if Chinese automakers have already taken the lead in self-driving tech, but it’s time to demand that these systems are put through regular testing on randomized routes: at this early stage, the variations of competence is huge between automakers but the claims are not.

Hands-On With XPeng's City NGP • Wheelsboy

Part of why I founded speedster.news was to excitedly write about all of the new vehicles that appear. Then Mercedes-Benz (and -AMG) show off the first all-electric EQE (and -AMG) SUVs and I’ve lost the will to put one word after another.

Yet again, Mercedes-Benz makes the fatal mistake of being uninteresting. Boring, even.

I’m not being facetious by wondering: what about these are Mercedes-Benz? What makes these a Mercedes? A blobtuse shape, ropey screen-forward interior, a few logos sprinkled about should remind you that angst is a word adopted, in large part, from German.

If you’re rooting for Mercedes, pray the follow-ups won’t be driven by the feeling of Weltschmerz.

The 2023 Mercedes EQE Electric SUV Is Mass-Appeal Midsize Luxury • The Drive

&

The 2024 Mercedes-AMG EQE SUV Is 3 Tons of 677-HP Fun • The Drive

I can’t claim this has much to do with anything, except to watch the process of turning a household robot vacuum into one that will do more than 55 km/h (and still suck).