Joseph White:

BMW AG is launching production here on Wednesday of its new Project i cars, the first large-scale test of whether building cars out of carbon fiber and plastic instead of steel can overcome the obstacles to adoption of electric vehicles.

The BMW i-Car project—including the $41,350 all-electric i3 city car, the $135,000 i8 plug-in hybrid sports car and more models in the future—aims to become the first high-volume supplier of the ultralight vehicles. Proponents of the idea say electric cars can be more competitive with internal combustion vehicles if car makers use exotic, lightweight materials, such as carbon fiber reinforced plastic, to reduce the weight the batteries have to propel. Plastic materials also would allow for a radically simplified body assembly system.

All car makers are under pressure from regulators around the world to move toward electric vehicles. In California, New York and several other U.S. states, BMW could face constraints on sales of its most popular models, such as the X5 sport utility or 3-series sedans, unless it starts selling zero emission cars and building up clean air credits.

Matt Phillips:

Anyone who keeps an eye on the US economy knows that the automotive business is going like gangbusters right now. In September US auto sales jumped to an annualized rate of 16.1 million, the best since December 2007.

How is this possible, given the relatively muted gains that US consumers have seen in their incomes?

Credit.

Take a look at this chart from Deutsche Bank, which shows the breakdown of issuance this year of different types of asset-backed securities (meaning bundled loans that lenders sell off to investors in the secondary market).

Lyra Kilston:

Michael Light often snaps his photos from a two-seater plane — at a bumpy 70 mph — that he pilots himself at the same time, but you’d never know it from his well-composed aerial shots. From swimming-pooled suburbs in Phoenix to razed hills awaiting their luxury homes in Nevada, Light has been documenting the western U.S.’s unique topography from the air for the past decade.

In his series on Black Mountain, Nevada, Light’s photos put viewers in the plane with him as he glides over 640 acres of dynamite-flattened hilltops, carved through with pristine roads and cul de sacs linking graded house foundations. But there are no houses. No lawns, no pools, no sidewalks. No guard-staffed gates. This is the site of the Ascaya luxury housing development, which has lain dormant since the economic crash of 2008.

“Once they get built, it’s hard to un-build them,” says Light. From the air the sculpted earth reads like a strange code cut into the brown hills.

Gavin Green:

A fleet of BMW i3s silently lugged foot-weary hacks from hall to hall at the vast Frankfurt motor show, that biennial techfest that celebrates the global dominance of Germany’s car industry. It’s not often that the most important new car at a show also doubles as journalist taxi.

I had my go, impressed by the lack of any intrusive B-post (so easy egress and ingress), the uncluttered son-of-iPad instrumentation, excellent all-round visibility and the usual electric car whisper-quiet whirr and whoosh. The wood trim on ‘my’ car looked a little out of place – can you imagine an iPhone in walnut veneer? – but if there is one car that summed the cutting edge of the global (i.e. German) car industry, 2013, it was the i3.

Candidate Brian Boyko:

In fact, nobody can buy a Tesla car in Texas. The State of Texas has decided that you can’t buy a car from Tesla.

Why? Well, the Texas Automobile Dealers Association lobbied hard against letting Tesla sell cars in Texas, spending $276,750 on Texas political campaigns – about 75% to Republicans, (including $2000 to Rep. Dale, the incumbent in the seat I’m running for.)

Tesla doesn’t use car dealerships. They sell directly to the consumer. No haggling, no upselling, no commission for employees, and uniform prices at every store. You just point to the car, say “I want that,” and you buy it. It makes a lot of sense for Tesla. Customers don’t like car dealers, and car dealers don’t like electric cars, so why would you try to sell an electric car to a customer through a car dealership? It is capitalism – a producer of a good is responding to the incentives of the market.

It appears monthly fees appeal, even at gas stations (U wireless). Tap on the photo for a larger version.

U wireless’s plans are available here: Airfire, Go Smart, H2O, Net10, Page Plus and Prepayd.

Jack Ewing:

“There are products that are hipper for young people than cars,” said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, a professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen in northern Germany and an industry analyst. “The car companies are still using the old marketing pitch — more horsepower. That doesn’t speak to young people any more.”

Interest in battery-powered cars has faded after disappointing initial sales, but it could pick up again this year with the market introduction of the BMW i3. The vehicle has perhaps the most revolutionary new design by an established carmaker in years, not only because of its electric propulsion system but also because the passenger compartment is made of carbon fiber rather than steel, to save weight and extend the distance the car can travel between charges.

There is also speculation that Continental, a German parts supplier, will announce an alliance with Google next week to further develop self-driving cars. A spokesman for Continental, which will hold a news conference at the auto show on Tuesday, declined to comment.

BBC:

Human happiness may rely on our ability to conquer a natural fear of upsetting the status quo, says AL Kennedy.

Imagine three identical boxes. Two are empty and one contains your heart’s desire, perhaps love, perhaps a nice cup of tea. A kind, if slightly perverse, person says you can pick one box and own its contents. Let’s say you select Box A. The person then shows you Box B is empty. So either Box A – your choice, or Box C – a mystery, contains your happiness. Now, you can change your choice to Box C, or stick with Box A. But what gives you the better chance? Should you change or not?

If you’re like me, you won’t want to change. Even if things aren’t wonderful, but are familiar, I would rather stay with what I know. Why meddle with something for which there is a Latin, and therefore authoritative, term: the status quo. I studied dead languages at school – no chance of sudden changes in grammar or vocabulary there. So I’m aware status quo has roots in the longer phrase “in statu quo res erant ante bellum” – the state in which things were before the war. I feel the implication is that without the status quo there will be chaos. There will be war.

Phillipe Sands:

Over the years, we have not lacked in matters to engage. This is the age of national security and liberty, a constant debate about balance that often turns around the role of the intelligence services. Our interest is mutually self-serving: he might ask me to review a draft that raises a legal point, I might seek his opinion on a matter that draws on his former life in “the secret world”, as he calls it, or on his life’s experience. He is wise and his life, I have come to appreciate, has been informed by a very particular past.

CHILDHOOD
Le Carré believes that the credit balance of the writer is his childhood, citing Graham Greene. By this standard, le Carré was an early millionaire. He was born in 1931, in Dorset, to a family that he celebrates despite (or perhaps because of) its manifest dysfunctionality. With a largely absent mother, his father became the central figure in his early life. Ronnie Cornwell was “seriously bent”, volatile, a convicted fraudster, yet also “exotic, amusing” and lovable. He avoided military service during the war by standing as a parliamentary candidate, an Independent Progressive. The postwar period offered Ronnie a goldmine of shady activity, allowing his son to enter maturity in an unpredictable environment populated by racehorses and Bentleys, passing from St Moritz to the Savoy Grill in the company his father kept, which included the Kray twins (“lovely boys”, his aunt called them).

Sonari Glinton:

There’s been a sort of collective freak-out in the auto industry about millennials and their waning interest in cars. Our series, reporting on the changing relationship between youth culture and the automobile, draws to a close.