Jalopnik Has Sudden Epiphany About Toyota And Tesla: There Is No Car

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

Jalopnik carries today the revelation that in the Tesla/Toyota agreement, there is no “formal deal with Toyota to build a new electric vehicle yet.” Let’s overlook for a second that the report is nearly verbatim lifted from Venturebeat. If Jalopnik would have read our story about Toyota and Tesla, they could have printed the above a week earlier. Last Friday, we wrote that there are no deals yet about building a new electric vehicle, neither formal nor informal : “According to sources at Toyota, any speculations about future cars are just that, speculations. Between the test drive of the roadster, and yesterday’s announcement were just a few weeks, barely enough time in the corporate world to process a purchase order for a load of hanging file folders. Any cars or technologies will be jointly bred by a team of Toyota and Tesla engineers.”

We didn’t need to wait for a revised S-1 filing, which Venture beat unearthed. We simply called up Toyota HQ and asked. They are quite nice at Toyota if you ask nicely. They even return phone calls. When we talked to them, they actually went to great pains explaining that any speculations about future cars are premature.

Apart from that, thank you, Jalopnik for sending all that traffic over to us. It helped making an obscure story about crash test dummies 4.0 today’s most read article, with the slimmest of leads over Ed’s great review of the 2011 Buick Regal Turbo. Ed got those readers all by himself, without the help of Jalopnik.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Akear Akear on May 27, 2010

    Toyota just wants the factory. I predict in a decade Tesla won't even be around.

  • Birddog Birddog on May 28, 2010

    You do realize Jalop is populated with automotive journalist hopefuls?? Read the comments.. They all want to be the next JC.. I'm no better..:D

  • Carquestions Carquestions on May 28, 2010

    Jalopnik's ugly sister Gawker isn't much better - they took credit for the ABC tach/rpm story when in fact they got it third hand off a youtube video comment made days before.

  • Porschespeed Porschespeed on May 30, 2010

    Effen snore. What will happen is that the Tesla illusion will be carried out far enough for scmfck Musk nd a few buddies to cash out/in. Then Tesla will fade to dark. Any bets?

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