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Try the TB12 Method with Tom Brady's fancy Escalade limo

ESPN's 10-part documentary "The Last Dance" recently gave viewers an inside glimpse at the basketball GOAT Michael Jordan's rides. This week, the public has a chance to ogle one of the football GOAT's vehicles, and it's significantly different from any of the car's MJ drove. While No. 23 was most often seen in speedy sports cars, Tom Brady just listed a Cadillac Escalade limo for $300,000, or best offer. Posted by Becker Automotive Design, the builder of the vehicle, this is a 2018 Cadillac Escalade ESV Mobile Office. The Escalade has been stretched by 20 inches, including 10-inch lengthened rear doors, and it features additional headroom thanks to a five-inch extended-height roof. Inside, the rear row facing forward features three regular seats upholstered by Becker. The added middle row that looks toward the rear of the vehicle features two six-way power reclining VIP seats with electric leg rests. The VIP view sees a 32-inch HD LCD TV, while a 12-inch screen is mounted behind the VIP seats. Additionally, the Escalade has a Savant remote-control audio-visual system, two aviation-style folding tables with burlwood veneers, and a "high-end mobile internet router that allows for multiple service providers." “Parting ways with my Becker ESV wonÂ’t be easy," Brady said in a provided press statement. "From day one it became my sanctuary from the outside noise. I took pride in picking out all the customizations of the ESV; from the trim of the seats to the color of the rug. With such limited time in my busy schedule, the ESV gave me those extra minutes to study my play book, make phone calls and be with my family. Immediately my productivity went up and my stress came down. I hope the next owner will take great care of her; she will always be a part of the Brady family.” P.R. speak aside, the Cadillac is surprisingly cheaper now than it was when Brady purchased it. The ESV originally sold for $350,000, and with 13,000 miles on its clock, it is now listed for $300,000, or best offer. Considering Brady is the greatest football player of all time, no debate, and is set to have his own nine-part ESPN documentary, we wouldn't be surprised if the best offer is higher than the asking price. Maybe he'll take the money and trade up for a Lexani Escalade Mobile Office. Related Video:

Cadillac's Johan de Nysschen clarifies a few points on the brand's future

Last week, Motor Trend ran coverage on a journo roundtable with Cadillac president Johan de Nysschen. During the roundtable, de Nysschen cited a few reasons for the decline in sedan sales, including gas prices, "young consumers" — read, millennials — less interested in driving dynamics than lifestyle accessories, and the state of U.S. infrastructure. Jalopnik homed in on the last two reasons, and those became the story, including here in our post on the roundtable. So de Nysschen called Jalopnik to add more context. The original reaction pieces painted de Nysschen's rationales as an excuse for sporty sedans not selling well, when the issue is Cadillac's sporty sedans not selling well. His main clarification: "I wasn't advocating the idea that the world is black and white, that if you're a young buyer a millennial or a teenager that you don't enjoy driving." On that note, it would be ridiculous to deny millennial and sedan-segment bugbears; de Nysschen has market research and the industry-wide, rabbit-like crossover breeding program to back him up. Yet even as he touted the success of the XT5, noting that it's "the third-best-selling luxury nameplate in the U.S. after the Lexus RX, and the Mercedes C-Class," he could add, "But the irony is not lost on me that the C-Class is a sedan." The circumstances laid out in the follow-up piece inject more likely color into the situation: the brand's onetime, singleminded focus on the U.S., followed by a singleminded focus on China that left the U.S. market wanting for attention. We could add to that: years of lackluster products and awful attempts at volume and brand engineering under the old GM at the same time that downsized premium luxury products, crossovers, and SUVs began their rocketship trajectories; trying to live off the Escalade success; and the carmaker's desire not to offend its older, traditional buyers while concurrently wooing "coastal influencers." De Nysschen also acknowledged that Cadillac interiors aren't where they need to be, saying, "We recognize that's where we want to improve." The result, as de Nysschen put it, "We're playing with the hand that we've been dealt.

Teaching autonomous vehicles to drive like (some) humans

While I love driving, I can't wait for fully autonomous vehicles. I have no doubt they'll reduce car accidents, 94 percent of which are caused by human error, leading to more than 37,000 road deaths in the U.S. last year. And if it means I can fly home at night in winter and get safely shuttled to my house an hour-plus away — and not have to endure a typical white-knuckle drive in the dark with torrential rain and blinding spray from 18-wheelers on Interstate 84 — sign me up. Autonomous technology will also take some of the stress, tedium and fatigue out of long highway drives, as I recently discovered while testing Cadillac Super Cruise. AVs are also supposed to eventually help increase traffic flow and reduce gridlock. But according to a recent Automotive News article, as the first wave of AVs are being tested on public roads, they're having the opposite effect. Part of the problem is they drive too cautiously and are programmed to strictly follow the written rules of the road rather than going with the flow of traffic. "Humans violate the rules in a safe and principled way, and the reality is that autonomous vehicles in the future may have to do the same thing if they don't want to be the source of bottlenecks," Karl Iagnemma, CEO of self-driving technology developer NuTonomy, told Automotive News. "You put a car on the road which may be driving by the letter of the law, but compared to the surrounding road users, it's acting very conservatively." I get it that, like teen drivers, AVs need a ramp up period to learn the unwritten rules of the road and that a skeptical public has to be convinced of the technology's safety. But this is where I become less of a champion on AVs, since where I live in the Pacific Northwest we already have more than our share of overly cautious human drivers. Since moving here 12 years ago, I've found it's an interesting paradox that a region famous for its strong coffee, where you'd think most drivers would be jacked up on caffeine, is also the home to annoyingly measured motorists. As an auto-journo colleague living in Seattle so aptly put it: "People in the Pacific Northwest drive as if they have nowhere to go." If you drive like me and always have somewhere to go — and usually are in a hurry to get there — it's absolutely maddening.