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Mystery shoppers love Infiniti, hate Tesla

Infiniti, followed by Lexus tied with Mercedes-Benz took the top two spots for best sales experience according to mystery shoppers from the latest Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index, while EV manufacturer Tesla recorded the lowest overall score. Not surprisingly, premium brands dominated the top ranks. Including the three already mentioned, luxury brands occupied seven of the top ten spots and included Audi, BMW, Porsche, and the only American brand to crack the upper echelon, Cadillac. Toyota, Volkswagen, and Nissan rounded out the first ten positions. The news for domestic automakers isn't good. Aside from Caddy, the only other star-spangled automaker to score above the industry average is Chrysler. The rest of FCA, most of GM, and all of Ford fell below the line. But Pied Piper's mystery shoppers handed Tesla the biggest walloping – the company is ten full points below the next lowest brand, Volvo, and its score of 86 is 17 below the average of 103. It's baffling, considering the company's touted direct-sales model. "Tesla leaves me scratching my head," Fred O'Hagan, Pied Piper's president and CEO, told Wards Auto. "They own all of their stores, so you would think each one would be doing the same thing. But they're not. Tesla is consistent in its inconsistencies." O'Hagan added that there's a "huge variation" in Tesla's store-to-store effectiveness, and that in some cases, shoppers found showroom workers that acted more like "museum curators," Wards Auto reports. It might be popular to call Tesla the Apple of the car world, but based on Pied Piper's work, the brand has a long way to go to emulate the uniform shopping experience of an Apple Store. The news might be bad for Tesla, but even for the brands that scored below average, there's cause for celebration. Only Tesla and Mini lost points in this year's rankings, and only Mercedes and Lincoln held steady. Every other brand, including Infiniti, which topped the index for the first time, gained at least one point. The biggest improvements belong to Porsche, Land Rover, and Mitsubishi, which all jumped five points. Pied Piper's annual Prospect Satisfaction Index uses mystery shoppers – over 6,100 this year – from across the country to assess dealers and generate rankings from over 50 individual factors. News Source: Pied Piper via WardsAuto Green Audi BMW Cadillac Chrysler Infiniti Lexus Mercedes-Benz Nissan Tesla Toyota Car Buying Car Dealers study

Mercedes F1 to use Qualcomm 5 GHz WiFi for its tire data

In Formula 1 you need more of everything. More speed, more grip, more hospitality, more money. And you need data, reams and reams of data. The Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 team – the guys with the silver cars driven by 2015 F1 champion Lewis Hamilton and his teammate Nico Rosberg – need so much information that they've teamed with Qualcomm to wirelessly upload thermal imaging data of its tires. During a typical race weekend Mercedes's two racecars will generate approximately half a terabyte of data. Live telemetry has been a feature of Formula 1 for 20 years, though there are more restrictions on it than in the past. (In the days leading up to last weekend's United States Grand Prix in Texas, Formula 1 major domo Bernie Ecclestone said that F1 needs to cease being an engineering war and return more responsibility to the drivers.) Nevertheless, F1 teams gather vast amounts of data during a race weekend, particularly in practice sessions during which restrictions on what they can upload from cars – from engine/power unit parameters to aerodynamic loads – are less prohibitive. For example, during a typical race weekend Mercedes's two racecars will generate approximately half a terabyte of data. Mercedes F1 technical director Paddy Lowe points out that the standard telemetry system simply doesn't have the bandwidth to handle the thermal tire imaging data that the onboard thermal cameras generate. Why do you want a thermal video of the tires? Because it tells the engineers and drivers precisely how much temperature there is across the surface of a tire during a lap, in corners and on the straights. It also indicates how quickly the tires come up to temperature and when they potentially overheat. Understanding the temperature variations allows the team to set the cars up optimally for grip and tire life during a stint. Qualcomm's system works with the race cars like this: Each car has forward- and rear-facing cameras in a winglet mounted on the left side of the engine intake behind the driver's head, which continuously record thermal images of the tires. As a Mercedes enters the pit lane, it passes a Qualcomm 802.11ac WiFi receiver to which it uploads the thermal data. As the car nears the garage, another receiver takes over the upload. Several Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processors crunch the raw data as it uploads. The data is encrypted – there are always prying eyes in Formula 1.

Lexus NX, BMW i3 to get Super Bowl commercials

At this point last year, we'd been getting news on automotive-focused Super Bowl commercials for more than two months. The teasers hadn't come out yet, but manufacturers lined up for the super-expensive spots were making their intentions known. This year? Almost nada, until this week. BMW has said it will air a 60-second spot promoting the i3 during the first quarter of the game, the Munich firm returning to The Big Game after a four-year absence. BMW says, "Big ideas like the BMW i3 take a little getting used to, and the creative idea surrounding our spot will play on this analogy." We say that pitching a tiny range-extended hatchback during the beer-iest American sports orgy of the year should make for some neat commentary afterward. Lexus is putting its new NX crossover in the second Super Bowl commercial it's ever aired, eschewing the glitter of celebrities and glamor for a straight-shooting spot and the tagline, "Be seen, be heard, make some noise." Joining those two are Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Toyota. The six confirmed carmakers are down from eleven last year, when car spots made up a quarter of the total ad time. The price to do business for 30 seconds this year: reportedly around $4.5 million, up a stacks from last year's $4 million. You can watch the Lexus commercial in the video above, and beneath that, the BMW press release below has a bit more information on its effort. BMW to Advertise All-Electric BMW i3 during Super Bowl XLIX. The all-electric BMW i3 is featured in a 60-second spot during Super Bowl XLIX on Sunday, February 1, 2015. Woodcliff Lake, NJ – January 15, 2015... Today, BMW announced plans to feature the all-electric BMW i3 in a 60-second spot during Super Bowl XLIX on Sunday, February 1, 2015. After a 4-year hiatus, BMW will be returning to the big game with a commercial during the first quarter. "As one in three Americans will tune in to watch the Super Bowl, we are thrilled to use this platform to educate viewers on the importance of electric mobility," said Trudy Hardy, Vice President of Marketing, BMW of North America. "Big ideas like the BMW i3 take a little getting used to, and the creative idea surrounding our spot will play on this analogy." BMW i is BMW's forward-looking and sustainable brand dedicated to solving many of the mobility challenges faced by the world's most densely populated cities. The BMW i3 is the first of the BMW i vehicles constructed from the ground up primarily of carbon fiber.