I guess it's ghost lots again today.

To be honest, I'm pretty bored with the ghost lots. All of the ones I've written about are still there except one. And that's the Lexus ghost lot. I'm guessing they just found a better place to hide them.

I wasn't looking for car stuff today, but when I drove past this dead theater in Menlo Park/Redwood City and saw cars piled up in there - I had to stop. It's pretty much filled with Toyotas. A lot of 2018's and some 2019's.







Toyota was talking up about half of the theaters parking lot.





On the other side of these trucks was a chainlink fence, and that area was storing Chevy/Jeeps.







Which was weird because they already had a garage storage area. So - they were overfull.

Why report real news?

We just got a new sign the pain from Trump's trade war is getting worse, and it's spreading to even more businesses like restaurants.

Did ya hear y'all? Tariffs are hurting restaurants. Not higher interest rates. Not lower housing prices. Not stocks being down 20-50%. Did you hear Sotheby[s is down 50%?! And it's especially not Toll Brothers saying their sales were down 39%.

I'm not saying tariffs aren't putting pressure on the market. Personally I am not a fan of them. But when your own government makes it financially prohibitive to make things in your own country with carbon taxes and all the other stuff- you have to do something drastic to change the tide. And it's likely to be painful.

At least they are starting to think about privacy.

A few months ago there was none of that. They have now moved on to anonymizing the data they are taking from you, and your car. And I have to admit, I don't quite understand it.

In some cases data is sent to  a third party to strip identifying information. And in others they try to anonymize images. The picture with the arrow is the true image. The others are anonomyzed versions of him.

Like I said, I'm not really sure how this works. And for some reason my camera was picking up the refresh on the lights, so that why you get such a crappy image.

I hadn't seen one of these in a while.

This should be a drinking game.

A lot of times when you go to trade shows, companies have created something really cool - but they just don't know how to make money off of it.

So, you walk up to their booth and say - hey, this is really cool. What are you going to do with it?

Sometimes their response is - what do YOU think we should do with it? That is sort of my tell that they have no idea how to make money off of whatever they are selling.

The past few years they have started creating "lures" to get you into their booths. Often they aren't even related to the item they are selling, but they just want to keep you there to see if they can sell you something, or get ideas from you. This is where I ran across life-size operation. Which has to be the best booth lure I've ever seen.



I thought this girl was pretty cool. I couldn't figure out what was in the box. So I asked.

She's like - it's his junk. In my head I was like - do you remove people's junk? But there was a guy there and we all just made jokes. Especially when the guy took his turn at taking parts out. All you have to do it joke about removing a guys junk, and they squirm like a 5 year old that has to go pee. It's funny.





I think they wanted you to stop into this booth where they had a robotic surgeon. But giant operation was too fun. I didn't see anyone go in there.

You know I'm going to say that is a lot of percent.

Toll Brothers Shocks With 13% Plunge In Orders As California Falls A Staggering 39%.

Think what's happening in France can't happen here? Don't bet on it.

Admittedly I have only lightly been paying attention to France because I don't give a shit what happens there. But the gist of it is they are making it really expensive to drive a car. Correct me if I'm wrong.

But France is just a preview of what they are gonna try here. Because governments are really getting pissed that you won't stop driving cars! They tried ride sharing, but you people still won't give up your effing cars. There are more cars on the road now than ever! Now I expect the "punishy" phase is going to kick in.

You see, I've been going to conferences for about two years where they have been telling me that people aren't going to own cars anymore. I can never actually figure out who is going to own all the cars people aren't going to drive - but I think I've finally got it.

For the past year I've been watching all these car subscription services pop up. Mr S. and I have talked about it a bunch of times because I don't really get it. It's essentially like time sharing a car. Or to be more financially correct - it's the rentacenter of cars. And there is going to be one car company that owns all of these cars. Apparently.  In their world view. Read:

The 'Netflix' model of car ownership is on the rise for drivers who need wheels--without the debt.

See... doesn't that headline make it sound pleasant? It's like Netflix - who by the way DOESN'T MAKE ANY MONEY.

Also read:

The future of the auto industry lies in car sharing, Chinese executives say.

This is exactly why Ford is dying. They are spearheading the march! I'm going to be at one of these conferences on Thursday and I'm already praying for strength that I don't say something shitty. I expect posts will either be nonexistent on Thur - or super ragey.

Boy - they really underplayed that.

Tesla becomes collateral damage in the China-U.S. trade war.

Oddly this article doesn't even say how bad things were for Telsa in China last quarter. Rumor has it that they only sold a little less than 300 cars last quarter. I will try to find a link.

In other news - things apparently aren't going well for Telsa in Norway. This video is three months old, but I would hazard to say that very few of these cars have been fixed by now. But it did make me think that maybe a couple of these Tesla ghost lots are just cars waiting for repairs.

I know a guy who went to Amsterdam over the summer and he said ALL of the taxi's there were Teslas.

GM, Fiat, and Ford all down today. Tesla up. Makes sense. But I saw people yesterday saying Tesla didn't need those subsidies anymore. So - good luck with that.

San Jose Walker Stalker. END.

San Jose Walker Stalker. Pt 1.

I have to give them points. They were doing a real blood drive.





















Extra points if you guess this one.