Automotive Engineering - March 2024 - 2

EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
Bill Visnic
Editorial Director
Bill.Visnic@sae.org
Lots of news amid the dark matter, if we can find it
The Chicago Auto Show rolled through
the Windy City in early February, bringing
unseasonably warm weather and
another chance to reconsider what actual,
real-world auto shows mean in
2024. Given the past few tumultuous
years, the show felt like finding a way to
the new normal. Organizers strongly
defended the show's focus on bringing
in people - car fans, potential customers,
the generally curious - and not as
much on news announcements. That's
great for the people of Chicago who
wanted to test drive an EV on the small
track inside the convention hall. It's also
understandable from a media perspective
if you think about how news travels
these days and how automakers
and suppliers calculate
ROI for new product
announcements or
other important updates.
Before I get into my
larger point, the idea that
there's some sort of dark
matter holding the news
environment together
these days, I should say
that there were, of course,
interesting tidbits in Chicago. Kia introduced
a hybrid Carnival. Tesla was there
with a Cybertruck you could sit in.
Nissan brought Chris & Julie Ramsey
along. This husband and wife adventure
team drove an all-electric Ariya from
the 1823 Magnetic North Pole down
both American continents and then to
the South Pole. Speaking in Chicago,
the duo described unexpected charging
assistance from firefighters in Central
Asia during a previous adventure drive
from London to Mongolia and the need
to have their support team bring generator-based
EV chargers with them to
Antarctica. The Ramseys drove more
than 18,641 miles (30,000 km) over ten
months last year, and we will publish a
story about their journey on sae.org by
the time you read this.
Which brings me to this dark-matter
idea, a way to understand how we get
2 March 2024
our news these days. One challenge I
have as the new editor is to filter
through the many emails, LinkedIn
postings and other sources to find the
bits of information you'd like to read. I
think of these items as the bright stars
that poke through the chaos of an information-overloaded
world: the unseen
forces that impact email lists, the random
encounters that mean I'm connected
with this person but not that
one, the fact that my view into the possible
universe of news was created by
and for me, digitally and organically.
Let's compare the automotive news
We don't have
rock stars the
way we used
to because
we don't have
the media we
used to.
stars with one of my other loves: music.
As an insatiable but aging music fan, I
sometimes feel adrift in
the sea of new artists.
There are so many universes
where I could find
new music: TikTok,
YouTube, any of a zillion
streaming music platforms,
or recommendations
from people I trust. A
varied music landscape
opens the door to smaller
artists getting well-deserved
attention, but it also makes
reaching the ceiling a huge challenge.
We don't have rock stars the way we
used to because we don't have the media
we used to.
When I look at automotive news
through this lens, I feel the need to
hang out with the " fans " - read: engineers
- more, the people who can tell
me what rocks. In concrete terms, I
would appreciate any help you might
feel inspired to give that would point
me toward these lights. If you're an engineer
working on an exciting project
- the kind that you'd like to read about
on our pages if someone else was doing
it - please get in touch with me (if allowed)
or ask your company's PR department
to send me a note. Together,
we can cut through the dark matter and
focus on the lights.
Sebastian Blanco, Editor-in-Chief
Sebastian Blanco
Editor-in-Chief
sebastian.blanco@saemediagroup.com
Chris Clonts
Senior Editor
chris.clonts@saemediagroup.com
Ryan Gehm
Associate Editor
Ryan.Gehm@sae.org
Matthew Wolfe
Assistant Editor
matthew.wolfe@saemediagroup.com
Amanda Hosey
Editor, Custom Content
amanda.hosey@saemediagroup.com
Contributors
Kami Buchholz
Detroit Editor
John Kendall
Europe Editor
Bradley Berman
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Don Sherman, Paul Weissler
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Automotive Engineering - March 2024

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