Well, folks, we made it. That’s 2022 done and dusted, and it was such a big year that sometimes it feels like it was several. Looking back through the Carscoops archives, we’re shocked at how much has happened in the last 12 months.
Once again, the year started out pretty normally, but bad news quickly came, as Russia invaded Ukraine. Not only did it lead to big decisions for automakers about discontinuing exports to the country and closing down factories, it led to yet more broken links in an already damaged supply chain.
That didn’t mean, though, that it was a bad year for new cars (though it did mean a bad year for sales). Sports cars had a great year with the unveiling of the new Honda Civic Type R, the Nissan Z, and the next-gen Mustang. The Chevrolet Corvette Z06 wowed with its potent flat-plane crank V8, and we drove the second-generation Toyota GR86 for the first time. Boring cars won’t be a problem for the near future, then.
Read: Watch How The New Honda Civic Type R Is Built At Japan’s Yorii Plant
Despite the supply challenges, there were plenty of EVs, like the Mercedes EQS, the Ford F-150 Lightning, and the Hyundai Ioniq 6, to name just a few. It wasn’t all good news in the EV space, though, as one company, in particular, had a very volatile year.
Tesla, long credited with making modern EVs popular and fun, had quite the year. It started off well for the company, but ended somewhat more poorly thanks to the antics of its excitable CEO, Elon Musk.
Between the plurality of recalls, the questionable updates, and the mass reports of phantom braking, the company’s image was somewhat tarnished in 2022. The true blows came, though, after the Musk bought Twitter for $40 billion. Since then, the company’s stock has plummeted, and now it is being prevented from marketing its advanced driver assistance system as Full Self Driving in California, dealing the automaker its final black eye of the year.
Sounds pretty bad when you list it all out like that, but there were also positives for the brand. It finally revealed the Semi and further tax incentives for EV buyers (if American legislators can ever figure out how to apply their own rules) making 2023 look like it will be a big year for the electric vehicle industry, if Tesla can hang on.
And on top of all of that, Carscoops.com got a brand-new look that readers were… well, vocal about. We’re hoping you’ll all get used to it. At any rate, although we’re still reeling from a very busy 2022, we’re looking forward to everything that’s coming our way in 2023.
Happy New Year, from everyone at Carscoops.com.
