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Gustavo Henrique Ruffo

EV Expert
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Motoring writer since 1998, Gustavo wants to write relevant stories about cars and their shift to a sustainable future.

Got any tips? Feel free to contact him through his LinkedIn profile or Threema: R6F4J872.

Gustavo knew he would make a living with writing. The options were a career in law and journalism. After a quick research, he learned that law professions would help him earn ten times more than a reporter. Knowing how it feels to be broke, he took no effort in going to law school.

Having grown up reading anything about cars his father would put in his hands, he started driving late: Gustavo wanted to buy his first car before learning to drive. But life is funny, and his law internships demanded him to have a driver’s license so that he could go to courts driving company cars. That was the only fun he had in the world of legal affairs.

In the third year of college, dying of boredom, he took part in a journalism training course. Loving cars was what landed him his first job as a motoring writer. But he also fell in love with journalism and how powerful it can be when things are not right in the world.

The profession was as unstable and low-paying as predicted, which eventually became a problem. That made him try to go back to the legal world working as a trainee. Ironically, it was at Ford, where he missed his days as an automotive journalist. That drove him back to newsrooms and made journalism turn into a professional refuge: he could always count on it.

Accepting that the life of a reporter is full of ups and downs – aren’t them all? – Gustavo fully accepted he was a journalist. That helped him earn a few prizes, work in multiple places, visit almost every major auto show in the world, meet a bunch of nice people, and feed his family while working with what he loves. He thanks for that privilege every single day.

At autoevolution, he found the right environment for journalism at its best: it can be fun to have a purpose.
Racism Victim at Tesla Fremon Says New Judgment Will Prevent It From Learning
Racism Victim at Tesla Fremon Says New Judgment Will Prevent It From Learning

9 Dec 2021, 18:58 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / After Tesla was sentenced to pay $136.9 million to Owen Diaz due to racism episodes in Fremont on October 4, the company appealed the decision on November 17. According to the company, the punitive damages award of $130 million “simply cannot...

 
Volkswagen Will Have an ID. California: Electric Campervan, Anyone?
Volkswagen Will Have an ID. California: Electric Campervan, Anyone?

9 Dec 2021, 18:05 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Most Volkswagen fans are really anxious about 2022. That will be the year in which the company will reveal its first nostalgic electric vehicle, the ID. BUZZ. Unexpectedly, Volkswagen anticipated today the name of another car based on the electric ...

 
Volkswagen Confirms Ralf Brandstaetter in China From August 2022 On
Volkswagen Confirms Ralf Brandstaetter in China From August 2022 On

9 Dec 2021, 15:38 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / The announcements about management changes at the Volkswagen Group this December 9 confirmed some of the rumors and corrected others we have read in the last few days. Just like Handelsblatt had anticipated, Ralf Brandstätter will really move ...

 
Tesla Model Y Owner Says Delaminating Cells Forced Battery Pack Replacement
Tesla Model Y Owner Says Delaminating Cells Forced Battery Pack Replacement

9 Dec 2021, 15:02 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Multiple issues involving Tesla vehicles have been revealed first by TMC Forum users. This may be the case again after a Model Y owner said that he was warned about the need to replace the entire battery pack. At his Tesla Service Center, he was to...

 
Mazda Anticipates MX-30 PHEV on Its American Website
Mazda Anticipates MX-30 PHEV on Its American Website

9 Dec 2021, 11:48 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / After selling just 120 MX-30 units until November, it seems Mazda wants to tell people interested in the car that it will soon have a more sensible version for sale. Instead of the meager 100 miles of EPA range the EV derivative offers, Mazda is pr...

 
Tesla Refuses to Give Model X Back to Customer Because Previous Owner Had Debts
Tesla Refuses to Give Model X Back to Customer Because Previous Owner Had Debts

8 Dec 2021, 19:27 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Tesla’s customer service keeps surprising us in a bad way, and the latest example of that is possibly the most absurd to date. Gjermund Olstad send his Model X for repairs. Out of the blue, he was warned that he would not get his car back. Th...

 
EnergyDome Proposes to Use CO2 to Store Renewable Energy
EnergyDome Proposes to Use CO2 to Store Renewable Energy

8 Dec 2021, 18:39 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / You may not know this, but carbon dioxide turns into a liquid when it is submitted to pressure five times that in the atmosphere. The guys from Energy Dome know that and turned this into a crucial aspect of their products: systems that use CO2 to s...

 
NHTSA Says It Is Discussing Video Game Access to Drivers With Tesla
NHTSA Says It Is Discussing Video Game Access to Drivers With Tesla

8 Dec 2021, 17:47 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / After The New York Times revealed that Tesla now allows anyone to play video games while the cars are moving (including the driver), NHTSA finally decided to take action. In an email message to Reuters, the safety agency said it is “discussin...

 
German Newspaper States Ralf Brandstaetter Will Lead the VW Group in China
German Newspaper States Ralf Brandstaetter Will Lead the VW Group in China

8 Dec 2021, 16:49 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Until everything is official, it seems the leadership struggle at the Volkswagen group will keep on surprising us. The last we had heard was that Ralf Brandstätter would replace Herbert Diess as the mass-market brand group boss. Now, Brandst&a...

 
Volkswagen Targets Key Aspects of Battery Production With Three New Partnerships
Volkswagen Targets Key Aspects of Battery Production With Three New Partnerships

8 Dec 2021, 12:45 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Volkswagen knows that it cannot rely on battery suppliers. With electric cars, producing them will be a crucial competency that automakers will have to master, even if through partnerships at first. The German carmaker established three of them all...

 
Tesla’s Issue With Repeater Cameras Reminds Me of MCUs and Lemon Laundering
Tesla’s Issue With Repeater Cameras Reminds Me of MCUs and Lemon Laundering

7 Dec 2021, 22:14 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / We have already told you about Tesla replacing repeater cameras in several hundred units of the Model S, Model X, and Model 3. CNBC broke the news thanks to internal service documents mentioning defective PCB (printed circuit boards), causing the c...

 
SCG Presents New Images of 010 Hydrogen Fuel Cell Boot Zero-Emission
SCG Presents New Images of 010 Hydrogen Fuel Cell Boot Zero-Emission

7 Dec 2021, 21:11 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / The last vehicle from SCG (Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus) that we have shared with our readers was the Zero Emission Hydrogen Fuel Cell Boot Pickup Concept. If you still have that in mind, you will get shocked by the images of the 010 Hydrogen Fuel ...

 
Elon Musk Would Have Pushed for Camera-Based Autonomous Driving Tech at Tesla
Elon Musk Would Have Pushed for Camera-Based Autonomous Driving Tech at Tesla

7 Dec 2021, 19:17 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / No other company bets on a camera-only autonomous driving strategy apart from Tesla. If you wonder why that is the case, The New York Times said that it was something Elon Musk insisted on, even going against his own specialists. According to th...

 
Who Will Win the EV Race? Brands Incorporate Countries in Video Analysis
Who Will Win the EV Race? Brands Incorporate Countries in Video Analysis

7 Dec 2021, 17:00 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / When somebody asks who will win the electric car race (as the Financial Times did in a recent video), people expect a conclusive answer like Tesla, Volkswagen, or any other carmaker. The video below shows that this is a much more complex discussion...

 
Toyota Will Spend $1.29 Billion to Build Lithium-Ion Battery Plant in North Carolina
Toyota Will Spend $1.29 Billion to Build Lithium-Ion Battery Plant in North Carolina

7 Dec 2021, 11:27 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Toyota wants to produce its own lithium-ion cells in the U.S. It announced on December 7 that it would invest $1.29 billion to build the TBMNC, or Toyota Battery Manufacturing, North Carolina. When it starts operations by 2025, it will produce enou...

 
Herbert Diess May Remain as Volkswagen Group CEO With New Deal
Herbert Diess May Remain as Volkswagen Group CEO With New Deal

6 Dec 2021, 22:16 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / After Herbert Diess said that Volkswagen could lose 30,000 jobs if it did not move fast toward electric cars, that almost cost him his job. According to Reuters, that may not be an issue anymore thanks to a new deal reached between him and board me...

 
E-Gasoline Test Shows Carbon Is the Least of Combustion Engines' Problems
E-Gasoline Test Shows Carbon Is the Least of Combustion Engines' Problems

6 Dec 2021, 20:40 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / CLEPA proposed this December 6 that renewable fuels can make combustion engines live longer and save jobs. Volkswagen thinks ethanol can deliver a carbon-neutral future in developing countries. These are hopes that do not stand a simple reality che...

 
Tesla Faces SEC Investigation Due to Whistleblower Claims About SolarCity
Tesla Faces SEC Investigation Due to Whistleblower Claims About SolarCity

6 Dec 2021, 16:48 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Former employee Cristina Balan said she was fired when she tried to warn Elon Musk about safety issues with Tesla products. That’s something Steven Henkes also claims, even if in a different situation: the quality engineer would have found sa...

 
EV Transition May Kill 500,000 Jobs in Europe Alone, Suppliers Warn
EV Transition May Kill 500,000 Jobs in Europe Alone, Suppliers Warn

6 Dec 2021, 15:04 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Whenever an industry faces a revolution, old jobs disappear to create new ones. The automotive industry is being warned about that for more than a decade. However, it seems it is starting to believe that just now. For those that still doubt such ef...

 
EV Residual Values Do Not Seem to Be Affected by Battery Packs
EV Residual Values Do Not Seem to Be Affected by Battery Packs

6 Dec 2021, 12:06 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / One of the biggest challenges for electric cars is the value of their battery packs. If anything goes wrong with them, the entire vehicle may become junkyard material in the blink of an eye. However, in multiple discussions held at the 2021 Auto Fi...

 

Stories by Gustavo Henrique Ruffo