The Christmas list

St. Nicholas of Myra

1225 Navidad Lane

Urho Kekkunen National Park, Savukoski

Republic of Finland

My dude,

Wow, I do not envy you your situation this year.

I'm pretty sure you get the BBC or Reuters online or something at home and have at least heard about what's been going on down here in many places, so I would imagine you haven't been too surprised by the tone and direction of the letters you've been receiving for this upcoming Christmas. This has not been a good cycle of seasons for a great number of people in the world, and the next few months will continue to be pretty bleak even as glimmers of hope are present on the horizon. I cannot imagine how you are going to handle the requests ranging from debugged video games for distraught stay-at-home types to resurrection of family members that you've got in front of you right now, or keep track of who is offering what for someone else - that's got to do something messy when you cross-reference that with the naughty-and-nice list.

The mood in our household this season is one of tired gratitude; we are enormously fortunate that the now three of us (you did get that notification in the July update, right?) and our extended family remain healthy and stable. The state of the world does continue to weigh upon me, and the harshly circumscribed nature of everyday life wears at the soul. But again, we remain profoundly thankful for continuing good fortune in the face of epidemic disease and economic and social turmoil.

So, continuing in the spirit of many of those letters you have received, it seems inappropriate to do something so excessive as ask for stuff this year. Instead I'd like to take my usual wishes and turn them around into requests on behalf of others, both broadly and specifically, through the New Year and beyond. (And really, the number-one item this year for me would be a good parking space or garage, but that has way more to do with managing the impossible situation in this neighborhood than anything. So don't worry about that.)

Therefore, my Christmas list for this portentous year 2020:

- We need a workable formula and low-cost production system for solid-state lithium metal batteries. We're getting close, but a little extra magical push towards popular effectiveness and availability would be a fantastic benefit for the industry and the world at large.

- Environmentally and politically benign sources for said element would also be useful while we're at it.

- Let some extra quanta of inspiration and enlightenment strike product planning committees and accelerate their ideas and ambitions past the bovine-herd tendencies of consumer clinics, and let corporate heads see the wisdom of those ideas and ambitions as the industry moves into its new era. Stuff is going on that will require vision and daring beyond the kind of thought patterns that gave us the Toyota Highlander.

- Help this collision of galaxies that is Stellantis (oops, sorry, STELL/\NTIS) to produce real, honest Lancias and Citroëns and Chryslers and other cars with character and style and individuality, all of which the world really desperately needs. (And please make sure as much of it all as possible is available to us deprived Yankees.)

In blue, s'il vous plait.

- Give Scuderia Ferrari and Team McLaren competitive cars next year. Yes, AMG-Mercedes deserves every bit of success that they've imperiously claimed and Hamilton is the kind of global figure F1 has long needed beyond his dominance of this absurd season, but the sport needs to actually be a sport again.

- Send one of your teams of special-forces elves to stealthily rework the Tesla assembly lines so that the Model 3s in particular stop being such compromised, slapped-together pastiches of their promise.

Performance. Technology. Panel gaps.

- Have another group clean out whatever is in the water coolers and coffee pots at BMW. That's just getting out of hand.

- As top-flight endurance racing shows signs of making a comeback, let the teams all know that they can opt for livery patterns that include colors beyond white, black, and red.

- And as many of us seek to give our social reality a lift on the far side of All This, open the ears and minds of those at the tortured extremes of the transportation debate. Let it be better known that "car culture" is not sociopathic cretins in oversized coal-rolling pickups; likewise, have others understand that coexistence with pedestrians and bicycles is not a threat to their identity.

I think that covers most of it for now, or at least that's about all or which I can not-too-unreasonably ask of a major mythical figure at the moment. Again, I know you've got a lot in front of you, so take all this as you can.

Hope all is well up there with the missus and the workshop crew, give the reindeer nose boops for me, will be trying to keep it together here.

With good cheer as always,

Patrick