FCA and Groupe PSA Sign Merger Agreement

Happy Bastille Day!

Thinking old school, considering how much more space EVs are giving in smaller over all packages. Nissan has stated that the 3rd generation Leaf will start out FWD, but have an AWD option after launch. Length in growing an ICE auto is old school thinking in making room for other ice auto's and yet that is where looking at comparison of seating space, cargo space, etc. we see much more space in the EVs that are equal in many cases to an ICE one class bigger. I am only pointing out that price is an old comparison tool for like segments and that with EVs this will change as people look at the price but also the inside space and we will see a bigger mix of comparison of ICE to EV across categories.

And none of what you just said changes what I said in my original post. Two completely different vehicles, in powertrains and class of vehicles. For starers, the Mazda is a foot longer than the upcoming Leaf. Then there's the AWD part of the equation. See where this is going yet?

The old days of when Ala-cart was available for building seem to be over now, mostly set packages of expensive cost for a ton of stuff not everyone will use. Sad that building a custom auto is almost gone now. I really do not think we will see custom builds or they will be very rare for people to do. Sad for sure.

Road Trip update on self-driving. @A Horse With No Name In this picture, I have put a red box around the cruise control / self driving section of the dash. On the left you can see the grey auto image representing any auto that gets in front of me and the white triangle which is the space and the white auto represents my EV9.  You can have 3, 2 or 1 car length on cruise control, I usually have 2 set, but changed it to 3 for this picture so you can see the full image.  The set speed is to the right and to the right of that is the steering wheel indicating that the self drive is on. If the system cannot understand the road, it goes white and over the range section on the right hand side a orange box pops up saying to take control of the wheel and a chime is sounded. Here is a 38 second video of the self driving, I put my hand close to the wheel as being the first time on a road trip using it, a truck with trailer pulled in front of me and I was not sure how it would respond. All went well, so no problems. Kia is working on per their support lane changing but is not available yet. So that is a manual intervention, but after making a lane change the self driving takes over again. This video is just cruising along. 200 miles and have to say, was very nice. Makes it easy to eat or drink something or in the case of my glasses, I had to clean them so no problem. Loved it. 20250712_104825.mp4  The EV9 truly keeps you in the center of the lane, it freaked my wife out a couple times as normally a human would go away from semi-trucks that came close to the line, but the EV9 monitors it and will adjust if it feels it needs too, but mostly just keeps going. Did this with all autos and trailers. seems to stay far more stable in driving than humans are when they are distracted with their phone or other stuff.