The Sunday Column - March 8, 2015

I've got this Toyota Camry they assigned to me.  Wow ... this has the second highest mileage of any vehicle I've ever been assigned - 56,000 miles!  That's over 9 transcontinental U.S. round trips.  The only other car that beat it was in Italy when I was given a Seat Leon wagon with 105,000 km (which is over 60,000 miles).  That one looked kind of mangy and they didn't seem to care about all the scratches and all that, including the front bumper panel that had separated on one side and was provisionally fastened together.  I asked her if this Seat Leon wagon could get me from Ancona to Bari for the one-way drop (basically most of the length of the Adriatic side) and she said that it would.  It did.   As for this Camry, it's a rough one.  The engine is noisy and, unlike ones I've been put in that have had about 20,000 miles where the 8-speed automatic had some of the best shift quality I've experienced, this Camry revs out to the next shift point and then there's what seems like a pause after that shift.  It reminds me of some Smart cars and Opel Corsa automatics I've rented across the pond ... some 20 years ago.  I don't believe in these new long intervals for transmission service.  I think people need to be routinely servicing their geared automatic transmission every 30,000 to 40,000 miles. It's a basic LE and has none of the bells and whistles, like any of the traffic and parking sensors.  It also has that nasty diagonal sweep over the cubby hole for one's electronics.

Chevrolet Bolt gets lower-cost LFP batteries for next gen - Autoblog QUOTE: CEO Mary Barra confirmed the hatchback's return, telling analysts, "I know there has been some speculation in the market as to why we are developing a new Bolt EV. Our strategy is to build on the tremendous equity we have in the brand and to do it as efficiently as possible." The efficiency bit is the key phrase in that sentence, Barra explaining that GM can get the new Bolt to market quicker than a vehicle program from scratch while " saving billions in capital and engineering expenses." A big part of that savings comes from the plan to use lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which are markedly less expensive than the lithium-ion pack in the current car and the nickel-cobalt-manganese-aluminum (NCMA) chemistry in GM's Ultium packs. Barra explained, "This will be our first deployment in North America of LFP technology in the Ultium platform."  General Motors Company (GM) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript | Seeking Alpha QUOTE:  The team is optimizing the software strategy and fine-tuning the plans for our new vehicles to help make sure we executive with the highest possible quality and customer experience, while positioning the company to drive significant revenue growth from subscriptions in the future. To give the team time to do this, we'll move out the launches of three products, the Chevrolet Equinox EV, the Silverado EV RST, and the GMC Sierra EV Denali, each by only a few months. This will ensure their success. We believe our products will succeed, and the costs are coming out quickly. For example, our cost per cell has already decreased 45% over the last 12 months as production volume in Ohio has ramped up. We also expect to achieve significant margin improvement on our battery electric trucks through engineering efficiency and improvement, supplier cost, and reducing order complexity, buildable combinations, and manufacturing. However, by leveraging the best attributes of today's Bolt EUV as well as Ultium,, our latest software, and NACS, we will deliver an even better driving, charging, and ownership experience with a vehicle we know customers love. In the process, we are saving billions in capital and engineering expenses, delivering a significantly cost improved battery pack using purchased LFP cells. We are getting to market at least two years faster and our unit cost will be substantially lower. This is will be our first deployment in North America of LFP technology in the Ultium platform.