Leaderboard

I kinda go a big both ways here. I do believe that the earth goes in cycles (Hot, cold, etc) and that it is going to change regardless of what we do. But, I also feel we can speed up that change by adding more Co2 and other chemicals to the air/earth/sea.... And we need to find better ways to power these things for the future as well. Can’t simply use nuclear and coal forever. We need to make solar, wind and even sea powered ways to get energy for our car and home. I might be the minority, but I believe that both EV and ICE powered cars can live in harmony, and that both can be around......

Can't hate on any of that.. and truthfully I've always said that if American Domestics didn't make a vehicle in a particular segment.. the U gotta go to their competition to get it. Personally I'm still a Harley Guy.. altho my Night Rod Special did have the engine partially designed by Porsche Damn Bro. Sorry to hear that.. and hope he recovers fully soon. Stay Safe your self

A lot of the Anti-EVers like to say "Well, your EV is powered by coal! Coal is what is used to generate your electricity!" Well... that's become less and less true. It's time to start retiring that line. According to the Energy Information Administration - U.S. Renewable Sources Generate More Electricity Than Either Coal or Nuclear and Begin to Close the Gap with Natural Gas For the period January - September, solar-generated electricity – including distributed solar - expanded by 22.1% (compared to the same period in 2019) and provided more than 3.4% of the nation’s total. Wind grew by 12.2% and accounted for 7.9% of total generation. Combined, net electrical generation by wind and solar was 15.0% greater than a year ago. Electrical generation by geothermal energy and hydropower also increased - by 3.3% and 0.1% respectively - while that from biomass fell by 2.1%. Together with wind and solar, renewables provided 20.5% of total electrical output - up from 18.4% a year earlier. Moreover, renewables' share of U.S. electrical generation has eclipsed that of nuclear power (19.4%) and coal (18.6%). Renewables produced almost a tenth (i.e., 9.8%) more electricity than coal through September 2020. In fact, electrical generation by coal was 23.5% lower than a year earlier. In addition, renewable energy sources produced 5.2% more electricity than did nuclear power whose output fell 1.8% during the same nine-month period.

I agree with most of this, however, there are some people who are against progress of any sort and just hate it to hate it. They hold the view that "It won't work for me today, so that means it will NEVER WORK FOR ANYONE EVER!". Tesla was a game changer for EVs. It made EVs substantially more accessible to more people, not just in cost, but in range. Before Tesla, most EVs topped out at 120 miles or 150miles max. It doesn't matter if you were Jeff Bezos, that is a deficit of utility that those EVs could not overcome. Telsa coming out with 250, 300, 350, 400 mile ranges meant that suddenly the vehicle was usable to 99.9% of trips with no range anxiety. Yes they are still more expensive than regular cars, but now you don't have to be Jeff Bezos to own one. EV development will largely be incremental from here on out. There is really no need for a range beyond 400 miles in a standard passenger, so rather than adding additional range, manufacturers are going to start to work on things like charging speed and battery size... neither of which will generate much in terms of headlines. So, you're correct that the next Tesla with a 350 mile range is going to be 105% of the current one, that means the 30 minute charge from 0%-80% will take 28 minutes instead of 30, but also the battery will weigh less and the car will improve its regen efficiency. Battery cost will also stay flat or go down making it more accessible to more people. So, it's really only a matter of time before EVs become ubiquitous even if you don't personally own one.

Ummm @oldshurst442... what did I do to get drawn into this fight lol? Long time my friend.. but after sifting thru some of this.. I am still lost as to why @ocnblu is so in love with ICES that he still finds the need to talk $h! about the EV movement. INSANITY.. Propulsion that moves us around faster and more efficiently and if I rev the engine/motor/ up with a kid standing behind it... he won't get carbon monoxide poisoning and die? U'd think NO BRAINER. OCNBLU.. U must work for an oil company up there in PA. Rest assured.. I'm trying to hold out for either that Hummer EV or the Escalade EV as my next. Completely ready to exchange everyone of my gas burner V8s for a plug-in.

I would agree that between these two interiors, I would take.......................................................................................... Mustang Mach E interior Rivian R1S Adventure Package interior Rivian for the Win!!!

Speaking of extreme weather, supposed to get our first hit of winter tonight and tomorrow here in NE Ohio. Been raining all day, supposed to change to snow tonight. Predicted 5-12” here in the Cleveland burbs. Maybe I’ll get the snowblower out tomorrow. Maybe get my Jeep out and play in the snow..

They will. My Ranger is apolitical...It can play right wing talk radio or NPR. Or play Ted Nugent or a Rap artist. Car discussion should not be politicized. Only known collission between a car and a submarine...can't find much information...

L1011 Tristar...I miss Trijets...always thought they looked cool. Delta Livery of the period is classy IMHO.

Why you always secure the load in a pickup bed...

I started looking at these with an eye on 4-5 years down to road to replace the Chrysler 300C (Yes, I'm aware I just bought it and I'm aware I have a problem). But the interiors are terribly blah.... why can't we get an EV with a decent interior?! Right now the Defender and Rivian R1S are tops on the list. I did go test drive a Defender with my best friend on Friday.

Denver to Columbus is downhill. Lee Iacocca pulled the same trick in a Mustang 60ish years ago.

Arizona was full of those modified piles of garbage. I do not miss that rolling soot laden non-sense.

I've gotten pretty good mileage out of my two EcoBoosts. I have a pretty light foot though so I expect to do a little better than the ratings. I have also noticed with both of them that once you hit about 70mph, the fuel economy starts to drop quite significantly compared to n/a vehicles I've owned. My AWD 2.3T MKC is rated at 18/23 and my lifetime average over the 19,094 miles I've had it has been 23.2mpg. My AWD 2.0T Escape was rated at 21/28 and I averaged 24.7mpg over 24,611 miles.

I've never plowed with my truck. I put in 4L once. In treacherous snow I only need 4H. When I plowed for a buddy of mine using 3 or 4 different vehicles of his, I only ever used 4H. With plowing, it's better to have a bit of slip anyway. 4L is serious off road / mud pit stuff.

I like that Rivian has a range of color choices available for their interiors as far as I can tell...I looked the Mach-e site, and don't see anything other than black and despair gray...boring weak sauce. I'm surprised there hasn't been an Lincoln EV announced..I'm sure Lincoln will have more colorful interiors...

WOW, that is so stupid, yet sadly, I have seen this before especially from entitled kids. Hope the owner and employees can recover fast and get back to work during this pandemic. Post pics please, love to see snow!

Yep. Still will need to be the best for both worlds. For extreme weather, towing, and off road activity ICE is still king. But for local commuting or long trips to work or play, EV can be a changer there. One simple charge to get all of your shopping done. I still plan to own both..... ?

One last one for today.....this is some damn fine and heroic police work. Saved the guys life....good evening everyone.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes...

I will say that I find these little Suzuki's to be very cool. Happy 50th Birthday Suzuki Jimny! Quote: Less than three meters (9.8 feet) long and with a wheelbase of just 1.93 meters (6.33 ft), the first mass-produced 4x4 model was introduced in this popular market segment. The first version offered three seats, an open body with a canvas cover, and an air-cooled 360-cc two-stroke engine with 25 horsepower (18 kilowatts). Latest version was released in 2018 with a 1.5L 102 hp / 76 kW motor and automatic as an option for Transmission. Suzuki Jimny Turns 50, Remains True To Its Compact Off-Road Origins (motor1.com) I accept you as you Dwight. Yes the history is in the rocks as they say or Geologist say and science does show that we have gone through multiple ice ages. We clearly have evolved and with that comes the ability to look at the past and learn from it and realize that the climate has changed and drastic things have happened as the climate got out of balance. One would ask then, would it not behoove us to learn from the past, what is recorded in the rocks and improve upon it where we can by limiting how we affect our climate? I am happy to read that you like me do care about the pollutants that are harmful to humans. While Natural gas is the US highest form of electricity production, Nuclear and coal are now bellow green power generation I believe based on what Drew posted earlier.

toyoters require a LOT of repair.

That is only a problem with nitrogen storage catalysts. Urea Injection is an after treatment sprayed into the exhaust after the cat; $h! fuel is not going to hurt the tank or the sprayer. You may have trouble buying the Urea (aka DEF) if you used it up and peeing in there won't cut it. But, they typically last between 6000 and 9000 miles so if you top it off before the trip you should be fine.

I really want one for camping and maybe towing a trailer. So I would use it as God and GG (or Ford, or Ram) intended. Got in a bit of trouble... Diesel trucks are interesting because if you want to drive to say South America the quality of diesel si apparently not always good enough to work with modern emissions systems.

Nobody actually needs to remove anything in half of the modern diesels. These use urea injection not a nitrogen storage catalyst. This is favored in the USA because we do not really have true low sulfur diesel fuel and sulfur poisons nitrogen traps. The Urea is misted downstream of the cat and the ammonia in it converts oxides of nitrogen to nitrogen and CO2 (as well as some CO). When the Urea tank is empty the ECU knows and is supposed restrict vehicle operation (to 5 mph). THAT, however, is easily fixed with a software flash. It's as easy to detect as performance software on the ECU -- which is to say the SMOG gay have no idea. All the guy knows is that all the HARDWARE are all in place and no error codes are present.

Things are moving in the right direction in some ways. I really love the thought of a diesel full size pickup truck though. All 3 of the big three build some compelling vehicles in this regard. On the more humerous side...

They won't because not every county does yearly emissions tests and most have figured out how to remove the offending equipment before taking it to an inspection station. Ironic considering most those same folks subscribe to the "law and order" mantra, just not when comes to their diesel burning piles of s***.

Arizona needs to crack down also, impound trucks, fine drivers. Fines should go up for repeat offenders. Severely. This is kind of sad at the Auto Mechanics program at the community Colelge my wife works for, GM and Ford donate a ton of vehicles and money, and a lot of the mechanics go on to work for Kia, Toyota, and Honda dealers.

Interesting read on Diesel trucks and modifications in America. After the Diesel Brothers Discovery show was found and fined $850,000 for illegal modifications to diesel auto's, the EPA did research and reported on the roughly 15% of Diesel auto's that are running around with illegal performance modifications that have greatly increased the Toxic spew out of the tail pipe poisoning the local community in which they live. Interesting is that this study by the EPA focused on the last 10 years starting from 2010 and found that North Dakota has the highest number of illegal diesel auto's with removed emissions systems at more than 25% of the registered diesels in the state. This is compared to California that inspects yearly the emission systems and has only found on average 3% with deleted emissions systems. The study does point out how we have gone from high NOX emissions in the 80's to super clean today and when you remove the emissions system, we go back to being even worse than the 1980's and this is due to the power of the modern diesel motors and what they put out to produce such power. The need to burn up the toxic emissions. Very interesting read. ? Illegal emissions tampering on diesel trucks is rampant—and apparently a big business (greencarreports.com)

Getting back to vehicles, the RAM looks damn fine set up as an overlanding rig. I do like the idea of fueling at home. As Balthazar said, Thread Cleanse.

Gloomy rainy day....been listening to some Hans Zimmer...

Besides the fact that part of your assessment is subjective (example, I knew three people in Arizona that owned Teslas and not ONE complained about it not being quiet or luxurious enough which, again, is a subjective term), its statements like No.2 that have me laughing because its the same argument that the anti-EV crowd likes to use while ignoring the fact that you cannot fill up your ICE auto at home while you eat, sleep, enjoy time with your family. In addition, regarding No.3, there are now other EV options in the luxury game so singling out Tesla doesn't really accomplish much there.

My dad was born in 1939....amazing how much the world has changed since then.

Thought you were against speaking politics here (and yes, saying things like "but what would you expect when they have a far leftist parent company." is very much political)? Blu doesn't work for the oil industry but he sure acts like he has lifetime stock in it lol.

Welcome back my friend, great to see you post, been a long time. Hope all is well in your family and no one has been affected by Covid-19. Stay safe and well everyone. Sadly, I just learned my nephew who works for the FAA in Chicago and is a Type 1 diabetes had been moved to an administrative roll working from home when the pandemic started. His two room mates continued to work in the tower at Ohara airport. They brought home the virus and now Garrett is sick and had to go to the hospital as the virus does seem to affect those with health issues harder than without. Stay safe everyone, I would hate to have any of you deal with this virus.

Or at the very least talk freely and openly about ICE automobiles. The Ford Raptor is white hot, some dealers are asking 2x invoice for some new ones because they are out of production until fall 2021. Next Raptor may well ahve a version of the new bog block pushrod V8 that comes in teh f250 and F350....wouldn't THAT be a hoot. Ford may yet bring the Ranger Raptor here. C8 Corvette is white Hot. Lots going on with Euro cars. New Supra is interesting. Lots of interesting stuff in motorsports. Hell, I am even starting to fall in lvoe with the current generaiton of GM fullsize trucks. Lots of good potential content there.

Hi Dwight, Always appreciate your take and input on this. 1) I will disagree with you on economic sense. If looking at the bigger picture of how much toxic exhaust to toxic chemicals current ICE auto's can drop into the environment as well as the affect an ICE auto has versus an EV auto on the same environment, for people who can afford them now, they would see the long term affect of having a 21st century EV auto as being cost effective. One cannot just take a black and white approach to EVs due to cost alone. The bigger picture of how auto's affect the planet's climate cannot be denied as they exhaust does have an affect and many people are taking that into affect. On top of this battery costs are being reduced greatly each year and I do expect by 2025 to be on par with ICE. 2) We have had this discussion @Drew Dowdell has pointed out the change in thinking many times and we are moving to get there with rapid charging and solid state batteries that can recharge in minutes. Currently you cannot unless it is an Econ box sub compact with a tiny gas tank of less than 10 gallons fuel all auto's in 3 min. Average fuel tank size on full size trucks and SUV's is 26 gallons. USA limits gas pumps to a maximum flow of 10 gallons a minute from the main tank if all else is perfect. With filters and multiple auto's fueling this rate is usually reduced to an average of 5 gallons per min based on the industry. That would mean for an average 26 gallon fuel tank your are taking from empty 5 to 6 minutes to fuel. Yet many people fill up from a quarter tank or due to limited funds only put in a few dollars and go. EV you can always just get enough energy to get home and then plug in and finish over night. EV's will cause a change in approach to how one fuels their auto due to options that never existed with ICE auto's. 3) Totally agree with you on this point, I think the existing OEMs will bring a far superior EV auto to market due to their experience in mass production that Tesla has FAILED to learn from. 4) I totally get this point and I think that is where Hybrids will come in for those that have a harder time changing habits with an EV. I do believe that the newest solid state battery designs that have been published and are going into production for auto's that will come to market in 2024 and 2025 will help greatly with this as we see increased energy density in the individual cells that will allow for smaller battery packs where needed or keeping the same size but drastically increasing range. Already GM has revised their Ultium battery packs to now have 450 miles of range. GM Ultium design of small cell packs allows for ease of replacement if a section has a bad cell or two. This does allow for repair rather than total replacement. Toshiba, LG and Samsung have all moved to a modular design for this very reason. Panasonic has stated they have battery change designs coming, but have not clearly stated what those changes are. Tesla seems to want to build excess cells in to off set the potential for a bad cell or two but has remained vague on this. It will be interesting to see the direction we go in how battery repairs / maintenance is done for EV auto's.

Like I said elsewhere...Tesla fails to understand 1940s technology. They need to do basic fundamental manufacturing right. Ohio has a garage full of woodworking equipment that should have this in it instead.... gorgeous. I would like to learn more about Graham. They built interesting vehicles. Just....no.

Des Moines, 1939 ::

1925 Graham ::

I don't know how I became part this fray, but your outburst is nonsensical. I don't dislike you and I never left... I simply haven't found much to comment about on this tread lately exactly because of the prevalence of this kind of diatribe. My position on EV is very simple and it hasn't changed. (1) EVs do not currently make economic sense because of the cost of batteries exceeds the cost of fuel over the lifetime of the battery (and often times that of the vehicle). That is why they need subsidizes and tax bates to survive on the market. (2) EVs also do not make convenience sense because they cannot be recharged in 3 minutes like a gas tank can be refueled. This is a big deal because convenience is the very reason automobiles exist -- if you don't care much for it you'll be happy waiting for the bus and consulting train schedules. (3) That said, EVs do offer a massive leap in refinement because of the lack of vibrations and noise from electric motors. However, brands like Tesla have done a terrible job making their vehicles refined, luxurious or simply quiet. (4) Given the above, I have always advocated for a primarily electric vehicles with a SMALL battery enough for 40~50 miles and a micro turbine generator -- which does not have to be efficient, just extremely compact and devoid of a cooling system -- for infrequent trips that exceed that.

When I become a fan of a team, Im a fan for life for that team. Only once have I jumped ship. I was once a Montreal Canadiens fan. I got turned off by the that club, became a Bruins fan and that is that. Regarding the Cowboys...I fell in love with the team when I started watching the NFL in the early to mid '80s for whatever reason. The lore of the Cowboys from the 1970s I guess. The allure of the Cowboy's cheerleaders...the "America's Team" moniker that was touted from back then... Tony Dorsett and Herschel Walker. All the glamour and glitz that was the Cowboys back then. So...Ill stick with them with all the ups an downs. Even when they are losing, from the late 1990s all the way to today, you GOT to admit, its entertaining AF!!!! From Tony Romo fumbling the damned football because his hot Jessica Simpson girlfriend is in the stands, to Terrell Owens pretend mooning the fans and the Cowboys' logo in their own home as an opposing player, to him crying because the fans and media are rough on "his quarterback" when he actually became a Cowboy himself a year or two later after the mooning incident, to well, this year... The Cowboys are FUN to watch!!! Its awesome when they live up to the famous "America's Team" moniker with the 3 1990s Superbowls to the almost impossible task to live up to that moniker and them imploding the way they do. Win or lose, the Cowboys are very entertaining.

In all seriousness that is the problem a lot of legacy car makers have. EVs seem better as EVs from the ground up. Converted gassers as production vehicles don't seem to work as well. Mini didn't sell a lot of EV Cooper's nor was the E Golf a particularly good car.

46 Mercury M68 54 Pontiac Bonneville Special concept...

Seems Europeans are dumping public transportation to avoid Covid-19 chances of getting sick, so the used auto market has exploded which is bad as they say for the air and environment. Why you might ask, because many of the used auto's are diesel with no emissions control on them. Pandemic Motors: Europeans snap up old cars to avoid public transport | Autoblog I could so enjoy owning this Dodge Durango Hellcat! 2021 Dodge Durango Hellcat First Drive: The Three-Row, One-Year Wonder (thetruthaboutcars.com)

Reads about Michigan State Football and about the Detroit Lions' laughs because the Lions have been pathetic as long as I have been watching NFL football. (since the mid-80s) Laughs even more because as a Cowboy fan, the Lions cant seriously be more pathetic than the Cowboys...can they? Proceeds to google Lions 2020 season cant believe what Im seeing, Lions season is only marginally better. WTF???!!!

Jump was a staple of my high school lunchtime cafeteria playlist for a long time. VH was the first band I saw live in concert as a teenager back in the mid 80s. Sad to hear of Eddie’s passing.