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Seems like I missed quite the evening.....

I dont think these are going to be produced like the cheaply made Chinese products that Walmart and Dollar Tree sell to us. If GM is serious in bringing these to North America, or similar small EVs, Im sure GM will make sure they are not junk. But then again, GM did sell Vegas, Citations and Chevettes to Americans. Oh...the calendar says 2021 and not 1981? That's right...2021. Here we are bitchin' that EVs are waaaaay too pricey and electrification is damn near impossible because there is suuuuuuch a low take rate yet this thing exists...with an interesting marketing angle. Sold like designer clothes. Like everything else we buy in North America since...I dont know...the 1980s, with both the young and the old. The Millennials, Gen Xers and the bloody Boomers... We are conditioned to buy consumer products this way anyway... With Disney AND Nike co-branding... An angle like that seems...fun. Like who knew cars could be fun again? And affordable. If I were them, Id try to get Hot Wheels involved as well. And since Nike could be a co-branding entity, why not try to get the NFL, MLB, NBA and the NHL involved for North America too. Id buy a Boston Bruin or a Darth Vader (Disney owns Star Wars...) version of this over a ho-hum Chevrolet Bolt any day of the week! I absolutely agree with @daves87rs 's post above mine!!! A basic car, that is affordable. And it be fun to buy since it looks like it could stylized like a customized car, but at the car store (GM dealership) directly...

March 28 - today Spotted this final gen Monte Carlo ... they look great in white and with the optional alloy wheels. I have a soft spot for these and get some cognitive dissonance (the last larger GM coupe within the more reasonably priced brands), seeing that they have held up so well.

According to China Daily Wuling Motors, a joint venture of GM, Shanghai Automotive and Wuling Motors sold 36,000 mini EVs in January 2021 toppling Tesla's Model 3 as the worlds best-selling electric car and to add insult even if you combine Tesla Model 3 and Y combined they still did not sell as many EVs as Wuling Motors. Wuling Motor's Mini EV, has no connection with BMW Mini and it comes in two configurations, two or four seater, range of 106 miles and top speed of 62 mph and depending on options sells starting at $4,500 and $6,300. Four months before it went on sale, auto reporters were invited to share their views in March 2020. They over all said it would not sell in big cities where international brands were preferred and chances would be slim in small towns or rural areas where people were constantly choosing gasoline auto's. These views have proved wrong and with it the facts that EVs at an attractive price point would sell in large numbers to the general population. The Mini EV has safety front and center with 57% of the auto made of High Strength Steel. It also has anti-lock braking system (ABS), electronic brake-force distribution (EBD), tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS), and reversing radar. The back seats are equipped with two ISOFIX child safety seat restraint interfaces to cater to young families. The auto has 13 kW of Power (17.5 hp) and 85 Nm of torque (115.3 ft-lbs) to go along with a smart battery management system that uses pre-heating and battery insulation to deal with cold or heat as well as IP68 water proofing and dustproofing of the battery system. The mini EV is 2,917 mm long (115 inches), 1,493 mm wide (59 inches) and 1,621 mm high (64 inches) on a 1,940 mm (76 inches) wheelbase. Ultimate inner city or urban commuting auto. Wuling Motors now has requests from 150 counties / regions in China asking when will the Mini EVs go on sale. As production ramps, so will new outlet offering the Mini EV. Statistics are currently showing that the majority of buyers are in small cities / towns with 72% of these buyers born in the 90's and 60% of them are female. Where Tesla is considered a toy for the Rich, Wuling has gone after the Companion to the young independent Woman / Man. Selling points have been easier to park and maneuver especially for new drivers. The range while short in comparison to Tesla is more than enough for commuting to work, easy to charge at home over night as well as cute, customizable and affordable. Wuling motors has been showing GM how to build profitable small auto's and market them for success. Wuling says you sell them like designer clothes, not like traditional auto's. Wuling has achieved this by partnering with Pantone, the global authority on Color and Design. In addition, Wuling / GM / Shanghai automotive are working on partner deals of co-branding with Disney and Nike for the regional markets. The focus has been rather than copy everyone one else on making auto's that look like Tesla and sell much higher, Wuling has focused on the last mile of mobility and looking good while arriving. Wuling is also launching e-bikes and scooters as it has branded itself as a Lifestyle Brand not an auto company. View full article

Now that the laughter that General Motors received for changing their logo has subsided, we could now focus our attention to ridicule Volkswagen when they officially change their name of their EVs to Voltswagen. (Their internal combustion offerings will continue to be Volks-wagen, until they dont produce no more of them...) At least according to the RoadandTrack article stating that its NOT an April Fool's Joke and according to their sources, the name change is real. https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a35969854/voltswagen-name-april-fools/

BMW is to merge a vast majority of their ICEV and BEV to a common modular platform by 2025. https://www.autoblog.com/2021/03/29/bmw-neue-klasse-modular-platform-ev-ice/

VW ID.4 reviews are hitting the net.

NEWS BREAK Nissan releases pictures, details and web site for the official 2022 Nissan Ariya Electric SUV. This auto will come in 4 configurations: Ariya 2WD Standard Range Ariya e-4orce Standard Range Ariya 2WD Long Range Ariya e-4orce Long Range - Maximum performance (389 hp) and range (details not released yet) Nissan ARIYA | All-New Electric Crossover | Nissan USA

Nah you didnt... https://www.gogoro.com/smartscooter/2-series/plus/ if you actually took the time to read and understand what the phoque it is you are reading...you would see that 1. this is about scooters a) Asian countries in and around...Asia...which actually does include India, folk get around by bikes and scooters and the like... 2. you would have read that this particualr scooter has a range of 170 KM...or slightly more than 100 miles. Maybe 105 miles. Nobody is talking about long road trips with these. Its clearly you having an agenda against this...for whatever reason. I wanted to show that the Japanese manufacturing companies are going to engineering bikes so that their batteries could interchange using the same battery pack. THAT article states that if you wanna buy a bike without a battery, you could if you already owned a previous motorcycle so you could bike swap from Yamaha to Honda to Suzuki. The initial purchase would be with a battery, and then you could buy another bike without the battery, saving you money JUST buying the bike. Keep the battery long enough and it starts to degrade, BECAUSE there will be soooooo many bikes on the road with THAT same battery pack...meaning mass production will probably make that battery pack that much cheaper, one could buy another battery pack that wont be too much pressure on the wallet. You could charge that battery INSIDE your home/appartement/condo/office building etc. And other ways that will make such a thing a positive. The scooter article was DIRECTLY DIRECTED at YOUR conversation with @David regarding India's future and THEIR plan to go fully electric. David said that Indian people DO use bikes and the like, and there was much noise about that...no need to rehash the details of THAT conversation... There is a sticking point to what the Asian countries wanna do with batteries. Whether we are talking about the Taiwanese scooter thing or the Japanese motorcycle consortium thing, they want to make it easier and cheaper for people to use. And to go fully electric...by 2030-2035. Cheaper because if there is a STANDARD battery pack across the board with the 2 wheeled variety of transportation, that will enable folk to change over to electric that much faster. Ease of use BECAUSE these battery packs will be interchangeable. AND...if MORE batteries are in production, the cost per unit of production of batteries WILL go down. And THAT will be for ALL batteries as a battery pack from Tesla or from the Yamaha/Suzuki/Honda consortium will probably be the SAME kind of battery... The Taiwanese link is the company's actual website and it states that they are investing in NEW tech batteries for even greater range and cheaper to produce... I guess it easier to whine and diss than to clearly understand what the REST of the world is doing...

At those prices and range, I could definitely use one of these to just stay around town going to the bus stop for work, grocery store, gym, Rural King.

I actually like this....think this what will get the current generation interested in cars again. While it may not be the next Beetle/Civic, it is a car that goes back to the basics.....

It wouldn't sell here as a $12K gas car, why would it as an electric? Fiat 500 is probably better built/more modern @ $16K, and no one buys those. The U.S. is not the market for junk like this.

Some comments suggest that this is more suited to be the official song of NYC than Sinatra's "New York, New York." I'd be okay with that. Highlights: - the first 25 seconds, when some local dudes are presumably near Times Square and then an early '80s Buick full size wagon, possibly with wood grain, just happens to pull up, an occupant lifts the hood, and it starts belching smoke ... and one drunken guy falls over the fire hydrant (seems to be ok) - at 1:45, why is it that so many NYC taxi cabs used to be shown bouncing up and down like this on TV and movies ... soft suspensions, worn shocks, bad roads, or a little of all of these? These were the days.

Atlanta, 1956 :

Have been watching some older 80s NASCAR races...wish I could find some older ones!

I don't pay much 'engine attention' to Chevys, so I would have to look up the specs, but 283-327 are the same family. 307 I couldn't say. 307 definitely was available in the full-size Chevys, too. It's not that it was a "great" engine so they put it in the Fleetwood for a bit, it's that Cadillac would rather have an engine association with an upper Division like Olds, rather than the entry-level Division of Chevrolet. Once the Olds V8 was gone, Cadillac went right over to the 'Chevy' V8 line.

There was a 283 V8 in my parents' driveway at some point. I know that they were very good engines. I'm not sure if the 307 and the327 used either the same bore OR stroke. It also seemed that the 307 skipped over Impala/Caprice and was slotted into Malibu/Chevelle. I'm not sure. So, it's funny that 307 c.i. worth of displacement shows up again, in 5.0 liter form and as an Oldsmobile small block V8, in the early '80s, and possibly the late '70s. And turned out to be such a great engine that it was chosen to power top of the line Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham et. al. just like a TBI Olds 350 V8 was chosen to power the first Cadillac Seville. I love that "family" of engines.

Looks very Bahama or Caribbean style to me for the 60's or 70's.

^ After the initial year ('62), all Impala SS's were V8s. In '63, that started with the 283, went thru numerous 327s, a couple of 409s and a 427. SS package has a lot of unique trim & details, also.

Very interesting ... I wonder where this "very" pink photos is ... thinking Savannah, Charleston, or other historic Southern coastal cities. Good on him or her. They snagged the right license plate sequence for that Riv. These used to hurt my eyes but, now, when I do see them, I appreciate them and that people are taking care of these polarizing vehicles. The Chevy ad was probably in the San Diego Tribune. El Cajon Blvd. The price makes sense, in a way. The barebones Maverick was introduced for $ 1,999, I think. But, look at what you started out with: a 170 c.i. inline 6, a "3 on the tree," nasty plaid bench seats, hubcaps, and no carpeting. With this one, it's more, but you got an automatic transmission (Power Glide), probably a V8, and trim items like buckets/console and wheel covers/WSW tires.

Jeep has announced that this spring they will start a build out of Jeep charging stations at or near off road trail heads for free use by Jeep owners of their plug-in Hybrids and EV wranglers, Gladiators, and future product. While the charging stations will be connected to the electrical grid, they will also have solar roofs to help be as green as possible. The first two places that are already identified and to quote the article: Moab (UT), the Rubicon Trail in Pollock Pines (CA), and Big Bear (CA) will be the first off-road sites to get the charging stations this Spring. More locations are planned to be operational by the end of the year, Jeep will announce those locations at a later date. Jeep Is Building A Charging Network For The Wrangler 4xe At Off-Road Trails (optional title) (insideevs.com) EV Lifestyle is the future.

That is rather sad. If you want REAL Lexus refinement, any LS will do over just about everything else Lexus makes.

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This air traffic controller is an asshole, should be fired. No way to act when people's lives are on the line.

Yes, I read the link/article. The idea of it is good for around town or a couple hour day trip with friends but you cannot expect to attempt to road trip and pick out dealerships to swap batteries. There was also zero talk of range but They're likely small batteries with not-a-ton of range. The Harley Davidson LiveWire has a range of 95 miles combined or 146 miles city. I very much expect a battery/bike situation where batteries can be easily swapped to not have the capacity of the LiveWire, having less range.

So then Mr. @oldshurst442, does David's quote below sound like a realistic venture on a road trip? So what EXACTLY are YOU doing to not let the "world pass us by"? What would you, personally, suggest me to do more to "understand". I certainly have never drawn a hard line in the sand against EVs. Exactly like @ykXsaid last week, I have previously stated nearly the same thing. I thoroughly believe EVs are the future but there are some hurdles to cross yet before they will really take off, the biggest of which is price that's been hashed and rehashed dozens of times already.

What is actually wrong with you? If I don't agree with somebody that means I'm trolling? Would you prefer this site to be a big circle jerk and everybody just agrees with everything? @oldshurst442, but nothing to say back to this?

Welp, @oldshurst442has fallen off the wagon again. Go take another sabbatical. Nobody reads your 5000 word rants anyway.

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