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Manufacturing and delivering a product as complex as a motor vehicle to market with quality in quantity in a reasonable schedule is not an easy task or set of tasks. Maybe a BE powertrain simplifies to some degree compared to an ICE powertrain, but there are still many systems to integrate to produce a finished, complete vehicle...many of those systems and components are probably outsourced to suppliers, but there is a lot of work to be done to make it so. Obviously, big established companies like GM, Ford, VWAG, Daimler, Toyota, etc have decades of experience successfully bringing new models to market and should have an advantage--ICE or BE, compared to startups trying to do it all from scratch..

People tend to think starting/running a new vehicle OEM is 'easy-peasy'... but the high rate of poor outings in the BE tent (Nikola, Workhorse, Bolinger, maybe Rivian) show that to be anything but.

@oldshurst442 @ccap41 I hope you both have a good year, but I cannot stress enough to still be careful. WHY? Easy, this Virus pandemic is far from over. Putin War is causing Covid infections to jump big time in Europe. Spain, Netherlands, Belgium Germany Italy and Sweden have all had large increases in infections and hospitalization over the last month. North America tends to trend behind Europe and as we open up and people stop wearing masks, I expect increases with a fourth wave in late spring/early summer here. Animated Maps - Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (jhu.edu) COVID-19 Map - Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (jhu.edu) We sadly are seeing an increase in infections and right now I would not recommend attending any indoor large gather without a face mask. Yes we are slowly getting the world vaccinated, but even then this virus hurts the body in ways that we are not totally understanding yet. Long term Covid symptoms needs to be studied better as we are seeing with the long term covid that some have, comes long term memory loss. More than 50 Long-term effects of COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis - PMC (nih.gov) Study explores prevalence and symptom trajectory of long COVID (news-medical.net) Post-COVID Conditions | CDC COVID-19 has long-term cardiovascular effects, ‘stunning’ study results reveal - Clinical Daily News - McKnight's Long-Term Care News (mcknights.com) COVID-19 (coronavirus): Long-term effects - Mayo Clinic While we need more study work done, Type A blood people have the worst long-term effects by Covid. Type O seems to be the most resilient against the virus. COVID ‘Long Haulers’: Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 | Johns Hopkins Medicine Serious COVID-19 linked to higher risk of long-term adverse mental health effects (news-medical.net) ‘Long COVID’ may lead to lingering airways disease, study finds - NewsBreak Plenty more links are available, but the end result, we are no where ready to say we can go back to normal life and be carefree with this virus. Live your life, but please be careful as especially for the unvaccinated, this virus tends to really mess up the body.

Direct sales have nothing to do with it. State Agency shop laws that protect dealers essentially prevent direct sales on NEW vehicles. The downfall of car companies require crashing market share with few repeat or conquest buyers. (See Plymouth, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn in the last 25 years.)

'55 Pontiac Safari ~

Happy Spring Equinox everyone, first official day of spring and we are still getting lovely snow in the moutains. Ski season is till May 1st, hopefully longer if there is enough snow which seems to be.

I wasn't listening to them on my own, but they were tied into some articles and links on various homepages. Both are sort of prescient with insightful lyrics, having listened to them in the past. Sting - "Russians" - 1985: Elton John - "Nikita" - 1985