G. David Felt

The first of the German auto companies has fallen inline with the Tesla NACS charge port, Mercedes-Benz made this Announcement late Friday night. This is a major change as news had been reporting that VW was in talks with Tesla and the expected first German auto company to support NACS ports, now we know that Mercedes-Benz will be that first company moving from CCS to NACS. Mercedes made the following points in their press release: Mercedes-Benz to integrate North American Charging Standard (NACS) in its electric vehicle line-up – introduction in North America starting 2025 Mercedes-Benz drivers gain access to more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers across North America beginning in 2024 Mercedes-Benz to simultaneously expand new Mercedes-Benz Charging Network with more than 2,500 high-power chargers in North America to provide a best-in-class charging experience First Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging sites to open in Q4 2023 for both Mercedes-Benz and non-Mercedes-Benz drivers Starting in January 2024 all Mercedes-Benz will come with a CCS to NACS adapter to allow existing EV customers to get a superior charging experience at Tesla Supercharger stations according to the press release. Starting in January 2025 all EVs will then be built with NACS ports and the following quote was made by the Chairman of the Board of Management Mercedes-Benz Group AG. "Our strategic priority is clear: Building the world’s most desirable cars. To accelerate the shift to electric vehicles, we are dedicated to elevating the entire EV-experience for our customers - including fast, convenient, and reliable charging solutions wherever their Mercedes-Benz takes them. That’s why we are committed to building our global Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging Network, with the first sites opening this year. In parallel, we are also implementing NACS in our vehicles, allowing drivers to access an expansive network of high-quality charging offerings in North America." Ola Källenius, Chairman of the Board of Management Mercedes-Benz Group AG Andre Cornelia, CEO of Mercedes-Benz HPC North America had the following to say: “With the development of Mercedes-Benz’s new North American High-Power Charging Network, we are ready to redefine the electric vehicle charging experience. We’re building on our strong brand promise here by leveraging the renowned quality, reputation, and customer focus for which Mercedes-Benz has been known for well over a century. With its own charging network, Mercedes-Benz will set a new standard for EV infrastructure, enabling a convenient charging experience in terms of fast, safe and green charging of electric vehicles.” It will be interesting to see how this works out for the German auto companies and who will be next, will it be BMW or VW/Audi/Porsche to join the NACS port club. Press Release View full article

I so agree with the various stories on Toyota battery break through should be taken with a grain of salt when they have been pushing Hydrogen and then all of a sudden have a major solid-state battery breakthrough! BS on Toyota. Toyota's battery tech needs to be taken with a grain of salt (qz.com) Gotta have the Alpha side of every relationship. Here is a good one!

Nothing wrong with Taco loving Taco!

Way to be a horse with blinders, she said that in relation to the Bolt, a second generation EV. She also said that there is no reason to not have a replacement for the Bolt and other executives have stated that the Bolt will move to Ultium where they do expect to make profits on their EVs. In regards to making 400,000 EVs a year, lets be clear, Mary stated that they would push this to early 2024 due to startup/ramping delays at their new battery production facility. GM Pushing Back 400,000-Unit EV Production Target To 2024 (gmauthority.com) Quote: Barra says that the 400,000-unit EV production target has been pushed back six months to early 2024. According to Reuters, the slower EV production ramp-up was attributed to a “slightly slower launch” of battery and cell production. In regards to the $25-$30K Tesla, try 2026 to 2027 at the earliest. There are no announced official model, prototypes, etc. On top of this, the news is now reporting at the earliest, Mexico will open in early 2025. Tesla's Gigafactory Mexico opening pushed to early 2025: Report - Drive Tesla (driveteslacanada.ca) Yet as the news is also stating, due to higher labor costs, poorer than expected existing infrastructure and a lack of proper locally sourced supply chain, that they have not even broke ground on the Mexico site yet. This will tend to be a 2026 mass production site I believe at the earliest. In that time frame, many companies will have their EV production up and running in the U.S., especially GM.

QUOTE: “GMC is giving customers the ability to forge their own path within the premium off-roading space,” said Duncan Aldred, global vice president, Buick-GMC. “GMC Sierra LD and HD AT4X AEV Editions delivered what customers were looking for in the off-roading space and now we’re applying that same formula to the next-generation Canyon.” Welcome the 2024 Canyon AT4X AEV edition. AEV was first introduced in the 2023 GMC Sierra 1500 and now today GMC has completed covering the full GMC truck lineup with the AEV Edition brought to the Canyon, delivering premium, advanced and authentically capable trucks in North America. Building off the strong AT4X foundation, AEV Edition takes capability even further with additional 1.5-inch lift, 35-inch tires and upgraded hardware Enhanced off-road capability matched with signature GMC premium appointments 2024 Canyon also includes upgraded technology features across the lineup So what does GMC mean by taking the Canyon to the next level you ask, simple as GMC has pursued the goal of offering the most capable premium off-road focused mid-size truck in the segment. The Canyon AT4X AEV offers an assertive stance, enhanced hardware and further upgrades to the vehicle chassis that include the following: 35-inch Goodyear Wrangler Territory MT tires with an additional AEV in-bed vertical spare tire mount Updated front fascia and larger fender flares to enable larger, wider tracks and ultra-high, best in class 12.2-inch ground clearance1 4.5-inch (114mm) factory-installed lift — 1.5-inch (38mm) more than the Canyon AT4X Heavy-duty, AEV stamped-steel front and rear bumpers with heavy duty recovery points and winch capable front bumper Five ultra-high strength, hot-stamped boron steel skid plates (positioned along the radiator, steering gear, transmission and transfer case, fuel tank and rear differential) for optimized underbody protection The addition of three standard auxiliary control switches which enable the integration of off-road and overlanding accessories. Exclusive AEV beadlock-capable Salta wheels AEV branding across the vehicle, including on bumpers, embroidered head restraints and all-weather floor liners The 2024 Canyon AT4X AEV edition now has a 38.2 degree front approach angle. A 26.9 degree breakover angle and a 26 degree departure angle. Bumpers front and rear have been designed for the serious off-road enthusiast featuring heavy-duty cast recovery points and front winch capability as a dealer or 3rd party option. To quote the GMC press release in regards to advanced technology, "Canyon’s Baja drive mode — available exclusively on the Canyon AT4X and AT4X AEV Edition — has been enhanced to include a new launch control feature, which allows drivers to press the brake and accelerator pedals at the same time, and then release the brake pedal, resulting in improved acceleration on- and off-road. This smart launch control feature learns the driving surface and can adjust engine speed and torque accordingly to improve subsequent performance on future launches." All 2024 Canyons are built on GM's Ultifi platform allowing new features and software updates over time with OTA service. The Canyon 2024 is produced at GM's Wentzville Assembly in Wentzville Missouri. The Canyon AT4X AEV Edition is expected to be available for customer orders later this year. View full article

What PROOF do you have that GM ramp up is not as fast as Tesla? GM has more battery capacity coming online this year in the U.S. and will exceed Tesla Battery production here by the end of the year. GM as well as Ford already know how to build more autos faster than Tesla. Proof is in the Trucks where each company has a truck coming off the assembly line in seconds. Tesla cannot do that yet. Cox article is historical and while sales have surprised the industry analysts, all it takes is the recession that the investment community sees coming by the end of the year to kill off those sales. Tesla DOES NOT have any $25-$30,000 EV. GM does and it goes on sales this summer. Also you have no proof that GM which says they can make a profit on the Equinox and Blazer EV that they are not making any profit. Tesla showed their Cybertruck in 2019 with promise to have it out in production in 2021. Now we are in 2023 and they are having so many engineering problems with the Cybertruck that they will not really have it out other than a few special production units this year. 2024 is now the more common time frame to have that truck out, 5 years after showing it off and at 6 figure prices first. GM as does Ford and Rivian has their trucks out and are working to ramp as battery production comes online. All of what you stated above is MUSK KOOLAID drinking and no actual facts.

Doug Field was a Leader at Tesla before being hired by Apple to lead their EV program. In 2021 Ford hired Mr. Field as their new CTO to lead Ford into a new future of "Subscription Services". At the latest investor event Doug Field pointed to a pile of individual computer driven sensors and talked about how a central processor running software written by Ford will change fundamentally how people use their autos. In this interview with the Associated Press, Ford's CTO talked about the coming transformation to electric vehicles and the change that is happening not only to EVs but to ICE autos. As of today in 2023, the Ford F-150 Lightning EV and all internal combustion F-series pickups now use a central computer and have software defined sensors. Here is some of the Q&A: Q: How far along is Ford on moving to this central computing system? A: The transition has happened where we designed the hardware and the software for the immediate user interface, the center screen. That’s gone into both the F-150 Lightning EV as well as the internal combustion F-Series. The next step is with our next generation of electric vehicles (coming in 2025). We’re expanding to control the overall vehicle and control over the autonomy system. There will be software in parts that comes from suppliers that is appropriate. The reason for that is to make it as fast as possible. A great example is firing the air bag. We don’t want that coming back through the central passage. Q: As a driver, why should I care about this? A: The car’s a robot, which means the interaction with the software includes pieces of hardware. So something like an Amazon interface where you know a delivery is coming. A one-time code opens the trunk. Doesn’t open the rest of the car. They get to drop it off. That requires an interaction between centralized software and what today is a locking-unlocking module. There also are sensors that we don’t have access to the information. An easy example is an autonomy system that’s supposed to keep you in the lane. There’s a camera. We can’t say to the customer that we’re going to give you a dash cam for free or for a subscription where it’s always running. And if we detect any kind of a bump or anything like that, you’ve got a 30-second recording. We will be able to do that. We talked a little bit about our ability to predict if the car is heading toward a failure or a wear-out situation. I want to count wiper strokes combined with how much water is coming down and where it’s being driven and how dirty it is. Maybe develop an algorithm that knows exactly when your wiper blades are wearing out. Q: How do you come up with something that’s compelling enough to get me to part with my hard-earned money and subscribe? A: The model is already transitioning from ‘you check a box when you buy the car’ to ‘you can get a free trial.’ You only part with your hard-earned money after you are on the road trying it and say, ‘this is pretty great.’ A big part of how I try to guide the engineers is you must earn the right to collect money. You’re going to come up with things, you’re going to try them. Q: You’ve shown the bear cam, where a Bronco parked at a campsite recognizes a bear nearby and may honk the horn to scare it away. How important is security? A: We are going to build a whole set of services around this. The car is the most sophisticated sensor that you have in your life, and the number of accelerometers and microphones and cameras and things on it will allow it to be not only something that protects you when you’re in the car, but it’ll actually be useful when you’re not there. Even acting as a remote sentry if there’s stuff going on outside the house. Q: Does having a centralized computer open you more to the possibility of hacking? A: Anything where you are allowing the car to be software-updated opens you to that possibility. You need to have an architecture where that has been really carefully thought through. And the more you go toward things like firing the airbags or controlling the steering, the more that becomes a pretty involved process to actually update your access. Q: How long will Ford still be selling internal combustion vehicles? A: There are a number of applications where it is going to be near impossible for an EV to perform the same mission. There will be many, many places where EVs are a slam dunk. There will be ones where it’s going to take a lot of work to get battery technologies to the point where it could serve that mission. There are ones we see now that the ICE engine needs to be a part of it. Maybe we partially electrify it, but they’ll be out there. The incremental value to the world of getting those last ice engines out versus the value that they provide to an ambulance in Alaska. That will take a very, very long time. Q: Affordability has become a big issue. Ford has gotten out of cheaper cars in the U.S. Is there a $20,000 EV coming? A: I don’t want to talk a lot about what we’re doing here. It is possible, with the advent of EVs, to make step changes in the way vehicles are built and sourced. Yes, I believe very low cost EVs are possible. I also believe the way the business model is changing is going to require it. If you are in the software business, what you want is installed base. How many people can I sell software to? To do that, you need affordability. GM moved to a central processing system a while back and have had their ICE and EVs running this way. It would seem that Ford is now making this move and as such, the change in how autos are built and programmed is on the move to make things simpler for the builders. Simplification on top of Service Subscriptions is where the Auto Companies are hoping to increase their profitability while offering auto owners new features that they believe they will want based on a trial period. This will simplify the building process of autos and increase based on what a person is willing to pay for on the features they get. The question to ask is how much is too much subscription service versus check the box of what you want in your auto, pay for it and have it with your car payment versus car payment plus subscription service monthly fee. How do you the individual retail customer think about this subscription service approach to features enabled, disabled on your auto? View full article

The global economy is not as sound as you seem to think and while they have had sales by cutting prices, I admit that many, myself included, are surprised by the global sales. With that said, GM roles out multiple EVs this year and has the ability to ramp up production. Yes sales will come from some companies, but while Tesla will stay solid, I do not see them ramping to the moon in sales as much as you do. Here is one of many stories that foreshadow the upcoming depression. Electric vehicle production set to surge in 2023 despite low sales | Reuters Then we have news stories like this that also put water on how hot you think the EV market is. EV sales slowing in 2023. Why are more Americans unlikely to buy one? (usatoday.com) Need to look at the large picture of everyone selling. Numbers are interesting. https://www.coxautoinc.com/news/cox-automotive-forecast-june-2023-u-s-auto-sales-forecast/

I wonder how much CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere from these massive planes?

@smk4565 Take a step back from the Musk Pipe and realize that they have major problems. Basic engineering is a problem for them and the Cybertruck. Do not expect any quantity but a few till 2024 and even then it will be triple digits as Musk has stated he will start at the top end of production order quality. These are $150,000 trucks and I doubt we will ever see anything below $50,000 from them any time soon if ever. Leaked Tesla documents shed new light on why the Cybertruck is taking so long - The Verge

Will start this off with a surprise siting, a GMC Savanna full size van with AWD. Did not know the latest versions could be had in AWD and conversion format. In regards to spotting, my friend in Texas sent this to me that he saw over the holiday weekend.

Ouch, guess Geely delivered on auto and electrification separation! ?

Yet you continue to ignore the move to U.S. manufacturing to gain the full 7500 rebate. Just accept that Tesla time will change by next year as more options come on the market and Korean manufacturing gets going to build EVs here. Yet the bulk of those sales are in Lemming China and Europe, not the U.S. and yes style and interior does make a difference. The last two quarters will show a more truthful picture as U.S. manufacturing gets going of EVs by the Koreans and GM.

Seems the Cyber truck could be delayed yet again to 2024. Seems, braking. Suspension, weather sealing and more issues in leaked documents have many in the industry shocked at how bad Tesla is at the basics of auto engineering. https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/tesla-cybertruck-ev-delay-exposed-leaked-documents/

The one time I tried Nexus, it sucked for me as did the Pixel and I ended up using the Verizon trade in program after a few days and went back to my Samsung that has never let me down. Yes, I admit that maybe the lower end phones suck, but never had my Note 6, Note 9 or Galaxy 22 Ultra fail me.

Maybe my friend you need to take yourself out of the computer person you are and look at the larger group of people using apple products. I find many folks that want it to work but do not like tech and as such, they use it till it breaks, then replaces it when it usually is for those of use a bit more techy a fix that can be simple for some, much harder for others. I have seen this in the Android world too, bulk of the users are not Computer tech folks with troubleshooting skills on figuring out how something has stopped working. A perfect example of this is a mongolian family that is our friends and they had us over for dinner. The whole family uses apple products and some things no longer worked on they just stopped using it with the reason it must be broken, so their saving up to buy a new phone or in this case it was their laptop. I cleaned house on the laptop, AKA, cleaned out the browser history, got ride of conflicting connection they had made, cleaned out storage to free up space on stuff they did not need. End result I was able to get their laptop working just fine and back online for them.

At least I got you my friend to post. Nice to have you respond. I am going to say that you, @Robert Hall @ccap41 are right and I was wrong to say laziness. It is the way one likes to work. For me having my whole career in the enterprise storage industry starting with Digital Computer Corporation that at DEC, I realized there were two ways people liked to work. One, they just wanted a product to work and use it and not have to understand what goes on under the hood to have it work all the time. Sadly, to me, I always was one to want to understand how it worked and why. This allowed me to quickly fix things when something stopped working. Apple products work, but when something stops working, there seems to be a bigger challenge by those that use the products to get it all working again. Be it windows or Linux, I find either product easier to me to fix in getting it to work where Apple with their own standards seem to take a very different way and as such, even with standards in this industry they tend to buck it and make it harder to fix when something breaks. My 40yr old daughter and 36 year old son, I am not sure they play much games on their phones, but battery issues they have always had. Course they did get new phones last year being the latest from Apple and I have not heard them say anything about the battery. Yes, due to my discount I get on the plan I have they are both still on my cell phone plan which is a global unlimited plan. Happy 4th guys, off to go water the garden.

I will agree to disagree as I have seen many problems with apple products especially in the enterprise space. Never had a problem with my Samsung Notes and now Galaxy Ultra phones. I always get 6 to 8 years and never have had the battery problems that my kids seem to have after 2 to 3 years with their iPhones. I get it, you guys like the interface and for how you work, Apple products work. For me, the interface is terrible and makes no sense, not intuitive. Yet I also understand my kids and others like you guys that enjoy their interface. That is why we have options. I enjoy Linux far more than windows lately especially Windows 11 which seems to have mimicked Apple, interface really sucks now. In regards to the topic at hand, I have found some very interesting reads on the NACS/CCS debate. Tesla NACS to Replace CCS? | LinkedIn Part 1 CCS vs NACS - Tesla's sneaky adoption of a standard, just to kill it | LinkedIn Part 2 NACS vs CCS part II: Europe won't move | LinkedIn I find both very interesting and enlightening.

Nope, as one that is a computer engineer, the largest market for Tesla is tech workers and they are also the biggest group of lazy individuals around the world. They do not want maintenance on an auto, they do not want to go to a gas station, they want to just plug in at home and use it as an appliance. They want minimal thinking and that is why Apple is also so popular especially in the tech sector. Those that do not have to code, think about scripting solutions, etc. which can be done successfully on a Mac, but want more decisions made for them use a Mac. They do not want to have to think about how they store, access and use tech, they just want it anywhere and everywhere in the cloud and Apple does one of the best jobs at that just like Tesla is the current Leader for EVs. Yes I know I have bitched about Apple in the past and still hate Apple products, that is my own personal issues with what I feel is a Terrible interface of a product, much like Tesla using a center massive touchpad only, too cheap to have a screen in front of the driver. Personal Opinion.

1) Totally agree with you that Squirrels are Rodent Pests, hate them, they are not natural to the PNW and destroy more than they help especially when crazy old folks think they are cute and out out pounds of peanuts so they tear up the yard, garden and even block drains, gutters, etc. looking for places to store the nuts. I have come to detest what I thought was a cute animal as a kid for the problems they cause at my house. 2) Agree as much as I want folks to move to EVs, I also am just dumbfounded by the laziness of folks here in North America that throw away so much plastic, aluminum cans and paper products that can be recycled. Worse yet is in Japan, Korea and Especially China and India, they use and throw away so much plastic, Styrofoam, aluminum and steel in the garbage. It amazes me how lacking we are in global recycling still.

Tesla is much like Mercedes, sold on a badge to Lemmings that can only look at the badge and ignore all the quality issues of the product on top of the worst style design ever. Both companies FAIL at style and interior room/design sucks big time.

Volvo Press release covering their move to NACS by the start of 2025. Electric Volvo car drivers will get access to 12,000 Tesla Superchargers across the United States, Canada and Mexico as Volvo Cars adopts North American Charging Standard - Volvo Cars Global Media Newsroom