G. David Felt

@oldshurst442 Thought of you today, when I had a single meeting after my doctors appointment. A new team member based in California was chatting with one of our team members based in Toronto. The California team member just could not grasp why the Toronto team member could not drive to Calgary and back in the same day to have lunch at the CN Tower.

Conspiracy Theories

Best example of Alien Fodder yet

Politicians

I totally feel your pain mate, the right but cheek has that pins and needle affect along with the calf cramp and the occasional toe tingles. Sucks, but first I have to address my left knee, then I can address the low back, pinched nerve issues. On a funny note, my son asked me to marry him and his fiancée. I said yes, but Washington state requires you to be a part of religion. So I followed the links from the WA state website that points to a variety of organizations that will certify you to perform weddings. This atheist is now an ordained minister! ?

Two interesting stories for today: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/26/us-auto-industry-down-3-million-sales-19-since-2019/ QUOTE: “Fun fact. The overall auto industry has on average declined 1.18% y/y since 2015. In this span, BEVs have grown on average 57.67% y/y while ICE sales declined 2.51% y/y. Total ICE production in 2022 was just 74 million … a level last seen in 2007! With BEVs really capturing the market now it seems clear we are well past ‘peak ICE’ which happened in 2017 at 96.5 million cars.” Compared to 2021, things change up a bit. Tesla still saw strong growth — just not as much of course (37%). Cadillac was up decently (14%). And a few other brands were up moderately — GMC was up 7%, Chevrolet was up 6%, and Mercedes was up 6%. Chevrolet (80,000+) and GMC (35,000+) were up the most in volume terms aside from Tesla (~139,000). Looking at the suffering brands, Honda lost the most volume-wise year over year (down a whopping 428,021), followed by Nissan (-236,355), Toyota (-178,032), Ram (-102,137), and Jeep (-94,097). In terms of a percentage drop, Fiat is still on the bottom of the pile. (Is Fiat going to survive in the USA?) Buick (-42%), Acura (-35%), Honda (-33%), and Alfa Romeo (-30%) also saw a significant drop in sales year over year. OUCH on the sales front. The car folks like @ccap41 @oldshurst442 @surreal1272 @Robert Hall @Drew Dowdell @riviera74 should enjoy this story. [VIDEO] 2025 Corvette Zora: Would You Buy One? - Corvette: Sales, News & Lifestyle (corvetteblogger.com)

Sciatic Nerve

True, I am finally downstairs working, so I am able to keep an eye on the site. WOW, I have a high pain tolerance, but this is a new kind of pain that I have not experienced. Roll my left leg to the left and all is fine. Roll it to my right and wow, stars. On top of this, just got a call from my doctor about discomfort I have had in my right hip and waking up at night with my right calf cramping and he had me get x-rays on Friday. Results show degenerative disc in L1 to L7 and L5 pinching on my sciatic nerve. Go figure, nothing I ever do is easy or in small quantities. LOL

Surgery

FYI - You might not see me post much in the coming weeks as on Friday night I twisted my knee being in a hurry and popped my ACL. Braced up and on crutches and pain meds. Have to see an orthopedic doctor this week.

Pain Killer

While I love saving gas, I am all for having a little extra omf under the hood. Example is my daughters 1999 Durango with the 5.9L V8 in her 4x4 that they then made it an AWD RT edition for 2000 and removed the 5.8L from the 4x4 option list in 2000 with a smaller V8 in the 4x4 model. She is over 300,000 miles and while the auto is old and not as fast as it used to be, with maintenance, it is still running strong and moves way better than an equal Durango that has the V6 or smaller V8 engines. I believe the Encore GX with a little more omf, aka bigger engine, extra piston would be what I would want if I could fit and drive one. The 3 cylinder motors I have not seen great history with them, but then it could also be my limited exposure to them since everything I drive and have owned have always been V8 SUVs/Trucks.

I would do my mid 80's Monte Carlo SS Aero or standard with T-Tops. Course this is cool too. Experimental EV: 1967 Buick Riviera Electric Vehicle | Barn Finds

All awesome candidates for conversion to EV powertrain if the person loves the car enough.

I think you might have seen it elsewhere as I never seen the videos till, I was cruzing during a boring all hands meeting on YouTube and came across it today. Then I find on binging the twitter coverage from one of the local news stations. I agree with you that the exit ramp that is there and I took a couple weeks back to take the wife to the Flower and Garden show at the convention center is short and terrible off ramp to a red light. Yet it was built back in 1960 when autos were a different breed. I will say they just finished a major expansion of the convention center and hotel rooms to attract tech conventions and I was surprised as many locals that this ramp was not closed for good. Politicians got their way with a old, design poor exit ramp that really should have been made to go away.

Exciting to see the spy photos of the EV above the LYRIQ out in winter weather testing. Electric Cadillac Crossover Above Lyriq Spied Testing (gmauthority.com) I do like the more traditional upright back on this suv.

@Drew Dowdell @surreal1272 @oldshurst442 @Robert Hall @ccap41 @riviera74 I am sure there are many and I wish like slack they had an @channel ability as this video is just too funny. Does not matter if your drive a car, suv, truck, ev or ICE. This is the Union St. Exit to down town Seattle at the Convention center and the off-ramp is a 50 plus year old off-ramp that is way too short and clearly so many people do not pay attention to the signs that go from 60mph to 20 mph in about 500 feet. As such, I just discovered that one of the folks working in the building at the off-ramp has built a compilation video of all the crashes. Enjoy Seattle Stupidity at it's best. Found a tweet of the off ramp and someone actually driving it. Seems it is 60 to 30 in a few hundred feet at best and then like 50 feet to 20mph and around the corner. Crazy.

Saw tonight a 1978 Indy 500 pace corvette at the shell station as I was passing by, looked very clean, a boomer was gassing it up, but surprised that with the snow coming down, he had taken it out for a spin. I have to say that while they had their issues, still to this day, this is one of my favorite body designs for the corvette, t-tops and all. I will say that the only thing I wish Chevrolet had done is what you find on custom corvettes from this generation, the built in aerodynamic lights like this 1980 custom stingray. Learned that famed Corvette designer Bill Mitchell was involved in this custom stingray. Cherry 1980 Stingray Has Just 700 Miles Since 1982 Restomod (95octane.com)

University of Maryland, director of Materials Innovation and lead author of the paper seems to think we can have a greener planet and healthier life by using shell fish or more specifically the Chitin that is found in the shellfish. Crabs are among just one of the many shellfish that not just Americans, but pretty much the global population loves to eat leaving tons and tons of shellfish for the garbage dump until now. Lithium as we know has its own draw backs when it comes to mining and refining the material for our greener EVs. Yet this is the most common used material for the battery cells. Now we have the first research done that is thinking outside the box in regard to how to build battery cells. As the world transitions to deploying green energy solutions and electric vehicles, the batteries being used by this technology should also be evo-friendly. Currently the chemicals used in conventional batteries such as lithium-ion can take hundreds to thousands of years to break down. These same chemicals are corrosive, flammable and in cases of consumer-gadgets batteries have caught fire or caused fires that took place in either the products or recycling centers. The Center for Materials Innovation at the University of Maryland has come up with a solution that is a proposed A Zinc coordinated chitosan electrolyte that they propose. This chitosan-Zn electrolyte enables the desirable Zn-deposition. To quote the released paper: Rechargeable aqueous Zn-metal battery is promising for grid energy storage needs, but its application is limited by issues such as Zn dendrite formation. In this work, we demonstrate a Zn-coordinated chitosan (chitosan-Zn) electrolyte for high-performance Zn-metal batteries. The chitosan-Zn electrolyte exhibits high mechanical strength, Zn2+ conductivity, and water bonding capability, which enable a desirable Zn-deposition morphology of parallel hexagonal Zn platelets. Using the chitosan-Zn electrolyte, the Zn anode shows exceptional cycling stability and rate performance, with a high Coulombic efficiency of 99.7% and >1,000 cycles at 50 mA cm−2. The full batteries show excellent high-rate performance (up to 20C, 40 mA cm−2) and long-term cycling stability (>400 cycles at 2C). Furthermore, the chitosan-Zn electrolyte is non-flammable and biodegradable, making the proposed Zn-metal battery appealing in terms of safety and sustainability, demonstrating the promise of sustainable biomaterials for green and efficient energy-storage systems. End result is that the energy efficiency of these battery cells are 99.7% after 1000 cycles of charging or about 400 hours of charging on the cell. Benefits: Quick charge and discharge without significant performance degradation Not flammable Cells if disposed of in the ground breakdown in just 5 months due to microbial degradation leaving Zinc behind for recycling Biomedical engineering has found that processing the food waste of shellfish into other uses is a booming business. Currently shellfish processed is now used in wound dressing as an anti-inflammatory treatment on wounds as another example. Colleges in the U.K. and Spain have per reviewed the paper and agree that this has great potential to giving green energy creation a greener energy storage. The researchers of the University of Maryland are being quiet at this time but are moving forward into prototype production of Chitin-Zinc battery cells for testing by both the automotive industry and energy companies. End result is an EV battery that is good for 300 miles of range would be able to handle 1,000 charge cycles in a 10-year period with minimal loss of storage. In this case a Chitin-Zinc battery pack would only loose .03% of its storage capacity according to the research done to date. End result is as we transition away from dirty energy sources, such as coal, the world will need a environmentally friendly source of storage for green energy such as wind, solar and hydro. Crustaceans could provide a solution that would reduce the reliance on lithium-ion batteries. View full article

Latest reviews are just bashing Tesla as junk compared to Korean or other EV products. Kia, Hyundai Catching up to Elon Musk's Tesla With Stylish Electric SUVs (businessinsider.com) Tesla Model Y Vs. Kia EV6: Comparing the Sporty Electric SUVs (businessinsider.com) Just looks alone show how dated Tesla has become. EV6 versus Tesla Y Ioniq 6 versus Tesla 3

This is an awesome read. Hyundai Ioniq 6 Gets Low Starting Price and Tesla-Beating Range (businessinsider.com)

@oldshurst442 I will say that I am excited for the Blazer SS AWD EV. This could be a hoot to drive as right now they are estimating 557 horsepower in AWD form for a cuv and that totally beats my Trailblazer SS body on frame fun auto. 2008 Trailblazer SS AWD 400hp/400 lb-ft of torque mid-size suv 173.5-inch overall length 113-inch wheelbase length 74.7-inch overall width 67.83-inch height 7.82-inch ground clearance 0 to 60 mph in 9.4 seconds 2024 Blazer SS AWD EV 557hp/648 lb-ft of torque mid-size cuv ????-inch overall length ????-inch wheelbase ????-inch overall width ????-inch height ????-inch ground clearance 0 to 60 mph in under 4 seconds Comparing this to the Blazer RS ICE version 191.88-inch overall length 112.7-inch wheelbase 76.7-inch overall width 67-inch overlength 7.60-inch ground clearance 0 to 60 mph in under 4 seconds While I have not found firm specifications, but in interviews, Chevrolet has said it will come in around the same size as the Blazer RS ICE CUV. This puts it in the same ballpark as my SS and might be a good fit for my wife.

True, much of this philosophical debate circles around financial keeping up with the jones versus living within ones means and enjoying to the maximum what one can afford and live with. While yes you are correct my friend that none of mine are CUVs, they are SUVs and are fun to drive. I do believe there are some CUVs that are fun to drive, but off the top of my head I cannot think after just finishing up a long day of writing a new Hands On Lab for our Trade Show in May in Vegas, so I think I would have to say that some of the German Performance CUVs might just be a hoot to drive even for the segment they are. Overall, the driving for the pure joy of driving is lost on the majority of Lemmings who get a license. AKA Prius owners, or heck just about any one who buys any auto and then farts along in the left lane at 40, 20 under the posted 60 MPH speed limit here and to make matters worse, we seem to have gotten a group of new idiot drivers who think driving in the left lane, 20 under with their hazards on is safe driving. ? At this point, my bottle of wine is calling me and a movie. Good night all, check in tomorrow. ?

Yet some do consider the Corolla GT-S and Beretta performance cars for their segment.