G. David Felt

Listening to this now. Have to say we HAVE NOT seen any talent like his yet to replace him.

MJ Time while working.

Dirty

Toyota Dealers who were shown the upcoming New From Frame up Toyota Tundra says they will have a World leader full size truck to over take Ford, GM and RAM. Toyota Dealers Confident 2022 Tundra Will Be A ‘World Beater’ (motor1.com) From a Tundra TDR that will beat the Raptor and RAM TRX to just a base model that will compete ala-cart with the big 3 Americans. The question is can they as Toyota has not delivered yet. Lots of stories on various sits about the Return of the Nissan Xterra and what seems to be a full size and mid size version. Interesting photoshop versions since Nissan released the first of the teasers. Here's What A New Nissan Xterra Might Look Like (motor1.com) Nissan Released Teaser

Volvo has announced they will start sales later in 2021 of a complete assortment of Electric heavy duty trucks for Europe. Production of Electric Trucks or ETs are set to begin start of 2022 for delivery there after. Volvo Trucks to launch full range of electric trucks in Europe in 2021 | Reuters Toyota announced today that they will in co-partner with Hino develop a Hydrogen Class 8 series of trucks for North America. Toyota believes Hydrogen is a better way to go than electric for Class 8 trucks. The first prototypes will be out for testing by June 2021. Toyota to develop fuel-cell electric truck for North America market | Reuters The following 15 states have banded together to drive the move to clean heavy duty trucks. The States include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Vermont. The goal is to be 30% ZEV by 2030 and 100% ZEV by 2050. This will start with all these states requiring ZEV medium and heavy duty trucks to begin sales starting January 1st 2024 and only selling ZEV trucks by 2045. 15 U.S. states to jointly work to advance electric heavy-duty trucks | Reuters Final news is in relation to a Electric Semi Truck Startup called Thor that has now been rebranded XOS due to a lawsuit. While the Semi Truck is still in development, XOS has started production to deliver to freight companies like UPS a new local EV delivery van. Xos Trucks Loomis and UPS are launch customers who have started to take delivery. XOS is also going public via a buy out by NexGen who uses the Shell Company SPAC. Allowing it to avoid massive red tape by being acquired allowing an easier way to raise funds to further company growth. Very interesting way to go public and makes one wonder if they can really stay solvent if they had to go through normal IPO methods. Exclusive: Electric truck maker Xos in deal talks to go public - sources | Reuters

Seems Norway and Audi have teamed up to reply to GM. Superbowl commercial

Yet you struggle to not stay focused on the FACT this was about the Cadillac CT4 & 5 V-Blackwing edition. Everyone time someone points out how Daimler is now BEHIND Cadillac, you have to throw in EVERYTHING else NOT RELATED to this focus on this thread. What does Rolls or Maybach have to do with the BlackWings? NOTHING, you could ignore and just stay focus and would be better for it, but you have to flitter off into the back 40 Upper 40 Lower 40 to play smoke n mirrors about the fact that Cadillac Luxury maker has a pair of high quality LUXURY Speed Demon cars and Daimler is now BEHIND them. Normal as everyone leap frogs in this industry. You would rather bring in CUVs, FWD Appliance auto's that have been heavily massaged by their AMG division of lower level or higher level than seeing where these auto's truly are. What Ever! ?

This is a Freakin Cool Car and I love the cars in this story. 6 full-size alternatives to muscle cars | Hagerty Media

Interesting, guess I missed this concept Idea Dodge had to make AWD Off Road capable MiniVans. Meet the ’90s Dodge Caravan Off-Road Minivan That Almost Made It to Production (thedrive.com)

I can respect and understand what is posted here. I also think this is based on a rather small, YES SMALL available data due to a limited variety of EV / BEV auto's. I actually expect things to change drastically once Full Size Truck and SUV EVs become standard and people continue with their live driving a BEV versus ICE and then we will see the reduction that science has projected based on scale. I think anyone that wants static numbers at this point is silly as until we have replacements for all the ICE Trucks and SUVs, we will not see any real change. That does not mean it cannot happen once people have the options of what they want to drive in a BEV available from their favorite dealer.

And there you go moving the field goal around the yard to justify you avoiding answering real questions and pushing your own Kool-Aid Daimler agenda. ?

@Drew Dowdell Hate to make assumption but I believe your talking in regards to this: Demand-side management programs save energy and reduce peak demand - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Seems to be working just fine here in Washington state as we take down more dams and improve fish spawning to rebuild fish runs. Plus the replacement by Solar and Wind seems to be picking up any slack and we have plans for far off coast wind farms where stronger winds exist allowing for more energy production than the dams can produce.

WOW, That is a big task especially after we removed 2 dams already on the Elwha River and replaced the power generation with green solutions. Seems a couple more dams are also coming down on the Pilchuck River here as well. Washington dam removal means 37 more miles of salmon habitat restored (phys.org)

Tesla Aliens are coming! Tesla doing a large fleet wide firmware update before shipping to Europe. Tesla updating software of a fleet in parking lot looks like the aliens are coming - Electrek

Define what is bad ass about the CLA45? I think your meaning AMG CLA45 and even then that is just a turd of a Jellybean style wise. Nothing that makes it look any hotter compared to the Cadillac. And dare we say a true from the start RWD for Cadillac, True from the Start FWD for the CLA! AMG CLA45 CT4-V CT4-V Blackwing

Loving this commercial

Where are you getting this mythical options list since they have not released anything other than saying the CT5-V Blackwing will start at $84,990 per the news release. It seems it will have few options not an ala-cart long list based on their new release. V-Series Blackwing: Ultimate Track Capability, Zero Compromise (gm.com) Based on this second news release this is the following only interior options that will be available. Just 2 option packages and that is it! V-Series Blackwing: Designed to Perform (gm.com) If ya do not believe me check out the full Cadillac News release page. News (gm.com)

Right now, my random thought is for this tomorrow at Stevens Pass, supposed to be a Pow Pow Day! Back Side of Stevens Pass Ski Resort in the Bowl.

Up Vote the Zoom Meeting of Auto Enthusiast. Love it!

This is where a dash cam comes in helpful as you could have turned the video footage over to the police and they could ticket them for littering and for aggressive behavior possibly.

In reading the write up at electrek, this got me to thinking about the current state of Li-ion batteries where China controls the world Li-ion supply by owning 75%. As such all major battery production companies produce a heavy amount of their batteries in China and ship across the world. The current 46th administration of the US has committed $400 billion to buying / using US made batteries in a wide range of products, auto's military, etc. and part of this is to spur investment by US tech startups to drive forward aggressively in moving into solid state battery packs that use various minerals that are not controlled by China. To quote the story at the link below: Wall Street believes this too, as it has recently backed battery startups in going public. Analysts are quite optimistic that EV sales have nowhere to go but up in the next decade. These startups include silicon valley based Sila Nanotechnologies Inc., which just raised $590 million in new wall street funding. Romeo Power went public last year and is developing lithium-ion battery technologies out of California. Meanwhile, Lithium Americas Corp. is based in Canada but also operates in the US. This startup recently sold $400 million worth of stock in a public offering in order to finance a new lithium project in Nevada. Wonder if any other automakers are working on batteries in Nevada? Most of the funding for these startups is going toward factory construction and streamlined battery manufacturing processes. However, while these tremendous rounds of public funding are encouraging to the future of a US EV battery market, small companies lack the battery resources required to scale toward genuine competitiveness. In support of gm's EV agenda, LG Chem is building a massive battery production plant in Ohio. Tesla is drastically expanding production in Nevada. While China is the leader big time with control of the Lithium, Nickel and Cobalt and a grow influence in graphite, the US startups have found numerous ways to build solid state batteries using other elements from copper, aluminum, etc. Creative alternatives focused on solid state batteries which has many numerous advantages over the Li-ion battery packs could make a huge difference. Chattanooga Tennessee is on the map as multiple large scale battery production plants are being built to support various auto companies. An Australian-based company called Novonix LTD. has built a factory in Tennessee. They are using Synthetic graphite they produce for their own anodes. Here they have already made a huge inroad as they will produce in the US for shipment to Korea for use by Samsung SDI Co. in their Samsung batteries replacing China made graphite. The US companies are small and clearly need to grow and ramp up fast. As the article states below, the US has a fighting chance by ramping up on battery capacity, shorter and more efficient supply chain (yes China uses lots of manual labor compared to robotic labor) and innovative alternatives to current Li-ion battery materials. Sounds off and let us know what you think. Can the US take a larger share of the battery market? How the US plans to capture the EV battery market - Electrek

Some Day I plan to travel a nice cross country road trip and meet as many members as possible.

Popeye

Tuesday