G. David Felt

That is very cool, wish more would realize that Benz is not the center of the auto world and not the original creator.

Lots on the EV charging front that I have been swamped by work for our tradeshow to write about. VW Charging Stations: https://chargedevs.com/newswire/volkswagen-group-components-to-produce-fast-charging-station-with-storage/ More Wireless Charging options for Auto's. I honestly think we will see the Plug in pig tails go away fast as Wireless charging parking spots take over: https://chargedevs.com/newswire/mahle-licenses-wireless-ev-charging-technology-from-witricity/ https://chargedevs.com/newswire/witricity-acquires-qualcomm-halo/ New EV Charging networks to offer extreme fast charging in California to challange traditional and state provided as well as existing providers. https://chargedevs.com/newswire/propel-fuels-to-launch-ev-charging-network-in-california/ BP invests in Chinese charging platform Powershare for use in China and Globally at gas stations: https://chargedevs.com/newswire/bp-invests-in-chinese-charging-platform-powershare/ Tesla release a CCS adapter that will ship standard with all European auto shipments to plug into non-Tesla chargers. https://chargedevs.com/newswire/tesla-makes-ccs-adapter-standard-on-new-european-model-s-and-x-vehicles/

This +1,000,000,000,000 to the power of 10. Totally agree, while not an Apple Fan, Jobs kept people on the edge of their seat with excitement and drove folks to spend money in the Apple Stores and Cell Phone Providers. That is clearly falling off as to why Apple no longer reports cell phone sales. Mary has done great for GM in turning a Ship around and is needed to keep it in the black and on course, but she needs to let Product Visionaries drive the rest of the auto business. In regards to Auto Visionaries, I am hoping Mary B is doing that and we will all judge it once we see Cadillac's first EV CUV. If it is spacious and luxurious to drive folks into buy, then she is balancing leadership with product driven sales. The next 18-24 months are going to be interesting.

Not sure if I am overlooking this or not, while I like the way posts now show up in this new updated version, I do have a challenge in getting to the Forum list of threads as from the home page I do not find where to go to get the forum list. The minimalist tool bar at the top has gotten too minimalist. This is what I see: Getting to this page I was lucky as I typed in /forums after the www.cheersandgears.com address in my browser.

Use that metal circle stamp thingy you posted a pic of to stamp into the fender Invicta GS.

UPS uses Workhorse electric vans in the US and ARRIVAL electric vans in the UK. https://pressroom.ups.com/pressroom/ContentDetailsViewer.page?ConceptType=PressReleases&id=1525867012405-924 https://pressroom.ups.com/pressroom/ContentDetailsViewer.page?ConceptType=PressReleases&id=1441744963510-216 https://pressroom.ups.com/pressroom/ContentDetailsViewer.page?ConceptType=PressReleases&id=1446039616630-395

Nope the XT5 interior I can get into but no one can sit behind me. Lucky for me, the wife drove it all week long and when we went out together, drove the Escalade. ? Right back at ya!!!

I wonder if the AWD option would be on the Hybrids only as you could probably squeeze an electric motor between those rear wheels.

LOL, SMK would want to race them. Couple Grand is what your 100,000 mile service / tune up costs now on pretty much all ice auto's. How is that at 100,000 miles versus if you had to replace that battery at 100,000. Much less maintenance costs and since batteries have gotten better and better, I doubt you will have the 100,000 service cost ice auto's get hit with. I totally agree that people should be able to buy whatever they can afford and like. Yet when you break down the miles driven of what gas costs versus electricity, EV's are cheaper to drive. 1200 miles a month is between $400 to $450 for gas here in Washington state and yet $28 dollars for the electricity. That means do I spend @ $400 * 12 months $4,800 dollars in gas or $28 * 12 months $336? You still have oil changes, service on the ICE and if your hard on breaks that could come sooner than every 2-3 years.

Thank you for expanding on the automagically adjust the charge as the battery gets full. That is very true and due to that intelligence is why we see very little failure on Li battery packs even on technology like laptops or cell phones. Many now talk with the charger on the progress of charging so they do adjust. I do think Tesla will overcome this regulation of charging by using their newly bought Supercapacitor company from LA that builds Auto Supercapacitors. I can see them being used not just from a performance standpoint but also in a recharge standpoint of letting the supercapacitor take the hit from rapid charging and stream the electrical flow back to the batteries.

I still see a ton of these all the time especially on the weekend when I go skiing. AWD with mini stage coach doors. Rather comfy way to go up the mountain and even off road.

Having just been in an XT5 for the week as the dealership fixed my SS as the starter died at 150K miles, I will say that the interior design is very subdued and yet very easy to use and relaxing. I am very interested in seeing how sales of the Aviator and this XT6 does in the marketplace. Will be interesting to see how the public receives these two CUVs and their contrasting interiors.

Very cool, this would increase sales here in Washington state. I cannot tell you how many GM AWD full size vans I see on the passes either there for ski / snowboard or with trailer hitch and snowmobiles. AWD is the right thing to do for Chrysler on their minivan.

In the early days of Lithium Ion batteries, yes too fast of a charge would kill off cells shorting the battery life. Today much of what is built can handle fast charging with no loss of cell life which has been proven by the hybid auto's used in taxi service that have hundreds of thousands of miles driven on them and no to minimal cell death. As we move towards solid state batteries, we will be able to recharge even faster. The biggest issue is heat that builds up as to why the V3 chargers have liquid cooling charge cables compared to the air cooled V2 cables. Heat over time does degrade products as to why liquid cooling becomes important for battery conditioning and recharging. Nissan Leaf was delayed getting their long range Leaf Plus cars out due to changing from an air cooled battery to a liquid temperature controlled battery. This helps insure the 10yr warranty works with minimal obligation to full fill replacing the battery pack due to degraded battery capacity. Plus as it states in the writeup, conditioning the battery to a certain temp allows for maximizing a fast recharge of said battery.

This is growing on me and I am excited that they are adding models to the lineup. Pricing seems inline with the industry and should help deliver more sales to the Cadillac dealerships.

Tesla announced the evening of March 6th 2019 that Version 3.0 of their supercharging network would roll out across the globe and be in place by the end of calendar year 2019. With the growth of the global market and to support a ever growing base of Tesla 3 owners and the upcoming new products, charging needed to get faster to reduce wait times by their customers. As such. V3 Supercharging was born out of Tesla's experience with the world's largest grid connected batteries enabling Tesla to surpass all OEM auto competitors in recharging their electric auto's. V3 Supercharging is a utility scale new architecture product that can delivery a peak rate of 250kW per car using a new 1MW power cabinet delivered via liquid cooled charging lines. This allows the Tesla 3 to recover 75 miles of range in 5 min with a charge rate of 1000 miles per hour. This new charging technology cuts the average time spent recharging by 50%. In addition to the new 250kW Superchargers, Tesla is able to push out an update to the existing V2 Superchargers that will allow a 145kW charge rate on the 12,000 plus V2 Superchargers around the world. This will be coming in the next couple of weeks as Tesla works to reduce charge times at existing charge stations. Tesla is expecting to double by the end of the calendar year 2019 the number of Tesla auto's on the road globally and having a faster recharge time on existing Superchargers is critical, but in high volume areas, this will need to be addressed and Tesla says they can do this by adding the 250kW chargers to existing stations. Tesla V2 charging cable to the left, V3 liquid cable to the right. This new supercharger no longer splits power with the vehicle next to you but delivers the full amount of charge to your battery. Tesla expects the average time spent by a customer at a Supercharging station to drop to 15 min on average. Tesla is also pushing out to Tesla 3's a new On-Route battery Warmup software feature that will intelligently heat the battery to the optimal temperature so that at the time of arrival at the supercharging station it can take a full high capacity charge quickly to get you on your way. This becomes very important as Tesla says with the Model Y on the way V3 SuperCharging is the only way Tesla can sustain quickly keeping people moving and not waiting around. San Francisco bay area will get the first of the all new V3 Supercharger stations. These new V3 chargers will be made available to the Tesla Early Access Program participants. V3 Supercharging stations will get installed in North America during Q2 & Q3 time frames with Asia and Europe installations starting in Q4 of 2019. Now you might ask what about the Tesla S and X auto's? While they currently will not be able to take advantage of the 250 kW chargers, Tesla does say in their release that in the coming months, Tesla S and X will get software updates to allow them to use the 145kW V2 Superchargers. One might ask how does this compare to what the VW-backed Electrify America network? Electrify America is currently rolling out 350 kW capable chargers. These chargers will allow a Tesla 3 to get 185 miles of range in 9 minutes once the Tesla 3 has their new Software update. The Future of ultra fast recharging is coming and should allow a revolutionary change in the way people drive. View full article

UPS, FedEx use Vans for delivery here in Washington, have not had trucks in years. Maybe they still use the old trucks around you. But the Dually wheel sprinter Van is in use here. Those are 1 ton vans that would easily be replaced by a service version of this EV van. USPS uses a weird range of vans and other auto's around here as I have seen less and less of the old traditional white box auto who ever built them. These are very common here in the neighborhoods making deliveries. Easily replaced by an electric version. Amazon Prime uses the Sprinter vans all over the west coast, easily replaced by an electric version. UPS delivery vans like this is what we see every day on the streets and in the neighborhoods. Same with Fedex All these ICE vans can easily be replaced by electric versions.

According to FedEx and UPS you have the following details. FedEx delivery drivers average 160 miles a day. 52 weeks in a year @ 5 days a week equal the following math (5 * 160 *52 = 41,600 miles a year driven) UPS delivery drivers average 200 miles a day. Same formula (5 * 200 * 52 = 52,000 miles a year driven) Pretty much most service companies average 15,000 miles a year or more so recovering a 15-20K up front cost is very realistic in the first 24 months. The formulas for LNG or CNG converted products have shown that with those fuels selling at half the price of Diesel even with the conversion cost of the motor and the LNG / CNG fuel tank costs, that most often those cost are recovered in 24 months and then bigger savings happen over the longer life due to less maintenance for LNG/CNG over diesel or Gas. I know for a fact that my brother in-laws appliance repair business they average 20,000 miles a year on the work vans. Showed him this last night and while he is put off by the Sprinter van, he did say he would be willing to buy one and see how it did on the routes. He is interested in reducing the overall costs to his vehicle fleet and would love it if Ford or GM would offer a full size electric van. With EV vans the cost of maintenance is even lower and the cost of electricity is lower so recovering this upfront cost should be very doable in the first could years. With examples of only 2 or 3 oil changes a year, this ignores that the more driving the more maintenance on an ICE auto. There is more than just oil changes too on an ICE auto that needs to be looked at. Brakes, differential, transmission, so much more costs on ICEV compared to EV. Yes, UPS, FedEx and USPS have all stated they plan to replace ICE auto's with EV's especially for inner city use or dense suburban areas. Just like they are replacing their Diesel semi's with LNG/CNG ones. All about reducing costs in maintenance, fuel and helping with cleaner air.

I totally disagree with you on the Sprinter TD van. Sadly my brother inlaw who has an appliance service business has replaced all of them less than 5 years old due to high maintenance cost, breakage constantly compared to the Ford vans he replaced them with. Sprinters are not reliable as MB would like to make them out to be. I hope their EV van is far better. CNG converted vans have been proven to totally offset the high conversion price at 15K miles a year in service compared to gas or diesel. EV's will do the same thing due to low maintenance and lower cost to recharge the battery packs.

2019 Forester has Forest Green Pearl Metallic 2019 RAM Black Forest Green Pearl Coat 2018 Metallic Forest Green Ford Bullit 50th Anniversary edition 2019 Audi RS 5 Sportback Sonoma Green Metallic 2018 VW Tiguan Dark Moss Green Metallic Not allot, but clearly some brands realize more than the basic Black, White, Silver, Red, Blue for colors. Mazda needs to step out of their very conservative colors. Add a couple fun ones.

Their CUV's Scream for a lovely Metallic Forest Green!

@oldshurst442 In the US, auto exhaust noise cannot go over 95 decibels. Many rock concerts break the 105 decibel limit that does cause hearing loss. Harley Davidson has come under fire as their open header bikes have often broke the sound limit and in the cities, you are very correct that many people complain about the noise waking them up during the night when sleeping.

Not hamstrung by electric propulsion and even if 15 to 20K higher priced, the savings on maintenance, oil, gas will easily off set and have bigger savings over a 3-5 year period than gas.

So then VW Arteon is really ancient.