ccap41

14 hours ago, oldshurst442 said:

GM announced that it would spend nearly 1 billion dollars for a new 6th generation small block V8.  I didnt think that GM's V8s need turbos for base applications.  If that is what you meant and concerning the Tahoe and Suburban.    As for the hybrid thing, GM decided not to go that route when transforming their business to all EVs.  In hindsight, that was a bad move.  But who could have predicted that?   But they should have predicted that as GM has also been known to sleep with Big Oil... So...all that anti-EV talk rhetoric from all KINDS of shytty sources in the USofA should have given them a clue as to what was going to happen 3-5 years down the line when they decided to nix hybrids...

I just think it's silly that GM HAD hybrids in their BOF vehicles but just let them go. If they would have stuck with those, they would have easily been the best on the market today. 

It's also pretty ridiculous to think they'd be able to convince everybody to skip over hybrids on their way to EVs. All of us car guys understand the advantage of EVs but 99% of the population will not do research and are scared of a few headlines they read as they scroll the internets. 

1 hour ago, surreal1272 said:

And speaking of fanboy logic, I could have sworn there was someone here touting the endless virtues of the upcoming Cybertruck and the phenomenal range it will have. Maybe they can explain this little tidbit I just came across (from it's release yesterday).

Ohhhh I thought this EXACT same thing last night when I read a few things on the Cybertruck. MSRP, Range, towing capacity... nothing is close to the claims. 

Those ranges are only slightly further than Ford's and the Lightning came out like 3 years ago now. Ford's small battery in RWD is rated for 240 miles. Big battery and 4WD is rated for 320 miles. 

15 hours ago, oldshurst442 said:

So not only does the TLX look good, it drives sporty.  There is no reason NOT to look at it and just BLINDLY look at a BMW or Mercedes.

I also included Cadillac and Audi, FWIW. But it isn't blindly, it's for a RWD-based architecture/dynamics. 

15 hours ago, oldshurst442 said:

If we just ignore the TLX,  yet another sedan...a WORTHY enthusiast sedan at that, will go away never be replaced. 

I mean, I don't have a whole lot of interest in FWD luxury sedans so if it went away, there wouldn't be much loss, IMO. 

15 hours ago, oldshurst442 said:

In a world of bland CUVs and dying sedans never to come back, Acura has given us a sedan worth driving.  And I do mean driving in an enthusiast kind of way. 

There is no way this has anywhere near the same driving dynamics that a CT5, C Class, 3 Series has. 

15 minutes ago, ccap41 said:

If only they'd step out of the stone age with those engines and join Toyota with modern turbo and/or hybrid engines. 

...and Ford and Ram...

13 hours ago, smk4565 said:

At $46,000 - $58,000 why not get a C-class or 3-series or a Tesla Model 3.  All better choices, or get a larger, less expensive Cadillac CT5 and in all 4 examples you have correct wheel drive, not wrong wheel drive like with the Acura.

Maybe they raised the price so sales drop so they can kill this model off and blame "sagging demand for sedans" and introduce another SUV coupe type vehicle.

We don't always agree but I certainly do here. I have no interest in this when I can get a 3 Series, C Class, Audi 4, Model 3 or CT5 for similar coin. 

12 hours ago, oldshurst442 said:

 I wonder if @surreal1272 is going to fly by here and give you a verbal carpet bombing for suggesting such a thing. He usually does.   Lately though, he has a fetish for giving @David and myself shyte for suggesting that Toyota followers ignore Toyota problems...    He has even went as far as dropping sly comments on threads concerning GM's car problems from 40 phoquing years ago.     Maybe he just ignores you now as he is still frothing at the mouth for me...     THAT and you and him may have a thing in common right now.  As in the common bond of pointing fingers at GM. 

LOL

I know Im playing with fire for daring a name drop at him  right now....he did warn me about that.  Suggested that I had a bad summer because I was a grade A a&&hole...   Oh well...    

Anyway...Im just going to tell you that not everybody wants a BMW or Mercedes.  I know I dont.  Besides the fact that right now, I cant afford a BMW or Mercedes,  when I did, I sure as hell wouldnt want one.   And...the way some Americans view electric cars and especially Elon Musk, why would ANYBODY that hates EVs or Elon would buy a Model 3? 

The TLX is actually a nice looking car.  It has a long hood short deck design.   One could NOT easily see a FWD design language on it.

 

Im not even going to post the Mercedes. Its just that ugly.  But here is a Cadillac

 

Id say the Acura is sleeker.  Despite the transverse engine thing and the whole FWD debacle.   Id say, if the calender said 2003 instead of 2023 and BMW and Mercedes offered these things to us then and Acura and Cadillac had these for us,  I wouldnt be sure if BMW and Mercedes would be sellin' vehicles the American market in 2023...   

 

If you ignore the dash to axel ratio, you wouldn't know anything was FWD vs RWD. 

I think the TLX looks good here but it doesn't quite have RWD proportions. That Caddy looks so much sportier than the TLX. 

13 hours ago, David said:

Cool next year models of Tahoe and Suburban.

The Best Get Better: Meet Chevrolet’s New 2025 Tahoe and Suburban

If only they'd step out of the stone age with those engines and join Toyota with modern turbo and/or hybrid engines. 

1 hour ago, David said:

I do feel that no matter the Legacy OEM, there is a ton of training to do from Sales to Service yet for EVs and sadly it does not help when you have a company like Ford that is only requiring Level 2 home charging chargers to be installed at dealerships. This is pathetic. GM if your top tier is requiring Level 3 charger on site, but middle and bottom tier are level 2. I feel all should be level 3 no matter what.

I find it a little funny that my local Ford dealership has a level 2 charger but my local GM dealer has a CCS fast charger that...you guessed it... out of order. 

17 hours ago, surreal1272 said:

I have to say that the mobile version of this site has become more unusable due to the pop up ads and videos. I get the reason for the ads but the execution of them takes away from the usability. 

For that reason, I only use the desktop version when I'm at work. It's a bit of a bummer but, it is what it is. 

On 11/19/2023 at 6:51 AM, Robert Hall said:

I'm sure there is a substantial price difference...

Of course there will! Then Cadillac will have horrible sales numbers because they're trying to sell the same thing at a much higher cost. 

Ford/Lincoln will probably end up doing the same thing but I can only hope Lincoln differentiates enough to justify existing. 

On 11/20/2023 at 12:19 AM, David said:

Interesting read,  very true that there is a lack of training for sales folks on how to sell EVs.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/car-dealers-love-electric-cars-just-dont-cant-convince-shoppers-2023-11

One of my good friends that sells at a Chevy/Buick/GMC dealership hates everything that GM has come out with. Everything electric they've sold has been nothing but a nightmare that's always in the service bays. 

I certainly wouldn't say dealerships love electric cars quite yet. 

1 minute ago, David said:

And here you are showing imho a very narrow view as this has nothing to do with focus on Tesla, it is a focus on the News Story that shows Tesla is not the Leader in the faster / best charging rate of an EV. You have ignored taking this out of context that the above statement was made against the news story.

This is exactly what I posted:

As such, if this was anyone else you would say that they are trolling the posted person. Is that what your doing, trolling me over the above statement, which imho you are taking out of context.

You obviously cannot see that you're the one who put an emphasis on "NOT", that's the the part where you're injecting your opinion on the piece. 

6 minutes ago, David said:

H'mmm No gotcha just reporting that while Tesla has shown to be reliable, they have been surpassed for charging by Hyundai and others. Just reporting, I put nothing into this other than that. But take it how you feel, no skin of my back my friend.

Yes it was capable, but not at the full potential of what Level 3 is.

I get it that many people will feel that you get what you pay for, those that pay more money for the top of the line Cadillac get the fast great experience and those that can only afford the Chevrolet have to wait much longer.

This is one place that Tesla while having tested out as a slower but reliable charging experience has done right. All of their EVs get the same charging controller so the 3, Y, S and X all can quickly charge no matter the size of the battery.

My point is that GM, Ford, VW should be taking that page from Tesla as Hyundai/Kia/Genesis has done and give the fastest charging experience to the customer. They can milk all they want for software and other EV features in the auto, but if you want to have people go WOW, I want that EV, then remove one item that the Press has hit on as a big negative, especially the crazy conservatives that feel EV should die.

For GM, they should have embraced this from the start if they truly want to go all EV by 2035 or 2030 depending on the country.

Remove the speed limits on Charging and give the best experience possible to the consumer for quick charging.

IMHO

Cadillac press release today:

Cadillac Confirms the 2025 OPTIQ

Possible Lucid Pickup Truck Seen In Clay Model Form (insideevs.com)

The Problem Cadillac/GM have is that they're rebadging vehicles and as EVs, they're even more similar to their Chevrolet counterparts. They're desperately doing something to differentiate themselves, That Optiq is nothing different than an Equinox EV,,,, but it charges faster!  

9 hours ago, David said:

I get it that the Bolt is on older technology, but the Ultium platform @ 800V can handle the speed and they should be making sure all the EVs can maximize the Level 1, 2 and 3 charging IMHO.

The current Bolt could already utilize level 3. It was a slow level 3, but it was still level 3 capable. 55 kW. 

9 hours ago, David said:

This is a good read on who leads in Charging speed and the results might surprise you. Tesla is NOT the leader

They're not the absolute fastest, just the most reliable by a country mile. 

1 hour ago, surreal1272 said:

Outside of the long outdated 4 Runner, all of their SUVs and trucks have gone hybrid or have it as an option but according to David, that is still outdated tech. 

And uhhhh... how many hybrid/plug-in electric SUVs does GM have? They're trying to completely skip over the hybrid/plug-in thing while rocking decades old 3.6L V6s in everything they can until everything is a full EV. 

1 hour ago, surreal1272 said:

Outside of the long outdated 4 Runner, all of their SUVs and trucks have gone hybrid or have it as an option but according to David, that is still outdated tech. 

Which that sucks because I think A LOT of people like what the 4Runner is and if they could only update the dang thing! Is it still running the 4.0 V6 with a 5spd auto?!?

10 minutes ago, surreal1272 said:

Agreed on the 3.4L sales prospects but shhhh, he is not supposed to acknowledge that. Only old $h! from Toyota matters here. Didn't you know?

Oh yeah, isn't the Taco getting new boosted/hybrid engines, as well? 

Last I knew, Ford and GM do not have hybrid mid-size trucks. 

7 minutes ago, surreal1272 said:

For all of Toyotas present flaws, they are not dependent on one group of vehicles like GM and Ford, to provide their profits. Aside from their EVs, GM has just a much "old tech" floating around as the rest of them (the 3.6L, the 5.3L, the 6.2L, etc).

 

I like you threw that in there because you think I am now some kind of Toyota fan (I am not). I just don't deal in fanboy logic. I'll leave that to you and SMK.

ALL OF THIS! For the record, the 5.3L long predates 2000. My mother's '97 Z71 proves that.

Oh yeah, I just wasn't about to look that stuff up. I knew it's been 20+ years and that was good enough for me, Hahaha. 

Chevy's been running the old-@ss 5.3 for decades while Toyota has a brand new boosted 3.4 AND a boosted hybrid in their full-size truck. Obviously, it won't sell worth a sht, for whatever reasons, but it's about as technologically advanced of a truck powertrain as there gets right now. 

26 minutes ago, David said:

So Canyon, Colorado, Maverick, Ranger are not trucks? Now your the one just like the terrible GM Authority story cherry picking the facts.

Fair point, I completely forgot about all of those. 

But, in all fairness, those all could go away and both companies would still thrive off their half tons and HD/SDs. 

Also, wouldn't that make the reliance on trucks for BOTH companies look worse, not just Ford? Moreso Chevy, because the current Ranger is mostly crap compared to the Colorado/Canyon/Taco/Frontier? 

I sure hope GM can find a buyer for Chevy, because they don't have a European partner and rely way too heavily on their truck sales.... 

31 minutes ago, David said:

GM does rely on their trucks, just not as much as ford and clearly has larger sales of SUVs & Cars than Ford. At least GM does not rely on old tech, ignore the future and sits running on old tech with serious quality issues like Toyota.

While their trucks are running the same pushrod engines from 2000. 

GM relies on old tech as much as Ford or anybody else. 

10 hours ago, David said:

OK, Lets break it down by the numbers. Full Year 2022

2022 (Full Year) USA: GM Sales (Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, GMC) - Car Sales Statistics (best-selling-cars.com)

Chevrolet

Trucks make up 612,446

SUVs and Cars make up 905,602

GMC

Trucks make up 269,341

SUVs make up 217,704

Cadillac

Total SUV and Car sales 134,726

Buick

Total SUV sales of 103,519

2022 GM Sales Combined

Trucks - 881,787 from Colorado, Silverado, Canyon and Sierra

SUVs & Cars - 1,361,551

Ford

U.S. Ford Motor Company Sales Decreased Two Percent In 2022 (fordauthority.com)

Ford

Truck sales - 798,871

SUV and Car sales - 982,107

Lincoln

SUV sales - 83,486

Combined total sales

Trucks - 798,871

SUVs and Cars - 1,065,593

 

Trucks Sales

• Ford 798,871
• GM 881,787

SUV and Car sales

• GM - 1,361,551
• Ford/Lincoln - 1,065,593

Ford trucks make up 42.85% of total sales

GM trucks make up 39.3% of total sales.

I will admit that it is not as bad as I thought, as I figured truck sales for Ford was over 50% of their total, but they are still high for both brands. Still relying on a single category for your bulk of sales/profits is never good and I still think Ford has room to improve as does GM.

But even then I still do not think that the bulk of Profits is from trucks alone.

Considering you're using the word "truck" here.

Those 2022 totals and percentages are as follows;

Total Ford sales: 1,780,978

Total F Series sales: 638,340

F Series percent of total sales: 35.8%

Total Chevy sales: 1,518,048

Total Silverado sales: 523,249

F Series percent of total sales: 34.4%

Yeah, FORD is the only one reliant on truck sales.. 

Also, I'm not sure why you're using 2021 data as opposed to the most recent 2022 data that is within your screen shots.

1 hour ago, surreal1272 said:

Everyone has until 2030 according to David yet GM is banking on their profit driven full size trucks to keep them rolling until 2035, but yeah it's nothing like Ford lol.

 

https://gmauthority.com/blog/2023/06/heres-how-much-profit-gm-makes-on-full-size-trucks-and-suvs/

 

Now go ahead remove those trucks and see how long GM would last with that "diverse product line". It would be the same result as Ford if they did that.

It's such a silly argument because if you take away the best selling product from ANY company and they'll be struggling. 

49 minutes ago, David said:

Could Ford be gone by 2030, no I do not think so, but they could have to merge with another stronger auto company to survive.

Have you lost your marbles? 

You think they'll have to merge with somebody else, because EV sales are pretty flat across the globe and they're cancelling one plant In Europe? 

GM doesn't have a plant in Europe and there's currently no plans for one. Does that mean they ought to look for a partner come 2030, too? 

4 minutes ago, David said:

I myself still think that with a 2yr time frame to build a new plant, that this will hold Ford back.

I think GM will be equally "held back" because they don't have any plans for a European Ultium plant. 

48 minutes ago, David said:

, even with a 1yr slow down in economy and folks buying new EVs, this plant still would not be online till 2026 which the economy will be robust again I feel and Ford will then be a couple years behind the competition.

The problem is not enough people ARE buying EVs. Otherwise they wouldn't have cancelled the plans for the plant.

"The slowdown in Europe's EV market is the biggest cause of the delays. According to the International Energy Agency, the EV market in the EU grew 40 percent annually on average from 2017 to 2019, but growth slowed to 15 percent last year. Volkswagen also said EV orders in Europe fell from 300,000 cars in 2022 to 150,000 this year.

16 minutes ago, David said:

OUCH, this does not bode well for Ford. Scrapping plants and not looking long term is how your competition will beat you. Ford is behind GM and will killing a battery plant for European sales, this will put them behind everyone else as the Chinese have entered the market and are not slowing down nor is the German companies.

LG Energy Solution, Ford Scrap Plans for Joint Battery Plant - The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea - Business > Business

I mean, they still have the three US plants all still going up. 

12 hours ago, David said:

Becoming a grandparent in March 2024, it has been interesting listening to my son and daughter in-law talk about names for the coming grandson. 

My wife and I are expecting our first in January and names are where we are completely stumped. We're having a girl but no name we've heard has really stuck out to us yet. 

1 minute ago, David said:

Latest news on NACS

More automakers plug into Tesla's EV charging network | Reuters

Thank god everybody made the switch to the superior charging infrastructure. 

One of the biggest holdups in the switch to EVs is the garbage-@ss infrastructure that's not ran by Tesla. 

Happy Birthday, @Drew Dowdell!

OUCH, this sucks for Cadillac and all 17 Cadillac XT5 and XT6 owners, PLUS Acadia owners. 

https://gmauthority.com/blog/2023/10/2024-cadillac-xt5-and-xt6-recalled-for-missing-windshield-adhesive/