Z-06

I am flying in on November 12, and Thanksgiving Wednesday. Camino and Olds, where art thou?

Yes Bosch icons rock. I replaced all three car wipers with those. Unless I have deluge of water pouring on the car, I rarely put them on more than second fastest intermittent speed. It is a fantastic buy. About $22 for piece they out last the $14 crap that you get from Jiffy Boob or Wiwimart.

Well said sir. I think the ideas here at C&G because of diversity in political, social and economic opinions have been like a melting pot. We at C&G need to create our own movement, not a party nor political entity, but a social entity to make our country better. Initially it all started bitterly here, but more and more conversations have been very constructive.

As usual, nothing new that has been brought on the table. Same tirade continues.

Congrats BV. Enjoy the machine. Hondas of that era were fun to drive vehicles. When are you going to bolt your ironing board on the trunk?

And what is the daily crow special are you going to boil with those numbers?

Sherlock Holmes

Gotta agree there.

Look the Pro got a Masters in Business Administration for Board, Deployment Model, and Fan sink. 6 Gbps is awesome.

Being a GM site - here it comes. I always loved this GM concept.

Most of these are based off on Suzuki Wagon R or similar Daihatsu. Japanese Kei cars. Yes these mini-minivans are a rage there. The specifications for Wagon R: Wheelbase 2,360 mm (92.9 in) Length 3,520 mm (138.6 in) Width 1,475 mm (58.1 in) Height 1,660 mm (65.4 in) Kerb weight 825 kg (1,819 lb)

Why does not Cruze come with manual transmission on Turbo? What if I do not want the Eco and the LTZ/RS packages with a manual transmission? It is kinda oxymoron to have RS package without a manual transmission. When is Eco supposed to be out?

One thing I would add, which is not as part of the options - Marketing and Efforts for Perception Change. That MUST be #1, because GM is committed to the other points.

I guess you are having a Sellathon Blast of your IBM mainframes and 8086's. Happy Birthday

Bob come out of your cave in Paoli.

Get rid of it. Leaner the better. However, I do recommend keeping the threads in the information section too such as alternative fuel propulsion, etc. They are useful resources. I more than often wander to those sections trying to find ideas.

That is precisely my point. All these numbers are empirical or performed mostly through self hypothesizing research. And chances are that we will be never accurate. As some of the people point out it how Volt is inferior to PIP or Leaf in number games. It is not always numbers as we have seen from messrs bankers. Volt is surely a compromise but with a real immediate solution to energy independence if gas were to go away or to stop money being siphoned to places of instability. Till the battery research makes it possible to go 500 miles on one charge with a 20 minutes recharge or micro nuclear fusion reactors sit in a car's engine bay or something else - Volt can make the world go by with either using connection to the grid or using ANY other alternative propulsion. Sure it is costly, but there is no cost to independence. Initial adopters will feel the heat, but that is how technology works till economies of scale and production costs are established. As I had said previously Volt naysayers are hell-bent to bury it in the ground for whatever it takes. It is like calling Al Capone's to be born child to be the next con man so let us kill him now even before he is born.

I meant when the charge retention life is only two years then Leaf is certainly in trouble. Because the 100 miles will become less very soon. But if it is 10 years then it is obvious. Certainly Prius can go Volt route, but then it will be like the pot calling the kettle black given that Toyota has gone on the record that Volt is inferior than Prius. It would be a vindication that GM was right. I understand that part, that is why I said on further research. What is to prevent the engine from replenishing the battery faster if a superior system comes into picture or that the Li-Ion batteries are done away with the charge memory? GM is applying a factor of safety by limiting the range of usage till more research is performed. It may even not use the remaining 50% but it certainly does not prevent from using that if the research proves so.

But after how long? If after 10 years who cares? And that is where research comes into picture. With modern nanotech li-ion batteries it is matter of time that those reserves drawing will be gone. If it is less than a couple of years then PI-Prius and Leaf are in real trouble because suddenly the economics will tilt.

The 80% to 30% usage is really intriguing. What if after more research GM realizes that the battery can be used optimally from 100% to 0% range? The opening up of that extra 50% reserve is just a software update away and suddenly you have 80 miles range (50 to 100 miles depending on how you drive - to be politically correct) plus an additional 300 miles on gas.

Well written, Boss. No it is important because an early loss of battle in perception and it is same old GM losing the war. GM needs to proactively destroy this notion.

Apparently Toyota Prius Fan-base provided me with the wrong information about the battery capacity. I had not looked at the MT article. The Prius with 3KWHr gives approx. 11 miles, while Volt with 8KWHr has a range of 35 miles, which suggests that both the batteries discharge with similar efficiency to provide approx. similar range/charge ratio. However, the efficiency of recharging the Prius is definitely better by about 22%. Again I think the number 57.5 mpg is not the correct number, because this is the quote from Motortrend: One cannot assume that the battery has been drained completely for the car to use gasoline. All MT states is that the charging was not possible to completely recharge the 3KWHr battery. So the number can be definitely inflated if there was some charge left in the battery. Toyota claims that it uses the same Gen 3.0 system for the Plug-in Prius as the conventional one. Given the extra girth, it just is not physically possible to gain approx. 15-20% in mileage if the powertrain stays the same. People driving the Prius in real world at 80 mph have recorded numbers far lower than the 48 mpg highway rating. So a conservative estimate of 48 mpg should be used. Another thing is C&D reports numbers for Volt at 80 mph speed, where we know that Volt may be losing a lot of engine power to supplant the electric unit at higher speeds. While Motortrend's test was clearly to see the higher limits of efficiency of Prius, C&D was less scientific. I think at lower speeds Volt's MPG would be higher while running only on gas because less drag to overcome and the engine will be operating at lower RPM. Not to that it would be close to Prius given the inherent inefficiency of a series powertrain, but we can see it reach 40 mpg. That is 15-17% gain, which will play significantly. To your excellent points I may add. If gas is to exhaust tomorrow and our Crazy Government feels it is all micro-nuclear reactors from this point on, Prius will fall off the line after 11 miles and stay there. Leaves will go to 100 miles till they sit for another 4 hours to get charged if there is a charging station. Volt can go forever. It is a compromise certainly, but it is the better solution for the future. And there is no dead end to the technology. Just one was and that too from Toyota Prius humpers' own mouth piece. At least I had basis for those numbers and did not make up detergent box numbers. Now go back and answer your flub about comparing before and after sale of GMAC in GM's reporting numbers back in 2007 or the flub about accepting Repub Issa's claim of GM shares need to be $130 each to be profitable. These are few of the many.

Again you skillfully ignore the $350/month lease, which is what GM is offering to match your leapfrogger Prius and fallen off the tree Leaf.

First off I do not know why you chose the 70 miles. But let us say you are correct, the Prius Plug-in packs 1.6 kwhr of battery, which is fifth of Volt's 8 kwhr of usable battery. So if Volt's battery range is 35 miles, Prius battery range should be 7 miles. Assuming same ratio of electric input to charging for the Prius as the Volt, 1.6kwhr battery will require 2.68kwhr of electricity. Thus cost of electricity to charge Prius is $0.32. Prius mpg highway is 48. It will thus need 1.31 gallons to make the remaining distance at a cost of $3.94. So the price of operation of Prius is $4.26 not $3.42. But if we assume 40 miles. Cost of operation for that range is: Volt: Electricity: $1.61 Gas: $0.43 Total: $2.04 Plug-in Prius Electricity: $0.32 Gas: $2.06 Total: $2.28

Keep your eyes open boss.