Drew Dowdell

Clearly the merging of the Buick and Opel styles happening here. The Interior design is a thematic clear tie-in to the Buick Envision. Mokka Envision

Wow a "4.6L" pentastar that gets 25-35 mpg in a heavy-ass brick of a full-size sedan?? It's crazy because Fiat-Chrysler can barely manage that with their 4-cylinder cars. I always get good fuel economy from the LX cars with the 3.6. Highway is usually in the low to mid 30s.

It was only 5 years difference between the two.

People bought the Pruis to save on gas (even if the financials of that idea were sketchy), but taking the fuel savings aspect away, the Pruis was rather lousy as a car. It handles poorly, has a lot of road and engine noise, every one I've driven has creaks and rattles, and they're ugly. Now that gas is as low as $1.25 a gallon in some parts of the country, the fuel saving aspect is far less compelling and cannot overcome the negatives of the car. Other hybrids I've driven are actually decent at their primary task of being a car. You don't take an experience penalty to drive a Fusion Hybrid or Chevy Volt. You just get the normal, capable, Fusion and save fuel. In a Fusion hybrid, there is no downside outside of the price of admission to the hybrid theme park.

Shame.. because it's actually a fantastic car for what it was intended to be. It was just priced too high. I could be completely tempted by one once deprecation does its thing.

Later assface.

March

I agree that FCA has one foot on a very slippery stone. Their problem right now is their CEO trying to raise brands from the dead rather than trying to keep alive ones alive.

... no.. again, Dec '14 was an unusually large sales gain for the 200. They basically ran a sale and moved a whole bunch of extra metal (and probably dumped the previous bodystyle into fleets). Dec '15 was a return to norm. It looks like a big drop, but it is really just a return to normal. For the entire year, the 200 was up 52%. http://www.cheersandgears.com/topic/86233-december-2015-fca-us-llc/ December '13 - 5,652 December '14 - 16,229 (fleeting and big discounts on old model) December '15 - 8,759 (and up 52% for the year)

What would have been the best decision for the business.

It wasn't that they tanked... it was that December the year prior was abnormally high.

Yes, Ford's debt is serviceable in this economy. What happens when China tanks and takes the world economy with it? All I'm saying is that Ford needs to work on this high level of debt and get it back into industry standard ahead of the next crisis. They have the profits today to do it.

How would you know? Nissan is building their QX30 out of mostly Benz parts. That they are, but none of the body panels or interior is the same. And in this case, the Nissan would use their engine/tranny and I'd suspect Mercedes would use theirs, I suppose they could offer air suspension too. Erm... a LOT of the QX30 interior is spec Benz parts.

7,000 is just the ones that are nearing the end of their lives and need to be replaced. There are over 30k windmills operating in Germany now. We're taking past each other here. Renewable energy is the future, but there is no single technology that will become the dominant player. The future involves wind AND solar AND geothermal AND hydro all coming together to displace fossil fuels as the primary source of electricity. Germany knows it, the US knows it, China knows it. Every day we get a little closer to that tipping point. It won't happen for a while, but it will happen within our expected lifetimes... And probably a lot sooner than we think. The biggest hold up in the US is the utility companies. They pressure state legislatures into passing laws restricting grid tie in by home owners and 3rd party renewable generation. Florida Power and Light just got the legislature to greatly hinder solar energy installations.... In The Sunshine State no less...

Purely a regulatory thing rather than a technical one. Wind and solar are growing but the reality is they are no where near replacing conventional means. One has to remember the Green movement is also a big money making venture where some date is accurate but so many are also selling pipe dreams too. When you say blanket what you leave out that means wind farms that would look like a forest of wind generators. Not only is it not real cost effective to build but also becomes a ghastly sight and also in many areas impractical due to the cost of land that is taken up. It is not like a power plant with a bank of generators in one room and some flood gates to open. Also these things are not maintenance free. They take investment to keep them working and they also have issues like a run away blade that can shatter and do damage with the loss of the blade and if in a urban setting can become a killing object as some in Europe have suffered. I never said they were on their way to displacing traditional generation, only that they are taking a larger and larger chunk of the new generation being added each year while coal plants get shut down. Your second paragraph of slippery slope is actually kind of amusing. The storage problem is being addressed by the likes of Telsa and a large number of far less PR-Tastic firms. The space issue is a non-issue in the midwest and indeed most of this country. Farmers that lease to wind farms generally get higher revenue per square foot from the turbine than they do from their crops... turbines have a very small footprint. Coal plants, nuke plants, and gas turbine plants all have far far higher maintenance costs than wind farms and that's even before getting to the fuel. As for cost, on-shore wind is on-par with advanced-cycle Natural gas (the most expensive to build, but most efficient to run) and that is primarily due to the low price of the fuel at the moment. Wind is cheaper than conventional cycle natural gas generation. Wind is now the second cheapest generation out there behind advanced-cycle natural gas, again entirely dependent on the price of the fuel. Cheaper than coal, cheaper than nukes..... the only thing that would beat wind at this point is Geothermal, however there is no wide-spread installations of that going on in the US. There are now more solar jobs in the US than there are oil and gas drilling jobs. Again... I work in the energy industry for one of the largest players out there. The trend lines are pretty clear.

Sure there are a lot of wind generators but no where enough to make a dent. I was reading how the Germans have abandon Wind for the most part as a primary source as they have found to make enough you would have to have so many generators that it is impractical. Well, there may have been something lost in translation..... what's being dropped is the idea that in the future there will be a single primary source. (An idea I agree with) Power generation is going to be much more diversified and flexible. They are continuing to install more wind generation still. Germany has another issue though, and one that will begin to skew the stats very shortly. Many of their wind farms (I'm reading up to 7,000 turbines total) are fast approaching their original 15 year expected service life. So soon, that means they'll need to start the overhaul process of replacing these while also adding capacity, so going forward, they'll need 2,000 turbines a year to grow capacity by 1,000 turbines a year.

They're probably moving the azera to Genesis to compete with the ES.

How would you know? Nissan is building their QX30 out of mostly Benz parts.

Solar and Wind are actually the fastest growing energy segments currently. Natural gas has the largest market share, but solar and wind are taking more and more of that each year. The key with residential solar installations is that they also do a household energy audit to try to reduce household usage. That reduces usage growth while adding the additional capacity to the grid. Residential/commercial solar tied to the grid really is the way to go rather than large scale solar installations. That's the reason you don't see generation companies moving towards it... because it makes more sense to put the panels on the roof where it will be used instead of in some farmer's field a hundred miles away. Wind is different, but if we were to blanket the mid-west with turbines, we could power the entire country. The mid-west is the Saudi Arabia of wind energy. Purely a regulatory thing rather than a technical one.

Also, since you seem keen to try and fact-check people... check your own facts. "Ford Chief Executive Officer Alan R. Mulally also asked Congress for a “credit line” of up to $9 billion in case the economy worsened." "the Congressional Research Service noted that Ford “is counting on $5 billion from the DOE loan program to support a $14 billion plan to reorient its lineup toward more fuel-efficient vehicles.” On June 23, 2009, the Department of Energy announced it would provide $5.9 billion to Ford “to transform factories across Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio to produce 13 more fuel efficient models.”" "In a business plan submitted to Congress in December 2008, Ford touted its $14 billion plan for fuel-efficient cars as a key part of its effort to turn the company around — noting that a big piece of the funding was coming from the DOE." "The company’s business plan also urged Congress to pass legislation to provide “incentives for consumers to trade in older vehicles and move to more fuel-efficient vehicles.”" "A Department of Transportation report (table 10) said more than 90,000 Fords were purchased under the cash-for-clunkers program — second only to Toyota — as of December 2009." "Ford was for government bailouts before it was against them." The idea that Ford didn't ask for the loan is absurd on its face... the D.O.E. doesn't just sprinkle magical loan fairy dust on a manufacturer. Companies have to apply for the loans, submit business plans, etc. The $5.9 billion that Ford got was by far the largest of the DOE loans at the time. The next largest was Nissan at $1.9 billion.

The real issue there is to get it to the people. Like us plug in's are not part of their infrastructure and it will take time to put them in. Also many of the people in metro areas live in apartments so where do you plug in? They have some things to work out just as we do. Now here our issue could be lack of power with the coal plants getting shut down and no Nukes being built along with increased demans. We already see brown outs in California in heat waves as it is now. The brown outs have nothing to do with coal generation capacity, it is hydro related. California is in severe drought can you can't generate electricity from water if there is no water. Natural gas is the biggest new generation capacity, however solar power in the US is growing fast. Solar was 32% of the growth in generation in 2014, and with the renewal of the tax credits from the budget deal, it's only going to grow faster.

Yes, we did. http://www.cheersandgears.com/_/news/cadillac/gm-plans-on-importing-ct6-plug-in-hybrid-from-china-r3292

Ford had 5 of the top 10 vehicle turn-ins. #1 Explorer 4wd, #2 F-150 2wd, #4 Explorer 2wd, #9 F-150 4wd, 10# Windstar

I can't quite follow or agree with you on most of that Reg. The Intrepid and Concord were packaged great yes. Mechanically, they were fine as long as you didn't get the 2.7 V6. The Sebring and Stratus weren't tweeners in size, they were cheap, but they were right there in size with the Camry/Accord of the day. The Malibu was the tweener at the time, being 4 inches shorter than the Stratus. (2006 stats used) As for the GM cars, the H-Body and G-Body cars that stacked up against the LH cars (except the LHS which got a trunk extension but is otherwise identical inside to the Intrepid) almost exactly. No interior dimension is off by more than an inch except hip-room where the GM cars are a little over an inch wider. If you're thinking W-body Impala/Lumina maybe... but back when the LH cars were first out, their main competition via price was the Bonneville, Eighty-Eight, LeSabre and Park Ave. While some low-end Dodge Intrepids were sold as loss leaders, the Concord, Vision, Bonneville, and 88 were less than $150 difference in price. New Yorker, Park Ave, and Ninety-Eight were all about $27k.

Yeah, because taking "Payday Loans" and maxing out a 3rd Mortgage on everything including Ford name is not the ghetto way out? The only thing Ford did differently than GM and Chrysler was get to the payday lender before it closed.... sitting in there with Laquisha waiting for her post-dated check to be processed. Ford got more than just the DOE loans. Just because they didn't take any of the stuff that was bad PR, doesn't mean they didn't get some sweetheart deals from the government. One of the deals they got was that the government "suddenly" needed to replace it's aging fleet of cars. The Feds suddenly started buying fleets of Focuses and Fusions to replace their aging Crown Vics for non-police/security duty, they bought a smaller number of F-150s and E-150s.... all at nearly list prices. In 2008, getting anyone to pay near list on a Focus was almost impossible... but Ford got it from the Feds.... it was a huge influx of cash for cars that would have otherwise been rotting on dealer lots until they got marked down many thousands of dollars. GM and Chrysler got similar deals selling Pontiac G6es and Dodge Avengers respectively, but not nearly at the volume that Ford got. Laquisha got to sell all of her old out of style weave inventory for nearly full retail price. Ford was also one of the biggest domestic beneficiaries of the Cash-For-Clunkers program being the ONLY domestic auto manufacturer with a model in the top 10 sales. The Ford Focus was number 4 and the Ford Escape FWD was number 10. Overall, Ford got 14.4% of sales generated from C4C. Laquisha's weave store now accepts SNAP/EBT cards and will cash tax refund checks. You can try and spin it any way you like, Ford certainly has... but no, Ford's process was no less ghetto than the other two.