Drew Dowdell

I'm curious about material quality on this one.... if it is as good as you say, it would be better than the RLX that I drove 2 weeks ago.... and I wasn't impressed.

But he did state it correctly, I followed the links and even the Canada government shows it as $6.21 per KWh. The web site unless I am miss understanding is wanting people to stay under the 30KWh thresh hold. Seems crazy expensive but that is what they post and say on the web site. Still electricity is cheap but they do have a big hit for heavy users according to the web site. You're right, I found another PDF that lists that same rate.... but still, that is a LOT of energy for a residential place to use. I went and looked at my bill and I'm only using an average of 12kWh - 15kWh per day... even with electric heat, I would think it would be hard to hit 3.3 times that.

I think he meant 6.21 cents/kWh.... not dollars.

I don't mind the idea of the self driving car. There are times I want to drive and there are times (like my frequent trips to NJ on the PA Turnpike) where I'd rather someone else was driving.

So that we're not flooded with a bunch of supercars that even William and I haven't been able to drive, lets try to keep it to makes/models that are accessible to most of the population: What car have you always wanted to drive, even as just an extended test drive, but have never had the chance? I mentioned one in the "Cars from your soul year?" thread, the Mazda RX7 I've also never been behind the wheel of an old Air-Cooled Beetle.... and while not fast, I still think it would be neat. I also would want to "return to my roots" and drive one of the old Old 350 Diesel power GM cars on a long drive.... just to experience it.

Well in the case of the sensors, I assume there will be some self diagnostic built in that will disable the autonomous drive if the sensors aren't in perfect working order. I had a test Lincoln MKS years ago with adaptive cruise control. I took it on a trip about 2.5 hours into Ohio during a heavy snow storm. The front end would get completely caked over with ice/snow/mush, including wherever the sensor was located for the ACC. After a very short time, ACC would simply refuse to function, citing a sensor error.

Very good question. The Benz CLS400 I had over the summer had a bad habit of its navigation system freezing up on me and me not realizing it until 5 or 10 miles down the road. Then it would reboot which seemed to take 2 - 3 minutes.

So here's a question about self driving cars: Can it recognize a road closure? What happens if your maps are out of date? Here in Pittsburgh, one street was suddenly switched from 2 way to 1 way with one lane converted into a bike lane. Even with instant update Google Maps, it would take a few days for that change to be reflected in the Google Map ecosystem. Does your Benz just plow into the bike lane until you get a map update?

OK, so how much per Kilowatt hr? Washington state which is 100% Hyrdo powered and they just built a couple of huge wind farms on the Columbia river so do not know how that factors in, but we have always had almost the cheapest electric cost in the nation. One reason the aluminum plants all came here. Our Home rate is 6.94 cents per Kilowatt hr. Only 2 other states are cheaper than us at 6.90 and 6.92. http://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ Course on this Gov web site they show us as the cheapest in the nation. http://www.neo.ne.gov/statshtml/204.htm So what is your rate? I'm at 7.5 cpkwh.

The RX7 is one car I've always wanted to drive but have never had the chance.

Really? Like what? The only thing I bought there, a car wash brush hose attachment, broke after 3 uses. Did you take it back for return or exchange? Costco has a great return program and while the say 90 days, I have seen them take stuff back that was far older. They are the Nordstroms of Big Warehouses. Awesome customer service. 90 days is only for electronics. Everything else has no pre-determined time limit.

Agenda: 1. Win the powerball 2. Build a 1983 Buick Electra coupe with the above powertrain.

Really? Like what? The only thing I bought there, a car wash brush hose attachment, broke after 3 uses.

It seems like they're going for a Low-Ash diesel spec and the Mobile-1 I listed above has that

Find out the spec, and as long as you get an oil with a matching spec, you should be fine. A quick googling says that "Mobil 1 5W-30 ESP Formula" is an acceptable substitute.

Which truck is this and what specific formula is required? Never heard of a truck that requires only a specific kind, usually if synthetic, you can use any synthetic as long as it is the right 5w30 as an example. I believe he has the Ram Ecodiesel V6

By the description of what SuperCruise does, it would have to be fully autonomous capable. It sounds like it is the legal department holding things up. SuperCruise can drive for you in heavy traffic situations and can drive for you on an open highway. To do either of those things, all the hardware that fully autonomous requires would need to be already in place .

No, not completely different at all, in fact it is quite similar. It is a bit unnerving at first to have the car accelerate and decelerate in response to traffic. If a car pulls into your lane and slows down, your natural reaction is to go for the brake, but that's no longer needed, the ACC has got it for you... and when that jack-ass gets back into the slow lane, your car automatically gets back up to the proper speed. It takes a good many miles to get used to.

Like with active cruise control, I'm sure it will take getting used to. I like Adaptive Cruise Control now that I'm used to it... and in at least one bad weather situation, it was safer to use the ACC than for me to try to drive. I just locked on to the F-150 in front of me that I could barely see and let the ACC do the work.

Ah, but the Parktronic, which will certainly be required for DriveTronic, is another $950 and also requires a $4,000 navigation package.

$100 Costco Giftcard for snow tires.

Thanks a lot! Found a way to get it back.

I think they still have further to fall in terms of price.... another month or two and the used prices will probably hit bottom if there are no additional scandals.

You're saying that swapping out the drive unit is a big deal. I'm saying it's not and that it is likely not even necessary in many cases, but Tesla is doing it anyway to maintain top consumer satisfaction..... a warranty policy that other companies should consider emulating. But again, nearly everyone here reading this knows you have an agenda against electric vehicles and Tesla in particular.

You're old skool. You're thinking in terms of catastrophic engine failure, generally one of the only reasons a big legacy manufacturer would replace an engine under warranty. They'll only do engine swap outs if the entire engine is toast. That's not what is happening with these Teslas. Some of them just have the petrol equivalent of a check engine light on, but are still otherwise functioning. GM, for a number of years now, has been dealing with timing chain issues on the early versions of the 3.6 and 3.6 DI. This covers the engine in the current Lambdas too. The timing chains will stretch, cause very poor running conditions, and generally F-up the VVT. Initially GM's response was to recall the unaffected cars and reprogram the Oil Life Monitor to go off at 5k - 8k instead of 10k -12k, but all that does is push the inevitable to outside the warranty time limit. GM did this because they were doing frequent timing chain replacements on vehicles with under 30k miles. Imagine having to get your timing chain replaced on your Colorado next year.... how upset would you be? To use your own language; "If GM can't get a timing chain right, technology that has been around for 100+ years, Good lord! What else will go wrong?!" What Tesla is doing is swapping out the entire engine instead of replacing the timing chain because it is faster to just swap out the whole unit. Do you get the distinction yet?