Drew Dowdell

Ford is all over the place with the lightning but everybody else seems fairly consistent

Hertz has announced that it will sell off roughly 30%, or 20,000 vehicles, of its EV fleet. The move came after it announced a scale-back from its original goal of electrifying 25% of the rental fleet. Hertz's original goal was to acquire 100,000 Tesla and 65,000 from Polestar over five years. Teslas make up roughly 80% of the Hertz EV fleet. At the time of this writing, there are 631 Teslas for sale on Hertz's website and only 40 EVs from other brands. In a statement, Hertz cited substantially higher than average repair costs "for EVs" with extended wait times for parts availability. Additionally, Hertz reported that manufacturers' new lower retail prices hurt the resale values of the existing fleet, leading to substantial depreciation losses. Hertz is expecting to take a $245 million write-down on the vehicles, or an average loss of $12,250 per vehicle. Unlike other brands, Teslas purchased by Hertz were purchased at the same retail price the general public pays without any volume discount. Our take While many in the anti-EV crowd see this as an indictment against EVs, it is really more of an indictment against Tesla. Tesla's use of the Gigapress, while revolutionary technology, means that even minor collisions can be catastrophic to the vehicle. But this technology is coming to other brands as well. General Motors has purchased a Gigapress manufacturer and Volkswagen is planning on using Gigapress in their future vehicles. Additionally, Tesla does not have a deep reserve of spare parts, leading to long wait times for repairs. Tesla's erratic pricing moves have also made it difficult to accurately predict resale value of their vehicles. For an individual, it is an annoyance but for a corporation that buys 100,000 vehicles, it can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But Hertz's loss could be your gain. If you have been looking at purchasing an EV but don't want to pay the high prices of a new one, a wave of Tesla Model-3 and Model-Y are about to hit the market. Couple that with a $4,000 tax credit for pre-owned EVs and there will be good deals to be had. Even if you do not buy one of the Teslas from Hertz, this move will likely drop the price of used EVs on the market, so keep your eyes open for a deal. View full article

The 500 hasn't been on sale in the US for a couple years now, so... yeah.. it's not selling. I think they are bringing it back as an EV though.

I don't think it will fly as a 2-door, but stretch it to a 4-door and make it about the size of the Renegade or Compass and this will print money and put VinFast on the map.

.... but I just wanted a volume knob. This crap is going to be all the rage for the next few years, and then it will be as passe as "Hey Mercedes...". Furthermore, I don't use ChatGPT because I have to fact-check it too much. ChatGPT is only as good as the data on the internet. If the internet data is inaccurate, ChatGPT will be inaccurate. How many times have you looked up a store on Google Maps or whatever you use and found the store hours to be inaccurate? Those hours are updated manually... by people... when they get around to it.

Fixed it. But I don't think there is an issue with Ram doing this. People complain about the price of trucks all the time and this is a solution if you really need a pickup but you don't need the latest wiz-bang gadgetry or expensive to work on turbo engines. There is still a market out there for a utilitarian truck at a reasonable price.

I guess when the whole industry is having to change at once, it should be expected. There's a lot of lag in the building of components too.

Thank as always @bobo Great write up! I add this one to the Jeers list all on its own.

It’s a bit of a Clickbait headline on Edmunds part. There’s an energy fault and it’s making all the sensors go on the fritz. The same thing happened to my Chrysler when the battery was going bad. New battery and cleared the codes and it was all fine.

By today’s standards, the 275 is probably bare minimum, but with a manual, its relatively light weight, and tremendously good balance, a base Camaro could be very fun. It just won’t win drag races. but if you’re shopping in the FR-S/BR-Z segment, the base Camaro would be a good competitor that has a back seat you might have a chance of putting someone in

Yeah, they ran the 2.0T for a few years, 2017 - 2022, it had 275hp instead of the 335 of the V6

Not in the US they won't when the average new car is older than 10 years. Vehicles simply don't cycle through that quickly and most people are slow to trust a new brand. BYD's current total of dealers in the US: 0

Not that Chevy-level materials are fantastic, but they're a complete league better than what BYD is doing. I've noticing a lot of this recently where the press pictures look great, but when you sit in the car, it looks and feels cheap even if there's lots of gee-wiz lights and pageantry to distract you. The Ioniq 6 is worse in person than its pictures (particularly the center console), the EQ-Benzes don't live up to anywhere close to their brand name, Tesla is abysmal, the Cadillac Lyriq is meh in person but their pictures aren't great either, Escalade EQ meets expectations. Toyota interior materials are a letdown across the board. Jaguar/Land Rover have mid-range VW interiors unless you're spending money for Autobiography models. Genesis, Telluride/Palisade, and most Buicks are better than you might expect. As for your argument that people will buy Chinese cars because they bought Japanese and Korean cars... I think you are correct on this, but it will be 25 years before they're where the Koreans are today.

Getting in and out of the Camaro was an issue, and I’m fairly limber. But once inside, it fit me so perfectly. It was one of the best ergonomic cars I’ve ever driven. The balance of the platform is fantastic and even in V6 form is more than enough to get you in trouble. great car and sad to see it go

Cadillac showed the first images of the coming 2026 Cadillac Vistiq EV today. This vehicle slots above the Lyriq and below the Escalade IQ in Cadillac's EV lineup, effectively taking the ICE-powered Cadillac XT6's spot on the electric side of the lineup. Though they did not provide any technical details, we can assume it will ride on the Ultium platform and come in single-motor rear-wheel and dual-motor front-wheel drive configurations with 340+ horsepower to 500+ horsepower, respectively. GM's modular Ultium battery packs will likely be configured for between 300 miles to 320 miles of range. The Vistiq joins the smaller Optiq to fill out the small, medium, large, extra-large EV-SUV lineup at Cadillac. Click to enlarge View full article

The R&D was virtually nill. It's an off the shelf ZF unit with a rear diff from one of their other cars. Before this announcement, BMW was set to drop manuals entirely as it was being dropped from the 2-series.

To expand on this: 2022 Hummer EV Pickup (350 kW) 2024 Genesis GV60 (350 kW) 2024 Genesis GV70 (350 kW) 2023 Genesis G80 (350 kW) 2022 Lucid Air (300 kW) 2024 GMC Hummer EV SUV (300 kW) 2022 Audi E-Tron GT (270 kW) 2022 Porsche Taycan (270 kW) 2022 Tesla Model S (250 kW) 2022 Tesla Model X (250 kW) 2022 Tesla Model 3 (250 kW) 2022 Tesla Model Y (250 kW) 2022 Kia EV6 (240 kW) 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 6 (235 kW) 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5 (235 kW) 2022 Rivian R1S (220 kW) 2022 Rivian R1T (220 kW) 2022 BMW iX (200 kW) 2022 Mercedes-EQ EQS (200 kW) 2022 BMW i4 (195 kW) 2023 Cadillac Lyriq (190 kW) 2023 Mercedes-EQ EQE (170 kW) 2023 Volkswagen ID Buzz (170 kW) 2022 Polestar 2 (155 kW) 2022 Volvo C40 Recharge (155 kW) 2022 Volvo XC40 Recharge (155 kW) 2022 Audi E-Tron (150 kW) 2022 Ford Mustang Mach E (150 kW) 2023 Toyota bZ4x (150 kW) This is a (mostly) complete list of the EVs with a charge rate of 150kw or higher. The reason I picked 150kw is because that's the base charge rate for the V2 version of the Tesla Supercharger and that seems like a minimum standard for vehicles to meet today. Keep in mind that well over half of Tesla's Superchargers are V2 with probably around 30% being V3 (250kw). V4 (350kw) Super Chargers are brand new and only one is installed in the U.S. as of October of this year... and even then, the Cybertruck is the only Tesla that can suck juice that fast. Additionally, the Kia and Hyundai models on this list and coming in the future have the hardware in them for 350kw charging that will be enabled in a software update in the future. I should also note that it seems like only the big truck-based Ultium products from GM appear to get 300kw+ charging. I know the EValanche will have it as will the Escalade IQ. The Ram REV 1500 is getting 350kw charging as well. The Lyriq is 190 kw as are the Blazer EV and Equinox EV. I think this is shortsighted on GM's part, and they need to bump these to at least the 250kw range. So you can see the list of cars that will charge at a higher speed than a Model 3 at a V2-150kw charger at these new Pilot stations will have a pretty good advantage, and if the driver opts for a 250kw charger on the Tesla network, they'll still get decent speed. It also matters for vehicles with a shorter range. Of the three Genesis models on the list, only the GV60 can get over 300 miles, and only on the RWD model. The GV70 range is only 235, which is pretty low these days. But if I were buying one, I would be less concerned about the overall range as long as I can go from 10% to 80% (~165 miles) in 18 minutes, as their website claims. This will really fill out the network for state-to-state EV driving.

Not with chargers at this speed unless you count Tesla only. Even then, those are almost all 150kw/250kw chargers. 350kw chargers are the game changers time wise.

Eh, that article makes some statements without data to back it up. It's a puff piece for EVs. That said, for EVs that have heat pump HVAC, the difference in range is negligible. Certainly less than the drop in fuel economy I see with cold weather in the truck. The EPA says that cold weather of 20 degrees (fairly common where I live) can drop your fuel economy 15%. If you properly precondition your EV in the cold before you leave, the range drop won't even be noticeable. All modern EVs (even not modern ones like the original Volt) have the ability to set a departure time and can heat up both the cabin and the batteries before you drive away. Of course this is best if you're on wall power at the time, but it helps even if not. Roughly the same as remote starting your ICE.

Which also doesn't account for the fact that several manufacturers (Tesla, GM, some Hyundai) have built Net-Zero manufacturing plants for their EVs. I think Subaru is one of the few that has done it for their ICE plants.

Except for a little blank spot in Georgia, that covers almost my entire route from Pittsburgh to Florida. As long as I fill up in Columbia SC, where I usually overnight, it's less than 300 miles to Jacksonville, so I'd have plenty of range if I did it solely on this network in the EValanche, but there's still Chargepoint and Tesla on I-95 in between if I really had to stop.