G. David Felt

Saw these two interesting versions of Jeep and Honda. Jeep Avenger Honda 2 door civic type S

Breakfast and dinner at the hotel here has been great. Breakfast bread spread. You have such a wide assortment of foods to eat and drink. Dinners I have been eating my way through the menu. Pii day was started with crunchy pork belly on spicy mashed potatoes, then a spanish ham pizza and a hot chocolate pie with vanilla bean icecream. Here is some of the other foods I had too. The two pictures above is their cheescake with vanillabean icecream. Had gyoza and pestrami sandwich for one meal. This was cheesecake with Belgium Icecream which was creamy amazing. 24 month aged steak. Their half pound hamburger. All food at the AC hotel by Marriott is amazing.

I had Spanish Pie for breakfast.

Would love to see GM shock everyone with a Hybrid or EV version of this sedan that is very modernized with the current technology and style.

Madrid Spain has been an interesting view of autos.

Working here in Madrid Spain this week. A couple of interesting observations. @Drew Dowdell reminded me that SEAT was the official car of Spain and yet until today, I had not really seen any in the financial / tech sector that I am in on the east side of Madrid. Observations is that they have allot of Diesel autos here and pretty much all Stick. Very few automatics. Tons of mopeds and allot of EVs. Will snap a picture on my way back to the hotel today as this one company, not sure what they do, but they had a ton of Pugeot EVs all plugged in and a few Tesla's in their lot. Everything here seems to have high fences as while it seems safe, everything is secured and locked down. There is a school I pass in walking to the office from the hotel and this is where I saw the Seat parked in front of a Jeep Compass. It is an interesting observations that besides the normal German luxury auto's, I then see a ton of Kia/Hyundai and then Pugeot and finally Citeron in this area. Seat seems to be very few here. @Robert Hall 2019 CT6 AWD What trim level is this car?

Congratulations Robert, that is a nice-looking car!

I would not be surprised to see it start at $150,000. Expect the V edition to be a $200,000 model imho.

I do not believe it is about cross shopping. The science shows we are running out of OIL. Folks can deny it all they want, but Saudia Arabia the worlds largest stock pile of OIL for Decades is now reducing production as their wells run low. Climate Change is also changing peoples attitude about what they drive and the Boomers can try all they want to stop and stay stagnant, but Humanity has always moved forward and the future is EV. Those that want ICE will have ICE options and those that want EVs will find more and more options and lower prices. People are hating the maintenance of ICE and as lower cost EVs come on the market they will buy. GM was Stupid to end BOLT before they had true replacements ready as the BOLT sales just like the VOLT sales shows there was a market and customers buying. We will change over and Stellantis is behind the 8 ball and as such this is to grab attention while they still sell their fuel thirsty cars/SUVs and trucks.

Ioniq 5 was based on their original Pony car. A awesome modern take of the 1970's Pony. I am excited for the 2025 model year with all the enhancements they are offering including a larger battery pack.

Yup, I can see that too.

? Is it me or does this thing look like the Hyundai Pony?

Your acting as if Rivian is Tesla. Yes they over promised, under delivered in their initial EV, but I think they have this pretty well sorted out. Will be interesting to see what the price is in 2026, could be less as battery prices drop. Sadly Rivian is a NO GO for me as any auto I purchase has to support Android Auto and Apple Carplay.

It is an interesting observation that as you push out into the rural and mountain area you find only SUV. Yet in the major cities Chargers all over here in Washington and especially a move to Tesla's as the EV of choice for traffic patrol for Suburban and inner city.

Some interesting reading: Even as EV sales slow, lower battery prices are expected to boost demand (goldmansachs.com) Electric school buses outperform diesel in extreme cold (electrek.co)

I can see a few of the EV as pursuit cars for police. I can also see them used for Traffic duty only as I see plenty of Tesla 3 as Traffic patrol cars.

This is so cool, EV is way better looking than the ICE version as I do not like the extra big hump in the hood but over all outstanding by Dodge. Wonder what Pricing will be? ?

Awesome van for the city and suburban needs by companies.

This is a good move, should help to move these 400V EVs till generation 2 comes out at 800V version.

Will be interesting to see how they handle this transition and if they survive.

I am very excited to see the reveal of this and what has been whispered as a Genesis electric version of the GV90 that is also supposed to be revealed some time this year. Be exciting to see how much more range it gets with a bigger battery pack since the Ioniq 5 will now have a bigger battery pack. I would expect this to have a bigger battery than the current Kia EV9 that is being sold. Exciting times for sure on new EV autos.

Another problem is quality. Fisker has had many issues with their first EV. The forum that was supposed to be a cheerleader for Fisker EVs has had more traffic due to this one story than positive. https://forums.fiskerati.com/fisker-ocean/ocean-the-good-bad-ugly/ Then you have these constant power loss problems. https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/09/fisker-ocean-braking-power-loss-problems-investigation/ Then main stream media even says the products they are delivering are not ready. https://www.roadandtrack.com/reviews/a45997938/2024-fisker-ocean-test-drive/ https://jalopnik.com/fisker-ocean-crossovers-are-falling-apart-in-their-owne-1851244202 So I totally agree that Fisker will have to move in with another much larger auto company to survive. Saw many comments on the Fisker and one thing everyone seems to agree on is that Designing a good looking auto and engineering is two different things.

@Drew Dowdell Did they say why the Silver Collar would not work with the adapter at charging Ford EVs? Do they not have all the pins that support the slower charging in the NACS adapter?

Yes Hummer did have issues and the Lyriq shipped and then held to address software issues. Those are the only two that seem to still be working with their current software as they are the only EVs that support Android Auto and Apple Carplay as GM used the default Qualcomm software with minimal customization. Course the stupid thing is that they are planning to with the updates for the trucks and Chevrolet SUVs move all EVs to their custom software with no Android Auto or Apple Carplay. Hopefully when they realize they made the mistake everyone thinks they did, they will enable it as it is software switched off/on. Yup we are in total agreement on GM messing up the Hybrid thing. Ford initially back in 2020 when Qualcomm started to announce OEMs that were going to use their Qualcomm Snapdragon system with Android OS that they would go with a customize experience protecting the end user's data from the cell phone companies. Then in 2023 they started to say they would keep it for ICE and not for EVs at the start of the year and by the end of the year the Ford CEO stated that all ICE and EVs would support Android Auto and Apple Carplay as the customers have stated it is an important part of their auto experience. Much like how Wendy's said at the start of the week in their investors meeting that they would roll out Surge pricing for peak hours of buying their food the internet had an uproar with millions sending via social media their unhappiness with Wendy's about surge pricing. Wendy's has now announced that the customer has spoken, and they will NOT be implementing surge pricing. Ford listened to their upset customers, GM has not realized that their customers are not happy about the lack of Android Auto / Apple CarPlay and I think this will bite them big time.

Yes, they started the Ultium rollout well and then it went downhill from there. Sad that GM could not bring in new fresh blood that knew how to build software and instead relied on old, outdated approach by those playing politics. GM has really screwed up and I think this back peddle to hybrids will work in the short term, but they should have never walked away from it as they worked on their EVs. Volt 2.0 should have been rolled out into many other models while they worked to bring EVs on. Sadly, I think GM has given up the race to Hyundai/Kia/Genesis who is still moving forward with rolling out EVs while they sell hybrids. Ford while excited for them, the recall problems across the board has me very hesitant to consider them. At least unlike GM they reversed course and committed to Android Auto and Apple Carplay. GM will find people will not be happy with that being taken away. This is another pet peeve I have is that the Cadillac Lyriq will continue to support Android Auto and Apple Carplay, but the rest of the EV family will use GM's customer Android Software interface, not supporting the Android Auto/Apple Carplay. At least Honda did it right with their Ultium Prologue in supporting the cell phones as they said, their customers stated that was a requirement to buy a new Honda auto. Why GM cannot seem to understand this is beyond many folks including myself as I do not see buying another GM product as long as they do not support the cell phones.