G. David Felt

Good Read, seems Ford nailed the mileage. 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E range test: At 70 mph, true to EPA highway results (greencarreports.com)

Pyramid

Some funny posts of the Pandemic changes and impressions.

The new numbering system will make more sense for EVs than the current ICE product. Cadillac should stay with C.I. or C.C. and leave the Torque to the EVs.

My wife and I did one 500 mile road trip, the North Cascade Loop. North Cascades Scenic Highway (scenicwa.com) We only stopped in a true Western Cowboy town, still has wood sidewalks, horse tie up posts, etc. Winthrop (Scenic Washinton | Best Small Towns in Washington | Winthrop) to use the bathrooms, otherwise we had all our food with us in the Escalade and only stopped at places where no one else was at to stretch legs and look at the beautiful scenery. Lucky for me the Escalade can make the loop on a single gas tank, so minimal people interaction there too. This is the kind of road trips we will do in 2021 planning to minimize any interaction with other people during this pandemic.

Totally agree with you, I have NEVER seen any marketing for the Cadillac XT6. I talked back in November when I got the oil change done on my Escalade and my sales rep informed me he was retiring due to the pandemic and decided to stay safe in the woods. I asked him how the XT6 was doing and he said that they had sold maybe 6 for all of 2020 at the time compared to the dozens of XT5 and Escalades over the year. Problem he saw was that people seem to like many other options out there better than the XT6 and the interior. He said which I agree with that the fit n finish is good but GM did not give it the luxury level that people are expecting for the price. In fact he said the weird part is people have a better luxury impression of a Denali equipped CUV over the XT6 as his sister GMC/Buick store was selling gang busters all they could get of CUVs. It is sad as while I was excited for when Cadillac talked about it, was disappointed when I actually saw it and the rushed job to just get it to market and have another niche filled with a product. GM needs to stop doing this if they want Cadillac to grow. Focus on the Luxury and let GMC/Buick fill in all the Niche areas for appliance sizes.

As a Skin Cancer survivor, I know even while I was never a sun worshiper or fan of having sunny days, I am even more now of an avoider of the sun and lather on sun screen lotion even during cloudy bright days. Course Seattle has Drizzle 9 months of the year and as such, we are used to hiking, camping and playing in the drizzle no matter what the temp is, so I love it and it does not stop me from gardening or doing pretty much anything outside. I can respect everyone for enjoying the sun and less so the rain especially when you do not live in a place that has it often. Course the rain storms in Texas were crazy huge when they hit. Talk about flooding events.

I totally understand this, I am an eternal Optimist that I believe we all have BEST INTENT for what we do. Hopefully we can weed out the companies that truly are fly by night grab the money and run and leave only the solid long term looking companies that believe in building quality products. I truly believe GM with their new electrical nervous system that is Terabytes in data movement has the goods to go back to being a global leader. But like all things, will take time to build and get there.

Fishing

Dementia

In the 90's it was a crap shoot on Software with no standards to security, quality, etc. Today, software changes cannot be allowed to break the tree when you check in your fix or new feature. If you break it, you better be ready to explain why and dish out the donuts. Before the pandemic, if you broke the software check-in tree, you had to bring donuts for everyone in the building. In the case of my Isilon team in Seattle, that was 1,200 donuts. OUCH As such, Microsoft and Apple both instituted around 2005 SDL or Security Development Lifecycle. This brought a ton of reliability and improvements to software development. The last decade has seen a big improvement from storage to smartphones in the way software is developed. Most people do not know this, but the FORD Sync system is a Secured Kernel of NT from Microsoft.

I love a Cloudy day or drizzle over sunny days.

Hard freeze after rain this morning and the water freezing patterns are amazing. This was on my Suburban.

Medium Rare

Software World Updates every 4 months is the normal with a major update once per year. GM after CUE 1.0 and 2.0 which was solid if you stayed within the lines, but broke every time people tried to do things the way they approached their smartphone broke all over. Was a smart move to bring in an actual software group with UI experience and customer feedback groups to get what is now a very reliable interface. Still have room to improve, but things are getting better. I am interested to see the new UI / System that will go into the EVs that take advantage of the new larger displays.

These are the 3 colored logos that will be used.

Nope when @ccap41 posted about it, I looked into it and found many posts of people getting their CUE system updated with the latest release 22.10. Depending on which model year you have since only in the last 2 years has Cadillac started to change over to WiFi updates, older Cadillacs that have CUE have to go in for a USB flash and currently the CUE is at version 22.10. I am surprised myself at 22 actual full update versions and of course the .10 is a minor update. Yes CUE is at version 22.10. This is one of many stories that I think confused people as Cadillac killed their in house CUE and then bought and brought in software designers who actually knew how to build a system, so yes it is still CUE, but night and day from what was CUE 1.0 that came out in 2012 as a 2013 model year. 2017 is when they killed off the existing one and moved everyone onto the new CUE that is not CUE. Still going strong 9 years later. Cadillac's CUE is dead, meet the new CUE that isn't CUE (motorauthority.com)

ALERT GM has rolled out a New Company Logo to go with their drive to become a pure EV Company. Quote Press Release: General Motors is debuting a new marketing campaign as part of the company’s comprehensive efforts to accelerate mass adoption of electric vehicles. The “Everybody In” campaign is a call to action meant to reflect a movement that’s inclusive and accessible. The company is also evolving its brand identity as GM transforms itself to deliver on a vision that creates a world with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion. As GM amplifies its EV message, it has also created a revitalized brand identity designed for a digital-first environment. The new logo builds on a strong heritage while bringing a more modern and vibrant look to GM’s familiar blue square. The new brand identity extends to technology brands including Ultium. The team of GM designers tasked with creating the new logo considered how to balance the history and trust inherent to the existing design with GM’s vision for the future. According to Sharon Gauci, GM executive director of Global Industrial Design: “This was a project our team took so personally, not just for ourselves but for the 164,000 employees this logo represents. At every step we wanted to be intentional and deliberate because this logo signifies creative and innovative thinking across the global General Motors family.” The new GM logo features a color gradient of vibrant blue tones, evoking the clean skies of a zero-emissions future and the energy of the Ultium platform. The rounded edges and lower-case font create a more modern, inclusive feel. The underline of the “m” connects to the previous GM logos as well as visually representing the Ultium platform. And within the negative space of the “m” is a nod to the shape of an electrical plug. To Advance Zero-Emissions Future, GM Invites ‘Everybody In’

Marmaduke

Earlier this week our local County Fire Fighters News Letter arrived and on the cover was a picture of all the various Fire Command Personnel and their new Toyota Rav4 Hybrid AWD CUVs. The county stated that they had been looking for replacement auto's that would meet the go anywhere in any weather SUV/CUV to replace the aging Tahoe fleet. GM lost out big time on this 59 vehicle order and today in running out for the weekly Grocery run, I saw one of the new Fire Command Rav4 hybrids at an intersection. Sharp looking CUV, bummer Toyota won the sales over GM. GM has always responded to slowly to what the needs have been. Been stated in this forum before by others, the Chevrolet VOLT system should have been moved with Gen 2 into a CUV as well at the time and I am now positive due to the crazy Sales and waiting List for Rav4 Hybrids that GM could have sold everyone they built.

CUE is currently on version 22.10 and can be done over the air if you have the WiFi setup or the dealer can install the latest version and it works great compared to the buggy early issues. Current CUE with Alexa is very cool to use and very simple. IMHO, It really depends on which model of which german auto company you have and how much cutting edge tech you have. MB as well as BMW have a long record of buggy new tech worst than the Americans. Japanese and Korean seem to be far more reliable, but that can also be due to using much less tech. The EV world is gonna be interesting to see.

HellBoy

So lets put this in perspective as our recently more than quiet MB fan used to talk about the quality of MB years ago and how it was worth $1,500. Back in 2006 when New the MB headlight assembly based on my memory was $1,500 and the Escalade then was $500. Now I look and see that the Escalade headlight assembly for my 2006 is $164 dollars give or take a dollar based on which GM parts web site you look at. So the Escalade headlight assembly has dropped by more than 50% over 14 years. So the MB headlight assembly is still about half price and 3 times more expensive than the Escalade assembly to replace. Yes you and @Robert Hall are correct that the bulbs are what you replace more often and my HID bulbs for the Escalade as I did just last year replace both to get full brightness back were $90.00 each. Looking at the GL450 I see they had Xenon lights not HID and as such those bulbs are $86 each.

Easy, considering how we all have complained at one time or another about the lack of Cadillac Luxury, it is nice and to be pointed out that they themselves is talking about it which has not happened in the past and so is looking to return to a true luxury competitor. Mercedes Benz has and always still seems to be buggy in electronics and expensive to repair. Example is that my Escalade head light to replace is $500 but Mercedes SUV is $1,500. That is a big difference for an SUV that is half the size and to me questionable quality over my Escalade that has been rock solid for the last 14 years. Two different posts, two different things to talk about, I did not pull them together and do not see it as a Bias, just pointing out what I see. Pretty much everyone here has talked about how BMW and MB are lease appliances due to cost of repairs after going off warranty.

Thanks for that info, what I found was what I posted on, did not see any articles about New Jersey going with an implementation goal of emissions reduction as my searches showed it joined California in that ban mandate. Did finally find this news story that correlates with you about the 80% reduction and that they are looking to still ban new ice auto sales by 2035. Will be interesting to see what happens. Will New Jersey be next to place a ban on gas vehicles? | EVANNEX Aftermarket Tesla Accessories