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G. David Felt

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Everything posted by G. David Felt

  1. Figure that a round number would be an average between buses that run high and low. I know that the School buses on the peninsula here in Washington average 15,000 miles a year due to the far spread out range of the kids in the small towns that get picked up unlike the school buses in Seattle that average 6,000 miles a year. I will make the assumption that the medium to small towns that have opened up their books have a mixture of both high mileage and low mileage buses. I understand the point your making though. The optimist in me looks at the positive side of people being honest till proven they are liars.
  2. Yes, a 400 SQ FT Studio Apartment will cost you $2,900 a month in Seattle. I just got notified that ALL 1,200 Employees will be brought in over the next 2 weeks at designated times to clean out our Cubicles. We have to take all personal items home and if we want, we can check out our docking station and monitors to take home too. Nothing to be left in the cubicle but the desk and chair. They say this is for Deep Cleaning and Sterilization to allow those critical employees back onsite. Yet our 7 story building lease is up this fall. I know we have the 7th floor subleased and the 1st floor. We consolidated everyone onto floors 4 to 6 so 3rd was vacated, which is an accounting move for writing off the lease cost for non usable space or so corporate said. The 2nd floor was our Executive sales briefing center. We had it half built out and the rest was supposed to be done 2yrs ago, but put on hold since the merger or the two Legacy companies into what is now Dell Tech. My gut tells me based on conversations with facilities folks local and in Austin Texas is we will vacate the bulk of the building and keep maybe on the big size floor 4 where a datacenter exists and 5 & 6 only. But I could honestly see them decommission the datacenter into our huge Durham NC site and do only floors 5 & 6. Coworker who had bought a 1200 sq ft condo in Seattle for $350,000 3 years ago sold it in January for almost $800,000 and moved to the east side in Bellevue to be closer to family and her boyfriend. Got a 2,400 sq ft town home for $700,000. Crazy House Prices. To imagen I got my 2000 sq ft Split Level home on a quarter acre lot for $140,000 in 1999. The old homes around me have since been bought up and torn down with McMansions on them selling for anywhere from $800,000 to $1 million. My tax assessment came in that my house is now worth $550,000. Crazy, crazy crazy
  3. I agree with you on Transit over school buses. In regards to the $400k cost, since these are various government agencies / school districts, until proven false, I have to assume the record keeping is valid.
  4. Seattle.city council is so stupid. Employee head tax on business just passed to be a range from .7% to 2.4% on high income employees. Talk about running out big business, this is going to come back to hurt Seattle. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-city-council-passes-new-jumpstart-tax-on-high-salaries-paid-by-big-businesses/
  5. Asian writing of English cracks me up.
  6. That is weird, seems to be inline with here, while the colors are all in the white, Silver and Black area, there is a lack of any other compelling colors. Lower end Jeeps are plentiful too, I think this does go with discretionary income available to spend. Right now lower income jobs have people holding off on spending I think.
  7. Same here the Ram / Jeep dealer is low on Jeeps, but the Ram lot is overflowing with trucks. I wonder is it the incentives, the configuration, or is it that GM and Ford appeal to a higher income group which has been less affected by the Pandemic than lower income. Interesting to understand this.
  8. I only quoted what was supplied by those that opened up their service books for school buses and transit buses. Transit does get higher MPG than School due to freeway runs compared to local neighborhoods.
  9. All cleaned and ready for summer use. My 1994 GMC SLE suburban.
  10. Yet all the reports show that Transit and School buses average 3 MPG, NOT 10MPG, that right there is a HUGE COST in Diesel which is Toxic and pollutes the Air, kids, riders, etc.
  11. LOL, some of us are just more REALIST than others Skippy!
  12. You are right that they have the records on the cost of maintenance for a bus in a fleet. Yet NO WHERE do they show adding this to the Purchase price of a Diesel Bus when they compare it to the EV Bus which has always pointed out the reduced maintenance cost. If they did that, I think even on a 12 year comparison they would come out much closer. Started to search around and found a few reports. Many are done outside of the US, India and China where they have already flipped over to more EV than Diesel so I ignored those. Pointes stated in the reports: 528 EV buses with 1yr maintenance records used to compare to diesel buses Diesel bus costs $500,000 versus $750,000 EV bus for Transit. School diesel costs $110,000 versus $230,000 EV bus New Flyer buses for Transit and Schools allowed access to this report of their maintenance costs for both buses. EV Buses save $400,000 in fuel expense and $125,000 in maintenance cost averted over the 12 year life of the bus. Seneca South Carolina shared their records, shows EV Buses are 16.5 mpg equivalent fuel efficiency compared to 3.8 MPG for Diesel. Fuel Per Mile costs was $0.28 for Electric, $0.59 for diesel with maintenance costs of $0.55 permile for EV buses compared to $1.53 per mile for Diesel. Report also states that for those school districts and Cities that used Solar Power Charging where the surplus was sold back to the local grid, this further reduced costs. Another point made was the reductions in EPA certificates and disposal of toxic waste related to gas/diesel buses. Here are US based reports: https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/electric-buses-mass-transit-seen-cost-effective https://uspirg.org/feature/usp/electric-buses-america https://www.govtech.com/workforce/Electric-Buses-Are-Not-Only-Clean-But-Less-Costly-to-Run.html
  13. ? Fighting, Stay positive and start shopping your resume. Better to be active while having a job than not at all. Some companies like where I work has frozen hiring, raises, bonuses and the executive staff have given up their pay to insure that the global workforce is not laid off. I appreciate what they are doing for us, but I know other companies that are more service focused, sales focused are starting to belt tighten as people hold off on spending money. Stay positive, stay focused, You will come through this OK, I believe! Based on statistics, we are already in contraction. While the freeways are busy here in the Seattle area, the lay offs by Boeing, Kenworth, Weyerhaeuser, are being felt. Depending on how big their employment rolls are, it will be minimal in many places to heavily noticed in others. One gauge as we learned in statistic class is tax revenue. Clearly when you look at that figure, you see every state has taken a huge hit. Then look at the Fed tax revenue and it also took a huge hit. Contraction in everything even though many states have opened up and then closed back down but trying to keep employment going, I still believe there is worse to come sadly. I hope everyone here is not hit as hard by this depression based on the current pandemic.
  14. Agree the Diesel fuel, various oils, gaskets, etc. there is much that does not get factored into the purchase price of a Diesel bus other than the fuel that would move the price higher. Electrics are higher priced right now, will come down over time, but they have a longer life on the road than ICE. I truly think if they figured in all the rebuilds, repairs on the ICE buses along with the amount of costs for holding tanks, disposal of toxic liquid, etc. the price of a diesel bus would go up considerably.
  15. ? Just found out the 710HP Hellcat Durango certified by NHRA is a One Hit Wonder of a 6 month run. 2000 total will be built. The more I look at that it is one HELL OF A SWEET RIDE! Love the Looks. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/2021-dodge-durango-srt-hellcat-debut/ Interesting read on the Hertz Bankruptcy and their 500,000 auto fleet that is left to deal with. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/hertz-bankruptcy-used-car-fleet-court/
  16. Seems the first fuel cell plane test flight was a success making it net zero equal for a plane. https://chargedevs.com/newswire/zeroavia-completes-test-flight-of-fuel-cell-airplane/ A video of the plane is a bum as I was wanting to hear how it sounded and the put a music track on it that keeps us from hearing. Cool Motor Finally found their post of it and WOW is that nice and Quiet. Chili just bought 150 electric buses from China to expand their bus fleet to 455 Electric buses, 2nd largest in the world behind China. https://electrek.co/2020/07/02/egeb-chile-orders-150-e-buses-santiago-france-nuclear-nevada-ev/
  17. Seems that the war is on for who can slip through the Air the best. Lucid says they have the best numbers for aerodynamic efficiency of a luxury car. Seems Mercedes-Benz is going to have to work hard to catch up. lol https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1128703_lucid-air-claimed-to-be-the-most-aerodynamically-efficient-luxury-car
  18. I expect a big drop in employment in the manufacture segment especially on the assembly line as I am hearing from coworkers who were planning to buy new auto's this summer delaying big ticket purchases. Global depression for sure.
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