G. David Felt

Having just been in an XT5 for the week as the dealership fixed my SS as the starter died at 150K miles, I will say that the interior design is very subdued and yet very easy to use and relaxing. I am very interested in seeing how sales of the Aviator and this XT6 does in the marketplace. Will be interesting to see how the public receives these two CUVs and their contrasting interiors.

Very cool, this would increase sales here in Washington state. I cannot tell you how many GM AWD full size vans I see on the passes either there for ski / snowboard or with trailer hitch and snowmobiles. AWD is the right thing to do for Chrysler on their minivan.

In the early days of Lithium Ion batteries, yes too fast of a charge would kill off cells shorting the battery life. Today much of what is built can handle fast charging with no loss of cell life which has been proven by the hybid auto's used in taxi service that have hundreds of thousands of miles driven on them and no to minimal cell death. As we move towards solid state batteries, we will be able to recharge even faster. The biggest issue is heat that builds up as to why the V3 chargers have liquid cooling charge cables compared to the air cooled V2 cables. Heat over time does degrade products as to why liquid cooling becomes important for battery conditioning and recharging. Nissan Leaf was delayed getting their long range Leaf Plus cars out due to changing from an air cooled battery to a liquid temperature controlled battery. This helps insure the 10yr warranty works with minimal obligation to full fill replacing the battery pack due to degraded battery capacity. Plus as it states in the writeup, conditioning the battery to a certain temp allows for maximizing a fast recharge of said battery.

This is growing on me and I am excited that they are adding models to the lineup. Pricing seems inline with the industry and should help deliver more sales to the Cadillac dealerships.

Tesla announced the evening of March 6th 2019 that Version 3.0 of their supercharging network would roll out across the globe and be in place by the end of calendar year 2019. With the growth of the global market and to support a ever growing base of Tesla 3 owners and the upcoming new products, charging needed to get faster to reduce wait times by their customers. As such. V3 Supercharging was born out of Tesla's experience with the world's largest grid connected batteries enabling Tesla to surpass all OEM auto competitors in recharging their electric auto's. V3 Supercharging is a utility scale new architecture product that can delivery a peak rate of 250kW per car using a new 1MW power cabinet delivered via liquid cooled charging lines. This allows the Tesla 3 to recover 75 miles of range in 5 min with a charge rate of 1000 miles per hour. This new charging technology cuts the average time spent recharging by 50%. In addition to the new 250kW Superchargers, Tesla is able to push out an update to the existing V2 Superchargers that will allow a 145kW charge rate on the 12,000 plus V2 Superchargers around the world. This will be coming in the next couple of weeks as Tesla works to reduce charge times at existing charge stations. Tesla is expecting to double by the end of the calendar year 2019 the number of Tesla auto's on the road globally and having a faster recharge time on existing Superchargers is critical, but in high volume areas, this will need to be addressed and Tesla says they can do this by adding the 250kW chargers to existing stations. Tesla V2 charging cable to the left, V3 liquid cable to the right. This new supercharger no longer splits power with the vehicle next to you but delivers the full amount of charge to your battery. Tesla expects the average time spent by a customer at a Supercharging station to drop to 15 min on average. Tesla is also pushing out to Tesla 3's a new On-Route battery Warmup software feature that will intelligently heat the battery to the optimal temperature so that at the time of arrival at the supercharging station it can take a full high capacity charge quickly to get you on your way. This becomes very important as Tesla says with the Model Y on the way V3 SuperCharging is the only way Tesla can sustain quickly keeping people moving and not waiting around. San Francisco bay area will get the first of the all new V3 Supercharger stations. These new V3 chargers will be made available to the Tesla Early Access Program participants. V3 Supercharging stations will get installed in North America during Q2 & Q3 time frames with Asia and Europe installations starting in Q4 of 2019. Now you might ask what about the Tesla S and X auto's? While they currently will not be able to take advantage of the 250 kW chargers, Tesla does say in their release that in the coming months, Tesla S and X will get software updates to allow them to use the 145kW V2 Superchargers. One might ask how does this compare to what the VW-backed Electrify America network? Electrify America is currently rolling out 350 kW capable chargers. These chargers will allow a Tesla 3 to get 185 miles of range in 9 minutes once the Tesla 3 has their new Software update. The Future of ultra fast recharging is coming and should allow a revolutionary change in the way people drive. View full article

UPS, FedEx use Vans for delivery here in Washington, have not had trucks in years. Maybe they still use the old trucks around you. But the Dually wheel sprinter Van is in use here. Those are 1 ton vans that would easily be replaced by a service version of this EV van. USPS uses a weird range of vans and other auto's around here as I have seen less and less of the old traditional white box auto who ever built them. These are very common here in the neighborhoods making deliveries. Easily replaced by an electric version. Amazon Prime uses the Sprinter vans all over the west coast, easily replaced by an electric version. UPS delivery vans like this is what we see every day on the streets and in the neighborhoods. Same with Fedex All these ICE vans can easily be replaced by electric versions.

According to FedEx and UPS you have the following details. FedEx delivery drivers average 160 miles a day. 52 weeks in a year @ 5 days a week equal the following math (5 * 160 *52 = 41,600 miles a year driven) UPS delivery drivers average 200 miles a day. Same formula (5 * 200 * 52 = 52,000 miles a year driven) Pretty much most service companies average 15,000 miles a year or more so recovering a 15-20K up front cost is very realistic in the first 24 months. The formulas for LNG or CNG converted products have shown that with those fuels selling at half the price of Diesel even with the conversion cost of the motor and the LNG / CNG fuel tank costs, that most often those cost are recovered in 24 months and then bigger savings happen over the longer life due to less maintenance for LNG/CNG over diesel or Gas. I know for a fact that my brother in-laws appliance repair business they average 20,000 miles a year on the work vans. Showed him this last night and while he is put off by the Sprinter van, he did say he would be willing to buy one and see how it did on the routes. He is interested in reducing the overall costs to his vehicle fleet and would love it if Ford or GM would offer a full size electric van. With EV vans the cost of maintenance is even lower and the cost of electricity is lower so recovering this upfront cost should be very doable in the first could years. With examples of only 2 or 3 oil changes a year, this ignores that the more driving the more maintenance on an ICE auto. There is more than just oil changes too on an ICE auto that needs to be looked at. Brakes, differential, transmission, so much more costs on ICEV compared to EV. Yes, UPS, FedEx and USPS have all stated they plan to replace ICE auto's with EV's especially for inner city use or dense suburban areas. Just like they are replacing their Diesel semi's with LNG/CNG ones. All about reducing costs in maintenance, fuel and helping with cleaner air.

I totally disagree with you on the Sprinter TD van. Sadly my brother inlaw who has an appliance service business has replaced all of them less than 5 years old due to high maintenance cost, breakage constantly compared to the Ford vans he replaced them with. Sprinters are not reliable as MB would like to make them out to be. I hope their EV van is far better. CNG converted vans have been proven to totally offset the high conversion price at 15K miles a year in service compared to gas or diesel. EV's will do the same thing due to low maintenance and lower cost to recharge the battery packs.

2019 Forester has Forest Green Pearl Metallic 2019 RAM Black Forest Green Pearl Coat 2018 Metallic Forest Green Ford Bullit 50th Anniversary edition 2019 Audi RS 5 Sportback Sonoma Green Metallic 2018 VW Tiguan Dark Moss Green Metallic Not allot, but clearly some brands realize more than the basic Black, White, Silver, Red, Blue for colors. Mazda needs to step out of their very conservative colors. Add a couple fun ones.

Their CUV's Scream for a lovely Metallic Forest Green!

@oldshurst442 In the US, auto exhaust noise cannot go over 95 decibels. Many rock concerts break the 105 decibel limit that does cause hearing loss. Harley Davidson has come under fire as their open header bikes have often broke the sound limit and in the cities, you are very correct that many people complain about the noise waking them up during the night when sleeping.

Not hamstrung by electric propulsion and even if 15 to 20K higher priced, the savings on maintenance, oil, gas will easily off set and have bigger savings over a 3-5 year period than gas.

So then VW Arteon is really ancient.

1900 The very first auto show at Madison Square Gardens. Great history of the industry. https://aoghs.org/transportation/first-auto-show/ Course some seem to think that the 1885 gasoline 3 wheel Benz was the first auto, but many will debate that as even the history channel says the following: https://www.history.com/news/who-built-the-first-automobile For historians who think that early steam-powered road vehicles fit the bill, the answer is Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, a French military engineer who in 1769 built a steam-powered tricycle for hauling artillery.

Very True, GM just did it better.

I totally can agree with this that Volvo is the safety brand and Polestar is the performance brand. Cool.

Agree, work and home have the same keyboard and I am lucky to be limited to minimal travel now so rarely use the laptop keyboard.

We could all ask why the Hell Did Johan feel the need to go CT or XT on the cars. Mazda could feel with all the others out there that are dual digit, maybe someone has the ear of Corporate Mazda in Japan and has them convinced going CX30, CX50, CX90 would move it like other luxury automakers with dual digit auto names. After all multiple people have stated that Mazda wants to move into the Luxury segment away from the Honda / Toyota / Nissan and more seen as the Acura, Buick, Cadillac, BMW, etc. Maybe this is the start of moving in that direction with a rename of the auto's.

Hummer Skyline R33 Unimog Yukon Denali / Escalade 1999 The start of the Luxury full size SUVs.

up, noticed they CX30 is already stated on the USA Mazda site. Talk about a mess this is going to cause. It does make me wonder if the rest of the numbers during refresh will go dual digits. CX50, CX90 ?

Talk about a confusing mess. Bigger but smaller so does that mean it is just right?

I love them, cannot imagine working on a traditional straight keyboard ever.

So work re-org'd groups and moved people around. Due to my seniority, I ended up getting a windows cube. Nice now, but I think summer is going to be hot. I also got a 2nd 30 inch monitor and as such went from 4 screens to 3. Here is my new setup, one 30 inch in portrait mode the other in landscape and then using my laptop screen for email.

Ford at Seoul Chevrolet at Seoul