G. David Felt

More garbage from Italy at the expense to the american name plates that are footing the bill. Sad day for Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler.

Ouch, this will hurt them, but it does show that Cadillac built a superior system. for Cadillac!

EPA - Fuels New Standard - Premium? Current administration has been doing everything they can to gut the EPA even though Auto companies have stated just push out the MPG standard till 2030 or so giving us time to delivery the results. Yet with that, the auto industry is trying to get onboard with Europe to a single standard. In Europe, 95 RON is their baseline fuel standard. This is equal to our 91 octane and while we have a 40 to 50 cent premium standard for 91 octane fuel, this only makes up 11% of the gas produced in the US. Making 91 the new base standard would increase gas creation resulting in lower prices for that gas and cleaner running engines along with a 3-4% increase in fuel economy for new Auto's. The story does say that you would not see a drop right away overnight but over a couple of years in the price of premium. This brings up some interesting questions: What about the cost hit to the lower income parts of society? Could they handle seeing a hit to buy gas as automakers stop producing auto's that run on regular or mid grade? Could they just drop Mid grade and like Costco, offer only regular or premium at the same price to help transition people to Premium autos everywhere? What else could be done to help with a change to a superior fuel? The Drive Story

Seems that with a sabbatical of the Engineering Head, a reorg is flattening the company. https://www.autoblog.com/2018/05/14/elon-musk-announces-reorg-as-tesla-engineering-chief-goes-on-lea/ Interesting times for Tesla

Confederate Motorcycles built and sold 35 of these bikes in ICE configuration before renaming the company and dedicating themselves to building only EV versions of their bikes. 170 HP and 290 lb-ft of torque, this bike will move. https://www.autoblog.com/2018/05/14/curtiss-zeus-electric-motorcycle/ This is cool, a real Light Cycle type EV Bike. The Neutron has 100 miles range, looks bad ass and they have a cop version of it. https://www.autoblog.com/2017/06/09/neutron-e-motorcycle-autoblog-minute/

Very Cool

WOW, talk about idiots. It would have been sad if they had gotten hurt but also their own fault. What morons get out of a car in a wild safari with dangerous big cats. WOW

UPS going Green in a BIG way! Paris and London, both these cities have stated by 2040 all auto's, delivery vehicles, etc. that are powered by ICE or internal combustion engines will be banned from the streets. This has especially package delivery companies in a pickle on how to honor the law and still deliver the packages. UPS has stepped up to the plate to figure this out by buying a fleet of EV package delivery vans from Arrival LTD. Based on their web site, a fairly new company out of skunk mode in 2017 as they sold and are delivering 35 EV vans to UPS for use in London / Paris. Under heavy load these vans will supply 150 miles of range. More than enough to cover their average daily driving of 75-100 miles. These vans in a smaller version will be used by the Royal Mail delivery throughout the UK. Replacement of existing petro mail delivery vans will happen as the vans age / mile out of service. Not leaving all their eggs in one basket, UPS has also purchased a small new fleet of plug-in hybrid delivery vans from Workhorse. These 50 Hybrid vans that are 100 miles pure electric with a generator on board should be able to cover a total of 350 miles. These delivery trucks will cover the rural routes where driving 100 to 200 miles a day is common yet inner city deliveries are less than a 100 miles a day. This continues UPS push as they now have 300 EV vans on the roads in North America and Europe with an addition 700 plug-in Hybrid trucks in both places. UPS says over the next 5 years they will have to replace 35,000 delivery vans and as part of their normal cycle, if they can reduce their cost on fuel by going plug-in hybrid or pure EV and reduce maintenance costs, then changing over sooner rather than later will benefit UPS bottom line. Arrival Web Site Workhorse Web Site Apex Insight Story Digital Trends Story The Detroit Bureau Story Reuters Story Next Greencar Story

@Drew Dowdell https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/comfort-is-not-your-friend-—-the-stock-markets-biggest-bear-explains-why-the-next-market-crash-will-be-one-of-the-worst-ever/ar-AAxbRFM?li=BBnb7Kz Some of the brightest minds are also seeing a big crash coming. I think you and I are spot on.

Age always plays a factor, but I know from my own 93 Suburban I still have, that once you get about 10 years, the fuses and solid state parts tend to start dying naturally. I have replaced them all on my suburban and everything works like day one, that is not to say that you still might have a bad wire from rubbing and a short is happening or a solder has cracked.

I know that I have hit my share of electrical gremlins in the past on various family members auto's. If you have a multi-meter, it would make sense to pop each fuse and test it to see if there could be a hairline crack that is causing the issues. Yes a cost, but still cheaper than a mechanic troubleshooting is you could just replace all the fuses and then look at which main solid state boxes could be affecting this. That is the fastest and cheapest way to try to fix the issues. Then you have tracing the wires and seeing if you have bad connections as sometimes cheap soders on the connections can cause this. Without looking at an electrical sheet to see the flow of current, I wonder if your alternator is going or look at any capacitors in the auto that could help store energy for bigger electrical loads and see if one has died. Good luck, electrical is the hardest to chase down.

So we start off with two teens getting killed in a Tesla S and police say Speed might be the factor. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/05/09/tesla-crash-killed-2-teens-probed-investigators/596728002/ They I like this story as it covers what has gone on under the Bland style since 2012. All the software updates: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1092515_tesla-model-s-electric-car-software-updates-since-2012

So in your mind EV / BEV / Etc. are fringe and have no place in society. WOW, you really do live in the stone age.

Anything but, you seem to be stuck in a white persons mentality world. Maybe just not much multi-cultural blending of society where you live. Seattle has a huge Asian and eastern European communities and one thing I have learned, due to American Ignorance by the Auto Industry, Toyota is King especially in places like Mongolia, Ukraine, etc. The Eastern European countries and most of the Asian rim see Toyota as an auto to attain over anything German or American. Only the badge snobs see Germans as the next step up. I have had many conversations with people that have chosen to not buy American Auto's cause they do not see them building luxury or quality. This is the failure of the marketing of American Auto's.

Actually not, Europe is far ahead of the US in moving forward with EV auto sales. Only China is ahead of Europe. Check out these interesting statistics: http://www.ev-volumes.com/country/total-world-plug-in-vehicle-volumes/ Here are the Q1 results for 2018 in Europe. The numbers show some countries have had high double and triple digit sales increases of EVs. https://www.best-selling-cars.com/europe/2018-q1-europe-electric-and-hybrid-car-sales-per-eu-and-efta-country/ Here the sales numbers are very noticable. The US is the stuck in the past head in the sand country. Time to Dump Standard and Join the World in all things Metric. Time to dump Daylight Savings time like the rest of the world has done. Time to dump old baby boomer mentality and move forward into the 21st century.

I believe Detroit needs to change now not in a year or two, they also need to embrace the technology excitement marketing buzz and make the auto show more like the CES show. They could recapture if they properly change now to embrace what the auto companies are looking for. Using the Ford adage of you can have it in any color you want as long as it is Black does not work any longer.

What Shell is doing Rocks

Lots of them around here rust free since we do not use salt on the winter roads here. They are amazingly popular still here.

Sure, I have noticed 110 outlets all around Gas Pump locations!

Nope Trader Joe's on Highway 99 in Lynnwood WA. They are moving to a way better location diagonal from here this summer into the old Safeway location, 4 times bigger, more parking and far easier to get into and out of. Yup, far more Asian and German brands than American around here.

Saw this Beauty when I ran to Trader Joes!

Detroit is not the center of the world is correct, but it is still a very important place for the auto industry in regards to design and building. Big point is Detroit is not the Focus of the Marketing World for New Auto Debuts. CES with Vegas is taking that place for the higher tech auto's and places like NY and LA. As product introductions change to other times from what was considered traditional in the past, the best places to be for an auto show are not the older venues.

I would agree, one would think the industry would have standardized across North America on a color and sizing nozzle for the various types of fuel but sadly no guidance from the Feds, this is a state thing and the west coast has all followed California in this regards. Course some things are just crazy like the new CA Law that says cancer warnings have to be on coffee now due to some idiot tree huggers. Yes we might as well label everything a cause of cancer.

Very cool story on a man who owns 400 auto's his collection is amazing and the pictures are worth the time to check it out. https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/enthusiasts/the-man-who-owns-400-cars/ss-AAx4RyG?li=BBnb7Kz#image=1 Some auto's I have never seen are in the pics at the link above and good story to read about it all. They do have an actual web site you can visit. http://www.studio434.co.uk/