G. David Felt

RIP to the Tesla 3 role out of more advanced auto. Guess the change and tweak as you go does not cover a good Alpha and then Beta test.

@smk4565 MB has turned the AMG badge into a whore as it allows an AMG appearance package to be sold on just about every model they build. As such, like Chevy did to the SS badge by destroying it's street cred, MB has done to AMG destroying it special status and street cred. On top of this is what Balthazar posted about the crazy insane

Agreed, when you see new current Premium at $80K and Luxury at $70K then you look at CPO and I find 3 at my local Cadillac dealer: 2017 CT6 2.0T Luxury, 2,561 miles for $54,299 2017 CT6 2.0T Luxury 11,880 miles for $53,244 2016 CT6 3.0T Premium, 13,997 miles for $49,283 Amazing deals found on Autotrader.

Mercedes-Benz has been living for years on leases rather than sales. As such so many badge snobs have leased the MB auto to pretend to have money and as such MB is about to feel the pinch of having a glut of low mileage used cars sitting around that will cause car buyers to get great deals as they move to unload and dump them. This makes me wonder how the next few years will play out as we go into a depression as I suspect many people are going to wait for the EV auto's to hit the market and then reduce maintenance cost, fuel cost, etc. at they change from ICE to EV auto's. For those that have to buy an auto, if you shop right I bet you can get a good deal, for the rest of us, we will wait a couple more years.

Very interesting, I have never seen an auto that eats through tires like you have. Can totally understand the Toronado tire issue, agree, let her sleep till spring now and then do something about the tires. Totally understand and with the Ice that I have dealt with in NJ, I would also have a set of Blizzak tires to ride on too.

I used to do this also, but since now all my auto's are AWD, I seem to get very long tire life out of a set of 4 even on the TB. Example is the Bridgestone Duellers I had was a 40K tire and I got 67K out of the set of 4 before I put on the new Michelin Defenders. In regards to winter tires, found that having a set on Rims made it very easy for me to swap them out in my garage in less than an hour and like CCAP41, I can clean and dress the tires so they start out the season clean and neat. Course that was for the Suburban, my only RWD auto left I own. Now everything on AWD, I am good with a proper set of tires all season. I upgraded the brakes on my 94 GMC Suburban before I did anything to the engine back in the 90's with what Brembo sold then and loved the far better response and faster slow down. Paid for itself when a car full of young kids pulled in front of me on the freeway in heavy traffic. 1 ton dually in front of me and they pulled in the space between us and traffic came to a stop. I would have crushed them on the original OEM brakes, but stopped safe and fast and they hit the bumper of the truck and pulled onto the shoulder and as we went by they were clearly freaked out. Brakes is one area I like having superior grip power for faster slow down than needed as you never know the idiots out on the road and what they will do.

Yes, as much as I want to help and save our planet, there is something very nice about a real fire in a fireplace.

Freakin Awesome!!! Where is Mercedes-Benz response? I do not see them building anything this freakin awesome, fast, crazy and just totally Engineering Supreme!

Seattle is expecting their first snow of the season this friday. http://www.king5.com/weather/blog/first-snow-of-the-season-expected-friday-morning/488162885

@Cubical-aka-Moltar Awesome, they look great, love the Michelin Defender tires, quiet and grippy, awesome and ready for winter. Way to go!

I see MB continuation of being a German version of Toyota or GM or Ford or FCA is on track. A 3 pointed star in everyone's garage is the focus equal to your income level. How noble of them.

Electric Engine or Electric Motor, same thing.

Picked up my Daughters Durango from Kirkland Transmission yesterday, Awesome place with an awesome group of guys. Top Quality Auto Work. They had 3 lovely auto's they were working on. 1950 Ford they just finished a custom transmission in. 1955 Chevy Belair Transmission Service 1957 Chevy Nomad - Complete restoration of transmission and engine.

Another Solid Month for the BOLT!

One can clearly see the auto recession is starting with all the down product lines.

I like the looks and feel this is a good evolution of the Wrangler.

It will take a few decades for ICE to truly die, but I happen to agree that the advanced battery tech, computer tech and multiple auto companies committing to building a wide variety of auto's, 2017 is the start of the end of ICE. I will be surprised if new auto's are still running with ICE motors after 2050.

Motor Authority reporting with Spy Shots that the 2019 Prius V will become a CUV https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1028603_2019-toyota-prius-v-spy-shots#image=100628976 Seems Spy shots in Europe show the next Prius to be a CUV, dropping the van look as it goes muscles with a CUV high seating position look. Very interesting, be more interesting to see how they keep the mpg.

G. David Felt - Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.cheersandgears.com West Coast Electric Highway Expands to 7 States for Fast Charging Arizona is the latest state to join the newest 7 member states that will expand the original West Coast Electric Highway system. Originally Washington, Oregon and California got together to build the West Coast Electric Highway at a cost of $257 million dollars to the taxpayers. This enabled anyone with an electric vehicle to drive from Vancouver BC to Baha California on I-5 in an electric vehicle. Since then, these states have expanded their EV chargers across state highways giving greater range to anyone driving an electric auto around. Since then more states have assessed the future and decided on joining this to cover a larger interstate electric highway system. At the beginning of this year Colorado, Nevada and Utah said they would build out over the next 24 months a 2,000 mile electric interstate charging system of fast chargers. This summer say Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming join effective October 4th 2017 and here the week of October 20th 2017 we see Arizona join to grow the electric highway to over 5,000 miles of interstate that will have fast charging available by the end of 2019. This on top of the thousands of miles of the original electric highway is growing exponentially the change that is coming to EV auto's. All of these states are looking at investing their VW settlement funds into the electric highway initiative. Colorado alone says their $68.7 million dollar payout by VW will enable them to cover the whole state with Level 3 fast chargers leaving room for the extreme fast chargers to be installed by others who are willing to pay for an even faster recharge of their battery packs. The fast charging stations will cost between $150,000 and $200,000 per station installed all over the state. At the high end, this would mean Colorado alone will install 343 fast charging stations across the state. Colorado Governor has also announced a $5,000 tax credit for new EV auto purchases on top of the Federal tax credit of up to $7,500. This means buyers can get a credit of $12,500 against the purchase of an EV auto. The political representatives for these states point to announcements from General Motors of 20 electric auto's by 2023, Ford with 13 electric auto's by 2020, Mercedes-Benz with announcing an electric or plug in hybrid for each model in it's family by 2022. Denver Post Green Car Report

This totally makes sense considering the instant torque and superior power a Hybrid Powertrain can deliver in a sports car.

Tesla cuts Tesla 3 parts delivery 40% starting in December 2017. According to a story that has broke on another site, it would appear that instead of taking delivery of enough parts per week to build 5,000 Tesla 3 cars per week in December, Tesla has cut that rate by 40% which indicates 3,000 per week by the end of Dec. This also has a ripple affect as it pushes out their delivery of reaching 10,000 Tesla 3 cars per week in the early part of 2018. They story goes on to say that Tesla will not start taking delivery of parts in 10,000 lot shipments till May or June at the earliest. This would indicate that If they are only building about 3,000 a week in the first half of 2018 ramping up to 10,000 by end of June for the rest of 2018, Tesla will deliver about 78,000 to 100,000 model 3 cars in the first 6 months of 2018 and then about 260,000 in the second half of 2018 hitting a possible 360,000 Tesla 3's for 2018 if no more issues happen and they resolve the battery building problems at the Giga Factory. Tesla 3 parts reduction story

G. David Felt - Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.cheersandgears.com DOE $15 Million Investment into US XFC Infrastructure The Department of Energy has announced funding opportunity number DE-FOA-0001808 for building XFC (Extreme Fast Charging) across the United States. The floor is $500,000 with a maximum single payout of $5,000,000 as the DOE works to achieve a reduction of 2.5 billion gallons per year of petroleum by 2020. The focus of this grant system is to encourage and fun development of the new XFC charging system and batteries that would allow mass adoption of EV auto's. The focus is to decrease charging times while maintaining currents of less than 400 kWh and assure battery state charge increases by 50%. Battery cells are to be capable of 500 cycles or more of charging with less than a 20% fade in energy capacity consisting of a 10 Min charge to full. Toshiba has accomplished this and this funding is to encourage others to enter the battery and charging race to supply infrastructure and batteries for a cleaner, quieter city and road. Currently most level 3 DC chargers in the US excluding Tesla only put out 50kWh of power, where in Europe they put out 100 kWh. Porsche installed their new 350 kWh chargers as they started to build their e-Mission car. Since then Europe has settled on a 360kWh XFC charging system that will fully charge a 400 mile range battery in about 15 min. Since investment costs are high, the DOE felt it needed to put out this $15 million dollar program to drive investments and research into better batteries and chargers. DOE by setting a Spec ceiling of 400 kWh is looking to help support the current standard of CCS which is used by all of Germany, most of Europe and the US. CHAdeMO is a spec using in Japan and the US only by Nissan. DOE Grant Site

Gotta Love Crazy Halloween 2017 in Tokyo! To get everyone into the Spirit, Tokyo Xmas 2016 Crazy Fun!

Japan EDC Ultra 2017 Totally funny what people wear and especially the ladies and not understanding the english on their shirts.

Seems Reuters Story is reporting the the core of the Tesla 3 bottleneck is battery production issues where they have not fully automated the building of the batteries and some implication that maybe some engine work too since both the Engines and batteries are assembled at the GigaFactory. Dawned on me that this is pretty much all of the greater Seattle Area as to why so many auto's here are AWD. You are always going up or down some place around here. Hills are murder on a snowy day.