Drew Dowdell

It's the Roger Smith era again, albeit with a lower chance of disastrous results. With EVs, the car manufacturers are moving substantially closer to the I.T. model. Right now, I can buy a laptop from a whole bunch of manufacturers... Lenovo, HP, Dell are the big names you've all heard of that I would liken to GM, Ford, and Toyota. MSI, Gigabyte are less well known, I would liken them to Rivian and (new) Fisker. Acer is sort of like FCA in that they're made up of Packard Bell, Texas Instruments PCs, Commodore, Gateway, and E-machines. Samsung (Hyundai/Kia/Genesis) has been making some inroads into the laptop market with cool looking designs and some luxury offerings. Tesla is Apple with their proprietary connectors and rabid fanboys. So there's 11 laptop brands I mentioned, with hundreds, if not thousands of models between them. All with various features like different size screens, different styles of keyboards, different styles of charging connector, some can convert into a tablet, some have big graphics cards to play video games. One I'm looking at has an animated display on the outside of the lid... totally useless, but neat to look at. But at the end of the day, they have a processor from either Intel, AMD, or Apple. They have RAM from Samsung or Toshiba. The screens are almost exclusively Samsung, but LG has some business there too. The hard drive is usually Samsung or Toshiba, but Apple builds their own. Touchpads are usually by Synaptic. Apple has recently turned more proprietary in their setup, but they still do sell some Intel machines. No matter what you pick, there is an 78% chance it will have an Intel under the hood with the remaining 22% split between AMD and Apple. This is the way the auto industry will go... and notice how many times I mentioned Samsung above. If you read between the lines at GM's various releases over the last year, it's pretty clear they want to be the Samsung of the auto industry. Not only do they see themselves as a car builder, but with their huge investments into EV technology, they want to be one of the biggest component suppliers to the other manufacturers. Samsung's laptop business is relatively small, but they own somewhere around 75% of the laptop screen business. They are huge players in storage and ram, building some of the best performing parts out there. As much as I hate Samsung end-user products, their storage and ram are among the best. To relate this back to the 50s/60s, it like when the Hydramatic was the best transmission out there and it was used in Hudsons, Nashes, Ramblers, Kaiser-Frazers, Willys, Lincolns, and Rolls Royces. I fully believe that while they may not have looked at Samsung specifically, this model of being the leading supplier of EV components is their motivation.. and quite frankly.. a very sound business move.

That's good, but that's not really what I asked, though you sort of made my point for me. I was asking if having the Ford Engine + Transmission in a Sierra would bother you... I'm guessing not since you were shopping the Ford also. In the end, the comparable powertrains didn't matter to you. You had a choice of two 3-liter turbo-diesel 6-cylinders mated to 10-speed transmissions. You made your decision on which way to go based on paint color and wheel selection. You care a lot more about engines than even the above-average CR-V/Equinox buyer. Do you really think that it would come down to who made the electric motor in an EV? I could see it mattering to some Tesla Fanbois.. maybe.... but that's about it.

I’m sure the bean counters at GM sharpened their pencils enough to figure out how to make a profit off of Ultium platform sales to other manufacturers. If they can do it for transmissions, they can do it for batteries. And economies of scale are one of the most important things in EV land right now. Look how long it took Tesla, and at such volume, before they started turning profits without selling carbon credits to FCA. GM selling 200,000 Ultium packs to Honda will make the Ultium pack cheaper for GM to produce for its own vehicles. Luckily we don’t charge by the word here at C&G.

My point is that even piddling little turbo engines of mediocre output are/can be quite sensitive to oil change requirements. I can hear and identify certain sounds that different brands make. Ford starter, old GM pushrod V6 starters, Northstar starters, any GM RWD 4-speed auto accelerating, any Panther accelerating, most older FWD Chrylsers coming to a stop... the list goes on and I'm sure you can identify those and some others too. I can hear an insufficiently oiled Audi/VW Turbo-4 coming at me with my eyes closed. I can hear/feel an insufficiently oiled GM 1.4T/1.5T from inside the car. This aren't even the high performance ones.... and for every well maintained WRX out there, there is another one with the body kit falling off and a dangling fart can. I think the exact same thing with happen with this new Toyota.

I don't know what the GM 1.4T makes for boost from the factory, nor do I know what the BMW 2.0T does.... What I do know is that I can hear when they go below 20% on the oil life monitor.

20psi is a pretty heavy amount of boost. This isn’t an ATS-V that costs $70k and gets taken care of. Turbos in general need better than the “oh, I think I’ll get an oil change this year” schedule that Toyota owners tend to take. Higher pressure turbos more so.

As of about 5 minutes ago, I got a new high powered search tool installed. Site searches using the box in the upper right should be faster and more Google-like in quality. It will take a bit for the software to reindex the 20ish years worth of posts here, but as of now it is already 12% done. There may be a *slight* performance hit while the search indexer is running, but it still seems faster than anything we've been use to for the past 20 years.

1997 - 2005, and probably later, but they are getting away with it more now by specifying lower weight oil and full synthetic. Those years are just what the class-action/recall covered. It's a 185 hp/liter 3-cylinder, heavily boosted. They'll be sensitive to oil changes just like any turbo-charged engine... likely more so.

I don't think anyone was suggesting that. And "co-developed" for both the GM 9-Speed / Ford 10-Speed is pretty generous wording. I'm sure each company had a lot of input on the respective designs, but GM was the lead on the FWD version and Ford was the lead on the RWD. Ford did some cost cutting on the 9-speed by dropping the final gear. Final tuning for both is done by the company using the transmission obviously. Honda is so far behind on EV development that the most they can contribute to GM is money, but yes, they'll need spec requirements from Honda as well.

I think there is a lot of chicken-littleing in this thread. The sky is not falling. This is ultium platform sharing, but not the body in white. You're not going to see CR-V shaped Equinoxes. It will be all the dirty bits underneath. Note how similar the CR-V, Equinox, and Terrain are today: Equinox - 1.5T with 170 hp and 203 lb-ft, 6-speed automatic Terrain - 1.5T with 170 hp and 203 lb-ft, 9-speed automatic CR-V - 1.5T with 190 hp and 179 lb-ft, CVT None of those are drastically different to even the above average consumer who would bother to check the specs. In this segment, they care more about seat comfort, what the stereo sounds like, and how much space there is in the hatch. Each one has their pluses and minuses: + Equinox and Terrain for having a good bit more torque - Equinox and Terrain for having the tendency to burn up their cylinder heads + CR-V for having more horsepower - CR-V for having a CVT (though probably one of the best CVTs available) + Terrain for having a 9-speed auto - Equinox for having a 6-speed auto - Terrain for having a $30k base price + CR-V and Equinox for having a ~$26k base price All this announcement does is say that GM and Honda will share the motive power. Do you really care if the electric motor and battery comes from Honda or GM? A battery is a battery and an electric motor is an electric motor. GM is ahead of Honda on both of these, so it is wise for Honda to partner with someone rather than spend R&D money on developing battery technology. @balthazar are you upset that your Sierra has a Ford developed transmission in it? Do you think it would have changed your purchase decision if it was the 3.0 Ford Powerstroke diesel in there instead of the Duramax? If not, why not? At least Mrs. Balth's Malibu has a GM transmission in it... the same one the Escape uses, albeit with one more gear.

I've been working on this little by little each day but I think the SQL server tuning is finally there. I made a change just now and the server is lightning fast... the site seems to be the fastest its ever been.

GM clearly does not care about name equity or they wouldn’t have misnamed the Silverado EV. There is a group of buyers out there clamoring for a replacement for their Avalanche. It’s waning due to age, but the Avalanche had some fantastic nameplate retention numbers. The reason it took me so long to find one was because people don’t give them up until 300k miles.

We are currently being targeted by multiple spam bots. Please report spam with prejudice as 3 reports will automatically hide it. We do have spam protection software but it isn't protecting us at the moment and I have a ticket in with the provider.

Yes, I was looking at completed transactions on eBay.

Same. Masks only on the bus, I think airplanes until April 19th, and medical/dental offices but those are at the discretion of the provider.

There is such a rut stuck mindset about "filling up" with EVs... it is going to take a while for people to shake it. Two main issues: 1. "It takes forever to fill up! I can fill my gas car in 5 minutes!" - So? Then don't "fill up" your EV. You don't need to, and indeed should not be, charging your battery to 100% every time. You'll shorten the life of your battery doing that. Put enough charge in to get to your next charge point plus 25 miles padding, then unplug and be on your way. The only time you ever need to fill up multiple times a day is when you are doing a 600 mile trip... and be honest with yourself on how often that happens. 2. "It takes forever to fill up! Why would I just sit in my car for hours!" - Then don't. I charged twice when I was in Colorado with the Kia Niro EV. I took a friend to lunch and found a parking garage with a charger (easy to do both with the built-in Kia app and the ChargePoint app that works through Apple CarPlay). I didn't sit around waiting for it to charge... I plugged it in and spend time having lunch with a friend outside on a beautiful Denver day. The charger wasn't the destination, the lunch was... but while I was eating, so was the car. I also charged on a visit to Boulder. I parked at a Wholefoods and plugged in to the rapid charger. Then I walked up Pearl Street (beautiful and fun shopping district in Boulder) and had breakfast at one of my most favorite places in the world. After breakfast I strolled through the shops, picked up a couple of gifts for Albert for Christmas, and slowly made my way back to the car. Again, the destination wasn't the charger, it was the restaurant and Pearl Street. But while I was there, the Niro added 115 miles of range. Then I went and drove it up and over the front range and toured the mountains a bit. Coming back down I made a bunch of stops, but generally kept it in high regen mode all the way back down the mountains. I ended the couple hours of driving with just 15 miles less range than I started with. When is the last time you recharged your gas tank by coasting down hill? You know what I didn't do? I didn't hunt around for a non-price gouging gas station within 10 miles of the airport right before returning the car to the rental company. I drove 300ish miles on that trip and spent $15 in charging fees. Can't do that in nearly any car right now.

That doesn't account for people who rent. The Blazer EV is next. They're moving right up the lineup. We already know the Escalade EV is coming which means that a Suburban/Tahoe EV is also likely... so while Traverse may be the last to go, GM is definitely working on it.

Unless I missed a post, your GP is not in #4 condition.... isn't the motor apart and some of it in pieces? #4 is that you can pull it out and take it for a spin right now. And once you get past a certain year/mileage, KBB stops being useful for valuations. Looking at multiple completed sales of Auroras online via eBay, it looks like that vintage Aurora with like 65k miles on it is more in the $7k range while KBB puts the trade in value at $2500 and private party at $3,300. A '92 Toronado with 65,000 miles in "Very good" condition KBB says is worth $850. I see them go on the FB Toronado pages all the time for $4k - $7k. If I could buy them for $850, I'd have a fleet of them and flip them for a quick $3k. They won't even value my '81, but I bet KBB would tell me to sell it for scrap. A nice '85 with low miles just sold on eBay for $17,5k. KBB is just not a good tool for something of even marginal collector status. They're only concerned with the recent model general consumer market.

It turns out a lot of the early interest over Ivermectin was due to a faulty study. There is a parasite that is prevalent in tropical and sub-tropical environments. If you give a patient a steroid, as is often done with covid patients to help reduce respiratory inflammation, this parasite if already in their system can spread rapidly and kill the patient. Ivermectin is the treatment for the parasite. So patients who got the steroid and also got ivermectin appeared to recover better from covid. Eh, I think that was a message that got twisted. Fauci's early statements about masks was "please save the masks for the medical professionals because we don't have enough" and he feared the hoarding as you pointed out. Very very early on in the pandemic, the week before things started shutting down, I was in Miami to visit my parents and I stopped by a Home Depot and Walmart. Every mask, paper towel, and cleaning supply was wiped out. The day I left I stopped at Costco for gas and a slice of pizza before I got on the road and it was a mad-house with people buying pallets of water and everything else they could get their hands on. There was also questions about how well the virus could move through the air. Sure, if someone who had it sneezed or coughed on you, you'd probably get it, but would just being in the same room cause transmission? We didn't have the information on that. It was a very eerie drive home to PA with the roads and gas stations nearly empty. Two days later, PA shut down. One thing that I hope continues is the sanitation of publicly used things like shopping carts and self-checkouts. Years ago I caught a virus that is usually just a kids disease that because of the incubation period, the virus's tendency to live on surfaces, and my movements, I know where I likely got it, and it was most likely from a shopping cart at Costco. So yea, they can keep spraying down those carts, thanks.

Because Teslas are ugly. Auroras are not. What would KBB say about the value of your Pontiac in its current condition? Why would you dump money into it?

Will any of them be for transverse applications?

Yeah, the independent rear suspension on the Aurora (and Riviera, Eldorado, and Seville) is a pretty compact setup, but it had to be. The Aurora has a tiny trunk relative to its overall size as it was a 4-door outgrowth of the Toronado which was a "personal" luxury car. The Toronados from '79 - '92 have relatively tiny trunks too. I'm sure you could put a second motor back there, but you'd lose what trunk space you did have. You might be able to put the motor in the spare tire well, but then you'd need some sort of transmission/gearing to move the output and half-shafts forward to the axle line and with a motor hanging behind the rear wheels it would cause some .... interesting... driving dynamics.

The rear suspension will be your biggest issue. They don’t have room back there. Doing it on a budget probably want to stick to the original setup.

Depends on location. If you live in suburban Iowa, sure. One of the nicer parts of Philly, not so much.

Apparently Pfizer is seeking FDA approval for 4th boosters. I’m 3x Moderna, but I’ll get Pfizer if it’s approved. Mixing vaccine boosters is supposed to give a slight immune advantage. if it gets approved soon (and there is no reason not to, they already do it for the 65+ set and the immunocompromised), I’ll be eligible at the end of April.