Drew Dowdell

I'll be coming up on the Avalanche's first oil change soon. The Chrysler still has a while to go. I drove it yesterday and Albert has hardly put any miles on it at all.

I’m.... not seeing locomotive in the current crop of Chevy trucks. Where are you seeing it?

The Bolinger is what Gru from Minions would drive if they ever did a live action version of the movie.... except it would be nuclear fission powered or something.

Cool I guess. (see what I did there?) But the other two vaccines don't require that sort of cold storage. The Pfizer vaccine is probably only going to be used for frontline healthcare workers. The third vaccine coming can be stored in a standard freezer purchased at lowes.

I've seen the Bolinger in person. It's what happens when someone gets an EV powertrain and has a bunch of flat sheet metal, an arc welder, a JC Whitney Catalog, and a few rolls of remnant office carpeting laying around. They had a booth at the L.A. show the same year the Rivian debuted.... and I was like, "You can't be serious.... "

There's a number of flaws with this, it makes assumptions that aren't part of reality. It assumes that everyone would plug-in and charge their vehicle at the same time. I think everyone here can agree that would not be the case. Also, most modern chargers are, or have the capability to be, smart chargers. They can be set up to only charge at the rate required to get to the desired level of charge by a specific time and during specific hours. What do I mean by that? I'll give you the scenario... these numbers are made up for this illustration, but the actual numbers work the same way. You drive your Tesla home from work and it has a 60% charge left. You've had a long day and don't intend to go out again that evening when you get home at 6pm. Because you want to preserve your battery health as long as possible, you've already set your Tesla to only charge up to 80% capacity. You plug your car in at 6, but because you get a lower electricity rate starting at 11pm, your charger doesn't start charging the car until 11. You tell the car that you want to be at 80% charge by 7am tomorrow. Once the charger kicks in, it only charges at the rate required to get you to 80% at 7am when starting charging even though the charger can go faster. This is much better for the battery as slow charging is better. So instead of running at the max 11.5 kWh, the Tesla charger will run at say, 8kWh. The reason the electric rate is cheap from 11pm to 6am is because that's when usage is lowest. It's the best time for EVs to charge. It takes a long time for power plants to ramp up and ramp down demand (unless they're NatGas Spiker units only used for unplanned spikes in demand). So a lot of energy gets wasted during this low demand period. A bunch of EVs charging at night would smooth out demand for utilities significantly. Do we still need more capacity? Yes. Do we need as much as this article is claiming? No

@ocnblu Did you see the new color for Jeep for 2021?

You'll probably be shopping for the new platform by the time you're ready to trade, so everything you know about the current vehicle will be out the window. The one I specd out was $79,500 in Forest Green w/Green Interior and 7 seats.

I learned a long time ago to not read Facebook comments as they are generally from people who are unhinged and/or without a firm grasp on reality. A bunch of keyboard warriors who can barely make the payment on their '15 Malibu are not Cadillac's target market. If Cadillac makes a product with a powertrain equal or greater than Tesla and actually puts some style back in their vehicles (unlike the puke worthy stuff they have out now - excepting remaining CT6 and '21 Escalade) then I'll be back in the Cadillac camp.... but they've gotta make the vehicles look GREAT.

I don't really care for older Pontiacs, but that one is gorgeous.

I run steels on my Toronado because that's what it came with of course. There were optional alloy wheels available but they're made of unobtainium.. there is a rumor that the few that were sold were recalled by GM and destroyed due to wheel failures. If any actually still exist I would love to own a set just for the obscurity of them. I was actually looking at some retro steel wheels for my Avalanche to run snow tires with this morning after we were chatting about the Defender. These with some Blizzacks on 17s on my 'Lanche? Could be fun.

Yeah I know.. I was pointing out the difference.

His Jeep has been remarkably good to him. 96k miles and just general wear and tear items plus one water pump which I taught him how to replace a couple weeks ago.

I can't seem to figure out how to configure the Defender with those wheels

I REALLY like those wheels on that. My best friend has a Jeep Liberty and loves it. He's not really sure what he wants to go to next and he's kinda defaulting to a Wrangler, but I've been raising the idea of a Defender to him for a few years from now when they've worked the bugs out.

I am reversing this. It makes browsing on mobile rather tedious.

So, F-150 EV?

Why do you hate choice?

Prius Prime is a plug-in hybrid... not a BEV.

10+ years when you want to start looking at retiring but you know you never will because you're like me in that if you didn't work you'd be bored, but you realize you can step back from 2500 series trucks and get a 1500 series with a 400+ mile EV range to do the work and just have the heavier stuff delivered by the supplier.

I was specifically only addressing your situation. I'm aware that people in apartments or without off street parking are different. As to your charger, you'd probably hardwire an outdoor safe model and hang it on the outside of the garage like a garden hose. The shortest hardwire units are generally 25" long. The eGolf people (and Leaf and Focus EV) are special use cases that only work if they have charger access at their house. The ranges for those models are simply too short to be useful except as a 3rd car in the household and it being dedicated to a specific route and charging pattern. However, as more models like the high range Teslas, Fiskers, Hummers, Bolts, F-150s, and Rivians come out, the use case looks remarkably similar to an ICE vehicle. Plug it in at night and go about your normal daily routine. Heck, I've got 50% of the action down right now without having an EV in the household. Ever since it got cold here, the Toronado gets put on the battery tender every time it gets parked.

East Coast Costcos, Sams, and BJs, generally don't carry diesel. I've driven the entire east cost from Boston to Key West and West to Detroit, MI.. not saying my survey was exhaustive, but I make it a habit to fill up at Costco as much as possible because they have the lowest prices for the top tier gas. I've never seen a Costco with diesel.

@balthazar Why are you looking at chargers around your house? Those are the chargers you would never use. Unless you're eligible for Tesla Supercharging for free or some other free service, charging at public paid charging stations never makes financial sense. What you want to look for is chargers between you and long-distance destinations that you visit. Can you make it to your son's college and back on a single charge? If not, look up chargers either in-between or at his school. Those are the chargers you would use. You're not driving 300 miles a day every day unless you're doing work in Harrisburg. Think about the longest trips you've taken in the past three years and look at the chargers for those routes. Anything under about 100 miles one way and you don't need to even think about it because for those you'd charge at home. The point that I believe @David is trying to make is that you "fill up" every day at home. You'll never use any of the public chargers around you... or even within 100 miles of your place. You'd never charge at a customer's home not because of any cost... even at 20c/kWh you're looking at $2.50 max worth of electricity on a 110v outlet. You wouldn't do it because on a 110v outlet the charge rate is too slow to even bother. If a customer had a level 2 charger at their house and let you use it, you could knock $5 off their bill and you'd be more than even. I suspect that the people you see hogging all of the Tesla chargers at the mall are just cheapskates that don't want their electric bill going up $30 a month. They paid all that money for a Tesla with free charging and they feel entitled to use as much free charging as possible and abuse the system even though from an opportunity cost/hour it makes little sense to the likes of you and I who can math. You could put a dryer outlet in your garage, get a level 2 charger for home and NEVER need to visit a public charger except for the maybe 2 times a year you go to your son's university. (I realize that Covid changes a lot of this scenario, but I'm talking about when life goes back to normal)

I could totally see myself driving a Rivian truck to supplement my Avalanche in 5ish years. I won't get rid of the Avalanche, but I would like to slow down the number of miles I'm putting on it. (5,000 so far and have only owned it since August!)

Dealership. However, Carvana allowed me to test drive the Avalanche and do my own inspection on it before I agreed to buy it. I could back out at any point up to 7 days after signing the papers and taking it home as long as I didn't put more than 1,000 miles on it. I also could have refused delivery at the time of pickup with no penalty to me. There is no way all dealerships will move online only, but many will. The profit margin increase for them is too high to not pursue it. For people who don't care about cars and just want to point and click on an Altima for $199 a month, online only will work just fine. The only reason I bought the truck I did was because it was the truck it was... but I'm picky like that.