akirby
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Posts posted by akirby
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3 hours ago, Oac98 said:
What about Oakville was rushed?? The decision to get rid of the Edge too early? Or the product that they still can’t get right it seems??
They rushed to kill Edge and Nautilus too early just to meet an anticipated demand that now isn’t happening and apparently with the wrong kind of product. They could have brought a C2 edge and nautilus to Oakville and decided later if it made sense to convert to EVs.I think it started with the 5 EVs from VW’s platform and pending government mandates to go EV quickly around the world. But then the VW platforms didn’t work out. And then the market cooled off and govts backed off the EV mandates, but by the time that happened it was too late to save Nautilus and Edge and there was no suitable Edge to import either. And now the direction is cheaper EVs and a whole factory sits idle. All because they rushed to get EVs out.
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1 hour ago, silvrsvt said:
It doesn't matter if its being driven 250 or 50 miles because it is still showing a large difference between what it should be getting going by testing. If someone isn't plugging in their car or as much as they should, the total use of fuel will be higher.
But it does matter if you drive a lot of miles per day. The WLTP assumed that you plug in every night and you never drive more than 40 miles without recharging, thus you’re operating in EV mode 75% of the time. That’s the utility factor used in the WLTP estimates. Assuming a 30 mile EV range. If you get 40 mpg without the battery then you drove 40 miles and only used .25 gallons for the last 10 miles. Thats 160 mpg. That is the estimate to which the real world data was compared.Now let’s say you plug in every night but you drive 110 miles per day. The first 30 are on battery so 80 miles on gas which consumes 2 gallons. Thats only 55 mpg or 1/3 of what the WLTP predicted. Is it because I didn’t plug in or because I drove a lot more miles that they expected every day.
Surely you can understand this.
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1 hour ago, silvrsvt said:
We already argued that point...that information is being collected by the OBFCM
https://green-driving.jrc.ec.europa.eu/JRCmatics_Monitoring_Fuel_Consumption_from_OBD
Which collects the following:
It doesn't matter if it’s being driven 250 or 50 miles because it is still showing a large difference between what it should be getting going by testing. If someone isn't plugging in their car or as much as they should, the total use of fuel will be higher.
Whether it’s collected or not, that was not used in the report. The only thing they used is the avg fuel economy (liters per 100 Km) and they calculated CO2 based on that.
I’m not arguing any more until you can acknowledge that point. All they measured was overall fuel economy.
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Around here the jacked up pickup and jeep guys like to run their huge LED offroad light bars on the highway. Talk about blinding. I can only hope the cops are stopping them.
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24 minutes ago, rmc523 said:
I understand too - but it has seemed like those sorts of upgrades can be swapped out "on the fly" after production has started, rather than continually pushing back new product.
As I pointed out above, it'd be a bit different story if ICE products weren't gutted for EVs, so now it's the worst of both worlds - EV product delays and limited new/updated ICE products until they can push both out.
Don’t disagree but most of what the skunkworks was working on was new vehicles. And some things are just too fundamental to be easily changed later. It could also just be the need to focus more resources on development of the new cheaper EVs that have a much better ROI than what was in Oakville. And maybe Oakville isn’t cancelled but really is just on hold due to resources. Hard to say.Thats always been a problem with Ford. Not enough resources to do everything and no appetite for building new plants or hiring more people. They just seem to make do with what they have to keep costs down and end up making a lot of product compromises.
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30 minutes ago, rmc523 said:
I think his point is that there are always going to be improvements that they find....and if you keep waiting for things to be "perfect", you'll never get there, and have endless delays because they're always finding something better.
I think they should've kept the Rivian Lincoln product to gauge reaction and to give them an EV product until their in-house stuff was ready.
I agree with that. But I think we’re underestimating the impact of the changes from the skunkworks team. I think they are fundamentally changing the way Ford designs and builds EVs which will either give them a big cost advantage or at worst keep them on par with other industry leaders. You don’t need 100 people working for 2 years in secret just to redesign a couple of vehicles. It’s far more fundamental in my opinion especially considering the team members. -
32 minutes ago, rmc523 said:
I see that all the time - the problem is, most if not all cars now have the gauges on day and night, and have running lights (some of which use the headlights as the running lights), so they drive along with the gauges on, and see light coming from the front of their car and figure their lights are on. Sometimes I flash my high beams at them, sometimes I leave it be.....half the time they don't know what I'm flashing them for anyway.
I’ve found flashing your lights only work about 20% of the time, maybe less. These people are just clueless.The solution is simple - mandate auto headlamps that default to on when you start the vehicle like my Nautilus. And they turn on with wipers.
DRLs make it worse and don’t really help much. Just look at all the YouTube videos where people pull out in front of others in broad daylight without even looking.
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15 minutes ago, Rick73 said:
A great way to discourage that kind of behavior is to enforce laws. It was reported last night that Dallas PD issued arrest warrants for Rashee Rice and Knox associated with their street racing and subsequent crashes. Assuming they are found guilty, much will depend on punishment. Too little and it will just encourage more of the same.
While I agree we need enforcement it won’t stop habitual violators. We regularly enforce laws against murder including life in prison and even death but that doesn’t stop bad people from murdering others. -
7 hours ago, jpd80 said:
I’m sorry but how many times has Ford tried this same idea, they now have an new plan
that lets them compete with brand x…only to find that the competition have also moved on….
God for them trying new things but it also shows just how much Ford rushed its roll out of BEVs,
everything now is curling up the moment the economy backs off, amazing how many $$$ they burn….
They didn’t rush T3. They didn’t rush Mach-E or Lightning - they are good first effort vehicles and learning experiences and they’re doing ok with proper pricing. The only thing rushed was Oakville.-
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7 hours ago, jpd80 said:
I sense that Ford is still in denial with the continuing ned for gasoline vehicles…
I have a feeling that newly discovered efficiencies in manufacturing and equipment may be behinda lot of the product delays, maybe Ford is learning so much that emerging product needs to already
be redesigned lest it be DOA to customers.
They're not in denial they just announced hybrids for every gasoline vehicle. They just overreacted to the EV sales boom and pending government regulations and tried to do too much too fast. T3 was the right move and timing. I think Mach-E and Lightning were the right moves at the time and they learned a lot. But the mess with Oakville and VW and Rivian was a cluster F of epic proportion.
And I don’t understand why you keep harping on design. They didn’t create a skunkworks team and delay projects to just work on design. It’s all about lowering the cost of EVs from battery type, source, design and size/range to vehicle design to electronics to manufacturing processes and suppliers. They obviously identified improvements for T3 in addition to new vehicles and that made the ones planned for Oakville obsolete.
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7 hours ago, jpd80 said:
The way Ford is back pedalling with Lightning production at its present facility,
going forward with a new, big ass BEV plant mightn’t be the smartest idea.
but if that’s the hill Ford wants to die on, then so be it…
The only problem with Lightning is price. T3 is the one BEV that Ford should be all in on right now given their leadership in the truck market. And building a new plant is the right way to do i pt instead of cancelling more existing products and getting caught with your pants down. -
15 minutes ago, silvrsvt said:
What are you talking about?
https://climate.ec.europa.eu/document/download/b644dafe-1385-4b56-98d9-21e7e9f3601b_en?filename=report.pdfIt just seems like that peoples biases are coming through without actually reading what the report says and the information in it.
Oh for Pete’s sake. You’re the one with a reading comprehension problem. All they measured was fuel consumption and they compared it to the expected WLTP estimates. Period. End of story. They even admit that the WLTP utility factor which assumes how much of the drive is in electric mode was wildly optimistic.They expected a PHEV would drive around 75% of miles driven on battery power. For a PHEV with 30 mile range that means charging nightly and never driving more than 40 miles without recharging.
You simply cannot determine whether a vehicle is being plugged in nightly by only looking at fuel consumption because two PHEVs could both charge every night and one could get 42 mpg and the other could get 120 mpg and another could use no fuel at all depending on number of miles driven per day.
Look at it another way. You’re fully charged. If you drive 30 miles your utility factor is 100% EV. If you drive 60 miles you’re 50%. 120 miles - 25%. 240 miles - 12.5%.
You can’t make conclusions about plugging in or not plugging in based on fuel economy alone. You must know how many miles are driven each day and they aren’t measuring that.
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30 minutes ago, Joe771476 said:
Just hand over the crossover market. Just like Ford handed over Class 8 heavy truck, farm tractor, and the mid and full-size sedan biz. What's left? Ford light and medium duty truck, Explorer and Mustang! That's it!
You forgot Transit, Maverick, Bronco, Bronco Sport, Mach-E, Escape, Expedition, Navigator, Nautilus, Corsair and Aviator. But who’s counting.-
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1 hour ago, Deanh said:
talk about a car with presence...15k?....wild guess...there WILL be addendums if 15k is what Ford thinks is adequatre compoensation for basically a 300k investment...I would presume the Dealer has to floor the vehicle as well, that would eat up at 15k in no time...Ford pulled the same shennagins with the GT, althoiugh if I remember correctly on the $250k the delivery fee was 3k per unit, but the Dealer had to pay for a GT exclusive service bay, I think dust free was a requirement...( seem to recall that cost was 75 -80k )
No investment - they’re all presold by invitation only. And of course there will be markups just done a little different. -
2 hours ago, rmc523 said:
I still think the GTD looks ridiculous and is still "just" a Mustang.
For the price, there are several other options I'd consider before it.
It was built strictly to be fast on the track and if the rumors are true there is no other $300k car that will beat it including Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini. Styling and suitability as a daily driver were not a factor. -
3 minutes ago, rmc523 said:
U-turns on reds is a new thing I've seen a TON of within the last few years.....I can't understand why they think they can go on a red light just because they feel like it.
Classic I’ll do whatever I want whenever I want and screw everybody else. Like the people who are in a line of 20 cars waiting to turn right and somebody jumps out of line and goes flying up just so they can bully their way back in line 10 spots closer. Zero respect.-
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6 minutes ago, rmc523 said:
Yeah, seems like they threw styling elements in from a few different generations. Maybe my opinions will change seeing it in person, but overall its "eh" to me.
I saw some other pictures that looked slightly better but still not a fan. -
1 hour ago, DeluxeStang said:
Politically, I think it's both sides. I've found that, especially the hardcore people on both ends just want to blame all their issues on the other side. Case in point, I can't even talk to my grandparents without them thinking everyone who's ever supported Republicans are evil.
Slightly different issue but you’re completely correct. Everything is black and white and their side is good and the other side is evil. Doesn’t matter the issue. I blame social media echo chambers.-
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10 minutes ago, mackinaw said:
They have websites, and I still see hard copies in the newstand of our local market. There was a time when I subscribed to all three of them. I haven't looked at a copy of any in years.
Ditto. They were all biased one way or another but they were usually entertaining and a great source of info. I think Edmunds.com started the online trend or at least made it mainstream. I still remember arguing with the editor in chief at Edmunds who said Ford can’t make up their mind about displacement because the Lincoln LS was 3.9L and the Jag was 4.0L. So I explained that they shortened the stroke on the Lincoln version which lowered the displacement. He said that made no sense, which is like saying you don’t understand why a tall glass holds more water than a short glass of the same diameter. He also complained about the tranny shifting after going to the dealer knowing there was a TSB to fix that problem but not mentioning that to the service writer. -
Any local body shop can do it. Some use Line-X or a DIY bedliner material. Should hold up well but has a rough matte finish.
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24 minutes ago, Andrew L said:
I feel like the rest of the Tesla lineup is fine but the CT is really something out of left field. I can't imagine it being a strong seller, maybe first year only due to excitement but after that I feel like sales will crash pretty hard after people realize it sucks at being a truck.
I give it a year. Musk’s ego won’t let him cancel it before then no matter how bad it is. -
Toyota fans are gushing over this design. I don’t see it.
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18 minutes ago, Andrew L said:
It would be a shame if they did give up on CD6. I find it hard to believe they can't build anything else off CD6. Is CD6 not flexible at all?
C2 is a step in the right direction they have a bunch of models built off of it currently.
CD6 only has the Explorer and Aviator currently.
S650 only has the Mustang
After that they have Truck and Van platforms.
It’s not that they can’t. It’s a question of cost and ROI. S650 uses a lot of cd6 parts.The only real advantage for cd6 over C2 is the ability to support high performance powertrains including full time 4wd. Body on frame is better for larger SUVs and trucks and C2 is better for the smaller stuff.
The only thing I see that would benefit is a mid to large car and we know that ship has sailed. And Explorer/F150 make better police vehicles.
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33 minutes ago, GearheadGrrrl said:
Also younger drivers who never really learned how to drive... We old folks had to learn skid control, etc. because the old cars didn't do that for us. AWD/4WD hasn't helped either- spinning one or two drive wheels was a warning that the road is slippery and we slowed down, todays cars give no warning until you exceed the limits of traction and totally lose control.
Driver education is a joke. We need driver training. People don’t even know how to make a proper 90 degree turn at intersections.
One local lady the other day actually said if you’re at an intersection and you have a green left turn arrow that does not mean you have the right of way. Umm that is EXACTLY what it means. No wonder we have so many crashes.
Low-Cost Ford EV Platform Will Directly Compete with Chinese
in E.V. Central
Posted
Idling blue oval city would do nothing to help OAC.