cars

A San Francisco-based writer for Wired discovers that today's electric cars are not a silver bullet

This entry was posted in cars electric GPCP Uncategorized on by (updated 3390 days ago)

A San Francisco-based writer for Wired discovers that today's electric cars are not a silver bullet

If you can't afford a $100,000 Tesla Model S (and let's face it the vast majority of us cannot) you probably really shouldn't even consider an EV unless you have a dedicated place to plug it in daily.

https://sam.abuelsamid.com/2014/10/08/2014-nissan-leaf-review-its-remarkably-normal/#1

In his article Alex Davies even mentions the people that carry the charging cord with them and plug in surreptitiously to accessible 110-volt outlets when they can't find a 220-volt charger.  This isn't really practical most of the time because the charge rate at 110 is slow that a Nissan Leaf will take 30 hours to fully charge.  For many people an EV is a great option, but it's definitely not for everyone. ?

A Two-Day Battle to Charge My Car Convinced Me We’re Not Ready for EVs | WIRED

Until the public infrastructure improves, people who can’t plug in overnight are in for a very serious headache.

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2015 Lincoln MKC – A Worthy Compact Crossover

This entry was posted in cars Ford Lincoln reviews and tagged 2015 car review car reviews lincoln luxury crossover mkc on by (updated 3143 days ago)

2015 Lincoln MKC 02

Back in the spring of 2010 when Ford announced that it was finally going to euthanize its Mercury division, the company also announced a renewed commitment to restoring Lincoln to its former glory. Part of that included refreshing, redesigning and expanding the Lincoln lineup including a new C-segment model. At the time, most of us assumed we would get a production version of the 2009 Concept C, but four years later what we got instead was the 2015 MKC crossover.

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2015 Mazda6 Touring – A Sedan Saving the Stick

This entry was posted in cars Mazda reviews and tagged 2015 2015 Mazda6 car review car reviews mazda midsize sedan review on by (updated 3143 days ago)

2015 Mazda6 02

The 2015 Mazda6 represents an endangered species. Don’t worry, Mazda is in no immediate danger of going defunct, in fact it’s currently in a real renaissance period. What makes this particular car a dying breed is the fully manual gearbox.

For the 2015 model year, the number of midsize sedans available in America with a three pedal layout has dropped by nearly half. Both the Ford Fusion and Hyundai Sonata have lost their stick shift options as a result of extreme customer apathy, leaving only the 6, the VW Passat and the Honda Accord.

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* +Audi USA is apparently going to reveal a concept version of the A7 with a fuel cell plug-in hybrid…

This entry was posted in GPCP Hybrid Uncategorized on by (updated 3390 days ago)

* +Audi USA is apparently going to reveal a concept version of the A7 with a fuel cell plug-in hybrid powertrain at the LA Auto Show today*

Cool idea, but definitely, not the first time it's been done. +***** actually had a prototype of an extended range EV with a fuel cell running in late 2006, a couple of months before Chevrolet revealed the original Volt concept. I had a chance to drive the HySeries Edge concept in February 2007. ?

AutoblogGreen Drives the HySeries Ford Edge and fuel cell Explorer

Click on the photo for a high-res gallery of photos from the Ford SMT LabBetween the Washington, D.C. and Chicago Auto Shows, AutoblogGreen got invited to

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2015 Chevrolet Silverado LTZ 5.3-liter, Trucks Have Come a Long Way

This entry was posted in cars Chevrolet reviews Trucks and tagged 2015 2015 chevrolet silverado car reviews chevrolet full-size truck review silverado on by (updated 3143 days ago)

2015 Chevy Silverado LTZ 18

Watching the evolution of the American pickup truck over the past 25 years has been a fascinating experience. Some time I recently spent with a 2015 Chevrolet Silverado demonstrated clearly just how far these most utilitarian of vehicles have come.

When I got started in the auto industry as an engineering student in the late 1980s, technology and trucks were two words that simply didn’t go together. Also not part of the truck equation were driving dynamics, braking performance, refinement or any kind of sophistication.

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2015 Nissan GT-R – Honestly Fast

This entry was posted in cars Nissan reviews and tagged 2015 car reviews godzilla gt-r nissan nissan gt-r on by (updated 3143 days ago)

2015 Nissan GT-R 01

“Deceptively quick.” That’s a phrase often used to describe cars so quiet and refined that you find yourself self going faster than you planned sooner than anticipated. There is absolutely nothing nothing deceptive about the Nissan GT-R. In fact, aside from the Lotus Exige, this may be the most brutally honest car I’ve ever driven.

Brutality is utterly fitting for a car known to its fans around the world as Godzilla. Like the Exige, the GT-R offers exceptionally rapid acceleration and amazing handling. Yet despite certain similarities in character that I’ll come back to, these two sports cars couldn’t be more different in execution.

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2015 Cadillac ATS Premium – It’s Way Better Than the Caddies I Grew Up With

This entry was posted in Cadillac cars reviews and tagged 2015 cadillac ats cadillac car review car reviews review sport sedan on by (updated 3143 days ago)
2015 Cadillac ATS 01

For 2015, the Cadillac ATS and the rest of its siblings have abandoned the wreath surrounding the crest

Paraphrasing one of the last tag-lines from the now defunct Oldsmobile, “the 2015 ATS is absolutely not your father’s Cadillac, and that’s a very good thing.” In fact this ATS is the antithesis of what Cadillacs were when I was growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Back in those days, Caddies defined the term land yacht. Actually aircraft carrier might have been a more apt description. When I was high school in the early-1980s, a friend of our family stopped by our house one day to show off the new Caddie that he had bought himself as a retirement gift after putting in his 30 years in one of the local steel mills.

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2015 Chrysler 200C V6, Finally a Real Midsize Competitor

This entry was posted in cars Chrysler reviews and tagged 2015 chrysler 200c car reviews chrysler midsize sedan review technology on by (updated 3143 days ago)

2015 Chrysler 200C 01

When Chrysler unveiled the new 2015 200 midsize sedan at the Detroit Auto Show last January, the team from Auburn Hills was clearly trying to expunge the final remnants of the company’s lost decade under first Daimler and then private equity ownership. Chrysler’s new mainstream family sedan was certainly a huge leap forward from its disappointing predecessor in the aesthetic department, but could it compete with the class leaders from Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and Ford? The only way to find out was to drive one.

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A surge in big truck sales triggered a drop in average fuel economy in September, but even these behemoths are getting a lot more efficient

This entry was posted in cars the business on by (updated 3678 days ago)

A surge in big truck sales triggered a drop in average fuel economy in September, but even these behemoths are getting a lot more efficient?

Truck Fuel Economy on the Rise

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just published its 2014 fuel economy trends report, and though the news is generally positive, some potential storm clouds remain on the horizon f…

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Audi Puts on Impressive Show With Autonomous RS7

This entry was posted in cars technology the business and tagged audi audi piloted rs7 autonomous driving autonomous RS7 autonomousvehicles self-driving car on by

However, it didn’t really prove anything other than that the basic technology for self-driving cars is now fairly well understood.  That doesn’t bring the full-function self-driving car any closer to regular use on open roads. That probably won’t happen until the end of the 2020s.

This demonstration was done on a closed course that is well mapped with no other vehicles around. The real issue that Audi and every other manufacturer has to deal with is working out all the kinks of dealing with weather, less than ideal road conditions, system robustness and of course programming ethics into the system.

That’s not something this particular group of engineers had to deal with. Not to take anything away from their achievement, but there is still a huge amount of work to do before we let self-driving cars loose.

Audi RS 7 piloted driving concept