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  • General Motors quietly closed the door this week on a goal to make only

    From Catrike Ryder@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jul 16 04:38:08 2025
    GM is also shifting some of it's production from Mexico to Michigan to
    avoid the tariffs and will produce V-8 engines.

    My wife and I have a long history of V-8 cars and trucks. She's driven
    our new-to-us truck more than I have, and when she starts it and hears
    the rumble of the 5 liter engine, she looks over at me with a big
    grin.

    When we talked about going down to one vehicle she was very adamant
    about it being a full size truck. Our need of having a full size rear
    seat and a big enough bed to hold our two Catrikes made that a
    requirement, and going electric was out of the question.

    Apparently, we're not alone in that decision.

    "In May, the Detroit automaker said it would ditch plans to make
    electric motors at its Towanda Production plant in Buffalo, New York,
    and instead spend $888 million to make V-8 engines."

    <https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/12/gm-slow-rolls-ev-aspirations-00401177>

    �Now the hype is dwindling, and companies are again cheering consumer
    choice. Automakers from Ford Motor and General Motors to
    Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin are
    scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans,� it added.

    Too bad the electric bicycle manufacturers don't do the same.

    --
    C'est bon
    Soloman

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From AMuzi@21:1/5 to cyclintom on Mon Jul 28 15:48:41 2025
    On 7/28/2025 2:44 PM, cyclintom wrote:
    On Wed Jul 16 18:01:11 2025 Beej Jorgensen wrote:
    In article <[email protected]>,
    Catrike Ryder <[email protected]> wrote:
    "In May, the Detroit automaker said it would ditch plans to make
    electric motors at its Towanda Production plant in Buffalo, New York,
    and instead spend $888 million to make V-8 engines."

    China's the one that's completely dominating in the electric vehicle
    market. They shipped some 10x more EVs than the US purchased in total
    last year (and we didn't buy any of their EVs). We're never catching up
    to them, if it's any consolation.

    Too bad the electric bicycle manufacturers don't do the same.

    Are there even any US ebike manufacturers with over 1% market share? The
    global demand for ebikes is off the charts, so I think we're going to
    see nothing but ramping up.




    I'm a little confused at what you're trying to say. Worldwide sales of e-bikes is huge and 1% would be a gigantic amount of money. Americanmanufacturers like Trek and Specialized are certainly major players in the upper end e-bikes. Is there some
    reason you believe they should try harder for a larger market share than they presently have?


    --
    Andrew Muzi
    [email protected]
    Open every day since 1 April, 1971

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From AMuzi@21:1/5 to cyclintom on Tue Jul 29 14:45:41 2025
    On 7/29/2025 2:22 PM, cyclintom wrote:
    On Mon Jul 21 11:53:12 2025 Radey Shouman wrote:
    AMuzi <[email protected]> writes:

    On 7/17/2025 3:36 PM, Catrike Ryder wrote:
    On Thu, 17 Jul 2025 20:04:43 -0000 (UTC), Beej Jorgensen
    <[email protected]> wrote:

    In article <[email protected]>,
    Catrike Ryder <[email protected]> wrote:
    Gas and oil subsidies are for fuel sources. EV subsidies are to
    manipulate consumer purchases.

    I agree insofar as I agree that consumers don't purchase gas and oil. >>>> Gas and oil are important for many more things that automobiles.
    Batteries for trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes are only dreams.
    --
    C'est bon
    Soloman

    And ethylene for a gazillion polymer products and packages.
    And asphalt, bunker fuel and solvents. And myriad other crude cracking
    fractions. Oh, plus helium (there's a shortage) from natural gas
    production.

    Natural gas for ammonia production, meaning nitrate fertilizers and
    feedstock for all sorts of amines. Fossil fuel is used for almost all
    cement production, used to build almost everything. Coke from coal for
    steel production. It's possible to imagine replacing all of these with
    something else, actually doing so will be very difficult.

    The supply of fossil fuels is certainly finite, and eventually all of
    those replacements will have to be done or industrial civilization
    abandoned. Guessing when that will happen is a mug's game.




    In the sense that we'll run out of oil, I don't beieve that's true. But in the sense that we cannot produce enough, perhaps. Oil is ocean planton that dies, falls to to the bottom of the oceans, is covered with sentiment and over time is subjected to
    great pressure in an anerobic atmosphere. So oil is being produced continuously. It is a byproduct of organic life. Coal was mostly produced in the Cretaxeous Period and we do not have many rain forests left on the planet.

    Coal is compressed forest material from an era before
    bacteria were around to decompose lignin. There's not going
    to be any new coal. Ever.

    https://energyskeptic.com/2025/why-coal-was-only-created-once/

    --
    Andrew Muzi
    [email protected]
    Open every day since 1 April, 1971

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)