John's Stuff - Personal Log 1298

October 25, 2024 - November 2, 2024

Last Updated: Mon. 11/04/2024

11-02-2024
Video: Final Warm Commute (part 1). Knowing how complex such inquires are to provide information for, I recorded some drives so you can see for yourself. Watch speed, terrain, temperature and traffic. The resulting mi/kWh value will supply what you need to determine range. Multiply mi/kWh by 64 to get estimated miles available. The following is an example of great driving conditions for high efficiency... Toyota bZ4X - Final Warm Commute (part 1)

11-01-2024
Conquest. His follow up response was: "Once you lose that customer, it is a lot more difficult to get it back. Perhaps you've not heard of the 80/20 rule. This will be my last response to you as loyalists will always defend their position no matter what, just like Tesla fanboys." He did in fact take customer retention into consideration by looking at the penalty of conquest. He didn't think it all the way through though. Conquest sales are in no way whatsoever a guarantee of the consumer returning later for another purchase. As a matter of fact, history has taught us the opposite. Those who purchased Volt showed no loyalty to GM. That's not the enthusiast mindset. They are consumers who seek out opportunity. Targeting showroom shoppers is far more difficult. Toyota knows this. That's why they tend to disregard industry noise that won't actually change the status quo. Solutions are needed to get dealers interested, to earn their trust & support. Needless to say, I likely lost any chance of constructive feedback at this point. So, I closed with: btw, that adds to the repeat of history... assuming discussion of audience & technology was only about Toyota. Enthusiasts have an extremely difficult time translating the success & reward they have with the paradigm shift required to reach the wider consumer base. They assume a narrow scope and specific priorities will carry over, only to later make the unfortunate discovery of a major mismatch. Tesla is indeed a good example. It's textbook Innovator's Dilemma. Know your audience. In this case, it's the typical showroom shopper at any legacy automaker... not just Toyota.

11-01-2024
Loyalists. You've heard the same thing from me countless times over the years. What I seek is a glimmer of change, evidence of progress. Today, that came in the form of an exchange where the person was spitting out mindless talking-points about Toyota. He clearly wasn't actually reading what I had posted... even when I posted the same thing again, pointing out his neglect. Oddly, that worked. He abandoned the lies I had challenged and switched to the topic at hand "are the legacies in major trouble?" He said it was "too late" for Toyota. I always find that of great interest, since no antagonist can ever provide evidence confirming that. They end up seeing we are only now struggling to reach beyond early-adopter sales. That inevitably silences them. This time was different. He kept exchanging posts. Cool. When I pointed out that bZ4X became the top-selling vehicle in Norway last month, his comeback was those sales were only to loyalists. He acknowledged audience. Gasp! That is progress. I jumped back in the discussion upon seeing that with this reply, asking: It is intriguing that "loyalists" is being portrayed as a bad thing. That is the perspective of an enthusiast, hence history repeating. We saw this same problem play out with Volt. Sales were only conquest. GM was never able to reach its own loyal customers. Dealers fought to retain status quo. Using rhetoric to deny the importance of targeting a necessary audience confirms my observation of priority differences. In other words, that "too late" is utter nonsense. Too late for what?

10-31-2024
Selling Loss-Leaders. How many times must you elude to the exposure before it finally sink in as a bad idea? I have done it countless times. Toyota gets attacked for selling their BEV in low-volume at an uncompetitive price and the others get praised for losing obscene amounts of money struggling to sell their inventory as a loss. It's bad enough being unprofitable. But when the supply exceeds demand by too much of degree, stuff like this happens: "Ford plans to halt production of the F-150 Lightning from mid-November until early next year to address high inventories and narrow losses." Enthusiasts see the market as a matter of delivering great engineering. They figure if that level is achieved, earning praise from them, ordinary consumers will fall in line to purchase it. Volt enthusiasts never learned the lesson of audience. No matter how many times I pointed out other influences, they didn't care. In this case, we see a market already flooded with lower priced pickups. How is one that's much more expensive and simply isn't capable of the driving range they expect to be a popular choice? Great engineering isn't enough. Fortunately, Lightning won't die like Volt did. The reason why should be obvious. Volt never appealed to GM's own loyal customers. Lightening does. But before it actually does become a popular choice, we'll see lots of plug-in hybrids in the meantime. They make more sense considering business need at the moment.

10-31-2024 Cost to Charge, journalism. There wasn't any sense of journalism. I continued on by pointing out why:

Absence of any mention of discounted electricity along with the incorrect usable battery value was an obvious sign of rushing to write an article.

Proper journalism includes some basis of perspective. Basis for that was listed in the specs... kWh/100 Miles. That's an industry standard used to simplify vehicle comparison. It's easy math.

@ $0.18 /kWh

FWD 28-30 kWh/100 Miles = $5.04 to $5.40

AWD 31-32 kWh/100 Miles = $5.58 to $5.76
Since all plug-in vehicles have a "kWh/100 Miles" rating on their window-sticker, there's no guess work involved try to figure out what a "recharge" is for each. It enables easy compares to gas vehicles too.

10-31-2024
Cost to Charge, click bait. It is rather difficult to take an article with a title like this seriously: "Here's how much it costs to charge a Toyota bZ4X." Why was one specific vehicle targeted? That context eluded me... as it did in the article too. Its purpose only served to rhetoric. The conclusion seem to solidify that: "Toyota bZ4X Costs $20 To Recharge." Compared to what? Ugh. I found it to be nothing more than click bait. Rather annoyed I posted: Spread of misinformation, by omitting vital detail, is troubling. Use of "According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the average cost of electricity in the U.S. is 18 cents per kWh." without anything else portrays the situation as having no other option. That's simply not true. Most people have the option of time-of-use and/or off-peak discounts. So rather than 18 cents, they end up paying around 4 cents. That's a huge difference, a misrepresentation unacceptable from a supposed expert source.

10-30-2024
Disaster for VW. It has been a few days since VW's head of labor sounded the alarm. Potential for shutting down 3 factories and laying off tens of thousands of staff is getting attention. There will be negotiations in the next few weeks working out options. There has never been plant closure for VW in Germany. Restructuring on the scale of Dieselgate would be painful. Pressure from energy & labor cost, along with competition from China, is making the transition to electric a much slower process than planned. A strike is possible. It will inevitably get ugly. This is really unfortunate... and sadly, predictable. VW had an opportunity to dominate. Imagine having rolled out ID.3 in the United States. VW was showing resistance too. No one cared though. Toyota being their scapegoat was working well. Ugh. I jumped into the discussion quite curious what kind of turn it would take over time: It never ceased to amaze me how many here were critical of Toyota leveraging hybrids for the transition, spinning the situation as "kicking & screaming" laggards. Absolutely refusing to acknowledge the reality of needing to keep the business profitable while not only to establish, but to also strive to evolve something competitive. This is why Toyota took the same approach with bZ4X as they did with Prius. First generation was a low-volume without trying to compete, intended to gain knowledge about audience while refining the technology. That rollout to the masses with gen-2 was extremely successful from having taken that time and ignoring "laggard" rhetoric. We all knew early-adopter offerings were way off the mark here. Looking at the fiercely competitive market in China, the absence of ordinary consumer choices should have been obvious. Emphasis on speed, power and range was an unfortunate distraction. Evidence of that is undeniable when you look at how infrastructure was neglected as a result. The "all in" pledges without accountability... or even a plan listing milestones... was a dead giveaway legacy automakers would end up having to face the music at some point. Hopefully, it doesn't turn into a disaster for VW.

10-30-2024 Not Profitable. Reality is crashing down faster on legacy automakers than I had expected. This was the article today stirring even more discussion of the growing problem: "Volkswagen Is Not Earning The Money It Needs". I couldn't resists jumping into that:

It never ceased to amaze me how many here were critical of Toyota leveraging hybrids for the transition, spinning the situation as "kicking & screaming". Absolutely refusing to acknowledge the reality of needing to keep the business profitable while not only to establish, but to also strive to evolve something competitive.

This is why Toyota took the same approach with bZ4X as they did with Prius. First generation was a low-volume without trying to compete, intended to gain knowledge about audience while refining the technology. That rollout to the masses with gen-2 was extremely successful from having taken that time and ignoring "laggard" rhetoric.

We all knew early-adopter offerings were way off the mark here. Looking at the fiercely competitive market in China, the absence of ordinary consumer choices should have been obvious. Emphasis on speed, power and range was an unfortunate distraction. Evidence of that is undeniable when you look at how infrastructure was neglected as a result.
The "all in" pledges without accountability... or even a plan listing milestones... was a dead giveaway legacy automakers would end up having to face the music at some point. Hopefully, it doesn't turn into a disaster for VW.

10-29-2024
Parking Fear. This is an intriguing... and somewhat worrisome... situation: "Need help!!! I live in a Senior Coop and park my Tesla Model 3 in a garage under the building. There is talk about banding EV in the garage." It's what emanates from FUD, nonetheless, resulting action could have lastly impact. Hopefully, the person who posting that will get some useful comments in return. This was my contribution: Make them consider the fundamentals of why for such a decision. Is it because the vehicle has a battery-pack? If so, you have allies... they would also have to ban hybrids and plug-in hybrids. Seeing the sheer number of vehicles already impacted and likely no concern stated by insurance for the garage, there isn't reason to ban. Keep in mind the source of that fear too. Some of that originates as a result of cheap imported e-bikes catching fire. With so many EV on the road now and their old fire exposures already addressed, some people may be extending the problem to where there is little actual exposure.

10-29-2024
Continued Misinformation. A popular publisher of daily news for the EV market has been updating their articles and republishing them. They found a new audience with old material by having adding Facebook to their reach. It the past, it was only their own website. Now, they are drawing in a much larger & broader following. Problem is, the updates aren't all that good. They'll clarify or correct minor things, but fundamentals continue to be a problem. Today, it was: "In a PHEV, even if you have plenty of juice in the battery, if you floor the go pedal, asking it to give all the performance it's got, it will have no choice but to wake up the engine." That is a misrepresentation from long ago, still persisting. It was how Volt enthusiasts attempted to portray Prius Prime as different... drawing a clear distinction between EREV and PHEV. Trouble is, that was always a lie and they knew it. In fact, that was a big influence with my video creation. I got tried & frustrated from such blatant attempts to undermine. Of course, such dishonest behavior was a dead giveaway they were desperate... seeing Toyota as a genuine threat. Why such obvious misinformation continues to be spread is a mystery. My theory is some of the writers don't actually know. Their occupation could have come about where their sources were trusted, even though they were actually propaganda websites not having been challenged yet. Remember the daily blog for Volt? That presented an appearance of authority, despite being a major resource for creating & feeding misinformation. Ugh. In never ends.

10-26-2024
Video: Metric Units (heavy traffic). Here's another video featuring displays with km/h, kWh/100km and °C. This time, traffic is very heavy. It's my commute home with lots of stop & slow to have to deal with. Though a test of patience, outcome of that lengthy duration is a rewardingly efficient drive. So, no complaint. It's informative to see the perspective of the lower being better too. That kWh/100km value, rather than mi/kWh, is the reverse of what I normally see with the display set for United States drivers... Toyota bZ4X - Metric Units (heavy traffic)

10-25-2024 Amazed. It's refreshing to get praise like this posted in a comment on one of my videos: "I'm still amazed at the relative efficiency of the bZ4x. This car gets unfairly judged by EV fanatics as being "worst" compared to the likes of the Model Y, ID.4, Mach-e and Ioniq 5, but in your hands it looks like a great EV." This is what I shared in return:

Absence of efficiency observations from reviews is becoming a source of suspicion. MPG was always highlighted with traditional vehicles & hybrids. People want to know cost of travel. How much gas? Why not how much electricity?

Such an omission is unacceptable. kWh/100km helps convey that information. In the United States, efficiency rating is stated in terms of kWh/100mi. Seeing mi/kWh on the vehicle displays helps us relate to that.

In this video for US owners, 4.2 mi/kWh = 23.8 kWh/100mi. At a cost of $0.08 per kilowatt-hour, that's $1.90 to travel 100 miles.
Why reviews exclude such vital information is perplexing. Perhaps they are showing bias for other automakers... unfairly judging bZ4X.

10-25-2024
Why? That friend took my information into consideration, then continued on by asking: "Why does it take so long to get decent EV pickup with range?" That was a much easier question to answer and had nothing in it that would be contentious. Phew! It's nice having something so straight-forward to convey at times. I passed along this insight on the topic of why it has taken so much time to only get this far: China had patents on LFP chemistry locked up. We had to wait for expiration to build those better batteries (no nickel, no cobalt, longer life, fire resistant, lower cost) before trying to build a competitive electric pickup. It's been a painful wait, but those efforts are finally underway.

10-25-2024 Impatience. I have a friend who has been a die-hard Republican all his life. The idea of voting Democrat is so appalling, he struggles to understand why anyone would. Being a trusted friend though, he does value my observations. That's encouraging. Loss of communication would be unfortunate. He's willing to listen, especially from an automotive perspective. So, I did what I could to provide an objective response to his endorsement for his candidate... the one I see as truly offensive and a terrible choice for our country by spreading fear of short-term losses and refusing to address long-term benefit:

Watch for narratives. One party exploits them by milking impatience.

Being a plug-in vehicle owner for over 12 years, I hear claims of waste and no progress all the time. Yet, even without government funding (NEVI) I see support for the undeniable shift from businesses seeing it as opportunity... despite Minnesota's awarded locations only now starting construction. On their own, they are making it happen... long-term investment easily overlooked.

Just yesterday, the Holiday gas station in Baxter opened up 4 new DC fast-chargers. That now makes trips up north for us quite convenient... long before the NEVI allocations are spent along 94 and 35W. Most people won't notice though.

Years of planning are easy to dismiss or misinterpret. It's like the solar & storage programs already well underway... which one party is constantly spreading misinformation about.
Unfortunately, few care about that. Instead, most focus entirely on the short-term.

11-02-2024	Video: Final Warm Commute (part 1). Knowing how complex such inquires are to provide information for, I recorded some drives so you can see for yourself. Watch speed, terrain, temperature and traffic. The resulting mi/kWh value will supply what you need to determine range. Multiply mi/kWh by 64 to get estimated miles available. The following is an example of great driving conditions for high efficiency... Toyota bZ4X - Final Warm Commute (part 1)
11-01-2024	Conquest. His follow up response was: "Once you lose that customer, it is a lot more difficult to get it back. Perhaps you've not heard of the 80/20 rule. This will be my last response to you as loyalists will always defend their position no matter what, just like Tesla fanboys." He did in fact take customer retention into consideration by looking at the penalty of conquest. He didn't think it all the way through though. Conquest sales are in no way whatsoever a guarantee of the consumer returning later for another purchase. As a matter of fact, history has taught us the opposite. Those who purchased Volt showed no loyalty to GM. That's not the enthusiast mindset. They are consumers who seek out opportunity. Targeting showroom shoppers is far more difficult. Toyota knows this. That's why they tend to disregard industry noise that won't actually change the status quo. Solutions are needed to get dealers interested, to earn their trust & support. Needless to say, I likely lost any chance of constructive feedback at this point. So, I closed with: btw, that adds to the repeat of history... assuming discussion of audience & technology was only about Toyota. Enthusiasts have an extremely difficult time translating the success & reward they have with the paradigm shift required to reach the wider consumer base. They assume a narrow scope and specific priorities will carry over, only to later make the unfortunate discovery of a major mismatch. Tesla is indeed a good example. It's textbook Innovator's Dilemma. Know your audience. In this case, it's the typical showroom shopper at any legacy automaker... not just Toyota.
11-01-2024	Loyalists. You've heard the same thing from me countless times over the years. What I seek is a glimmer of change, evidence of progress. Today, that came in the form of an exchange where the person was spitting out mindless talking-points about Toyota. He clearly wasn't actually reading what I had posted... even when I posted the same thing again, pointing out his neglect. Oddly, that worked. He abandoned the lies I had challenged and switched to the topic at hand "are the legacies in major trouble?" He said it was "too late" for Toyota. I always find that of great interest, since no antagonist can ever provide evidence confirming that. They end up seeing we are only now struggling to reach beyond early-adopter sales. That inevitably silences them. This time was different. He kept exchanging posts. Cool. When I pointed out that bZ4X became the top-selling vehicle in Norway last month, his comeback was those sales were only to loyalists. He acknowledged audience. Gasp! That is progress. I jumped back in the discussion upon seeing that with this reply, asking: It is intriguing that "loyalists" is being portrayed as a bad thing. That is the perspective of an enthusiast, hence history repeating. We saw this same problem play out with Volt. Sales were only conquest. GM was never able to reach its own loyal customers. Dealers fought to retain status quo. Using rhetoric to deny the importance of targeting a necessary audience confirms my observation of priority differences. In other words, that "too late" is utter nonsense. Too late for what?
10-31-2024	Selling Loss-Leaders. How many times must you elude to the exposure before it finally sink in as a bad idea? I have done it countless times. Toyota gets attacked for selling their BEV in low-volume at an uncompetitive price and the others get praised for losing obscene amounts of money struggling to sell their inventory as a loss. It's bad enough being unprofitable. But when the supply exceeds demand by too much of degree, stuff like this happens: "Ford plans to halt production of the F-150 Lightning from mid-November until early next year to address high inventories and narrow losses." Enthusiasts see the market as a matter of delivering great engineering. They figure if that level is achieved, earning praise from them, ordinary consumers will fall in line to purchase it. Volt enthusiasts never learned the lesson of audience. No matter how many times I pointed out other influences, they didn't care. In this case, we see a market already flooded with lower priced pickups. How is one that's much more expensive and simply isn't capable of the driving range they expect to be a popular choice? Great engineering isn't enough. Fortunately, Lightning won't die like Volt did. The reason why should be obvious. Volt never appealed to GM's own loyal customers. Lightening does. But before it actually does become a popular choice, we'll see lots of plug-in hybrids in the meantime. They make more sense considering business need at the moment.
10-31-2024	Cost to Charge, journalism. There wasn't any sense of journalism. I continued on by pointing out why: Absence of any mention of discounted electricity along with the incorrect usable battery value was an obvious sign of rushing to write an article. Proper journalism includes some basis of perspective. Basis for that was listed in the specs... kWh/100 Miles. That's an industry standard used to simplify vehicle comparison. It's easy math. @ $0.18 /kWh FWD 28-30 kWh/100 Miles = $5.04 to $5.40 AWD 31-32 kWh/100 Miles = $5.58 to $5.76 Since all plug-in vehicles have a "kWh/100 Miles" rating on their window-sticker, there's no guess work involved try to figure out what a "recharge" is for each. It enables easy compares to gas vehicles too.
10-31-2024	Cost to Charge, click bait. It is rather difficult to take an article with a title like this seriously: "Here's how much it costs to charge a Toyota bZ4X." Why was one specific vehicle targeted? That context eluded me... as it did in the article too. Its purpose only served to rhetoric. The conclusion seem to solidify that: "Toyota bZ4X Costs $20 To Recharge." Compared to what? Ugh. I found it to be nothing more than click bait. Rather annoyed I posted: Spread of misinformation, by omitting vital detail, is troubling. Use of "According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the average cost of electricity in the U.S. is 18 cents per kWh." without anything else portrays the situation as having no other option. That's simply not true. Most people have the option of time-of-use and/or off-peak discounts. So rather than 18 cents, they end up paying around 4 cents. That's a huge difference, a misrepresentation unacceptable from a supposed expert source.
10-30-2024	Disaster for VW. It has been a few days since VW's head of labor sounded the alarm. Potential for shutting down 3 factories and laying off tens of thousands of staff is getting attention. There will be negotiations in the next few weeks working out options. There has never been plant closure for VW in Germany. Restructuring on the scale of Dieselgate would be painful. Pressure from energy & labor cost, along with competition from China, is making the transition to electric a much slower process than planned. A strike is possible. It will inevitably get ugly. This is really unfortunate... and sadly, predictable. VW had an opportunity to dominate. Imagine having rolled out ID.3 in the United States. VW was showing resistance too. No one cared though. Toyota being their scapegoat was working well. Ugh. I jumped into the discussion quite curious what kind of turn it would take over time: It never ceased to amaze me how many here were critical of Toyota leveraging hybrids for the transition, spinning the situation as "kicking & screaming" laggards. Absolutely refusing to acknowledge the reality of needing to keep the business profitable while not only to establish, but to also strive to evolve something competitive. This is why Toyota took the same approach with bZ4X as they did with Prius. First generation was a low-volume without trying to compete, intended to gain knowledge about audience while refining the technology. That rollout to the masses with gen-2 was extremely successful from having taken that time and ignoring "laggard" rhetoric. We all knew early-adopter offerings were way off the mark here. Looking at the fiercely competitive market in China, the absence of ordinary consumer choices should have been obvious. Emphasis on speed, power and range was an unfortunate distraction. Evidence of that is undeniable when you look at how infrastructure was neglected as a result. The "all in" pledges without accountability... or even a plan listing milestones... was a dead giveaway legacy automakers would end up having to face the music at some point. Hopefully, it doesn't turn into a disaster for VW.
10-30-2024	Not Profitable. Reality is crashing down faster on legacy automakers than I had expected. This was the article today stirring even more discussion of the growing problem: "Volkswagen Is Not Earning The Money It Needs". I couldn't resists jumping into that: It never ceased to amaze me how many here were critical of Toyota leveraging hybrids for the transition, spinning the situation as "kicking & screaming". Absolutely refusing to acknowledge the reality of needing to keep the business profitable while not only to establish, but to also strive to evolve something competitive. This is why Toyota took the same approach with bZ4X as they did with Prius. First generation was a low-volume without trying to compete, intended to gain knowledge about audience while refining the technology. That rollout to the masses with gen-2 was extremely successful from having taken that time and ignoring "laggard" rhetoric. We all knew early-adopter offerings were way off the mark here. Looking at the fiercely competitive market in China, the absence of ordinary consumer choices should have been obvious. Emphasis on speed, power and range was an unfortunate distraction. Evidence of that is undeniable when you look at how infrastructure was neglected as a result. The "all in" pledges without accountability... or even a plan listing milestones... was a dead giveaway legacy automakers would end up having to face the music at some point. Hopefully, it doesn't turn into a disaster for VW.
10-29-2024	Parking Fear. This is an intriguing... and somewhat worrisome... situation: "Need help!!! I live in a Senior Coop and park my Tesla Model 3 in a garage under the building. There is talk about banding EV in the garage." It's what emanates from FUD, nonetheless, resulting action could have lastly impact. Hopefully, the person who posting that will get some useful comments in return. This was my contribution: Make them consider the fundamentals of why for such a decision. Is it because the vehicle has a battery-pack? If so, you have allies... they would also have to ban hybrids and plug-in hybrids. Seeing the sheer number of vehicles already impacted and likely no concern stated by insurance for the garage, there isn't reason to ban. Keep in mind the source of that fear too. Some of that originates as a result of cheap imported e-bikes catching fire. With so many EV on the road now and their old fire exposures already addressed, some people may be extending the problem to where there is little actual exposure.
10-29-2024	Continued Misinformation. A popular publisher of daily news for the EV market has been updating their articles and republishing them. They found a new audience with old material by having adding Facebook to their reach. It the past, it was only their own website. Now, they are drawing in a much larger & broader following. Problem is, the updates aren't all that good. They'll clarify or correct minor things, but fundamentals continue to be a problem. Today, it was: "In a PHEV, even if you have plenty of juice in the battery, if you floor the go pedal, asking it to give all the performance it's got, it will have no choice but to wake up the engine." That is a misrepresentation from long ago, still persisting. It was how Volt enthusiasts attempted to portray Prius Prime as different... drawing a clear distinction between EREV and PHEV. Trouble is, that was always a lie and they knew it. In fact, that was a big influence with my video creation. I got tried & frustrated from such blatant attempts to undermine. Of course, such dishonest behavior was a dead giveaway they were desperate... seeing Toyota as a genuine threat. Why such obvious misinformation continues to be spread is a mystery. My theory is some of the writers don't actually know. Their occupation could have come about where their sources were trusted, even though they were actually propaganda websites not having been challenged yet. Remember the daily blog for Volt? That presented an appearance of authority, despite being a major resource for creating & feeding misinformation. Ugh. In never ends.
10-26-2024	Video: Metric Units (heavy traffic). Here's another video featuring displays with km/h, kWh/100km and °C. This time, traffic is very heavy. It's my commute home with lots of stop & slow to have to deal with. Though a test of patience, outcome of that lengthy duration is a rewardingly efficient drive. So, no complaint. It's informative to see the perspective of the lower being better too. That kWh/100km value, rather than mi/kWh, is the reverse of what I normally see with the display set for United States drivers... Toyota bZ4X - Metric Units (heavy traffic)
10-25-2024	Amazed. It's refreshing to get praise like this posted in a comment on one of my videos: "I'm still amazed at the relative efficiency of the bZ4x. This car gets unfairly judged by EV fanatics as being "worst" compared to the likes of the Model Y, ID.4, Mach-e and Ioniq 5, but in your hands it looks like a great EV." This is what I shared in return: Absence of efficiency observations from reviews is becoming a source of suspicion. MPG was always highlighted with traditional vehicles & hybrids. People want to know cost of travel. How much gas? Why not how much electricity? Such an omission is unacceptable. kWh/100km helps convey that information. In the United States, efficiency rating is stated in terms of kWh/100mi. Seeing mi/kWh on the vehicle displays helps us relate to that. In this video for US owners, 4.2 mi/kWh = 23.8 kWh/100mi. At a cost of $0.08 per kilowatt-hour, that's $1.90 to travel 100 miles. Why reviews exclude such vital information is perplexing. Perhaps they are showing bias for other automakers... unfairly judging bZ4X.
10-25-2024	Why? That friend took my information into consideration, then continued on by asking: "Why does it take so long to get decent EV pickup with range?" That was a much easier question to answer and had nothing in it that would be contentious. Phew! It's nice having something so straight-forward to convey at times. I passed along this insight on the topic of why it has taken so much time to only get this far: China had patents on LFP chemistry locked up. We had to wait for expiration to build those better batteries (no nickel, no cobalt, longer life, fire resistant, lower cost) before trying to build a competitive electric pickup. It's been a painful wait, but those efforts are finally underway.
10-25-2024	Impatience. I have a friend who has been a die-hard Republican all his life. The idea of voting Democrat is so appalling, he struggles to understand why anyone would. Being a trusted friend though, he does value my observations. That's encouraging. Loss of communication would be unfortunate. He's willing to listen, especially from an automotive perspective. So, I did what I could to provide an objective response to his endorsement for his candidate... the one I see as truly offensive and a terrible choice for our country by spreading fear of short-term losses and refusing to address long-term benefit: Watch for narratives. One party exploits them by milking impatience. Being a plug-in vehicle owner for over 12 years, I hear claims of waste and no progress all the time. Yet, even without government funding (NEVI) I see support for the undeniable shift from businesses seeing it as opportunity... despite Minnesota's awarded locations only now starting construction. On their own, they are making it happen... long-term investment easily overlooked. Just yesterday, the Holiday gas station in Baxter opened up 4 new DC fast-chargers. That now makes trips up north for us quite convenient... long before the NEVI allocations are spent along 94 and 35W. Most people won't notice though. Years of planning are easy to dismiss or misinterpret. It's like the solar & storage programs already well underway... which one party is constantly spreading misinformation about. Unfortunately, few care about that. Instead, most focus entirely on the short-term.