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Old 03-23-2024, 10:34 PM
stevesbirds stevesbirds is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2017
Posts: 7
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I own a Prius and a Volt. Never even sat in a Tesla sedan. Truck is just way too gimmicky. Not the least bit useful practicality. I rode in a Hyundai Ioniq 5 and was damn impressed. It was just a 30 mile Airport shuttle. Driver was intriguing. About 82 years young, career OTR big rig operator who ran the Hells road in BC for years where they shoot the ice road towing show. He booked about 75 hours in the car a week. He would start about 5 AM on first flights in and run till late at night. He made so much money for the Lyft service they leased him the car. He would pay lease payment in 7 days, bank the rest of the month. He was hauling in at least $80K. The socialist state of Oregon would ride him on over 40 hours so he found ways to take off duty naps during slow parts of day to make it appear he wasn't cheating on labor laws.
My Prius is possibly fixable. Couple bad battery cells. It got to 180K before triangle of death! Local body shop here has a number of them, the battery cell isn't complex for a detailed tech with electronics experience. I will be doing that tear down and repair soon, now that I have a local battery cell source. The Volt is really pleasurable to own. For me, I cannot get it close enough to charge for maybe 6 of 12 months. I have way too much stuff in drive. But no biggee. On gas only, still doing around 50 mpg, takes about $18 to fill and runs a week. I am a field tech so constantly rolling somewhere 2 hours away on little notice. It kills me to run the old gas or diesel stuff on that work. I break a lot of stuff cause everything has 200,000 plus and that is normal. Given choice, I prefer the hybrid or the Volt which is a dual. Electric generator powered but backed by a gas motor to power the generator. It is soo... hard to work on. They have twice the complexity. But again, I am mastering that and getting into stuff like AC system repair on it. It took me 6 months. Needed to get some education and a bunch of AC learning curve steps, pricey toys like Robinair, digital gauge set, adapters... Honestly if it weren't for Youtube and ALLDATA, we would be stuck driving to a service center. Dealers need a ton of money on all electric service. Many GM dealers have zero certified techs for the electrics. Getting parts swappers trained to accurately diagnose and follow strict protocols that electrics demand is a tall order. I hope to buy a Ioniq. I am not alone. It is a highly reviewed and loved and affordable car.
Marry Barra did not wish to cave on hybrid designs. It was a gamble and she was deep in protest when they made the fateful decision to gamble 100% electric on future engineering. Killing the plant in Ohio that made Volt was a bad step. A ton of possibilities were just slammed shut. Volt community has been bitchiing for years, "you killed the best car of the last 20 years".

Sorry, I type on a 2" tall screen. Lots of spell errors.