Day: February 9, 2021

Truck Trend

GM All-Electric Pickup Truck Will Be On The Road In 2021

It’s no secret that trucks are hot right now. And the notion of, and desire for, an electric pickup has ramped up in ways never before thought possible. The loudest noise maker in the space is obviously Tesla and Elon Musk’s cyber monstrosity. Thanks in part to Tesla, however, and their fabulous marketing machine the public’s perception of electric vehicles has finally started to shift to a point where it might just be possible for an automaker to be successful with an all-electric pickup.

Both Ford and General Motors have been up front in their ambition to bring a mass-produced electric truck to market. Ford has even gone toe-to-toe in marketing rhetoric against Tesla by staging a stunt where an electric F-150 pulled a train. GM has been a little more reserved, however company President Mark Reuss made a big announcement about the future of the company’s electric pickup

Motor Authority

2021 Tesla Model S and Model X revealed with airplane yoke steering wheel, Plaid performance variants

By Michael J. Moody 10 months ago

The updated Tesla Model S and Model X are no longer the subject of rumors.

On Wednesday ahead of the Silicon Valley automaker’s earnings call, Tesla released its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2020 update, which contained the first details on the refreshed 2021 Model S and Model X.

Both battery-electric vehicles are available to order on Tesla’s website, including new Plaid and Plaid+ (Model S only) performance variants boasting a new three-motor powertrain.

The bulk of changes take place inside where the vertical 17-inch touchscreen of the current models has been replaced with a Model 3-like horizontal screen. The size has not been released yet. A storage cubby now sits below the touchscreen, along with a hard button for the four-way flashers.

2021 Tesla Model X Plaid

Unlike the Model 3, a digital gauge cluster remains. The steering wheel

Car & Automotive

Not driving can hurt your car. Here’s what to do to prevent that.

By Michael J. Moody 10 months ago

If the pandemic has you working from home, shopping more online and drastically reducing any other travel, it might be time for you to think about the last time you drove your car. The fact is, a car left parked for three weeks or longer needs attention just as much as one driven on a more regular basis.

According to the Maine Department of Transportation, there was a 30 percent drop in vehicle miles traveled in the state in the early months of the pandemic. Traffic since then has picked up, but at the end of December, it was still between 6 and 9 percent lower than the same weeks in 2019.

Here are a few things you should do if you find yourself not using your car for weeks at a time.

Don’t park on empty

According to Josh Reardon, owner of Reardon’s Automotive and Diagnostics in Bangor,

Truck Trend

Nikola Refuse Garbage Truck Announced, 2,500 Orders Placed

By Michael J. Moody 10 months ago

*****Update, December 28, 2020: Nikola and Republic Services (NYSE: RSG) have discontinued their collaboration on refuse truck development.*****

Will this be the coolest—and quietest—garbage truck in the world? Perhaps—but we’ll believe it when we actually see it. Nikola, whose most notable contribution to the pickup-truck world thus far is the hydrogen fuel-cell Nikola Badger, is now dabbling in the dirty business of trash collection with its Nikola Refuse battery-electric garbage truck. Nikola, which is shooting for dominance in the zero-emissions heavy truck market, sees waste as a stable business and has received an order of 2,500 electrified Nikola Refuse trash trucks from Republic Services, the second largest recycling and solid waste provider in the U.S. The order is expandable up to 5,000.

Claiming about three times the power (up to 1,000 horsepower), Nikola expects its Nikola Refuse to outperform its diesel and natural-gas competition—not to mention the zero-emissions perk of

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