GM advances its electric roadmap at CES 2021 with a focus on zero crashes, zero emission, and zero congustions. Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore and Senior Editor, Green John Snyder speak with Director of Global Battery Cell Engineering and Strategy for GM, Tim Grewe about GM’s electric footprint, innovative battery cells, and the introduction of a new Cadillac vehicle.
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Transcript

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GREG MIGLIORE: Welcome back to our live coverage of CES 2021. I'm Greg Migliore, editor-in-chief of Autoblog, and we're leading off today with big news out of General Motors. CEO Mary Barra outlines an ambitious plan transitioning the 113-year-old automaker to an electric future. Joining me today to discuss all of this is Tim Grewe, director of battery cell technology and strategy for General Motors, and John Snyder, senior editor for Autoblog, Green.

Thanks for being with us this morning, guys. Lots of things to unpack. Many new initiatives for General Motors. Tim, let's start with you. A big part of the future for GM will be this transition to electric vehicles. And that all starts with batteries, of course. So many different things we saw, from Cadillacs to the new Hummer to delivery vehicles that are all going to essentially boil down to the batteries.

Ultium is sort of the big phrase that we're hearing from Ms. Barra, and I think it's a really cool-sounding word that I think could get people excited about electric vehicles and the technologies that underpin them. Could you sort of tell us, maybe get into and explain how these batteries can be scaled and used for different purposes?

TIM GREWE: Yeah, thanks for having me today. I really appreciate being here. It all starts with the battery chemistry and the battery cell. And we've got a joint venture going with LG Chem where we bring the best of both companies together to make the world's best battery, where we can use that on the small crossover or all the way up to that EV-600 light delivery.

And when you-- when you have the scalability and the capability to meet all these different customer needs is you can hold your quality, you can hold your cost, and then, most important with this architecture, you can upgrade it in the future. And those upgrades will come naturally because we haven't found the bottom of the cost curve yet, and we're still innovating in production, through development, and then we have some great R&D breakthroughs that we're going to be able to upgrade into this vehicle whenever they become available.

GREG MIGLIORE: That's exciting news. Now John, I want to bring you in, as you're obviously sort of our green expert here at Autoblog. It really seems like, with the onset of electrification becoming more and more mainstream, companies like General Motors could really elevate the conversation and bring electrification to the masses. I know it was almost a year ago now you got to tour some of GM's battery development and technology at their tech center in Warren, and we're seeing a lot of these things come to fruition now today with the keynote speech at CES. What are your big takeaways, just from this morning's announcements?

JOHN SNYDER: Well, it's really interesting, I got to see a lot of these vehicles in person, and some of them are very impressive. The Cadillac Lyriq and Celestiq are beautiful, beautiful vehicles. And just to see that this Ultium battery technology is so modular and able to, you know, apply to anything from small vehicles all the way up to the Hummer with 1,000 horsepower is really impressive what GM can bring to the table with this new battery technology, especially with its modularity and its energy density.

Tim, you mentioned-- well, GM mentioned the addition of aluminum helping to improve the efficiency. It sounds like such a simple thing. How did that come about, and how does aluminum help the chemistry produce these more dense battery packs?

TIM GREWE: Yeah, so that's a great example of some of the innovation that we had in this Ultium development, where you talk about nickel, cobalt, and manganese, which are fairly widespread throughout the industry. And then what we do is we add an aluminum dopant, OK? And what this dopant does is it gives you the long life, especially in the high-use duty cycle like the EV-600.

So you add a small amount of that dopant, and it's sort of like a cladding on the nickel, cobalt, and manganese-- sorry about that, I'm getting into the industry lingo here. And that improves your life while having your energy density go up a small amount. And that processing is actually very novel. It doesn't add any cost. It just is a good example of how we didn't imagine it four years ago when we made the Bolt EV, and now we're introducing it in on the Ultium platform.

JOHN SNYDER: And let's see-- there's another generation of batteries coming after Ultium. Can you tell us a little bit about what that brings to the table-- what does that consist of, and how does that work? How are you achieving even greater density and more range?

TIM GREWE: Yeah. So we call this our innovation cycles. And if I could back off a little bit and explain them a little bit, like, when we are in production, we never stop innovating. We're always looking for more efficient ways to run the factory and work on the value chain to hit the bottom of this cost curve. The Bolt EV, we went up 10% in energy from 2016 to 2020, and we'll innovate at those levels.

The Ultium is what we call our breakthrough technology where we go to something like an NCMA with that special dopant. We got a 60% bigger cell that we can build all these vehicles with. And we have this modular approach to have that launch the Hummer with this incredible performance, and cars like the EV-600.

As we have parallel groups working here, they take all that knowledge and all that learning, and they try to take it up to the next level. And so our R&D group, you actually probably saw Meg Chi in the video there-- she's one of our scientists out of R&D. And they have developed a protected lithium anode which basically really puts up the energy density-- so you can either go for much higher range vehicles or much smaller batteries in the same vehicle.

And she's actually got that working on a multi-cell pouch that you can come and see today. So her team has had a great breakthrough this year in 2020, and I just look to them to accelerate in 2021. And then when we made Ultium architecture, we made sure that that new chemistry, it can go into those factories, and that new chemistry can go into those cell formats so we don't have to redesign a Hummer when it becomes available on the next generation. Or when we have this next generation technology, we can launch even more exciting products as we expand this portfolio.

GREG MIGLIORE: What I think is interesting is the scalability and all the different applications that you guys that General Motors are employing to put electrification to batteries in them. I'm curious-- sort of, Tim, this question's for you-- why go so all electric? I know there's the theory for some car companies, hey, let's try hybrids for a while. This is definitely a clear stake in the ground saying, hey, we're going to really dial in to electric, because, you know, we really think that's where the future is going.

TIM GREWE: Yeah, it's really one of those inflection points. And I think that CES kind of brought it back to the real customer-facing beyond the technology. And as an engineer, I spent a lot of my time talking about the technology. But even if you look at that previous clip that was just on the screen where you had those different offerings with a common cell, and so you can drive complexity down, you can reduce your development time, and you can react to whatever the customers want in a much, much quicker way.

And when you have that flexibility, you heard some of the designers talk in the video about the options they have. And then you saw some of those electrified interiors-- it was just a natural alignment. And we're doing all we can to accelerate into it, because we see the technology ready for Ultium, but we don't stop there. We see it further progressing into more and more applications. And so it just is a natural better vehicle, better customer experience, totally integrated with the technology to have this electrified capability on vehicle.

JOHN SNYDER: And we saw recently a crate-- basically a crate engine, but electrified, using the Bolt battery platform. And GM put it in a Blazer. And we had a lot of fun with that, picking our own vehicles that we would retrofit with an EV architecture. With Ultium and it's modularity, is there going to be more opportunities for customer retrofit of their own vehicles? Is there going to be an Ultium crate EV power train available at some point?

TIM GREWE: Yeah, it's natural with the technology. And you saw us do it on the Bolt EV. And you can only imagine where we'll go on the Ultium platform. We haven't announced anything at this time, but we have announced multiple other OEMs that we're working with, which is kind of the first step into a crate type environment. And that's one of the things with our vehicle intelligence platform or our wireless battery system where you then have the ability to open it up. And you have the ability to put it into applications that you just couldn't imagine before.

And that wireless battery management system in that VIP architecture is a great example of, you got power, you got cooling, and everything else is wireless. And so it's sort of like the Wi-Fi versus the old landlines on the dial-up, where we can't even imagine where it's going to go. And I'm sure that'll be something that we announce in the future.

GREG MIGLIORE: A big part of today's presentation was sort of the transformation at Cadillac. You guys have been pretty, you know, forward-looking in making this luxury brand, you know, the mission really all about electric vehicles, and really taking a position and trying to redefine, in some ways, what luxury means, and making electrification part of that conversation.

The Celestiq, we sort of saw it in the shadows there. It was a really beautiful looking vehicle. And I think to me, a lot of this is about not just the technology, but making these aspirational vehicles-- things that people want to buy. You've seen Tesla, obviously, achieve some success with that. Other car companies, some of their electric vehicles tend to be a little more conventional.

And I think you guys have sort of done both approaches actually. The original Chevy Volt was pretty futuristic. And then it became a little more conventional in line with consumer tastes. But just looking at some of these shots of the Cadillacs, I mean, they're very impressive vehicles-- you know, gorgeous cars. They really make a design statement, something that I think could get people excited.

You know, Tim, I know you're an engineer, not a design guy, but you know, you must be excited seeing things like that hidden away kind of in the depths of GM, wherever you guys are keeping these prototypes. To me, it's something that I think gets the average consumer excited about an electric vehicle.

TIM GREWE: Yeah. It's really infectious enthusiasm. And you saw some of those designers, right? And so we'll interact with the designers, and they'll say, hey, I'd like to try this. Is that possible? And we'll say, sure. The Ultium architecture the Ultium platform can make that happen. And so that enthusiasm just kind of multiplies and it gets more infectious as it goes forward. You know, I particularly like some of this Ultifi, where it's all going to be on your phone and it's all transparent. They have a very good user interface with that. And just wrapping that total package together is giving us options that we could only dream of as little as three years ago.

GREG MIGLIORE: You know, that kind of I almost think begs the question is, what else could Ultium do? What advantages can it give you guys that a traditional car, just a gasoline-fed engine, you wouldn't even have that sort of technology on a car? But with Ultium, you've already got some of this infrastructure built in.

TIM GREWE: Yeah. The electrified part of it, right? Some of those panel roofs that you had there came from the ability of having this strong electric system. You know, some of those rock crawling modes on the one-pedal mode with that torque control, and how you have that instantaneous feedback of applying torque, but you also have the sensing capability to know which wheel is turning and then how it's all integrated together in that vehicle intelligence platform. And so you know, I am a bit biased. I've only driven electric for six years now. But the one-pedal drive that we had on the Chevy Bolt we thought was going to get diminishing returns after that. And we couldn't imagine it getting much better.

Now, we do this one-pedal drive on this Hummer, especially during this rock crawling, and it just is opening up all kinds of possibilities, you know? And this walks to freedom mode, where we have-- I always call it the ultimate power has the ultimate responsibility. And you can make all that happen where we can enjoy a three-second car, and we don't have to be track certified.

So a lot of this integration and a lot of this capability, it just continues to amaze me as to where it's going to go tomorrow with so many creative people and so many innovators working on it. I couldn't even begin to comprehend where it might all come together five years from now.

GREG MIGLIORE: How many folks do you guys have at GM working on electric vehicle technology now? I know it's a very big company, hundreds of thousands of workers. But roughly how many people are working on EVs?

TIM GREWE: It's a large amount, and they're converting more and more every month as the products start to roll out. And so you know, where do you draw the line? How do you differentiate it? I mean, I call those designers we worked with, the EV enthusiasts now, and they're working on the EVs-- whether it be the Lyriq, or the Hummer, or some of the other ones that we've got coming out with this full line of Buicks coming out.

So I would say it's the vast majority of the company right now. And you know, you may have noticed that we're going to hire a lot more. And we're really going to have this connected customer and this software development where we're bringing in thousands and thousands of more experts. So if you want to work on great technology and you want to be part of the innovation and be part of the creativity, definitely GM can use you. So come on in.

JOHN SNYDER: What are some of the challenges and some of the strategies for getting people into these electric cars? I know GM's been around for forever. And you know, you have these legacy customers. Some of them might be sort of stuck in their ways. They want a diesel pickup that can tow, you know, 500, 700 miles without stopping. How do you convince these folks to give up the internal combustion and go to electrification?

TIM GREWE: I think we let the customers drive us as to where they want to go. And so if you look at what they're looking for, we have the telematics on board so we know how they're using these vehicles. Through that brand name OnStar, we're also able to say, well, how far do you drive? And when do you need to do a fast charge? And you know, some of that 90 miles in 10 minutes drove us from our customer feedback. Because although they only do it maybe once every two years, they want to have a vehicle that has that capability. And so we really have to meet the customers where they are. And then we really have to listen to them and have the technology ready to meet their needs.

We have great retention on our existing vehicles. If you look at Bolt EV drivers in user forums, they all love the vehicle. And so you have to maintain that, right? You have to make sure that the next one coming out is even more exciting and it doesn't disappoint in any ways. But even if it doesn't disappoint, you have to say, well, what would you like to make better?

And part of that whole scenario of continuous innovation where we love making it better and we love getting this feedback from our customers to say, tweak it here, make this a little bit better. And it just keeps on evolving with them as that goes through. And so I really think it's one of those things where we expose them to it, they tell us what they like, most of them are very enthusiastic-- very few negative feedback.

But when there is something that you want to improve, go fix it. And kind of this whole, you know, 238 up to 258 miles on the Bolt EV was a range thing, and now we're going up into the 300 and 450 mile EVs to further reduce that range topic is kind of related to what you're talking about. But we have to say, you know, we're never stopping, and we're going to always, always improve.

And once Meg Kaisell gets in here, it's almost-- how should I say it-- another inflection point, where it's going to reduce the weight, improve the rock crawling capability, and getting down to the bottom of that cost curve where we don't know how low it is right now. But we're going to get there as quick as we can.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

GREG MIGLIORE: Go ahead, John.

JOHN SNYDER: Go ahead, Greg.

GREG MIGLIORE: Oh, no, go ahead. I'm curious what you're going to say. That sounds interesting. That sounds like a very--

JOHN SNYDER: I was just curious--

GREG MIGLIORE: Solid state question.

JOHN SNYDER: Solid-state batteries are part of the plan at all-- is that in the works for GM?

TIM GREWE: Yeah, you know, and the terms are pretty loose, right? So we're going to have always the cutting edge, pioneering battery chemistry-- whether it's a hybrid electrolyte, or a solid state electrolyte, or the different nanotechnologies. I mentioned the protected lithium anode to remove the graphite out of the cell and make more room for higher range.

So all of those, we have those three major cycles of innovation, where not only do we prove it in the lab it can be done, we have a [INAUDIBLE] team working with our Ohio factory to say, well, how would you get that into scale production? And then all the value chain to say, well, OK, now if you look at some of these next generation products, it's a great competition, because you have the graphites competing against the lithium anodes. And you just keep on working them to make them both the best they can be. And with a wide portfolio, it'll probably coexist. And in offering those types of customer choices at scale is part of the exciting part of the next five years in the industry.

GREG MIGLIORE: Tim, could you kind of talk a little bit about the size of what an Ultium battery pack-- just compare it to something for the average person. Is it like a fruit, like a jug of milk? How big are we talking about here for the Ultium battery packs?

TIM GREWE: Yeah, so if you kind of look at some of those things there, those are your 300, 350-mile packs. And that's basically the footprint of the vehicle as you look underneath the vehicle there. And so with that footprint of the vehicle, you have a lot of the advantages where it's a low center of gravity, and it's a very stiff chassis, because the battery cells on the cell module assemblies actually assist in the structure of the vehicle so you can have that firmly planted feel while you're driving the vehicle.

And then as we get into the next generation technologies, or even this generation, you can make them smaller. And you heard us talk about a six or an eight, a 10 or 12, up to a 24 module with a double-stack battery-- and we have all those options. What you're seeing on the screen now is kind of a 12-stacker.

But then you can shrink that up, and so you'll basically pull it back from the rear wheel so there's actually a little more space, a little lighter weight for, say, a six-module battery pack that goes together. But it's always basically the width of the car. And then we just stack them in-- and on the trucks, we double stack them to put them double high.

GREG MIGLIORE: That really opens up some packaging opportunities for you guys. I remember driving the Chevy Volt-- some of the earlier versions of it-- and it was like a t-shaped cell sort of thing that ran right down the middle. And for a while, I think it was actually only a four-seat car, then you guys were able to add a middle seat.

And to me, that's one of the exciting things about electric vehicles is you don't have a traditional internal combustion engine right in the front. And it opens up space and opportunities for things to add new features, to add new seating configurations, things like that. Even with the Volt with the t-cell, that car was incredibly well planted. It drove in some ways like a sports sedan, because it was so low, implanted to the ground with those battery cells. What are you guys thinking about as you look at these new, like, open spaces in the car that you could put things in, and add new storage, and try new things?

TIM GREWE: Yeah, the designers are really excited. And some of the fundamentals, you know-- and I'm not a designer, I can just play one on TV here-- but ball of foot to front axle-- you have a lot of flexibility now. The slope of the windshield, you have a lot of flexibility now. If you look at some of the rear packaging options that you have with that very tight suspension back there, it gives you even more capability.

So each designer and each brand is taking this freedom, and they're going to go make their specific statements without any of those constraints that they used to have. And so it's a pretty exciting time to see what they come up with. If you look at the Hummer super truck, I mean, to take the roof off and throw it in the frunk was a great example of some pretty creative use while you still had all that off-road rock crawling capability with that front locking differential.

So if you look at what these designers will come up with, you're starting to see some of the excitement now and those special individual lighting systems through the glass panel roofs. There's more and more of that coming, so stay tuned. I think you're going to be amazed with the creativity of our designers.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah, I got to say, I saw the Celestiq in person, and it really is an impressive vehicle. The way that it greets you when you walk up to it, the lighting display on the grill, and then goes down the sides and the door handles. And then you get inside, and everything is lit up, and everything's a screen too. There's a screen on the steering wheel. There's a screen all the way across the dash. There's screens on the center consoles, front and rear. Everything's a touch screen, and everything's usable.

The space is more of a lounge-- a place where someone wants to spend time. It's not specifically an appliance to get you from place to place. It was a very emotional vehicle. And it was really cool to see how excited designers were about the freedom that these EVs give them to just recreate the brand and create a new halo for the brand too.

TIM GREWE: Yeah, it is kind of neat. It's not just physical options they have, but it's also, like you said, the screen options, and the ability to reconfigure, and grab, and toss, and a lot of that stuff that you used to just see in movies, and now you can live it yourself. So I'm sure we're going to see stuff that we literally didn't think was possible and is going to happen in this generation of Ultium architecture.

GREG MIGLIORE: How does Ultium sort of reinforce Bright Drop? Which was a new service we heard today, and that's pretty exciting-- that's something that, especially with, you know, the way shipping and the way people now shop has really been transformed in the last 11 months now. It seems like you guys are really trying to meet the moment with Bright Drop, and then using electrical-- you know, electric propulsion really as a way to rethink how you do that.

TIM GREWE: Yeah, and it's all tied together in the fundamental architecture with the vehicle intelligence program. I call it the telematics, where we've got the cloud-based systems up and running. And so Bright Drop was a very quick natural adaptation on how to really take a pain point for that customer. And I think you heard they had a 20% improvement in productivity.

But you know, fatigue goes down. It's easier to use. Everything is centrally located in that cloud. You're never worried about state of charge on your Bright Drop module. It's all right there. And it's sort of like teaming up now where you're not just trying to run your route by yourself, but you've got all this extra information and ways to optimize it. And so it really is a better way of doing business and a better way of doing life. So we're excited about those types of new opportunities with just very minor adaptations to some of the systems that we already have in place.

JOHN SNYDER: Can you talk a little bit more about the drone, the Vertan? Were you involved with that at all? I mean, I'm sure you were, as it's electrically powered. But I'm curious as to how far out that is and you know, just some of the thinking behind it, and some of the applications for that.

TIM GREWE: Yeah. I think it's another good example of you think about how it ties together with that Ultium architecture and that vehicle intelligence platform, and to say that, well, now you're going to make a smaller vehicle that has similar power, but you're going to drone from spot to spot-- it's all capable within the physics. Now, where is the customer need? Where's the customer demand? And where's the customer confidence in making all that come together?

But I think you kind of have seen, you know, the small scale drones have really been very useful in many industries. And this is just a natural evolution where you take some of these common Ultium components, and you can be very useful in some of these situations. So I don't think they've announced timing on that yet.

But you know, it is all within the Ultium architecture that you can make it all happen. And it really comes down to, you know, how do you take the autonomous, tie it together with the power of the Hummer, tie it with the quality of the Ultium cell moving forward, and offer a very compelling product that could be very useful for some of our customers.

GREG MIGLIORE: Tim, what would you say the biggest learnings General Motors as a company has, I would say, achieved over the last really 30 years, even going back to the EV1? You guys were among the first to get into the electric vehicle space, followed up by the Volt, the Bolt, and now we're looking at this whole new range of electric vehicles that really is going to come to dominate your portfolio. What are just some of the big takeaways you've learned about developing the batteries and consumer preference?

TIM GREWE: Yeah, that's a great question. So if you kind of look back, and we have some of these old guy like me museum pieces out there, right? And you take the EV1 battery pack, and it's kind of the same size as a Volt battery pack-- and the Volt battery pack was about 18 kilowatt hours. And now you look at a 60-kilowatt hour Bolt EV battery pack compared to those two, and it's not only the chemistry that goes inside of it and how to manufacture that chemistry, but it's how to manage to equalize it. It's how to condition it with our active heat pump systems.

It's how do the customers use it, and how do they charge it? And then how do you have all of that tie together so you have the right technology in without waste? And so one good example we had just in the Ultium is that we used to do a quick evaluation of new technology chemistry, and we'd run it at 65 degrees Celsius, just because that was a very representative way to get a quick test to say, well, A is better than B on a comparative basis.

We knew our customers never did that, but that became one of those good benchmarks when you say, well, how am I going to upgrade? You know, how do I go from a 38-mile extended range up to the 55-mile extended range? But then when we got into this new technology with this MCMA, you know, those methods didn't work anymore.

And you actually had to develop new methods [INAUDIBLE]. And it's a little generic response to your question, but you can never stand still. You always have to innovate, and then you can't get stuck in the, well, that's what we did before, and we got to it this way again. We always got to do it new, better, faster on each generation with the new technology, while we're protecting the customer to make sure that we don't miss any steps, and that we give them a very durable product. And so, so far on the Bolt EV, we've had some great experience with many people over 100,000 miles and going strong.

I think on the Chevy Volt extended range, you know, some of our customers are up at half a million miles with that. And so getting that feedback in to say, well, let's go get those parts back, how did they wear out, how did our acceleration techniques and validation compare to the reality of the field, and then how do we iterate that global development process so we can do it faster and accept better technology sooner, while still having that high quality of release?

And so innovation, I think, is the biggest way-- it's more of a processing question than a one technology, because about every three years we're getting these major improvements in battery chemistry, major improvements in motors and power electronics, and major improvements on the interior. If you look at auto cruise right now today, I mean, you know, that's not so much battery, and chemistry, and power side, but the ability to say that we're going to have that experience for the customer with all that related technology on these electrified platforms is just very powerful. And it just takes that constant innovation. So I hope that answered your question. I hope it wasn't too vague.

GREG MIGLIORE: No, that was great. That was great. You know, something else that I think is on the mind of consumers is the infrastructure. You know, right now if you need to fill up your car, you go to the gas station that's on your corner. And it's easy. And you can Google the price of gas. You know, all this stuff has been around for over 100 years.

You know, what are you guys looking at as far as sort of meeting the challenge with infrastructure-- partnering, developing some of your own features for this? Because that really is something that could speed rollout and make this just so much easier for your average American, if there were, like, charge stations on their corner.

TIM GREWE: Yeah. I'll say it's going to be a new world out there. And I've got kids, and college kids, and stuff like that, and they actually get annoyed going to the corner if they have to go fuel up on the Chevy Volt extended range. And so a lot of the customer experience with that Ultifi, we can get the charge station installed in your house or your apartment, which is very convenient for you.

You'll never go to the corner, you know, because you don't need to unless you want to go there for something else. You know, and that's many, many of our customers' experiences. Like, 80% of our customers never go to a fast charger at any time, and they charge at home. Another approximately 18% of our customers, they charge at work, because they have that ability to do that. And so that's a very natural infrastructure, and we want to keep that going.

When it comes to fast charge, we partner with multiple people, and I like to call it universal charging, OK, where it's not a special station. It's an interoperable standard. And you plug in and you fast charge. And then most importantly is on your phone, you have this great little application that knows where you're going in your route, and your plans, and it ties it all together to say, well, listen, you probably don't need to fast charge today, and you can just run the whole day.

Or if you got a longer route with that, here's a convenient time for you to fast charge, just not when you get empty. And then you can finish your day. So you kind of combine route management like you kind of do on the fleet that we're talking about with personal use. And quite frankly, you know, [INAUDIBLE] purchase fuel. He doesn't ever go to the gas station, because he's got those types of systems that he relies on all the time. And it's much, much less expensive to make it all happen.

And so, you know, I think a part of it is that, you know, somebody else always pays for his electricity, so that's an extra bonus to him, and he's never got a transportation expense. So I think all that will come together, and many of our users will have those choices to do that universal charging-- you know, whether it be at home, at work, on the road, anywhere in between.

GREG MIGLIORE: Tim, thank you so much for your insight today. John, thanks for being with us as well. We're out of time. It's been a great segment. I've enjoyed this immensely. Stay with us for all the coverage from CES. At 10:30, Chip Wars is coming up. And of course, Wednesday at 4:30, the official Best of CES Awards, 4:30 Eastern-- come back for those as well. Thanks again, enjoy the day.

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For 2024, the Honda Passport picks up some improvements for the off-road focused TrailSport trim, as well as a style-focused Black Edition. The TrailSport's upgrades include all-terrain tires on 18-inch wheels as well as retuned shocks, springs and anti-roll bars for better off-pavement performance. The Black Edition is the new …

2024 Honda Prologue walkaround

The 2024 Honda Prologue will be Honda's first widely-available electric car available in the U.S. While it is based on the Chevy Blazer EV, it has a number of unique qualities, starting with its unique exterior and interior styling that are much cleaner and more reserved than the Chevy. Honda …

2024 Acura Integra Type S video review | Autoblog Garage

The 2024 Acura Integra Type S is the Acura branded variant of the Honda Civic Type R. It gets the same turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder and six-speed manual transmission with 320 horsepower and 310 pound-feet of torque. It does have a number of differences, though. The design is different with a …

2023 Detroit Auto Show - everything you need to know

The F150 is a significant refresh for 2024 and features a new tailgate, bed dividers and an updated design. The tailgate can now swing out -- Ford joins the tailgate wars with Ram and GM -- and the headlights give the F150 a fresh look. The Tremor and Raptor are …

Quick look at the 2025 Ford Mustang GTD

The 2025 Ford Mustang GTD is the most extreme Mustang and also one of the most extreme road cars ever made. Its body is largely made out of carbon fiber, and it's rocking a 5.2-liter supercharged V8 under its hood that is promised to make over 800 horsepower. Ford created …

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQE 350 SUV 4Matic video review | Autoblog Garage

The 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQE 350 4Matic SUV is a very pleasant luxury EV to pop around in, and while it isn’t particularly sporty to drive, it sure is a relaxing space to spend time in. The EQE SUV is a similar size and class as the gas-powered GLE, though its …