The polished wheels were always an extra-cost option. They cost me $695!
What else "cut" for the 2014 $5k MSRP drop?
Found a NEW '14 sitting on a dealer's lot locally. With a motivated dealer, running the numbers could make me owe LESS after tax credit than what's left on my '13--wouldn't mind getting paid to drive a new car! It's also a later build date, so it may have the 17.1 kWh battery. Getting a few extra EV miles is not bad either.
However, my '13 is solid and I'm wondering if anything else was "cheapened" on the '14 Volt for the $5k MSRP drop. I couldn't get a solid answer from searching besides the following:
--eliminated automatic charge door opener (actually like this, but can deal with it)
--eliminated two-tone accents on the leather seats (a personal preference I really like, and will decide in-person if I can part with my ceramic white accents--fortunately this particular '14 has the white center stack)
Anything else? Is the gas door still locking?
I know GM shaved costs somewhere and am wondering if there are other things "unseen" that may make the car less reliable or less of a keeper than the solid '13 I have now.
However, my '13 is solid and I'm wondering if anything else was "cheapened" on the '14 Volt for the $5k MSRP drop. I couldn't get a solid answer from searching besides the following:
--eliminated automatic charge door opener (actually like this, but can deal with it)
--eliminated two-tone accents on the leather seats (a personal preference I really like, and will decide in-person if I can part with my ceramic white accents--fortunately this particular '14 has the white center stack)
Anything else? Is the gas door still locking?
I know GM shaved costs somewhere and am wondering if there are other things "unseen" that may make the car less reliable or less of a keeper than the solid '13 I have now.
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An interesting thread - I didn't see any real conclusion though. FWIW my 2012 has a button on the centre stack for adjusting the time. I have had the 4G upgrade and it still didn't alter the clock. I expect the chip is programmed for global use and doesn't know where you are or if and when DST kicks in. England and Europe, for instance, are a week ahead of North America.
It added a WiFi hotspot that I didn't have before. The App's functionality was spotty and inconsistent before, to the point that I stopped using it and never took it up again, so I can't comment. Other than that, as far as I can tell, business as usual. In Canada it was mainly meant to enable continued coverage as the previous network was being phased out.I supposedly had this "upgrade" to 4G done also, but I don't notice any difference. Did you? It still takes forever to load the car's status from the app. Maybe this is improved in the '15 and Gen2 with the wifi hotspot. I don't think this is improved on the '14.
Your car is two years newer than mine. I have a quite different entertainment and nav system, ( with the HDD and no MyLink) so the car might know where it is but it doesn't seem to tell my clock.My conclusion is that the car is syncing regularly, but whatever the source is, it's not (always) accurate.
My guess is onstar, because that's the only thing that's changed since getting the car. And it changed on the correct day to the correct time for the first few changes. Only broke after the upgrade of onstar to GSM/WCMDA.
It knows where you are (GPS) - or at least has the capability to, if they would program it that way.
Programming that capability in, using the location and the date, might get a little complicated. It would be easier to pick up the local time externally. Even pushing a button twice a year is not a big problem.
I still have the original 2G radio. And OnStar is still active. No XM.
My wife has a 2015 Ford C-Max Energi and just got a note from Ford that they will upgrade the radio, due to older cellular service being phased out (didn't provide details).
It sounds like Ford is in the same situation there as GM was in Canada. The 2G network that OnStar used here is being phased out, if it's not already gone.
Agreed. I've always thought the remote release door is needlessly complicated.The charge door is more convenient for sharing EV spots than my coworkers 2012/13s, and is more reliable with no potential CELs from it.
Yes - exactly that. Even here in North America not all regions go to DST - Saskatchewan for one - and the car would have to have some kind of table programmed in to look up which is which. Overseas some kick in at different times and some never. My car could get that info from OnStar but if it does it doesn't pass it to the clock, so I reset it myself. It's really not a big deal to someone brought up with spring driven clocks that had to be wound.It's actually easy, time and position is provided in the GPS signal. It's the DST offset that is not, which is probably the issue with the system (if GPS is the source of time), and it waits for onstar to give it that info instead of try to calculate based on position and date.
I think you and I have differing ideas on what is simple. Those clocks you are talking about have considerable computing power built into them and chips with thousands of transistors.I agree it's not a big deal. But it's a feature my car shipped with (an extremely simple one, at that), and should continue to work.
The simplest of alarm clocks can do it on the correct day without a data connection at all, so should a vehicle with an exponentially more complex computer and radio system.
Agreed, and I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole, but when we were taught in school about DST the justification was that it helped the farmers. Any farmer I ever met timed his day by the sun and worked dawn to dusk.I'd personally like to see our government switch to the summer daylight savings time and never switch back. Twice a year we screw up people's sleeping patterns for this "tradition" that leads to all sorts of confusion. A few years ago Russia chose to switch and never do daylight savings again. Not that I'm supportive of all the things the Russian government does, this is one that made sense to me.
A few weeks ago I was out of synch with what I expected London time to be. Then I was OK and back to five hours. My daughter was 12 hours ahead, she's now 13 hours because in China and most lower latitudes they don't switch.
Yes, I watched one of those tractors at work in Saskatchewan. Amazing. It did drive itself on a route programmed into the GPS.I have a farm where I cash rent to a farmer to plant crops. They could care less about the light as they have lights, a cozy cab with heat and AC, and lots of gadgets like GPS and automated systems on board where the combine practically drives itself. I got to ride in the combine a few years ago when they were harvesting my land. It's an amazing dance of giant vehicles (combine keeps running, storing corn or beans in its container until another tractor with a trailer and auger pulls along side to transfer the combine;s contents, then that tractor rushes to the Semite truck trailer to dump, going back and forth until the semi is full. Then the semi leaves to get the grain to the grain silos while the remaining combine and tractor with trailer fill up, keep moving, until the semi returns. Moisture content is what causes them to stop, not the sun (though sun and weather have a great effect on moisture content)
But what's a Semite truck?
I remember mid winter in London going to school and coming home in the dark. DST didn't help at that latitude.We got home a half hour ahead of dusk.
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