#south side gigafactory berlin

[madeindex]

South Side Tesla Gigafactory Berlin Grünheide

South Side of the #Tesla#Gigafactory#Berlin#Brandenburg#Grünheide. The #traintracks coming from the north of the Gigafactory property and the #industrialzone across the road from #Gigaberlin.

#elonmusk #gigafactory4

[bopinion]

2021 / 52

Aperçu of the Week:

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

(Desmond Tutu, South African Anglican archbishop, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, died last week at the age of 90. No doubt: this guy will rest in peace!)

Bad News of the Week:

Bureaucracy. A very German speciality. When making a decision, you don't have to think too hard and weigh up the pros and cons - because there's bound to be a regulation that governs it. Of all nations, the "people of poets and thinkers" hardly use common sense and prefer to fall back on the appropriate form. Example laws, I just took a quick look at category A: "AARKZustAnO" stands for "Order on the assignment of responsibilities for issuing notices of objection and for representing the employer in actions brought by employees of the Federal Foreign Office in matters of travel expenses" and "AAÜGErstV" for "Ordinance on the Reimbursement of Expenses under the Act on the Transfer by the Federal Government of Claims and Entitlements under Supplementary and Special Pension Schemes of the Accession Territory". Any questions?

Ordinances, application regulations, rules, codes of conduct and much more naturally also exist in epic breadth. Which leads to many processes taking half an eternity. Two recent examples: Tesla is already producing the first pre-series vehicles in its new Gigafactory in Grünheide near Berlin, yet there are only provisional approvals so far. A final permit has not even been issued for the so-called subsoil preparation. And since 2012, basic planning for a power line from offshore wind farms in the North Sea to industrial areas in the south of Germany has been officially laid down in the Federal Republic of Germany's "Grid Development Plan". After ten years, it is hoped to formally conclude with the first planning step, which merely defines corridors. It is a pity that neither globalization nor global warming will make allowances for lengthy procedures.

The fact that on top of the local, municipal, county, district, state and federal levels there is still the European Union does not make it any easier. An absurd example from this week: due to a slump in bookings due to Corona and the associated travel restrictions, Lufthansa wanted to cancel about 51,000 flight connections for the first quarter of 2022. However, only 33,000 of these will actually be cancelled. The other 18,000 will be operated as "empty flights" without passengers, as otherwise take-off permits would be lost due to lack of use. This is ecological and economic madness.

And when things go fast, they go wrong: on New Year's Eve, the sale of fireworks was banned on short notice in Germany. But not the use of them. As a result, Germans were happy to stand in line for three hours in front of the corresponding sales points behind the Polish border so as not to miss out on this senseless and dangerous fun. The result can be imagined: it was nevertheless and still much too much banged. In addition, environmental pollution, terrorized animals, seriously injured people and completely absurd Twitter threads about "how much individual freedom this pretentious state actually still wants to curtail". I wish you a good night. And now to the weather forecast...

Good News of the Week:

So, sweeping all the bits and pieces together, I at least get Good News from Germany for the environment:

Plastic bags have been banned since yesterday. But only the big, colorful ones at the checkout - not the small bags with handles for vegetables and fruit. But at least they only need about 20 years to decompose - instead of 100 to 500. I'm not even sure if I mean that sarcastically.

By the day before yesterday, three more nuclear power plants had been shut down. However, the last three are still on the grid for another year. And next door in France? Still 80% of the electricity comes from nuclear power. And now it's even to be greenwashed. This is ridiculous, since the assessment of environmental damage cannot be based solely on CO2 emissions.

This year, the ban on so-called chick shredding will also take effect. But male chicks still rarely have a life expectancy of more than one day, so now they are gassed. And the market introduction of technology that can determine the sex of the egg before hatching is still far away.

From now on, mandatory deposits will apply to all plastic bottles and all beverage cans. Previous exceptions, such as fruit juice in a bottle or energy drinks in a can, have been eliminated. I didn't understand that anyway. Nevertheless, there are still exceptions, e.g. for milk drinks. I still don't understand that anyway.

Personal happy moment of the week:

Let's make it short: My wife and I spent New Year's Eve with a 6-hour Zoom marathon with her French-Canadian friends and family. The highlight of all conversations was just that: "My wife and I..." ;-)

I couldn't care less...

...that the Austrian ex-chancellor Sebastian Kurz will work for tech investor Peter Thiel in the future. It just fits the picture, as both interpret the boundaries between normal lobbying and covert political influence for personal gain "rather flexibly". So anything but surprising. And probably the first time that a 35-year-old is included in the A list of "elder statesmen".

As I write this...

...I am fighting with reflux again. Doctor Google always has the same suggestions: less stress, less fat, less sugar, less alcohol, less caffeine. But seriously now: what can be done about it?

Post Scriptum:

Every year there is this trend: the song that was #1 on the hit list on your birthday (the very first one) is your personal motto for the coming year. This time I actually checked for the first time - and I'm speechless: it was "Get back" by The Beatles! Not only is that a choice motto for the year after this f*#*+* 2021 (I'm glad to share!). No, since Peter Jackson's documentary of the same name on Disney+, this song has also replaced "Hey Jude" as my current favorite Beatles song. Oh my god, there's prediction for real!

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Giga Berlin | 2021-01-13 | Timelapse

Tobias Lindh

A lot of activity today at Tesla's Gigafactory Berlin. - the stamping section is almost closed now. (0:13) - first windows at general assembly. (3:40) - roof and wall construction at the south side of the main building. (5:30) - full parking lot and new office containers. (7:20) - roof construction and window preparations at the east side of general assembly (9:35) - construction at the casting section started again (11:00)

[cleopatrarps]

German carmakers left reliant on others for battery cells

MUNICH (Reuters) – Plans by a Chinese company to build a battery cell factory in Germany should serve as a wakeup call for the national car industry, whose lack of its own production capacity risks leaving it exposed in a dawning era of electric mobility.

FILE PHOTO: A worker assembles a StreetScooter electric delivery van on the production line during an opening tour in Dueren near Cologne, Germany, May 30, 2018. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo –

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang is expected to take part in a signing ceremony at a summit in Berlin on Monday for Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) to build the plant in the eastern state of Thuringia.

BMW has awarded a contract worth just over 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) for CATL to make cells for electric cars, while Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) has picked CATL and South Korea’s Samsung and LG Chem to deliver $25 billion worth of batteries.

Tesla founder Elon Musk has also talked about locating a battery ‘Gigafactory’ near the Franco-German border, in the vicinity of its Grohman Engineering division that has built a production line for Tesla’s Nevada plant.

“If we want to have a German battery cell industry, then this is a warning shot,” said auto industry expert Joern Neuhausen of PwC consulting arm Strategy&.

German car makers have championed a switch to greener forms of motoring following the Dieselgate scandal of 2015 that exposed the dark side of their long and lucrative reliance on the internal combustion engine.

Volkswagen called last year for the German and European industry, which employs 12.6 million workers, to team up on battery production. Industry experts expect the mobility revolution to boost Europe’s battery market to 250 billion euros by 2025.

SEMICONDUCTOR PARALLELS

Analysts draw parallels with the semiconductor industry, where European players lost out as memory chips used in computers and mobile phones become a mass-produced commodity and low-cost Asian producers came to dominate the market.

Europe’s chip makers were not wiped out completely, however, maintaining – with the help of state aid – a lead in high-performance chips used in industrial and power-management applications such as electric cars, trains, wind turbines or computer server farms.

“When you talk about silicon chips for cars, it’s not about standard products but specialized applications,” said Elmar Kades of management consultants AlixPartners. “That’s a good business.”

Robert Bosch is building a new plant in ‘Silicon Saxony’ in eastern Germany that will make chips for the car industry and the industrial ‘Internet of Things’.

The privately held company, a leading auto industry supplier, has opted out of making lithium-ion battery cells, saying it would take an investment of 20 billion euros to catch a fifth of the European market by 2030.

The real value, say industry insiders, is in battery packaging – or combining cells so that they operate efficiently – maximizing the distance an electric vehicle can travel and the speed at which its batteries can be recharged.

“There is absolutely no point in chasing after today’s technology,” said Peter Cammerer, a member of the works council at BMW.

Cammerer urged the auto industry to prepare for the “post-Lithium era” by focusing its joint efforts on promising sodium- or magnesium-ion battery technologies. Battery-grade sodium salts are more abundant than lithium, while magnesium has the potential to be used in solid-state batteries — potentially more efficient.

“The right time is now,” said Cammerer.

Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Keith Weir

The post German carmakers left reliant on others for battery cells appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2u3uoiS via News of World

[dani-qrt]

German carmakers left reliant on others for battery cells

MUNICH (Reuters) – Plans by a Chinese company to build a battery cell factory in Germany should serve as a wakeup call for the national car industry, whose lack of its own production capacity risks leaving it exposed in a dawning era of electric mobility.

FILE PHOTO: A worker assembles a StreetScooter electric delivery van on the production line during an opening tour in Dueren near Cologne, Germany, May 30, 2018. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo –

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang is expected to take part in a signing ceremony at a summit in Berlin on Monday for Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) to build the plant in the eastern state of Thuringia.

BMW has awarded a contract worth just over 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) for CATL to make cells for electric cars, while Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) has picked CATL and South Korea’s Samsung and LG Chem to deliver $25 billion worth of batteries.

Tesla founder Elon Musk has also talked about locating a battery ‘Gigafactory’ near the Franco-German border, in the vicinity of its Grohman Engineering division that has built a production line for Tesla’s Nevada plant.

“If we want to have a German battery cell industry, then this is a warning shot,” said auto industry expert Joern Neuhausen of PwC consulting arm Strategy&.

German car makers have championed a switch to greener forms of motoring following the Dieselgate scandal of 2015 that exposed the dark side of their long and lucrative reliance on the internal combustion engine.

Volkswagen called last year for the German and European industry, which employs 12.6 million workers, to team up on battery production. Industry experts expect the mobility revolution to boost Europe’s battery market to 250 billion euros by 2025.

SEMICONDUCTOR PARALLELS

Analysts draw parallels with the semiconductor industry, where European players lost out as memory chips used in computers and mobile phones become a mass-produced commodity and low-cost Asian producers came to dominate the market.

Europe’s chip makers were not wiped out completely, however, maintaining – with the help of state aid – a lead in high-performance chips used in industrial and power-management applications such as electric cars, trains, wind turbines or computer server farms.

“When you talk about silicon chips for cars, it’s not about standard products but specialized applications,” said Elmar Kades of management consultants AlixPartners. “That’s a good business.”

Robert Bosch is building a new plant in ‘Silicon Saxony’ in eastern Germany that will make chips for the car industry and the industrial ‘Internet of Things’.

The privately held company, a leading auto industry supplier, has opted out of making lithium-ion battery cells, saying it would take an investment of 20 billion euros to catch a fifth of the European market by 2030.

The real value, say industry insiders, is in battery packaging – or combining cells so that they operate efficiently – maximizing the distance an electric vehicle can travel and the speed at which its batteries can be recharged.

“There is absolutely no point in chasing after today’s technology,” said Peter Cammerer, a member of the works council at BMW.

Cammerer urged the auto industry to prepare for the “post-Lithium era” by focusing its joint efforts on promising sodium- or magnesium-ion battery technologies. Battery-grade sodium salts are more abundant than lithium, while magnesium has the potential to be used in solid-state batteries — potentially more efficient.

“The right time is now,” said Cammerer.

Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Keith Weir

The post German carmakers left reliant on others for battery cells appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2u3uoiS via Online News

[party-hard-or-die]

German carmakers left reliant on others for battery cells

MUNICH (Reuters) – Plans by a Chinese company to build a battery cell factory in Germany should serve as a wakeup call for the national car industry, whose lack of its own production capacity risks leaving it exposed in a dawning era of electric mobility.

FILE PHOTO: A worker assembles a StreetScooter electric delivery van on the production line during an opening tour in Dueren near Cologne, Germany, May 30, 2018. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo –

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang is expected to take part in a signing ceremony at a summit in Berlin on Monday for Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) to build the plant in the eastern state of Thuringia.

BMW has awarded a contract worth just over 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) for CATL to make cells for electric cars, while Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) has picked CATL and South Korea’s Samsung and LG Chem to deliver $25 billion worth of batteries.

Tesla founder Elon Musk has also talked about locating a battery ‘Gigafactory’ near the Franco-German border, in the vicinity of its Grohman Engineering division that has built a production line for Tesla’s Nevada plant.

“If we want to have a German battery cell industry, then this is a warning shot,” said auto industry expert Joern Neuhausen of PwC consulting arm Strategy&.

German car makers have championed a switch to greener forms of motoring following the Dieselgate scandal of 2015 that exposed the dark side of their long and lucrative reliance on the internal combustion engine.

Volkswagen called last year for the German and European industry, which employs 12.6 million workers, to team up on battery production. Industry experts expect the mobility revolution to boost Europe’s battery market to 250 billion euros by 2025.

SEMICONDUCTOR PARALLELS

Analysts draw parallels with the semiconductor industry, where European players lost out as memory chips used in computers and mobile phones become a mass-produced commodity and low-cost Asian producers came to dominate the market.

Europe’s chip makers were not wiped out completely, however, maintaining – with the help of state aid – a lead in high-performance chips used in industrial and power-management applications such as electric cars, trains, wind turbines or computer server farms.

“When you talk about silicon chips for cars, it’s not about standard products but specialized applications,” said Elmar Kades of management consultants AlixPartners. “That’s a good business.”

Robert Bosch is building a new plant in ‘Silicon Saxony’ in eastern Germany that will make chips for the car industry and the industrial ‘Internet of Things’.

The privately held company, a leading auto industry supplier, has opted out of making lithium-ion battery cells, saying it would take an investment of 20 billion euros to catch a fifth of the European market by 2030.

The real value, say industry insiders, is in battery packaging – or combining cells so that they operate efficiently – maximizing the distance an electric vehicle can travel and the speed at which its batteries can be recharged.

“There is absolutely no point in chasing after today’s technology,” said Peter Cammerer, a member of the works council at BMW.

Cammerer urged the auto industry to prepare for the “post-Lithium era” by focusing its joint efforts on promising sodium- or magnesium-ion battery technologies. Battery-grade sodium salts are more abundant than lithium, while magnesium has the potential to be used in solid-state batteries — potentially more efficient.

“The right time is now,” said Cammerer.

Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Keith Weir

The post German carmakers left reliant on others for battery cells appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2u3uoiS via Breaking News

[dragnews]

German carmakers left reliant on others for battery cells

MUNICH (Reuters) – Plans by a Chinese company to build a battery cell factory in Germany should serve as a wakeup call for the national car industry, whose lack of its own production capacity risks leaving it exposed in a dawning era of electric mobility.

FILE PHOTO: A worker assembles a StreetScooter electric delivery van on the production line during an opening tour in Dueren near Cologne, Germany, May 30, 2018. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo –

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang is expected to take part in a signing ceremony at a summit in Berlin on Monday for Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) to build the plant in the eastern state of Thuringia.

BMW has awarded a contract worth just over 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) for CATL to make cells for electric cars, while Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) has picked CATL and South Korea’s Samsung and LG Chem to deliver $25 billion worth of batteries.

Tesla founder Elon Musk has also talked about locating a battery ‘Gigafactory’ near the Franco-German border, in the vicinity of its Grohman Engineering division that has built a production line for Tesla’s Nevada plant.

“If we want to have a German battery cell industry, then this is a warning shot,” said auto industry expert Joern Neuhausen of PwC consulting arm Strategy&.

German car makers have championed a switch to greener forms of motoring following the Dieselgate scandal of 2015 that exposed the dark side of their long and lucrative reliance on the internal combustion engine.

Volkswagen called last year for the German and European industry, which employs 12.6 million workers, to team up on battery production. Industry experts expect the mobility revolution to boost Europe’s battery market to 250 billion euros by 2025.

SEMICONDUCTOR PARALLELS

Analysts draw parallels with the semiconductor industry, where European players lost out as memory chips used in computers and mobile phones become a mass-produced commodity and low-cost Asian producers came to dominate the market.

Europe’s chip makers were not wiped out completely, however, maintaining – with the help of state aid – a lead in high-performance chips used in industrial and power-management applications such as electric cars, trains, wind turbines or computer server farms.

“When you talk about silicon chips for cars, it’s not about standard products but specialized applications,” said Elmar Kades of management consultants AlixPartners. “That’s a good business.”

Robert Bosch is building a new plant in ‘Silicon Saxony’ in eastern Germany that will make chips for the car industry and the industrial ‘Internet of Things’.

The privately held company, a leading auto industry supplier, has opted out of making lithium-ion battery cells, saying it would take an investment of 20 billion euros to catch a fifth of the European market by 2030.

The real value, say industry insiders, is in battery packaging – or combining cells so that they operate efficiently – maximizing the distance an electric vehicle can travel and the speed at which its batteries can be recharged.

“There is absolutely no point in chasing after today’s technology,” said Peter Cammerer, a member of the works council at BMW.

Cammerer urged the auto industry to prepare for the “post-Lithium era” by focusing its joint efforts on promising sodium- or magnesium-ion battery technologies. Battery-grade sodium salts are more abundant than lithium, while magnesium has the potential to be used in solid-state batteries — potentially more efficient.

“The right time is now,” said Cammerer.

Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Keith Weir

The post German carmakers left reliant on others for battery cells appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2u3uoiS via Today News

[eddiejpoplar]

Our Four Seasons 2017 Mazda CX-5 Goes to Michigan, Part One

Even before our Four Seasons 2017 Mazda CX-5 and I could hightail it out of Greater Los Angeles for its second cross-county journey, this time a one-way trip to Michigan, it was clear this relatively humble compact sport/utility is what BMW’s “SAVs” aspired to be—a tall utility with good ride and good handling.

A good ride is far more important on these cross-country trips. There has not been time to forage far off the Interstates in search of Blue Highways, though my escape from SoCal took me along beautiful, and (for California, especially) quiet Highway 395 along the Eastern Sierra Nevadas. The first day’s drive took me from Automobile’s El Segundo HQ to Reno, Nevada, and one route suggested by the Apple iPhone would have been 526 miles. It was I-5 to I-80, via San Jose and Sacramento. I might have chosen a side trip west, swinging by the Bay Area city of Fremont to skulk about the Tesla factory and check up on early Model 3 production, but my only goal for that first day was to make it to Sparks, just outside of Reno, by Tuesday morning to switch into winter tires from our friends at Tire Rack.

Northbound Highway 395 through the communities of Lone Pine, Big Pine, Bishop, and Mammoth Lakes provided a serene road trip experience you can’t find in Coastal California. At times, I felt like I was back in British Columbia, north of Vancouver, where (in the early ‘90s, at least) you could drive along Highway 97 for half an hour before another car came from the other direction.

No, US-395 is not nearly that desolate, but when you’re driving solo, the beautiful Sierra Nevadas and the cloudy, darkening blue skies feel more comfortable and soothing than a sea of taillamps ahead of you. There’s too much open road ahead to feel rage when a big, lumbering SUV blocks the passing lane as its driver sends text messages.

Perhaps that’s what the Mazda CX-5’s nav system was thinking when it routed me onto the lonelier road. Though it might not be as quick as I-5/I-80 in, heh, good traffic, this route to Reno is actually 37 miles shorter, measuring 486 miles total.

My first fill-up was in Inglewood, as the CX-5 had about 10 miles of range when I picked it up from HQ Monday morning. My second was in Big Pine, California, 289 miles later, for 24.7 mpg—decent for a large-compact SUV, though not exceptional for one with a 2.5-liter I-4.

The 187-hp four-banger has been the popular Mazda SUV’s only major shortcoming, since El Segundo HQ took delivery of the CX-5 last June. Yes, yes, you’re thinking about how the hallowed Miata always has been underpowered; but while the current MX-5 is short of the CX-5 by 32 ponies, it’s more than 1,300 pounds lighter. And the 2019 Miata is in for 26 more horses, just six short of the much-bigger SUV.

“It sort of caught me off-guard the other day with how slow it was out of the gate, when I was trying to get up to freeway speed,” said editor-in-chief Mike Floyd last fall, when he recorded commuter mpg in the low 20s.

A “sport” button jacks up the throttle response, though the button’s purpose doesn’t readily come to mind when you climb into this compact SUV, even though it’s right there, just below and to the left of the six-speed automatic’s gearshift. You’ll try it a few times then figure it’s probably not worth the extra hit to fuel efficiency.

This sort of lackadaisical acceleration almost defines any naturally aspirated compact utility, though perhaps we were expecting more from the erstwhile Zoom Zoom brand.

“I’d rather drive an MX-5,” online editor Ed Tehaney wrote, “but the CX-5 offers Zoom Zoom with a lot more room room than a Miata.”

Tahaney also lamented, among a few other nits, our tester’s handsome perforated Parchment (cream white) interior color as “very stylish, but not kid- or pet-friendly.”

El Segundo HQ had seven dogs among its staff when it took delivery, while the single staffer comprising the Automobile Detroit Bureau has three dogs—all collies. Once I would get the Mazda CX-5 to Michigan, its second row would be flipped down almost all of the time. High-powered car wash vacuums are a must.

But first, I had to get it there. I drove north before driving east so I could get Tire Rack to install a set of Bridgestone Blizzaks ($765.70, including sales tax, mounting and two-years roadside protection) on my way to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to drive the Nissan 370Zki and Armada Snow Patrol ahead of the 2018 Chicago auto show—this was still the middle of The Endless Winter, remember.

Tire Rack’s Sparks, Nevada, facility is a warehouse only. It neither sells nor mounts tires for retail customers of any kind, but I had no free time and knew I’d be white-knuckling it over the Rockies about the beginning of February, relying only on Predictive I-Active all-wheel-drive and the factory installed Toyo A30 mud-and-snow all-season tires. Given a choice between front-wheel-drive plus Blizzaks, or AWD plus all-seasons, I’d take the winter tire option every time, so the winter-AWD combo seems unbeatable.

The Blizzaks were mounted on the stock wheels and the Toyos would occupiy about two-thirds of the cargo compartment for the remaining 2,650 miles to the Detroit Bureau in Royal Oak, via Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Davenport, Iowa, New Berlin, Wisconsin (to visit parents) and through Chicago and Northern Indiana.

But first, an unscheduled side trip. Tesla’s Gigafactory is maybe three miles from the office park housing Tire Rack’s Western warehouse. Let’s see how close we can get…

Our 2017 Mazda CX-5 Touring

MILES TO DATE 14,477 PRICE $34,435 ENGINE 2.5L DOHC 16-vavle I-4/187 hp @ 6,000 rpm, 185 lb-ft @ 4,000 rpm TRANSMISSION 6-speed automatic LAYOUT 4-door, 5-passenger, front-engine AWD SUV EPA MILEAGE 23/29 mpg (city/hwy) L x W x H 191.1 x 72.5 x 65.3 in WHEELBASE 106.2 in WEIGHT 3,655 lb 0-60 MPH 8.6 sec TOP SPEED N/A

The post Our Four Seasons 2017 Mazda CX-5 Goes to Michigan, Part One appeared first on Automobile Magazine.

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[jesusvasser]

Our Four Seasons 2017 Mazda CX-5 Goes to Michigan, Part One

Even before our Four Seasons 2017 Mazda CX-5 and I could hightail it out of Greater Los Angeles for its second cross-county journey, this time a one-way trip to Michigan, it was clear this relatively humble compact sport/utility is what BMW’s “SAVs” aspired to be—a tall utility with good ride and good handling.

A good ride is far more important on these cross-country trips. There has not been time to forage far off the Interstates in search of Blue Highways, though my escape from SoCal took me along beautiful, and (for California, especially) quiet Highway 395 along the Eastern Sierra Nevadas. The first day’s drive took me from Automobile’s El Segundo HQ to Reno, Nevada, and one route suggested by the Apple iPhone would have been 526 miles. It was I-5 to I-80, via San Jose and Sacramento. I might have chosen a side trip west, swinging by the Bay Area city of Fremont to skulk about the Tesla factory and check up on early Model 3 production, but my only goal for that first day was to make it to Sparks, just outside of Reno, by Tuesday morning to switch into winter tires from our friends at Tire Rack.

Northbound Highway 395 through the communities of Lone Pine, Big Pine, Bishop, and Mammoth Lakes provided a serene road trip experience you can’t find in Coastal California. At times, I felt like I was back in British Columbia, north of Vancouver, where (in the early ‘90s, at least) you could drive along Highway 97 for half an hour before another car came from the other direction.

No, US-395 is not nearly that desolate, but when you’re driving solo, the beautiful Sierra Nevadas and the cloudy, darkening blue skies feel more comfortable and soothing than a sea of taillamps ahead of you. There’s too much open road ahead to feel rage when a big, lumbering SUV blocks the passing lane as its driver sends text messages.

Perhaps that’s what the Mazda CX-5’s nav system was thinking when it routed me onto the lonelier road. Though it might not be as quick as I-5/I-80 in, heh, good traffic, this route to Reno is actually 37 miles shorter, measuring 486 miles total.

My first fill-up was in Inglewood, as the CX-5 had about 10 miles of range when I picked it up from HQ Monday morning. My second was in Big Pine, California, 289 miles later, for 24.7 mpg—decent for a large-compact SUV, though not exceptional for one with a 2.5-liter I-4.

The 187-hp four-banger has been the popular Mazda SUV’s only major shortcoming, since El Segundo HQ took delivery of the CX-5 last June. Yes, yes, you’re thinking about how the hallowed Miata always has been underpowered; but while the current MX-5 is short of the CX-5 by 32 ponies, it’s more than 1,300 pounds lighter. And the 2019 Miata is in for 26 more horses, just six short of the much-bigger SUV.

“It sort of caught me off-guard the other day with how slow it was out of the gate, when I was trying to get up to freeway speed,” said editor-in-chief Mike Floyd last fall, when he recorded commuter mpg in the low 20s.

A “sport” button jacks up the throttle response, though the button’s purpose doesn’t readily come to mind when you climb into this compact SUV, even though it’s right there, just below and to the left of the six-speed automatic’s gearshift. You’ll try it a few times then figure it’s probably not worth the extra hit to fuel efficiency.

This sort of lackadaisical acceleration almost defines any naturally aspirated compact utility, though perhaps we were expecting more from the erstwhile Zoom Zoom brand.

“I’d rather drive an MX-5,” online editor Ed Tehaney wrote, “but the CX-5 offers Zoom Zoom with a lot more room room than a Miata.”

Tahaney also lamented, among a few other nits, our tester’s handsome perforated Parchment (cream white) interior color as “very stylish, but not kid- or pet-friendly.”

El Segundo HQ had seven dogs among its staff when it took delivery, while the single staffer comprising the Automobile Detroit Bureau has three dogs—all collies. Once I would get the Mazda CX-5 to Michigan, its second row would be flipped down almost all of the time. High-powered car wash vacuums are a must.

But first, I had to get it there. I drove north before driving east so I could get Tire Rack to install a set of Bridgestone Blizzaks ($765.70, including sales tax, mounting and two-years roadside protection) on my way to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to drive the Nissan 370Zki and Armada Snow Patrol ahead of the 2018 Chicago auto show—this was still the middle of The Endless Winter, remember.

Tire Rack’s Sparks, Nevada, facility is a warehouse only. It neither sells nor mounts tires for retail customers of any kind, but I had no free time and knew I’d be white-knuckling it over the Rockies about the beginning of February, relying only on Predictive I-Active all-wheel-drive and the factory installed Toyo A30 mud-and-snow all-season tires. Given a choice between front-wheel-drive plus Blizzaks, or AWD plus all-seasons, I’d take the winter tire option every time, so the winter-AWD combo seems unbeatable.

The Blizzaks were mounted on the stock wheels and the Toyos would occupiy about two-thirds of the cargo compartment for the remaining 2,650 miles to the Detroit Bureau in Royal Oak, via Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Davenport, Iowa, New Berlin, Wisconsin (to visit parents) and through Chicago and Northern Indiana.

But first, an unscheduled side trip. Tesla’s Gigafactory is maybe three miles from the office park housing Tire Rack’s Western warehouse. Let’s see how close we can get…

Our 2017 Mazda CX-5 Touring

MILES TO DATE 14,477 PRICE $34,435 ENGINE 2.5L DOHC 16-vavle I-4/187 hp @ 6,000 rpm, 185 lb-ft @ 4,000 rpm TRANSMISSION 6-speed automatic LAYOUT 4-door, 5-passenger, front-engine AWD SUV EPA MILEAGE 23/29 mpg (city/hwy) L x W x H 191.1 x 72.5 x 65.3 in WHEELBASE 106.2 in WEIGHT 3,655 lb 0-60 MPH 8.6 sec TOP SPEED N/A

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