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GM tells NHTSA pickup truck electronic glitch is 'inconsequential'

General Motors has been enduring some serious problems with recalls recently, and it is hoping to avoid launching another major safety campaign. 200,921 2014 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups are under the microscope due to a rare problem with their instruments, an issue GM calls calls "inconsequential to motor vehicle safety." The Detroit-based automaker believes that the glitch is so minor that it has filed a petition with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asking the government safety watchdog for permission to pass on recalling the vehicles.
The fault at issue can occasionally cause the instrument cluster to reset when drivers use the steering wheel controls to browse songs from an external media device connected to the truck's USB ports. If a song's title information exceeds 2,000 bytes, according to The Detroit News, then the instrument panel can reset, which in turn causes the gauges, shift position indicator and cruise control telltale to turn off briefly. When rebooting, other instrument panel lights may briefly illuminate without their functions actually being activated. GM claims that if this does happen, the instrument display lights go out for about 1.5 seconds and the bulb check lasts a further five seconds. However, this snafu has no actual affect on the truck's operation. The glitch is present in trucks built between January 29, 2013, and October 28, 2013.

Daily Driver: 2015 GMC Canyon

Daily Driver videos are micro-reviews of vehicles in the Autoblog press fleet, featuring impressions from the staffers that drive them every day. Today's Daily Driver features the 2015 GMC Canyon, reviewed by Seyth Miersma. You can watch the video above or read a transcript below. Watch more Autoblog videos at /videos. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Hey, guys. This is Seyth with Autoblog, and I'm here in the 2015 GMC Canyon pickup truck. The version I'm in is about as bare bones as this truck gets. We've got a convenience group package, which means I have things like a remote lock and unlock. I've got a spray-in bed liner and then I've got the very tiny but still useful infotainment system, which allows for things like hooking up your phone, [00:00:30] Bluetooth streaming music from my iPhone to the sound system, things of that nature. Really there's not a whole lot here. What you see is what you get. The interior is pretty basic. We've got gray plastic. We've got black plastic. We've got these gray cloth seats which I actually kind of dig. They've got a cool shape. It's comfortable in terms of the interior but it's certainly not fancy at all. You go back and look into the segment and you look at offerings from Nissan and Toyota and you'll see that this really feels pretty [00:01:00] plush certainly compared to their base level trucks. We've got the 2.5-liter 4-cylinder in it. Still makes 200 horsepower and 191 pound feet of torque. It doesn't feel completely slow but I'll admit that some of that has to do with the fact that I have a six-speed to play around with. I'm revving it up a little bit higher than you normally would with a pickup truck. It's not fast. It doesn't mean that it's not a little bit fun to drive. [00:01:30] We've come so far in terms of overall ride quality, noise vibration and harshness and things of that nature in all pickup trucks that it's frankly surprising to see something at the very bottom end in terms of price of the market be as good as this is. I think that you're going to get a lot of people who are into the truck lifestyle who like the look. You're going to get a lot of people who are moving down from bigger trucks that still want to have a little bit of capability. Then with things with a truck of this nature where you're talking about a [00:02:00] sub-$25,000 price point, you're just going to get a lot of people who want a vehicle of any kind, kind of a budget vehicle.

What the electric Hummer's size and weight means for its efficiency

The 2022 GMC Hummer EV Edition 1. Tim Levin/Insider If you think driving a pint-sized Nissan Leaf is as good for the planet as driving a huge electric Hummer, think again.  The GMC Hummer EV uses significantly more electricity than other EVs, meaning it produces more pollution upstream.  The electric Hummer weighs 9,000 pounds and its battery weighs as much as a Honda Civic. The new electric Hummer rolls through town without a deafening engine rumble or a cloud of toxic fumes, but it doesn't exactly tread lightly.  The colossal truck weighs an astonishing 9,000 pounds. (Think two Toyota Tacomas, three Honda Civics, or 24 Shaquille O'Neals.) Moreover, the GMC Hummer EV is in many ways a supersized gas guzzler for a new era. It repackages many of the same flaws of hulking SUVs and trucks of years past — and proves not all zero-emission cars are created equal. EVs can be energy guzzlers too On the whole, electric cars use less energy than gas-powered ones. But they aren't all equally efficient.  No surprise here: The Hummer needs more electricity than any other EV on the market to move its elephantine frame. The Environmental Protection Agency rates the pickup at 47 MPGe (miles per gallon of gasoline-equivalent). For comparison, the Tesla Model 3 sedan is nearly three times as efficient, earning a rating of 132 MPGe. The Ford F-150 Lightning, another electric truck, gets 70 MPGe.  This has real consequences: Since the US gets 61% of its energy from oil, coal, and natural gas, the more electricity a car needs, the more pollution it creates upstream.  As the Union of Concerned Scientists put it: "Both EV cars and trucks are much cleaner than their gasoline counterparts, but electric trucks are responsible for more global warming emissions than electric cars simply because trucks are larger and heavier."  The 2022 GMC Hummer EV Edition 1. Tim Levin/Insider The Hummer EV is also resource-intensive to manufacture, requiring a ginormous (and weighty) battery to give people the 300-plus miles of range they desire. You could produce three Chevrolet Bolts with the same battery cells consumed by one Hummer.