Pib

Thanks....that's good to hear IMO.

We've talked a little bit about ground clearance in relation to driving thru water/flooded area. As I read my 200 page Atto 3 manual in prep of getting my car this week the manual gives some conflicting info on the depth of water to avoid. On page 98 is says water depth must not exceed the vehicle's lower edge. The Atto has a ground clearance level of 175mm. But then just a few paragraphs later on page 99 it says do not drive thru areas where the water level exceeds half the tire height. I'm assuming where they say "tire" they mean the rubber tire "and" steel rim as if it's the rubber tire portion only then that would only be around 50mm. Today I measured the halfway height of an Atto setting in a parking lot (hope the owner didn't see me) and it was 330mm from pavement to center of the rim. Seems to me half way up the wheel...which is 330mm on the Atto should be the safe limit assuming it was a short distance and you keep moving. In the perfect world where it never rains hard causing standing water on roads the possibly of driving thru water is close to zero, but in the real world and especially in the tropics such as Thailand where rain can quickly cause unavoidable road flooding and big mudpuddles hopefully BEVs with their traction battery on the bottom of the car can handle driving thru water half way up the wheel for short distances especially since the traction battery and high voltage components are suppose to waterproof per IP67 which means waterproof for short periods in up to 1m of water. See three snapshots below.

And now I have no rank...not even Newbie. Even those folks with made-up ranks no longer reflect anything. Just see the person's handle, profile picture and a post count. That's one way to get rid of the rank issue.

Well, I'm glad Wise had such a durn explanation of why they had to change so fast it provided little to inadequate lead time for its customers. I expect Wise needed to dump Evolve fast for some reason(s)....or it was the other way around in Evolve deciding to dump Wise quickly. See below 15 Oct 2023 FinTech News article where Evolve is mentioned several times in having falling-outs with several business partners to include Wise. Even talks possible illegal transfers to Hamas-linked Gaza Now new site. Fintech companies starting to sue each other. https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/p/solid-claps-back-at-ftv-in-countersuit

And at least now thanks to pmarlin we know the 2nd mailing is out.

Wow....unbelievably fast. Was there any visible mailing date on the envelope....possibly in small print? Maybe the SSA actually generated/printed the form with a different later date than the actual printing date to compensate for mailing time. Yea...6 days from US to Thailand is like expensive FedEx/DHL priority mail time.

Was the 16 Oct date actually "on the 7162 form" OR at you referring to a date mailed on the envelope? Either way for mail to arrive from US to Thailand in only 6 days sounds way, way too fast since you said earlier you received the form 22 Oct. What part of Thailand are you in?

Yea..it's a 3 day weekend. Today/Monday is King Chulalongkorn Day. You know if you have not accepted the blue Seal you can change colors without loss of deposit. I did such in switching from a white to red Atto....but it added almost a month delay since red is kinda hard to get.

Update: yesterday morning I noticed I was now at Ruby....stayed there all day...but this morning I see I'm up another notch to Diamond. Re-indexing is indeed working. One more notch for me to go based on my understanding of the system and assuming "points" required for a certain rank really means "number of posts."

Ditto to what Ohyesuare said. If/when the Nov payment is rejected back to SSA then SSA should look and see you updated your direct deposit info and then resend the payment to the new acct. This process will probably take a couple of weeks. Yea, SSA actually locks in next payment details and sends it to the US Treasury weeks before actual payment is made. But it wouldn't be a bad idea to follow-up with the SSA again "after" you are sure the Nov payment was rejected back just to make SSA is resending the payment to the new acct. It's a durn shame Wise did not give customers at least 60 days notice. I too got the notice about Wise dumping Evolve...switching back to CFSB...and I also was given an 18 Oct date after which any payments sent to the Evolve acct would be rejected back to sender. Now I don't have any direct deposits going to Wise but if I was you I would definitely let them know the amount of notice given (only about 35 days for me) is not long enough lead time to get direct deposit iinfo changed with some payers....like U.S. govt agencies which normally require about a 3 week advance notice to ensure the upcoming monthly payment goes to the new acct. About 2.5 years ago when Wise switched from Evolve from CFSB they gave approx 90 days notice...but as mentioned this time they only gave around 35 days (at least for me). Expect Wise needs to transition from Evolve quickly due to whatever reasons....they must have had a fallen-out, problems in using Evolve, etc. Or maybe it's as simple as Wise re-competes their contracts for partner banks every few years, awarded the new contract to CFSB, and it's just Wise that set the quick change over....not Evolve. Wise webpage talking the changing USD acct details: https://wise.com/help/articles/2G69Jf6EEvf5TvYSlA8XjQ/were-changing-your-usd-account-details Edit: just found this SSA POMS (instruction/regulation) that takes how they handle rejected payments...open the webpage for full details...I also included a partial quote from it. Bottomline if they see new direct deposit info in the system that replaced the old info causing the rejection they will resend to the new acct info. Process will take 2 to 3 weeks. https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0202402100

What date is in the upper right hand corner? If 2 Jun it's the 1st one. If much later like around Sep/Oct it's your 2nd notice and also should say you have 45 days vs 60 days to respond for the 1st one.

I expect the BYD Dolphin and Atto 3 to lead the pack again by big margins again come Oct registration stats (belated sales stats). I expect Seal sales will have very respectable Oct stats but since the Seal was only released in late Sep the Oct stats based "registrations" probably will not show full strength until Nov registration stats. Probably follow the same ramp-up like the Dolphin which was released in July I think...showed several hundred registrations for Aug....then by Sep the registrations had went thru the roof. Takes a while for the registration process (belated sales stats) to complete the process.

Correction...I'm now at Platinum. The re-indexing is definitely working.

Will do...thanks @Andrew Dwyer

To be honest when reading above I thought it would not get better in terms of restoring ranks since a similar projection was made many months ago after another major upgrade took everybody down to Newbie status but the projection was made re-indexing would restore ranks. But a few weeks later it was revealed the re-indexing didn't work as hoped...a future software patch would be needed to fix things. But I noticed last night my rank had moved up to Senior...this morning it was at Silver...and now it's at Gold....hopefully it will continue and I'll be put back at Star with my around 27,000 posts over 16 years. Good to see the re-indexing fixing the ranks.

Update on the red Atto I'm been trying to buy. The wife and I talked face-to-face with the dealership manager and our salesperson this morning.....took a look at the red Atto that had become available...it will be ready for pickup the afternoon of 25 Oct/Wed. Will go get the cashiers check cut 24 Oct. Also, this morning "before" going to the dealership, the wife and I got to talk to the neighbor on our soi who got a white Atto 4 days ago. He bought it from the same dealership we are buying our red Atto from...it took him less than a week from booking to delivery of his white Atto. A white vehicle is quick to get. We had a good 45 minute talk....he even let us take his Atto for a test drive while we talked more about the car. He's very happy with it. He said based on his 4 days of driving it "appears/his early estimate of" the real-world range for him which is predominately "in Bangkok" driving is going to be around 430Km vs the car's pie in the sky 480Km NEDC rating....but he said again his 430Km estimate is only based on 4 days of driving....he hasn't even had to recharge yet....so more driving needed to get a better estimate. He also said for a brief period he considered getting a Seal but decided against it due flooded streets that all too often occur...flooding that occurs so fast you simply can't avoid from going thru it....like even in our moobaan which occurred just last night when it rained cats and dogs for 30 minutes....the sois flooded to curb level for about an hour and then subsided. He decided to stick with the Atto SUV due to its higher ground clearance of 175mm vs 120mm for the Seal. Plus he really preferred a SUV type style due to what he needs in a vehicle...both him and I are on the same wavelength regarding that. We asked him about installation of the free wall charger. He said the wall charger installer had called him a few days after getting the car to say it would be 1 to 2 weeks to install the charger due to a big queue (lot of BYD's being sold). At the dealership today the salesperson said she would try to get the installer to call us over the coming days to get a jump on the installation process---but I'm not holding my breath we'll get a call before we actually receive the car. The dealership also confirmed it would indeed probably take 2 weeks to get the free wall charger installed due to backlog. So, it looks like the journey to get a red Atto is almost over....it appears to be clear sailing between now and Wed afternoon unless my bank goes bankrupt, the dealership burns down, the Atto is stolen from the dealership, the moon falls on the Earth, etc. Knock on wood (my head)....hopefully no such events will occur. This Saturday at the dealership here in Bangkok it was VERY busy....many people in the showroom and service center. We were there for about 1.5 hours and saw two people receive their Seals (one black, one blue) during the little delivery ceremony the dealership does with a big bow on the car....pictures, etc. And in the dealership garage area where they prep cars for delivery there were around a dozen cars, mostly Atto's and Seals with a few Dolphins, being prepped for delivery over the next few days. One busy place especially on weekends.

Update on the red Atto I'm been trying to buy. The wife and I talked face-to-face with the dealership manager and our salesperson this morning.....took a look at the red Atto that had become available...it will be ready for pickup the afternoon of 25 Oct/Wed. Will go get the cashiers check cut 24 Oct. Also, this morning "before" going to the dealership, the wife and I got to talk to the neighbor on our soi who got a white Atto 4 days ago. He bought it from the same dealership we are buying our red Atto from...it took him less than a week from booking to delivery of his white Atto. A white vehicle is quick to get. We had a good 45 minute talk....he even let us take his Atto for a test drive while we talked more about the car. He's very happy with it. He said based on his 4 days of driving it "appears/his early estimate of" the real-world range for him which is predominately "in Bangkok" driving is going to be around 430Km vs the car's pie in the sky 480Km NEDC rating....but he said again his 430Km estimate is only based on 4 days of driving....he hasn't even had to recharge yet....so more driving needed to get a better estimate. He also said for a brief period he considered getting a Seal but decided against it due flooded streets that all too often occur...flooding that occurs so fast you simply can't avoid from going thru it....like even in our moobaan which occurred just last night when it rained cats and dogs for 30 minutes....the sois flooded to curb level for about an hour and then subsided. He decided to stick with the Atto SUV due to its higher ground clearance of 175mm vs 120mm for the Seal. Plus he really preferred a SUV type style due to what he needs in a vehicle...both him and I are on the same wavelength regarding that. We asked him about installation of the free wall charger. He said the wall charger installer had called him a few days after getting the car to say it would be 1 to 2 weeks to install the charger due to a big queue (lot of BYD's being sold). At the dealership today the salesperson said she would try to get the installer to call us over the coming days to get a jump on the installation process---but I'm not holding my breath we'll get a call before we actually receive the car. The dealership also confirmed it would indeed probably take 2 weeks to get the free wall charger installed due to backlog. So, it looks like the journey to get a red Atto is almost over....it appears to be clear sailing between now and Wed afternoon unless my bank goes bankrupt, the dealership burns down, the Atto is stolen from the dealership, the moon falls on the Earth, etc. Knock on wood (my head)....hopefully no such events will occur. This Saturday at the dealership here in Bangkok it was VERY busy....many people in the showroom and service center. We were there for about 1.5 hours and saw two people receive their Seals (one black, one blue) during the little delivery ceremony the dealership does with a big bow on the car....pictures, etc. And in the dealership garage area where they prep cars for delivery there were around a dozen cars, mostly Atto's and Seals with a few Dolphins, being prepped for delivery over the next few days. One busy place especially on weekends.

No sweat. For a minute I thought to myself if any of these are a BEV or PHEV I was going to run to the nearest MG dealership and see if any are left. But even as ICEV I bet all the discounted display models were been booked/sold within hours with that healthy price reduction. Cheers.

But aren't above just regular ICE vehicles...not even a hybrid.

That design is intentional, safety, and comfort engineering as you would never want the smell of a Durian originating from the front of the vehicle to be blown into the vehicle as you speed down the road. The Durian fumes would enter the vehicle cabin in a large quantity and overpower all occupants resulting in severe nose-pinching, blurred vision, etc., and even in an extreme case of a really ripe Durian causing unconsciousness....basically, similar to carbon dioxide poisoning in an ICEV.

No secret handshake but a decoder ring with "Build Your Dreams" engraved on the inside of the ring.

Yes...I read that in the Atto manual. If I every get my Atto I will "not" routinely be letting it drop to less that 10%....in fact, I fully expect it to stay well above 50% to ensure I'm well charged. But I understand where BYD is coming from as letting any lithium-type battery drop close to zero and then charging to 100% recalibrates the charging system/state of charge monitoring to help ensure the current charge level/range estimate is fairly close. Laptop computers typically have a recalibration setting which basically first charges the battery to 100%, then discharges it close to zero %, and then recharges to 100% in order to recalibrate the charging circuit. And on some Toshiba laptops I used to have if I didn't recalibrate about once a year the percentage of charge remaining would become VERY inaccurate....like I could be at 50% charge and then suddenly it would drop to under 5%. But after doing a recalibration (i.e., charge 100%...discharge close to zero...and then recharge to 100%) that problem would go away for a year or so.

Night vision goggles is one of the secret freebies that come with every Seal.

Yea....the wife and I agree.....that's what made us switch from our "white" Atto booking to wanting red instead. When booking the white Atto the dealership had 4 of 5 colors on their showroom floor....red was the missing color. Over the next few days or so when we got to see a few red Atto's out in the wild, on the roads of Bangkok....that is when we decided to switch our booking from white to red. A white Atto is available within days to a week....but red that's turning out to be a different story.

Update from Bangkok on my Atto 3. A week ago my dealership sales girl said "hopefully" 20 Oct...tomorrow. I asked her by LINE post yesterday if any update...she read the post this morning...but no response yet. Will wait until Friday evening or Saturday before seeking my Thai wife on the dealership via phone call or visit. This morning a neighbor on my soi of 10 houses brought her new white Atto home from a dealership. Haven't had a chance to talk to them to see which dealership they used...maybe the same as me. This now makes 2 of 10 homes on my Soi having a BEV in their driveway. The other home has had a Telsa Model 3 for a couple of months. Hopefully I can soon make it 3 of 10 homes on my soi having a BEV...gosh, didn't figure it would be taking this long to get my red Atto...getting a red vehicle just takes longer in the land of white, silver, gray, and black cars.