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Meet the mother-daughter team that's worked on almost every Chevy Volt

It's Mother's Day, and we're soft enough we love our mothers enough to share a new video from General Motors with you. In it, we meet Monique Watson (left) and Evetta Osbourne, a mother-daughter team that works at the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly where GM makes the Chevy Volt (along with all of GM's other plug-in hybrids: the Opel Ampera, Holden Volt and Cadillac ELR). The two work side-by-side and have installed the lithium-ion battery pack on almost all of those vehicles - nearly 80,000 of them - since GM started making the pre-production Volts in 2009. In a prepared statement, Watson said that she likes working next to her mom, day in and day out, and they the two are totally in sync when it comes to putting the 400-pound, 16.5-kWh packs into the vehicle undersides. They two can also share stories throughout the day, and Watson said, "The arrangement has absolutely improved our relationship." Osborne started working at Detroit-Hamtramck in 1999, Watson since 2006. If you're driving a Volt today, you probably have them to thank for doing a bit of the work putting your car together. See a short video of them in action below. It's Always Mother's Day for Detroit-Hamtramck Duo Mother, daughter install lithium-ion battery pack in nearly all GM electric vehicles 2014-05-08 DETROIT – For Detroit resident Evetta Osborne, every day is Mother's Day. That's because she literally works side by side with her daughter, Monique Watson, at General Motors' Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant. They have installed the lithium-ion battery pack on nearly every Chevrolet Volt, Opel Ampera, Holden Volt, and Cadillac ELR since production began. In fact, apart from vacation days and an occasional sick day, the mother-daughter duo has installed almost every battery pack since the Volt was in pre-production in 2009. The ELR launched earlier this year. All told – including Ampera – that's more than 80,000 electric vehicles. "We're a good team and our relationship is secondary when it comes to performing our jobs – but it's great to work alongside my daughter, said Osborne, a mother of five. Because the battery packs weigh more than 400 pounds each, automatic guided vehicles – robotic carts that use sensors to follow a path through the plant – deliver them just as the vehicle body structures glide into position overhead. The carts then lift the T-shaped packs, and Osborne and Watson guide them into the chassis and secure each one with 24 fasteners.

2016 Hennessey CTS-V is properly ridiculous with 1,000 horsepower

We truly live in a halcyon era of automotive performance with models like the latest Shelby GT350 Mustang and 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat. And now Hennessey Performance Engineering is bringing something with absolutely obscene power to the world with its tuned 2016 Cadillac CTS-V that packs a ludicrous 1,000 horsepower. The latest CTS-V isn't even on sale yet but should be a powerhouse straight from the factory. Under its carbon fiber hood is a 6.2-liter supercharged LT4 V8 with 640 horsepower and 630 pound-feet of torque that makes the sedan capable of a 200-mile-per-hour top speed. Hennessey's take ditches the blower in favor of two turbos to feed air to the engine. To cope with the extra power, the mill gets upgrades like forged aluminum pistons and forged steel parts for the rods and crankshaft, and transmission upgrades are also necessary to make it all work. Buyers can even spec things like carbon-ceramic brakes and a widebody kit to allow for bigger tires. The crazy numbers are leading to some big performance claims from company founder John Hennessey. "I believe that our 2016 Twin Turbo CTS-V will have a top speed approaching 240 mph," he said in the Caddy's announcement. Hennessey is building just 24 of these 1,000-horsepower sedans for the 2016 model year. However, for those that want to keep the supercharger under the hood, the company is also offering upgrades with 750 hp and 800 hp for the CTS-V too. All of them sound absolutely ridiculous in an utterly fantastic way. 2016 HPE1000 Twin Turbo Cadillac CTS-V Texas Tuner Plans to Build World's Fastest 4-Door Sedan Sealy, Texas-When the next generation Cadillac CTS-V hits the streets later this year, it will have 640+ hp and a top speed of nearly 200 mph. To the team at Hennessey Performance Engineering (HPE), this is a good starting point. The company plans to pick-up where they left off with the last gen CTS-V by producing the world's fastest 4-door sedan: The Hennessey HPE1000 Twin Turbo CTS-V. "A couple of years ago, the State of Texas gave us the opportunity to test one of our specially tuned CTS-Vs – our VR1200 Twin Turbo coupe. It ran 221 mph (356 km/h) on State Highway 130, near the Circuit of the Americas", said company founder, John Hennessey. "It was still pulling on when we ran out of road. I believe that our 2016 Twin Turbo CTS-V will have a top speed approaching 240 mph (386 km/h)". Hennessey plans to offer a limited run of only 24 units for the 2016 model year.

Cadillac Celestiq electric sedan could top $200,000

General Motors teased a slew of new electric vehicles last week at a media event where cameras weren’t allowed, and now thereÂ’s more news about the Celestiq, one of the two EVs in the pipeline for Cadillac. Reports suggest it wonÂ’t come cheap and will retail for at least $200,000. Wall Street Journal auto writer Mike Colias dished that detail, along with word of a mid-2020 launch, on Twitter, attributing it directly to Cadillac President Steve Carlisle. Cadillac has made no official mention of starting price for either the Celestiq luxury sedan or the Lyriq, an EV SUV that it has previously teased. A spokesman told Autoblog the brand wouldnÂ’t comment on future product speculation. Leftover scraps from Cadillac flagship ‘CelestiqÂ’ news: ItÂ’ll be hand-built in the hundreds per year, Caddy chief Steve Carlisle said. Price? Six figures Â… “and it wonÂ’t have a 1 in front of it.” Due mid-2022. — Mike Colias (@MikeColias) March 5, 2020 If true, the six-figure MSRP would make the Celestiq the most expensive Caddy ever assembled, at least outside of one-off coach builds and the presidential limo, vaunting it into the same class as brands like Bentley, Lamborghini and Rolls-Royce. By way of comparison, the limited-edition ultra-luxury 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham four-door debuted with a $13,074 price tag, the most expensive car of its day and the equivalent of around $120,000 in todayÂ’s dollars. So what do we know about the Celestiq? For starters, itÂ’ll be a halo flagship hand-built in limited quantities somewhere in the Detroit area. Our reporters who saw the white four-seater describe it as having a long, fastback roofline, no side mirrors or visible door handles, with a long wheelbase, short overhangs and a tinted glass roof. A rendering of the interior showed an LED instrument cluster and infotainment display that stretches between both A pillars, with touchscreen interfaces on the rear of the front seats. It also reportedly features a hatch instead of a conventional trunk and styling cues from the Escala concept from 2016, shown above. Cadillac teased it as the “ultimate luxury experience” and said it would be highly customizable. Cadillac also showed off the Lyriq, the name itÂ’s given to its midsize electric crossover that it had previously promised to unveil in April, possibly at the New York Auto Show, if it manages to happen given the coronavirus.