Can GM Challenge Tesla With a Long-Range Electric Car? 466
cartechboy writes "GM may sell the Chevy Volt, but it's not a sexy electric car like Tesla Model S. It's a plug-in hybrid with muddled marketing (whose owners love it even though they burn gasoline sometimes). Product exec Doug Parks says GM is developing an electric car that does 200 miles on one charge, with a price around $30,000. But he wouldn't say when, falling back on the old excuse: 'Electric car batteries are really, really expensive!' Tesla's still the only maker to offer an electric car with more than 200 miles of range, so it will be interesting to see whether GM can really build a true Tesla rival. If so, the marketing must be better than the Volt's. Otherwise, it won't matter how good the car is."
betteridge's law of headline (Score:5, Insightful)
why do people even try to submit shit articles with bad questions? Betteridge's law easily applies here. GM is not going to "Challenge" tesla, and they don't need to. It's an explicitly unnecessary question.
The correct question is: "is GM going to continue developing and improving electric cars?" to which the answer is already clearly yes.
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Why do they make these cars so fugly? Geez, what happened to car design that wasn't simply utilitarian and looked fun and sexy?
Re:betteridge's law of headline (Score:4, Insightful)
The S is a nice looking car. What do you not like about it?
The roadster was just an Elise.
Me personally I want a utilitarian vehicle. A small hatchback. I give not a single solitary fuck what it looks like, I don't spend my time staring at my car in the driveway.
Re:betteridge's law of headline (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like you are the perfect candidate for an all electric Pontiac Aztek!
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Not at all, that is not a small car.
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Some automotive journalists have even credited the Aztek with being one of the largest causes of Pontiac's demise. It wasn't just an ugly car, it was a car so horrible it caused an entire car brand to be shut down.
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The S is awesome looking and I would love one but then there's the price...
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To be fair to Nissan, the Leaf isn't utilitarian but to be fair to you, it's still damn fugly.
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I find that somehow they don't look so ugly in real life. Not good, but...plain. Which is pretty good for a Leaf.
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I have the same experience. I see one around Lake County, CA periodically, and it just looks like a car. It had a couple of odd styling cues but basically blended in to the point where I didn't know it was a leaf until I saw the name badge.
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I work near Nissan USA's HQ and see them every day. They're fugly.
It wouldn't have taken much to make them not so which is the tragedy. Several of Nissan's vehicles even look good except for one irredeemable feature. I'm thinking specifically of the 350z's door handles.
OTOH, I'd love a G37. It's just a shame it's so boring looking.
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Seriously? The Tesla S has almost the same profile as a Lamborghini Gallardo. Slightly less absurd front scoop, a bit less "sharp" in a few places, but otherwise, very similar.
I do have to agree about the price, though - If GM can do it at under $30k, awesome. $65k and up, not so cool.
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WTF?
While I agree that the S is a great looking sedan, I've seen both Model S and a Gallardo and there is no possible way to confuse them for each other.
To add to that, when you take into account the sound, the Gallardo is thunderous and the Model S is super quiet. Oppositely impressive feats by both cars.
Get a Tesla Model S (Score:2)
first one of them that get a performance electric car, that isn't fugly as all the current "green" cars....sporty looking (like the Tesla Roadster was) for the price range of a low end Vette...gets all my money.
The Tesla Model S seems to fit your critera. It's very nice looking, does 0-60 in just over 4 seconds in the fastest model and under 6 seconds in the slowest, it costs roughly the same as a well appointed current model Corvette, and it got the highest road test score from Consumer Reports they've ever given.
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why not buy a tesla roadster if you want a tesla roadster?
roadster style cars are just a drop in the ocean in overall car sales.
you would think though that someone would make an electric suv/pickupwanabe for american consumers. just lay the batteries down low and use lighter materials for the upper parts, plenty of room there since buyers of those vehicles don't ever go offroad anyways.
Re:betteridge's law of headline (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry, but I refused to buy genetically-modified cars.
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The correct question is: "is GM going to continue developing and improving electric cars?" to which the answer is already clearly yes.
Developing maybe, but improving?
That term keeps causing me to have flashbacks to the 1980's, when GM's "improved" vehicles, as an answer to the huge influx of fuel injected Japanese cars, were essentially the same cars as before but with an ECU wired to the carburetor*.
The system did not work out well.
* It was known as Computer Command Control, or C3, but there's no wiki entry and I haven't found a good reference yet.
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My Jeep will be 25 this in Dec. My bike is 32.
I just bought a house, and the owners threw in the car that was sitting in the garage. It is 34 years old, and it still runs.
It is a real freak: 1979 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Coupe Diesel. That car has no business still running.
Re:betteridge's law of headline (Score:4, Insightful)
A union is just a corporation that serves to equalize the negotiation power between employer and employee. The unions negotiates on behalf of the well being of its owners/clients... just like any corporation. Without a union, the absolute inequity of power between employer and employee is so disproportionate in almost every market that fair compensation can not virtually impossible to negotiate. The few exceptions are those markets that retain extremely low unemployment such as software development. Terms of a contract made under threat are invalid, without the backing of a union or extremely low unemployment in ones field, all employment contracts are made under threat on unemployment, which with America's economy and lack of welfare is a slow death sentence.
Re:betteridge's law of headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:betteridge's law of headline (Score:5, Insightful)
The hostess thing was a little different. Apparently the company had been so mismanaged that the baker's union couldn't bring themselves to believe the claims that the executives were making, they thought it was a bluff. And there's always the possibility that they were right - this could easily have been a case of the two sides playing chicken until they crashed and the company went belly-up.
Regardless, it's very clear that the unions don't "hold all the power." That claim just doesn't make any sense in the face of these two events or any other. You could make the claim that the unions "hold some of the power" as opposed to the executives having all of it. I don't see that as a bad thing.
Re:betteridge's law of headline (Score:5, Insightful)
a union isn't automatically like you perceive. They can be good or bad, and it's up to the individual union. The function of a union as provided by Nadaka however, is correct. A union's intention is to equalize rights of the worker. Not "fuck people over" or "be lazy", as you have implied twice.
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I was talking to a construction worker about the Union, and he made a good point. He said that he has worked for a dozen construction companies before starting his own, and nearly every one of the companies he worked for was now out of business for one reason or another, and the only reason he had a pension was because the union made sure it was properly managed.
One of the few good points I've heard on the Union that's relevant nowadays.
Cheers!
Re:betteridge's law of headline (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company can't survive without abusing it's workers, then it should not survive. The argument of "but job creators", is not an open ended excuse for total narcissism in favor of a small class of social elites.
A company with one of the key American brands couldn't keep it's doors open. That's a fundemental management failure. Trying to blame the unions is a pathetic red herring.
I'm just pissed that they took Dolly Madison down with them.
Re:betteridge's law of headline (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell you've never worked a production line. If you had you'd know what a stupid comment you'd just made. Are auto workers overpaid? Maybe. Underworked? Hardly. Now executive salaries are an entirely different matter. How salaried execs at a company with such dismal records make the kind of bonuses these overpaid asshats collect is inexplicable.
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Right, which is why Germany builds twice as many cars as the U.S. while paying their unionized workers twice as much.
Re:betteridge's law of headline (Score:4, Insightful)
The advantage that GM has which far exceeds anything Tesla could do is simply access to massive amounts of capital and physical assembly plants, not to mention an army of employees who are very capable of not only designing but also building these vehicles.
That said, this advantage is gradually diminishing as Tesla is selling vehicles and has an amazing assembly plant (one that GM even jointly owned in the past). The problems with labor unions is something that Tesla has to face in California (where labor unions do have considerable influence on state labor policy), not to mention that Tesla is not really able to have that much cheaper labor costs than GM.
The question is if GM will be able to leverage their advantages knowing full well that the automobile industry is definitely changing? GM had all but written off the development of electric automobiles (just watch "Who killed the electric car?" for details) until the Tesla Roadster was built and the then CEO of GM interviewed Martin Eberhard about Tesla's view of electric automobiles. That was the foundation of the Volt... and the fact that the Volt was the only major automobile project from prior to the bankruptcy of GM that still exists today.
For those complaining about the fact that Tesla doesn't have an "affordable automobile", that simply is a reflection of the fact that Tesla lacks the capital necessary to mass produce a quarter million automobiles in the 20k-30k price range. It takes those kind of production numbers in order to profitably build cheaper cars. I certainly don't fault Tesla for not building those low end cars first but instead sticking to high end/low volume niche markets first.
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Envy? You have me confused with someone else.
Hard work is not how you get rich.
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No, that's the true American Dream, not that drivel they fed you in school. The true American Dream is not "work hard, play by the rules, you'll leave something better for your children," it's "Con other people into working hard and generating revenue, then keep the revenue for yourself."
Hard work only gets you ahead if what you work hard at is screwing over people who do actual work.
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Their mistake? The price has gone up 4X since april. $40 in stock in April would be $160 now. The chevy volt looks cheap.
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Yeah, that's why there's a waiting list months long for the Model S, and it outsells its conventionally-fueled competitors. Idiot.
Nissan Leaf (Score:2)
Has Nissan built a true Tesla rival? How's that going? I think that may point to an answer to the question can Chevy do the same.
Re:Nissan Leaf (Score:4, Insightful)
Nissan's way of hitting that lower price point is to use cheaper batteries than get more like 85-90 mile range. I have had my Nissan Leaf for about 4 months and I adore it. Not that many people need to drive more than 80 miles in a day. And even with a 250 mile range, road trips are not feasible in the near future regardless of what Elon Musk tells you.
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If the price was lower I would have one already. The range is fine, but the price is just too high for a little hatchback. I ended up getting an insight, but I would love a leaf.
Re:Nissan Leaf (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem I have with the Leaf is that my 25 mile commute would be way too much for it in the winter where I often get stuck in 2 hour traffic jams at temps from 32 to 0F, if my employer had a charge station it might be enough to risk it but draining 70+% of the battery just for locomotion during ideal temp days doesn't leave enough safety margin for cold weather performance plus heater usage.
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Why would you waste your life like that?
2 hours in traffic? I would move or find a new job. That is 4 hours a day you are wasting.
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I didn't say it's typical, typical is 30 minutes each way, during a blizzard it can turn into a 2 hour commute and the temps are by definition low enough to need a heater. A vehicle that meets 80-90% of my commute scenarios is not sufficient.
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Yes, I'll jump right on incurring those 10-15% fees to sell and buy a house, plus pay more for a similar school district closer to my work, have way less land, and be farther from my parents and my inlaws just so I can save ~20-30 hours per year in commute time, not.
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Such commutes are very common where I live as well... people live far from work because in many cases, those are the only homes that are affordable. Unless one is lucky enough to happen upon a foreclosure, getting a good deal on a home in the city proper can be next to impossible.
And of course, the employment opportunities are not as rich in the outlying suburbs, so long commutes to and from work are pretty much the norm.
One could also rent an apartment in the city, but where I live for a two-bedr
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The LEAF would work in your scenario easily. The energy economy of the Nissan LEAF is greater at slow speeds.... actually, 12 MPH is the sweet spot.. you could likely get 200 miles from the LEAF if you kept it at 12 MPH. ;) Using the heater is a drain on the traction battery, but you've got seat heaters and a steering wheel heater and the ability to pre-heat the cabin before you leave. The 2013 model has a heat pump which is supposed to make heating the cabin more efficient.
Re:Nissan Leaf (Score:5, Informative)
And even with a 250 mile range, road trips are not feasible in the near future regardless of what Elon Musk tells you.
I saw a Tesla S with DC plates on it in Cape Cod over the 4th. While there are certainly other explanations it would appear that it was driven there.
Re:Nissan Leaf (Score:4, Funny)
I saw a Tesla S with DC plates on it in Cape Cod over the 4th. While there are certainly other explanations it would appear that it was driven there.
was it towing a diesel generator?
not so crazy an idea (Score:2)
It would be entirely feasable to mount a small generator/fuel tank in a lightweight aerodynamic trailer and use it to power an electric car for long road trips. Then for local short-range driving you unhitch the trailer and go pure-electric to avoid the weight penalty.
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Re: Nissan Leaf (Score:4, Funny)
Have a bumper sticker that says, "my other car is a Hummer H1"
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Nissan's way of hitting that lower price point is to use cheaper batteries than get more like 85-90 mile range. I have had my Nissan Leaf for about 4 months and I adore it. Not that many people need to drive more than 80 miles in a day. And even with a 250 mile range, road trips are not feasible in the near future regardless of what Elon Musk tells you.
I could live with the low range if the darn thing could be 'filled' from empty in the same amount of time it takes to fill my diesel (which, incidentally, has more than double the range of an S, and rarely dips below 40 MPG).
If I'm not mistaken, the fastest charging method for a Tesla is using one of the Superchargers (assuming they're available in your area - the nearest one to me is more than 1200 miles away), which still takes at least an hour to get an 80% charge... and that's assuming no lines at the "
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Oh really. [wordpress.com]
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90% of drivers need a range of over 50 miles a day, less than twice a year.
The vast majority of households could use an EV as their primary vehicle, a daily commuter. Relying on a second vehicle or rental for the longer trips.
generator trailer (Score:2)
I mentioned this in a previous post but it would be possible to make a little trailer with a fuel tank and generator and use that to provide extended range for an electric car.
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I wasn't aware Nissan as even trying to make a Tesla rival.
Tesla has put their energies into making a brand based on performance and style. Nissan's LEAF offering is focused on affordability. They are not competing for the same market any more than Hyundai is competing with Lamborghini.
=Smidge=
They're just attempting to stay relevant (Score:4, Insightful)
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Indeed; if GM had ever been serious about electric cars, we'd all be driving around in an EV1 derivative right now.
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What wild promises?
Wild promises of building an EV and not a hybrid, and then wild promises of a revolutionary drivetrain which never appeared?
I'm not saying the volt isn't a perfectly fine automobile, I've never driven one, so how would I know? They don't seem to be owned by people who drive like douchewaffles are are the prii, so perhaps there's something to the notion that they're worth owning. But it's not what was promised at all.
What promises? (Score:3)
Wild promises of building an EV and not a hybrid, and then wild promises of a revolutionary drivetrain which never appeared?
What drive train do you think they promised? I'm not aware of any similar drive train from their major competitors. The Volt uses the gas engine to power the electric motors which actually drive the car - kind of like a diesel locomotive. The hybrid offerings from Honda, Ford and Toyota work differently. They can drive the car straight off the gas motor which is quite different. The Volt has the best all electric range among similar hybrid cars (around 40 miles) and I'm not aware of any cars near produ
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Considering it can't travel at highway speeds without powering the ICE I think you are exaggerating. If they either made it cheaper or look better than the cruze it might sell better. Paying $40k for a $17k car is not appealing to many folks.
it will market itself (Score:2)
. If so, the marketing must be better than the Volt's. Otherwise, it won't matter how good the car is.
IF they really do have a car that goes 200 miles on a charge and costs $30,000, they won't need to run a single advertisement, that thing will market itself. I will strongly consider buying one, and I spent a lot of time complaining about the Volt.
Remember that will be close to $20,000 after rebates, a really good deal.
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Haha, a car that costs less than MSRP. That's a good one.
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All cars are less than MSRP, save for Tesla. You never pay sticker for a car, save for Tesla.
and toyota (Score:2)
I'm up in Canada. All the Toyota dealers within a thousand miles charge the same price, and they don't dicker.
Re:it will market itself (Score:4, Insightful)
For electric cars with a 200+ mile range there's a $7,500 federal tax credit so yeah, it would end up at ~$25k after discount but plus fees.
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$15k-20k is pretty much the bottom of the new car market. What can you get below that? Try to remember that actually finding a base model car is near impossible. Car dealers make it near impossible by not listing a huge amount of inventory or listing it in a misleading way.
Sure they could. (Score:4, Interesting)
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But they would be lease only, GM would refuse to sell them to anyone and then they would for no reason take them all back and destroy them.
Sure, if you live in Hippie Fantasy World.
In the real world, the EV1 was hugely expensive, the lease didn't even begin to pay for the cost of the car, and GM had very good reasons to trash them when it decided to scrap the program.
Re:Sure they could. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
There's all kinds of liability issues that most of Slashdot doesn't care to acknowledge. Anytime legal matters come up you guys just make up your mind that life shouldn't work that way and act like that somehow absolves any guilty party of responsibility. Unfortunately, for those of us who have to live in the real world, life doesn't work out that way. There would be all kinds of question of tax credits offered to GM if there were any, parts availability, and liability for environmental factors of disposing
they could have had them sign a waiver (Score:2)
Are you seriously saying that there is no possible way the lawyers at GM couldn't have come up with a valid waiver for drivers to sign saying that they were buying the cars as-is with no guarantee of servicing or parts availability?
Marketing? Why? (Score:2)
PR (Score:4, Insightful)
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So I guess they should name it the "GM Bailout".
Great name, for a car.
Or how about the "GM Screw", for what it did to the US taxpayers.
Not if, when (Score:2)
The answer to "Could someone else make this thing I just made" is always "yes", eventually. We have patents to slow the arrival of the "yes" answer enough so that the first person to do so gets to make a bit of money.
But in this case (and most other cases) there's more than one way to do it and a lot of relevant technology, a lot of which is general car technology. And in every case, sooner or later, the huge company with a huge patent portfolio and huge expertise in manufacturing is going to win the "lowes
Sell the car, lease the batteries. (Score:5, Interesting)
.. then they could advertise much cheaper prices, get people in the door, and sell multiple range options based on the batteries they could afford/lease.
Lithium form factors (Score:2)
A friend was considering (but ended up not) taking over management of a lithium battery manufacturing plant.
He pointed out that one problem with lithium batteries is heat dissipation.
His plan was to make shaped batteries that could be mounted in the car's unused spaces. Big, flat batteries could be placed in the roof or on the floor, or in the door panels or behind the seats. With a larger surface to volume ration, they would dissipate heat more efficiently than the cylinder form factor. They would also fre
Marketing was not the problem (Score:2)
"If so, the marketing must be better than the Volt's. Otherwise, it won't matter how good the car is."
That's like asking the president to give a New Glorious Speech to fix a deep problem. No, the problem has not been marketing - it has been mainly the cost (both to the purchaser and the subsidizing taxpayer), and to some extent performance (size, garages on fire).
I don't think it matters (Score:3)
I for one would love to see GM stick around, so that Ford has more competition. Some of my favorite Fords exist in their current states because they have competition from GM.
They can't compete without supercharging (Score:3)
Tesla's superchargers are what make it truly revolutionary. Pony up the bucks and get viable road-trip capability with no charge at the charger. Ummm... let me rephrase that... ummm... without spending any money at the point of charging. Yes, the car itself is expensive; but you have to factor that in.
Unless GM is also planning a supercharger infrastructure of its own, or partnering with Tesla to allow their vehicle to pull up and charge, it's hobbled right out of the gate.
Yeah fine, you go 200 miles then... GM has no answer. Tesla does.
I don't believe that GM is serious about an EV (Score:4, Informative)
The oil and auto industries colluded to keep EVs and any other competitive technology from eroding the profits of Big Oil. They did it before when they conspired through shell companies to acquire and destroy streetcar companies [wikipedia.org]. Streetcars were powered by electricity not fossil fuel, so by forcing consumers away from streetcars they had little choice but to buy cars. Auto makers fattened their profits, as did oil companies.
I find it hard to believe that GM is at all serious about EVs.
Re:I don't believe that GM is serious about an EV (Score:5, Informative)
The EV-1 was an experiment, not a production car. They cost GM about $250,000 each to hand-build and they were leased only to people who already owned one or more petrol/gasoline cars as the EV-1's reliability couldn't be guaranteed and it might be recalled for upgrading or examination at any time during the lease.
At the end of the experiment they were recalled and scrapped. If they had been sold on then GM would have been liable to provide a very expensive maintenance and parts supply operation for them for ten years minimum by law.
The results were useful but proved that electric cars at that time were not quite ready for prime-time, not when gas cost less than a buck a gallon and the EV-1 had a range at full charge of about 80 miles or so. The original Ni-Cd and later Ni-MH batteries weren't up to the job but lithium tech batteries with their greater capacity, fast-charge capability and high current drain made the later development of hybrids and full-electric cars feasible.
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"At the end of the experiment they were recalled and scrapped."
In reality, they scrapped them as soon as they won their lawsuit against CARB. That ruling effectively reversed state law that required electric vehicles--the entire time GM was leasing electric vehicles, their lawyers were fighting to overturn laws that required electric vehicles be sold. The EV-1 was GM's response to those requirements, and when the requirements were reversed they repossessed all the EV-1s and crushed them.
Citation:
http://www. [ucsusa.org]
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First hand experience with this type of behavior...What started out as an anecdote from an instructor turned into a lesson in Big Business.
Many years ago I attended an automotive trade school with the intention of focusing on fuel systems and computerized engine controls. One of my instructors, while explaining the demise of carburetors, mentioned a modified Chevy V-8 getting 80 MPG. I pressed him on this claim. He went on to tell the story of the Moody Brothers, racers at heart and some of the best race-en
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It's not true. It's been around in one form or another. Here is a little thinking applied to it:
If Shell(any company, really) had this tech they would make a mint licensing it. Remember it's about money, oil is just a product. I would guess they could gt 200 dollars a vehicle in licensing. So, Billions a year.(yes, it's based on a guess but I hope you see the point)
These cars would still need Gas.
They would have stopped any EV developments for at least a decade.
And by sitting on it it means they risk someon
Re:No. (Score:4, Interesting)
GM wants to make cars that people want to buy. Most people don't want to buy electric cars that are twice the cost of a Civic and can only drive a couple of hundred miles before they have to stop for an hour to 'refuel'.
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GM wants to make cars that people want to buy. Most people don't want to buy electric cars that are twice the cost of a Civic and can only drive a couple of hundred miles before they have to stop for an hour to 'refuel'.
Exactly.
In this arena, Tesla actually has an advantage over the major auto manufacturers, since they are essentially a boutique supplier, so they can focus on the technology instead of worrying so much about selling products. TFS is essentially comparing Wal-Mart to that small time, over-priced organic foods market in the fancy strip mall on the nice side of town.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
People who think that electric cars are useless unless they can meet the needs of every car (300+ mile range and 5 minute recharge) are being silly. I need a car big enough to carry suitcases and seat my 6 person family, but only one of my cars has to meet this need. The other car only needs to be big enough and efficient to take me to work and back.
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GM has one advantage though. In some states, Tesla is forbidden to sell cars because they are not going through dealers. Plus, GM also has a lot larger advertising warchest.
It is taking time, but I think the GM is wising up to the same lesson that smacked them in the '80s -- either you do something for the demands of the customers, or lose market share to a company who does. Ford knows this, and is putting out hybrid cars, and the 100% electric Focus [1]. Dodge is still out in left field, but their pare
GM advantages and disadvantages (Score:2)
GM has one advantage though. In some states, Tesla is forbidden to sell cars because they are not going through dealers. Plus, GM also has a lot larger advertising warchest.
GM has a lot more advantages than that. GM has a much larger R&D budget. GM has a global distribution network. GM has lobbyists. GM has economies of scale for production and purchasing. GM has a well known brand.
Disadvantages? Big company inertia, difficulty funding speculative projects that are likely to lose money for years, management distracted by a wider product line, internal politics, shareholders demands for immediate profits.
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GM is GMs single biggest disadvantage.
All of the "advantages of scale" also come with the a "disadvantage of scale" that negates everything else. It is the essential problem with every corporation that is "too big to fail".
GM should be getting pushed out of the way by 3 more Teslas.
That is the free market that we should have but don't.
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Pretty much. The biggest difference would be removing the Voltec engine out of the drivetrain. The electric motor would be 100% of the vehicle's propulsion.
The generator would be a completely separate mechanism, and because it has nothing to do with the drivetrain, it would be easier to use a particular fuel of choice. For example, a diesel generator tends to have a longer run time per gallon of fuel than a gasoline genset, and both are better than LP gas.
Of course, there is mounting the generator to min
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The generator
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A better designed gas engine might get better economy, but GM ran out of time when they were designing the original Volt. There are rumors that the next Volt model might lose the direct connection between wheels and the engine. But yeah, a diesel-powered Volt would be a great thi
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When I look at the tables for MJ/kg here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density [wikipedia.org] , I see 9.0 for Li-air batteries and around 46 for liquid fuels.
It's a heavy handicap, and I'm not sure that technical prowess and good marketing can overcome it.
The world's most efficient internal combustion engine is 50% efficient. It's the size of a house, and it's in a container ship. Very efficient automobile engines are around 25% efficient. These are expensive engines with direct injection and forced induction.
The electric motors commonly used on EVs are 95% efficient while going forward and as good as 90% efficient while doing regenerative braking, something that is much more expensive and failure-prone with ICEs (which is why we don't have KERS on all our c
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The world's most efficient internal combustion engine is 50% efficient. It's the size of a house, and it's in a container ship. Very efficient automobile engines are around 25% efficient. These are expensive engines with direct injection and forced induction.
That's not precisely true - first, an average petrol engine in an average automobile is about 25-30% efficient. Second, direct injection and forced-air induction might have been the expensive option half a decade ago, but they're becoming standard technology, and increasing engine efficiency upwards to the 35-40% range. Not great, but not as terrible as you're trying to make them out to be.
Of course, you've completely ignored diesel engines, which typically run at around 40-50% efficiency. I couldn't find a
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You also need to consider that an all-electric drivetrain is going to easily be four times more efficient, so you'd need only 1/4 as much energy to cover the same driving. That brings the parity MUCH closer.
=Smidge=
Re: The unpleasanteness of low energy density (Score:3)
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Please don't insult google that way (Score:2)
Toyota == Google
Google isn't willing to put their name on something as astronomically boring as ... basically every car Toyota has ever sold in the US in the history of time.
A better analogy:
Toyota == HP
VW == Google
You constantly see Toyota on the road, but never envy one. The company that makes drivable cars that middle-class people can afford is VW, but people keep forgetting that they are even around because they can buy something less satisfying from someone else for less money.
And for that matter...
G
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
For example: the PT Cruiser was such a collosal piece of shit, it was rebranded the Chevy HHR in what i can only imagine was a complete lack of respect for their customer.
The Dart is based on a version of the Fiat Compact platform
the Pontiac G6 is based on an Opel platform
the Ford Fiesta is based on a Mazda platform
I can't tell if you're trying to group all US auto manufactures together or are just ignorant.
PT Cruiser: Chrysler
HHR: Chevy (GM)
Dart: Dodge (Chrysler)
G6: Pontiac (GM, Retired)
Fiesta: Ford (Who has worked with Mazda since the 80's, not really news there)