GM Is Killing Off the Chevy Bolt and Bolt EUV (techcrunch.com) 297
General Motors will stop producing its two top-selling EVs, the Chevy Bolt and Bolt EUV, by the end of 2023. TechCrunch reports: [General Motors Chair and CEO Mary Barra] told investors during the company's earnings call that its Orion Michigan factory, which currently assembles the Bolt, will be retooled for electric truck production. The decision comes as GM launches a new slate of EVs such as the GMC Hummer and Cadillac Lyriq that are outfitted with the company's Ultium architecture that includes a new battery cell design. However, it also puts an end to GM's highest volume EVs and takes one of the few affordable electric vehicle models off the market. It also means the end of the Chevy Bolt AV, the autonomous vehicle version that GM's self-driving unit Cruise uses for its robotaxis. GM unveiled the Chevy Bolt in early 2015 and brought it to market in 2016, "at the time presenting one of the few EV options to buyers and directly competing with Tesla," adds TechCrunch. "Bolt never had the same cachet as Tesla. And while consumers did buy the vehicle, its sales lagged behind the Tesla Model 3."
Not Surprised. (Score:2)
takes one of the few affordable electric vehicle models off the market.
Not a big deal. Tesla, Kia, and Hyundai will continue to drive down lower prices in America. And count on China to dump heavily subsidized (i.e. low price) EVs on Europe and undeveloped nations in a BIG WAY.
Re:Not Surprised. (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla doesn't drive down prices. Their $35k EV is now $42k. GM's is now $25k.
Nobody is making a cheap EV that isn't a truck/suv. The Bolt might have been the only one. This is bad news.
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I do wish GM would make an EV sedan though. I have a Malibu and I really enjoy the size that it is and would like to have an electric one.
Whereas the Equinox is just big enough that you'd want to be able to use it for road trips, or get the AWD option and take it camping far away from charging stations, so a plugin hybrid would m
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the Equinox is just big enough that you'd want to be able to use it for road trips, or get the AWD option and take it camping far away from charging stations, so a plugin hybrid would make more sense.
Most people never go camping far away from charging stations, so unless you're trying to make a niche vehicle to sell to a handful of people, worrying about that makes no sense. Most people will never drive their AWD CUV off pavement, unless it's on an unpaved driveway. They're buying it to help with snow and/or rain. A $500 winch will also get you to a lot more places than a $2000 AWD option, so if you really want to go to those kinds of places you're better off lifting a used Honda and figuring out how to
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https://youtu.be/gSmsqB2zJmc?t... [youtu.be]
As for getting stuck, even just getting a little rain or snow on what was previously a smooth forest road can stop a 2wd with remarkable ease: (I live in this region)
https://youtu.be/RCHDFEv3ixg?t... [youtu.be]
As you can see, neither of the above is about winching over some huge obstacle because you de
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I wish any company would make a fun, 2-seater roadster type sports car....price it maybe between a Miata and a base level Corvette.
I'm not interested in a "family truckster"...I want a fun, performance sports car with good range.
Come out with a fun, cool looking car and PLEASE, come take my money.
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Re:Not Surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
The $35k Tesla was available for about 2 months in 2019. The cheapest Tesla available today is the 40k version.
Terrible, right? Except that after inflation, that $35k in 2019 is equivalent to $41,174 today, according to an inflation calculator.
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About two months on-menu and about half a year off-menu.
And yeah, even ignoring inflation, the current base Model 3 is a much better car than the $35k version.
Re:Not Surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
US automakers need to get off of their truck obsession.
Re: Not Surprised. (Score:3)
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And what will sell is what's relentlessly advertised. And what's relentlessly advertised is what's most profitable. And what's most profitable is SUVs because they count as light trucks which makes them exempt from a variety of safety, pollution and efficiency regulations, due to an intensive lobbying campaign on the part of auto makers.
Start Selling UTE's (Score:2)
They don't want to get off the truck obsession because there are CAFE loopholes with trucks and everyone wants a truck for some reason.
What they need to do is start experimenting with UTE's. The Ford Maverick is basically a UTE that looks truck-like and is selling faster than they can make them. The Hyundai Santa Cruz is selling well considering it's a new truck made by a company that never really sold trucks to consumers in the US. The Subaru Baja would've sold if it wasn't marketed by complete idiots that
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They are just making what the customer wants...
That's the name of business, you know....build what the market wants.
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Nissan Leaf says hi.
Re: Not Surprised. (Score:2)
CHAdeMO says "bye". Lack of CCS in North America or Europe is pretty much a deal breaker.
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When Tesla first strted, it was 150K for a roadster. And no other EV was around that was even close to decent.
When Model S hit the market in 2012 (i.e. 10 years ago), they were $60-75K. Yeah, they have come up in prices, but S/X remain price competitive against the LICE vehicles that they match with.
The same is true of Model 3/Y, which are around 50K starting.
BUT, what you are missing is that the new mexico plant will be producing an EV with $25K price.
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A base model 3 is US$39,990 which is only slightly higher than a Bolt. The average price for a new car in the US is currently $48,763.
https://www.tesla.com/model3/d... [tesla.com]
https://www.coxautoinc.com/mar... [coxautoinc.com]
Also, if I needed to charge my EV anywhere but in my home, I wouldn't buy anything other than a Tesla these days. Their supercharger network is ubiquitous in all of the places that I travel, but finding non-Tesla charging stations that actually work can be a challenge.
Best,
Re:Not Surprised. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm almost at the 4 yr mark on my model 3 (2019, bought a few months before the big shutdown in 2020). there's some front end issue or clunk but its not a showstopper and I've avoided having it dealt with for some specific reasons. I can have a link replaced when I need to. other than that, zero work on the car. no maint at all. I have not put lots of miles on the car, but it has been in use all these years (lots of sitting unused during the lockdown, though).
point is: if this was a gas car, there would be tuneups and filter changes and oil changes and parts changes. lots of trips to service places.
as much as I dont recommend tesla (as a company) and musk (as a person), my model 3 has been zero cost of ownership, other than electricity, for nearly 4 years. and for some employers, they even gave us free charging at work.
I'll never go back to a gas car again. just dont see the point, now that we have other options. life has been so much better NOT having been in the gas/oil world. no gas stations, no fillups that are smelly and expensive, and its been great.
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Because we don't have enough trucks and SUVs (Score:5, Interesting)
I completely get why they're doing this -- why make a car you don't make much money on when you can make more profitable cars?
But this means the already absurd US EV market will be even closer to entirely massive putz-mobiles.
The Nissan Leaf and the Model 3... is there anything else not oversized?
If only we had a cheap and easy way of importing the cars sold in the EU to the US. Hell, even Jeep has a nice, sensibly-sized car in the EU.
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But this means the already absurd US EV market will be even closer to entirely massive putz-mobiles.
The US auto industry in general is like that. I think it's mostly due to the fact that what you can spend is based more on your creditworthiness rather than your budget. If you have great credit, you can stretch out the loan until the heat death of the universe to get the monthly payment within your budget, and now you can "afford" that gargantuan $50k SUV.
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If you have great credit, you can stretch out the loan until the heat death of the universe to get the monthly payment within your budget, and now you can "afford" that gargantuan $50k SUV.
Umm...don't do that. Just don't. Sure, you get that low monthly payment, but at the end of the day you're just ripping yourself off. Dealers love it when people do that, and for a very good reason, and often go out of their way to weasel people into doing that. People with bad credit also have a tendency to act before they think, which is why they go and do shit like this, and it's why they have bad credit. It's also why insurance companies and employers will often gate you based on your credit rating.
Perso
Re: Because we don't have enough trucks and SUVs (Score:2)
Re:Because we don't have enough trucks and SUVs (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm currently driving a 2017 Toyota Yaris that I bought for $11k with a cashier's check in 2019. Really happy with it. Debt is generally bad news.
Taking on debt *can* be the right thing to do. It all depends on the opportunity cost — what you would have done with that money if you hadn't spent it.
Assume that you have $50,000 in cash lying around, and you need (or want) a new car. You have two choices:
If you buy the car in cash, you now have no cash. In five years, suppose the remaining value of your car i
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Also, 5 years is not long enough for the stock market to average. [sofi.com] Over the last year it is down about 7%. Over the last 5 years and the last ten years it has gained more than 10% a year on average. Over the last 20 years and the last 30 years it has been below 10%. So it's a bet, not a given.
On the other hand, when inflation is higher than the interest rates, as had been recently, I would assume you are better off ge
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True. But an automobile is a depreciating asset, and they tend to be pretty fungible when it comes to carrying out tasks like going to work and doing chores. So calculate depreciation as well.
So last time we bought a vehicle, it looked like $5k for a 15 year old, well maintained, vehicle. That's served us for a few years now. Ironically, we coul
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Buying with cash is a great choice, but if you are happy with a Yaris, no one should care about your opinion. Unless it's a GR (which it isn't for that money) it drives like absolute dogshit. Based on my experience driving one, I would say that Toyota made it deliberately bad to try to avoid cannibalizing sales of their more upscale vehicles.
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That is to say, buying an $11,000 car that lasts (say) two years, is a worse deal than buying a $50,000 car that lasts (say) 15 years.
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Re:Because we don't have enough trucks and SUVs (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that most of the US carmakers have basically accepted their own death. With the exception of Ford, they’ve resigned themselves to being legacy manufacturers. They just couldn’t make the jump. Most of them will be gone in 10 or 20 years.
Tesla isn’t going to have serious competition until Toyota and VW get into the EV game. At that point, they’l have to work HARD to stay on top. Toyota, especially, will be an absolute beast once they commit to EVs. Ironically, the stupid-crazy success of their hybrids is making it hard for them to switch to full electrics.
Re:Because we don't have enough trucks and SUVs (Score:4, Informative)
Tesla isn’t going to have serious competition until Toyota and VW get into the EV game. At that point, they’l have to work HARD to stay on top. Toyota, especially, will be an absolute beast once they commit to EVs. Ironically, the stupid-crazy success of their hybrids is making it hard for them to switch to full electrics.
VW has a large portfolio of EVs in Europe across their brands - from the tiny VW e-UP to the large SUV Audi Q8. They've also got a couple of electric sports cars (Porsche, Audi) and mini vans (ID.Buzz). They're selling quite well here in Norway. Toyota finally launched one last year - they've been all in on hydrogen - but it's been a disappointment so far, with disappointing range and poor reviews.
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The same mentality that existed in the 70s when Japanese cars were undercutting them AND getting better quality at the same time. I remember Chrysler tried to counter the trend with the K-Car which was an absolute lemon. I visited Germany in 79(?) and I saw a Mitsubishi dealership in a tiny village, and asked what Mitsubishi was and I got an odd look about how could I be so ignorant - but honestly it was unknown in the US.
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I remember Chrysler tried to counter the trend with the K-Car which was an absolute lemon.
Except those K-cars saved Chrysler for bankruptcy by being affordable. They were kind of tragically bad, though. The Japanese were way ahead on unit bodies in that era.
I visited Germany in 79(?) and I saw a Mitsubishi dealership in a tiny village, and asked what Mitsubishi was and I got an odd look about how could I be so ignorant - but honestly it was unknown in the US.
Back then, everything Mitsubishi built was a lemon, outside of the commercial space anyhow. Their cars were complete trash. Frankly they continued to make embarrassing mistakes all the way through their independence, even on their best-regarded vehicles. Eclipse&Evo crankwalk anyone?
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The small-medium EV market in the US is totally dominated by Tesla,
Tesla doesn't sell cheap cars. They're all more expensive than average. Mainly because they can make more money that way.
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I think you're missing the point the OP was making. Those people you list *are* in the EV game. Significantly. They are just not importing their European models in the USA. The Volkswagen ID.3 is cheaper than a Model 3 and quite a good seller in Europe. Renault also produces cheaper EVs in the European market (though the Zoe is getting long in the tooth and not a good buy right now, best wait for the model refresh).
Tesla dominates in the USA. But they are a player in a competitive European marketplace. That
Re:Because we don't have enough trucks and SUVs (Score:5, Informative)
VW has lots of EV models in Europe, and sells plenty of them.
This is a US thing. Rightly or wrongly, manufacturers seem to think that the US market doesn't like EVs, or that their first model has to be some super expensive halo pickup truck with 400 miles of range to have any credibility.
Meanwhile in Europe we have a decent choice of manufacturers and models when it comes to EVs, many of them quite affordable. The second hand market is really interesting too, with EVs reaching parity with fossil fuel cars in some sectors.
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Rightly or wrongly, manufacturers seem to think that the US market doesn't like EVs, or that their first model has to be some super expensive halo pickup truck with 400 miles of range to have any credibility.
They saw what happened to Nissan. Specifically, they have a chance to botch it, so they not only might as well make the most profit in the process but selling the fewest number of units means less units to recall if they do screw up.
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Until I think 2020 Nissan was the top selling EV manufacturer, having cumulatively sold more cars than Tesla.
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One big factor is range.
Like it or not, driving in North America means going longer distances that in Europe on a regular basis. Europeans familiar with the very dense and capable public train/transit systems would most often take the train for a journey of more than a couple of hours, and then use public transport at their destination. In NA, a trip of 400 miles is more likely to be done by car.
This increases range anxiety. When a consumer considers an electric car, in Europe the limited range is just not
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Yeah, this has probably been precipitated by Tesla's recent price cuts on the model 3, and it becoming quite apparent that they still have plenty of margin available to fight on price if required (can't remember the exact figures, but it's like 20% for Tesla vs losses for many of the other EV manufacturers). It would be a mammoth effort to get a production line/volume up to a level where they can start matching Tesla on profit margins and then survive the ensuing bloodbath.
But Tesla has left a huge hole in
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I don't really understand what's gone wrong with Toyota.
Here's what I know.
First of all, Mr. Toyoda didn't like EVs. It's not a coincidence that he stepped down and then suddenly Toyota is talking about EVs.
https://www.teslarati.com/toyota-ceo-akio-toyoda-steps-down/ [teslarati.com]
Second of all, the Japanese government has been pushing hydrogen, and it might have seemed like a good bet to a Japanese company. I don't really get it... you look at the efficiency numbers for hydrogen vs. batteries, you look at electricity b
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Part of it is the "chicken tax". That makes the trucks in the USA VERY profitable. US truck makers effectively have a 25% profit built into every vehicle. If it weren't for that tax, the USA manufacturers would probably have faded away years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Because we don't have enough trucks and SUVs (Score:4, Funny)
That will work fine in places where the population is meek and obedient, but it is fraught with political danger here in North America
Also eagles love the smell of gasoline and one will land on the hood of your Canyonero when you go to Walmart.
Re: Because we don't have enough trucks and SUVs (Score:3)
Americans want trucks? Then why are Teslas so popular?
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Americans want trucks? Then why are Teslas so popular?
Tesla sells 200,000 vehicles (all models) in the US in a year. Ford sells 750,000 F-150s alone, and GM and Dodge trucks are up there too. Light duty domestic pickups are close to 10 times the sales of all Teslas in the US (and Canada).
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No one wants to drive across Canada in an EV. Especially in the winter. It's dangerous enough as it is.
Who he fuck wants to drive across Canada in winter anyway? It's weird that EV threads bring about a certain type of poster who clamber over each other to brag about how much incredibly boring stuff they do.
Plus I do find it slightly odd that on a tech focussed website, how many people here seem to spend their weekdays haulin' then the weekends taking incredibly long road trips. Or is it the other way aroun
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You do realize people have reasons to move that are out of their control. A person I know needed to switch provinces and their lease was over in the middle of winter. So they had to go in the middle of winter.
I don't understand how someone's life could be so incredibly predictable that you can always plan long distance trips exactly when you want to go.
You said their lease was over. That's generally a predicable thing because there are minimum notice periods from the landlord. And how often does that happen
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Well in this case, they were moving and they couldn't leave their car there.
Good on you for ignoring most of the points! Do you own a car large enough to haul all of your stuff in one go?
Yes: you're being regularly evicted midwinter, have no good friends you can call on in a pinch apparently and always have to head cross country after eviction but can carry your meager possessions in your car. OK this is beyond slashdot's pay grade or the EV vs ICE debate. You need to sort your shit out.
No: I wonder what th
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Maybe they do leases different where you are. Where I live you get a year lease and you have no choice when to end it. I said 'lease ended' not 'evicted'.
You made it sounds like it was totally unplanned and you were suddenly stuck needing to drive cross country with no way of planning for it.
No I can't haul all my stuff.
So... what do you do? What could possibly be the solution!!
But you are being ridiculous. That's maybe a once or twice in a lifetime event. Not a yearly event.
Wait, so you're choosing your ev
Meh (Score:2)
Subpar EV experiences subpar sales, and so receives appropriate executive level net effects (ie, canceling the line).
I've driven a Bolt. It's not impressive, and it cannot compete with Tesla (which, btw, is also a very shit interior finish for a 60k+ vehicle).
Get better or get fscked -- when did we forget this mantra?
Re:Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
The Bolt wasn't competing with the Tesla. It's competing with other $25k cars.
It's a hatchback with a 200hp motor in it. It accelerates like a beast, it is reasonably comfortable, there's nothing glaringly wrong with it. It's just a car.
Who else is making "just a car"?
And isn't that, like... the majority of what we need?
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American auto makers think we "need" trucks and SUVs.
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I worked with a "car guy" at my last job; he had two Audis (one with a V8) and a BMW. I told him that once my 2002 Saturn SL2 bit the dust, I'd probably go for a lightly used Toyota Yaris or Nissan Note. His response: "Why? Because a car is just transportation? No, wait, you drive a Saturn—that car is just transportation."
This was highly amusing to me for two reasons: (1) when his Mom visited later, she was driving a Nissan Note; and (2) my Dad, who gave me the Saturn, laughingly agreed that Saturns a
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I'm definitely a "car guy" and that's why I drive... a 20 year old Miata. Maybe it's just my own smugness but I do find it funny when being a "car guy" translates into spending a lot of money on the latest BMW or whatever. A friend of a friend was like that - "Oh I'm really into cars!" what did she drive? A base model diesel BMW 2 series, the FWD one. Cool, whatever floats your boat I suppose...
But "just a car" is perfectly fine and valid. I bought a beater Honda Fit/Jazz for $600 two years ago for a rally
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Saturn is, literally, what happens when GM builds a Nissan. I've owned and worked on Nissans and driven and worked a little bit on Saturns, and I can confidently say that what happens is that they fuck it up. You would have been at least 100% better off with a Sentra.
If you bought a Yaris, well, same thing, except the Yaris drives like crap in the bargain. Saturns were just numb, the Yaris is jittery.
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I have no interest in "just a car".
I want a sporty 2-seater...roadster type car.
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The Bolt is the top-selling EV outside outside of Teslas [ca.gov].
It's also much, much cheaper, so why would it compete directly with Tesla?
They're just killing it off to move to a higher-margin truck production.
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I don't know where you are located but in the NOVA (VA/MD) area you have to wait months and pay $5-8k over MSRP to get a Bolt or Bolt/EUV. I have two local dealers that promised to sell to me at MSRP if they ever get an allotment, but GM is only sending them out to the biggest dealers in the large cities so I have been waiting 4 months to buy one.
At this point i'm about ready to cancel my reservations and put money down on an Equinox.
It was an odd car (Score:4, Informative)
One of my friends bought one for his ex-wife (pre-Covid and back when they were still together, obviously) and when he showed it to me I didn't find it all that impressive. The car just seemed a Chevy Sonic with substantially more sticker shock. He paid somewhere around $40k for it, IIRC.
The cheap batteries we've been promised for years just haven't materialized. I've been saying for awhile: cheap BEV batteries are a bit of a pipe dream because if cheap batteries were available, they'd be useful for so much more than just putting in cars. Until the industry has satiated all the demand for grid load balancing, backup power, home PV systems, and other stationary uses, we're not going to see "cheap" batteries for BEVs.
Without those cheap batteries, what Chevy had was an econobox that wasn't priced like an econobox because it happened to be electric. That was always going to be a tough sell. At least in the truck realm you've got buyers who already used to opening their wallets pretty wide, so this is probably a smart business move on Chevy's part.
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[...] what Chevy had was an econobox that wasn't priced like an econobox because it happened to be electric. That was always going to be a tough sell.
Honestly, this is how you could describe pretty much every EV except for Tesla, until quite recently.
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Affordable batteries would be quite the boon for the industry. Asia is doing what the rest of the world should be doing: investing in battery swap technology instead of charging stations. Of course, with charging stations, Tesla et al. could not charge a fee on top of the cost of electricity. Maybe a fee to the shops doing the battery swaps, but who cares about what's more natural for the consumer. Just corral them into what we say is best and if they get out of line punish them until they do as we say.
I'
Re:It was an odd car (Score:4, Interesting)
Battery swap stations are a bad idea that have come and gone. EV batteries are huge and built into the frame. So swapping them would require heavy robots and huge compromises on car design. And for what?
Asian battery swap is for electric scooters and modified golf carts. Not what most people would consider a car.
Inductive charging in the road would be cool. It would never make sense for it to be everywhere, but maybe for busy roads it could supplement the charging infrastructure.
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I will agree with you on the idea not having panned out, but I will disagree on the technical details.
The robots wouldn't need to be heavy, and the compromises aren't all that huge. See Tesla's demo of the tech back in the day.
Back on the robots, consider that what you really need amounts to a press, with some tooling for the bolts/nuts.
A 10 ton jack doesn't weigh anywhere near 10 tons, for example. Matter of fact, I can carry one by hand. Just make it pneumatically or hydraulically activated. You may s
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The robots wouldn't need to be heavy, and the compromises aren't all that huge. See Tesla's demo of the tech back in the day.
You mean where they never actually showed the battery, which was installed partially with adhesives, being swapped?
Re:It was an odd car (Score:4, Interesting)
The cheap batteries we've been promised for years just haven't materialized. I've been saying for awhile: cheap BEV batteries are a bit of a pipe dream because if cheap batteries were available, they'd be useful for so much more than just putting in cars.
The cost of EV batteries is estimated to have dropped by 89% over ten years [mr-sustainability.com]. An order-of-magnitude cost reduction certainly sounds like cheap batteries did materialize. It just turns out that there's a lot more to the cost of an EV than the battery. There's also the rest of the car and the profit margin. :-D
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The cheap batteries we've been promised for years just haven't materialized. I've been saying for awhile: cheap BEV batteries are a bit of a pipe dream because if cheap batteries were available, they'd be useful for so much more than just putting in cars. Until the industry has satiated all the demand for grid load balancing, backup power, home PV systems, and other stationary uses, we're not going to see "cheap" batteries for BEVs.
There doesn't need to be that much overlap between electric vehicle batteries and stationary batteries*, they have very different requirements. EV batteries must prioritise weight, followed by temperature tolerance (so that the same car can be driven in Florida or Canada) followed by speed of charging. Stationary batteries don't need any of that. Weight doesn't matter for a battery bank in a basement or in a load-balancing station. Temperature is less important, which is also tangentially related to weight.
Re: It was an odd car (Score:2)
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Stationary batteries don't need any of that. Weight doesn't matter for a battery bank in a basement or in a load-balancing station. Temperature is less important, which is also tangentially related to weight...
Speaking of temperature, sodium sulphur batteries are good for grid scale storage. Remember when Tesla built the biggest battery in the world? It wasn't as big as the actual biggest battery at the time which was a sodium sulphur one which had already been running for a few years in Japan.
Remember the EV1? (Score:2)
The EV1 [wikipedia.org] seemed pretty popular with people who had them, however GM only allowed a lease option on them. One day GM told lessees that they wanted the cars back and then destroyed all of them claiming there wasn't enough demand from the people who wanted to buy them.
Here is a bit of history on GM's first electric car. [youtube.com] Sure does sound like a familiar story.
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And that was not the first time that GM destroyed electric vehicles.
General Motors streetcar conspiracy [wikipedia.org]
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The EV1 program was unprofitable, was never meant to be profitable, was never meant to produce a vehicle that consumers would be allowed to keep, and if they had permitted people to keep them they would have taken on certain legal obligations as a volume manufacturer of automobiles which would have been even more unprofitable.
The streetcar scandal, on the other hand, was just outright going out and crushing a competing industry. It's classic antitrust, and what's more, it was deliberately outright hostile t
It's the same playbook as with ICE vehicles (Score:2)
US auto manufacturers have been bailing on the passenger car business for years, so it's not surprising they're continuing that trend with EVs as well.
They Are Going To Make Electric Motors For Honda (Score:2)
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2... [arstechnica.com]
Maybe this had something to do with it.
Forgetting the battery fire problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
IIRC they [GM] had to send a letter to owners telling them not to park within something like 100ft of anything valuable due to a risk of the battery bursting into flames. I knew somebody at a Chevy dealership back then (2021, the height of the new car shortage) who showed me all the new Bolts on the lot, which were the only new cars they had... but sadly they could not sell - the dealer had been given an order by Chevy not to sell them because of the fire problem. An entire year later, in 2022, they still had those Bolts on the lot and could not sell them because the few new battery packs trickling in from the manufacturer were required to be installed into previously-sold Bolts that were in customer hands and needed the units replaced. None of this was good for the Bolt. Having thousands of new cars sit on car lots until they are 2 model years old before you can sell them is NOT a recipe for success.
The company that seems to have mastered the Lithium vehicle battery is Tesla, and Musk does not patent stuff. When Boeing had problems with the 787 batteries catching fire, they SHOULD have consulted with Tesla for help (I think Musk even offered help) but pride seems to have prevented this and they just decided to put the batteries into a fireproof metal box [doh]. When GM had their battery problem on the Bolts, they SHOULD have consulted with Tesla. Pride probably stopped that too. If a company cannot master a technology, and then refuses to contract with experts who could help them, then they probably should not be trusted with that technology. The demise of the Bolt may well be for the best.
Re:Forgetting the battery fire problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
The company that seems to have mastered the Lithium vehicle battery is Tesla, and Musk does not patent stuff. When Boeing had problems with the 787 batteries catching fire, they SHOULD have consulted with Tesla for help (I think Musk even offered help) but pride seems to have prevented this and they just decided to put the batteries into a fireproof metal box [doh]. When GM had their battery problem on the Bolts, they SHOULD have consulted with Tesla. Pride probably stopped that too. If a company cannot master a technology, and then refuses to contract with experts who could help them, then they probably should not be trusted with that technology. The demise of the Bolt may well be for the best.
Take a look at Toyota's RAV4 EV for another example. Tesla designed their powertrain, but Toyota insisted on a tiny battery because they believed that people wouldn't be willing to pay for a car with a a larger battery. The product line was a total failure despite being an amazing car as far as the driving experience goes, because the appalling range was less than many people's commutes, and it had no DC fast-charging capability.
One year later, the Tesla Model X came out with a starting price of almost double that of the failed RAV4 EV. In the first full year of sales, they sold 2,725 — more than the RAV4 EV sold during its two-year run. Twice the price, twice the sales!
And just 8 years after the RAV4 EV disappeared, the Model Y was selling at a price ranging from $4k to $19k more than the RAV4 EV after adjusting for inflation, and sold 759,000 units in 2022.
Imagine if Toyota's shortsighted executives had actually designed a car that was worth driving back then, like Tesla was pushing them to do, rather than a compliance car that nobody would want. Toyota would now be at the forefront of the EV market, and Tesla would either be out of business or would be a wholly owned subsidiary of some other car company.
And they continue to make the same mistakes year after year. Despite ample evidence that there's a huge market for EV SUVs, they continue to build plug-in hybrids that nobody wants. For example, if the numbers I've seen are correct, the RAV4 Prime sold almost an order of magnitude fewer cars than the considerably more expensive Tesla Model Y.
At some point, you just have to conclude that the entire auto industry is run by bozos.
Re:Forgetting the battery fire problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't look at Toyota for anything when discussing EV. It would be like asking Phillip Morris which nicotine patch to use. Toyota is infamously laggard in their EV policy to the point where their business strategy (going against the entire industry and all in on hydrogen) is starting to make its way into textbooks along side other grand failures in history.
The funny part is you can find counter examples in China and Europe. Every time Tesla reported good sales BYD said "that's cute, wake us when you put another zero or two behind that number". While America was swooning about the possibility of Tesla finally getting production to the point where people were willing to buy them, in Europe Renault was already seeing healthy sales from it's now over a decade old Zoe. Where in the USA people were saying about Tesla "OMG an electric car, how unique!" this past decade, in Europe they were saying "Yay, *another* electric car option".
Where in USA Tesla is the only cheap EV on the market, in Europe it is not the cheapest, with most classic European manufacturers having a cheaper model than the 3.
Looking at the Japanese when discussing EVs is ignoring the actual EV market which exists.
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Europe was always a good market for EV adoption anyway.
Far shorter commutes, and people don't feel they need a 500 mile range because they rarely drive it, whereas in America it appears to be part of the American dream to do long road trips.
Tesla sell well, but there are lots of other EV manufacturers on the streets - European and Asian, not American. VW id.3 and id.4 (id.2 and id.7 coming out soon, to widen the market) whirr around a lot - they seem to be what the VW Golf (and Polo for the id.2) owners lik
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Cities over here have parking issues (lots of on-street parking) that limit home recharge options, and stop EV uptake, but it's the cities mandating low emission rules first...
Don't you have lamp post based EV chargers there?
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When looking for a new vehicle, the RAV4 prime is exactly what I wanted. Had I been able to purchase one new without wa
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At some point, you just have to conclude that the entire auto industry is run by bozos
Definitely there were total complete idiots. One Ford group managing the EV side insisted there should be the ability to pump engine noises through the entertainment system. They seriously thought people liked hearing the engine noises.
One bunch of bozos were arguing: "Look battery is the energy storage, gas tank basically. My 16 gallon tank holds 512 kWh of energy. That much in battery will weigh twice the weight of the car, and cost twice the price, no way it will work out". They did not figure, EV is fo
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The company that seems to have mastered the Lithium vehicle battery is Tesla
No. The company that mastered the Lithium vehicle battery is BYD. Tesla doesn't hold a candle to them in terms of production output. But you probably don't hear about them because they don't have fancy marketing with "giga" in the title.
The reality is outside of the USA EVs are common from many auto makers, and most of them have multiple models available on the market, and nearly all of them don't have any issue with fires.
Re:Forgetting the battery fire problem? (Score:5, Informative)
GM fitted new batteries to all those cars, which makes them used bargains. Virtually brand new batteries.
Tesla's batteries were actually made by Panasonic. They had issues too. A few fires due to over-heating, which resulted in Tesla reducing the charging rate for older battery packs. The original 85kWh ones were notorious for it, after a certain number of supercharges the charge speed would be cut dramatically.
Every manufacturer has had some early issues with batteries. That's probably why most manufacturers have been waiting to do mass roll out of EV models. If they enter the market now they can be fairly confident that the serious issues have been worked out. None of them make their own batteries - even Tesla who use Panasonic and CATL.
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The company that seems to have mastered the Lithium vehicle battery is Tesla
By "mastered" you mean "bought LFP cells from CATL". Their NMC battery packs are now known for bursting into flames even without any physical damage. 50% of the vehicles they build in the states use CATL LFP, and those are not spontaneously burning. We should ban NMC battery use in EVs. Anything with a high risk of catching fire that contains cobalt should be a no-no, and we should certainly not proliferate it.
ONOZ! What shall we do without Volt and Bolt? (Score:2)
Batteries bad (Score:4, Funny)
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That's a pretty niche use. No one should be driving in "deep snow" unless it's recreational (they have these things called snowmobiles that are very good at that) or search and rescue, or a plow. As a Canadian, I assure you that the average person waits for the roads to be plowed, because ICE vehicles will also be very, very stuck in deep snow. In fact, even powerful 4WD off-road trucks will get very, very stuck in actual "deep snow".
No one cares about 0.001% niche usages: drive whatever you want for that s
Bolt EUV Owner Here (Score:3, Informative)
I own a 2023 Bolt EUV.. it's a great car. But, this makes total sense from a product point of view. Here's why:
1) The battery platform is old. It was first introduced in the mid/late teens. Only 400V. Max 50kW fast charge. This doesn't meet with modern needs
2) The Bolt brand is tainted by the battery recall
3) The Equinox EV is coming, and will be bigger, cheaper, have a longer range, charge faster, and longer battery cycle life. This makes the Bolt obsolete.
This is par for the course for the product development lifecycle. Eventually, the new products are better and cheaper than the old ones, so it no longer makes sense to keep making the old ones.