GM To End Production of Electric Chevy Brightdrop Vans (theverge.com) 93
General Motors is ending production of its Chevy BrightDrop electric delivery vans after sluggish demand and the expiration of key EV tax credits. "This is not a decision we made lightly because of the impact on our employees," GM CEO Mary Barra said during the company's third quarter earnings call Tuesday. "However the commercial electric van market has been developing much slower than expected, and changes to the regulatory framework and fleet incentives has made the business even more challenging." The Verge reports: Brightdrop first launched in 2021 as GM's effort to capture a large portion of the commercial EV market, starting with a pair of electric vans, as well as fleet management software and electric-powered carts for goods delivery. The automaker made deals with Walmart, FedEx, and other major retailers to add the van to their delivery fleets. But after trying to make a go of it as a standalone brand, GM reabsorbed BrightDrop in 2023, and then later assigned it to Chevy in order to tap into the brand's sales and service dealer network.
Now the van will stand as yet another casualty of the expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which ended on September 30th. In addition to the consumer credit, there was also a $7,500 discount for commercial EVs under 18,000 lbs -- which Brightdrop was eligible for. The van was a range leader, but also was more expensive than its most prominent competitor. Brightdrop's vans started at $74,000, while Ford's E-Transit van with extended battery range sold for $51,600.
Now the van will stand as yet another casualty of the expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which ended on September 30th. In addition to the consumer credit, there was also a $7,500 discount for commercial EVs under 18,000 lbs -- which Brightdrop was eligible for. The van was a range leader, but also was more expensive than its most prominent competitor. Brightdrop's vans started at $74,000, while Ford's E-Transit van with extended battery range sold for $51,600.
VW expanding lecce van factory (Score:1, Troll)
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Which has what do to do with anything in the article?
Different product.
Different market.
Different laws.
Different regulations.
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What is wrong with the US that businesses can't take advantage of the obvious cost savings that EVs offer?
Cheaper "fuel", lower maintenance, green credentials. Businesses were early adopters in Europe because the benefits were obvious and quickly realized. Even the higher purchase cost in the early days was not a big issue, because they were often spending big chunks of money to kit the vans out anyway.
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What is wrong with the US that businesses can't take advantage of the obvious cost savings
Nothing is wrong with the U.S. You are misinformed. The cost savings afforded by EVs in Europe do not exist in the U.S. If they did, business and consumers would flock to EVs. The fact is that EVs are considerably more expensive than comparable ICE vehicles AND EVs bring additional inconveniences.
In Europe, the taxes, regulations, and fuel costs are so high that EVs are a cost effective alternative to ICE vehicles, in Europe.
In the U.S. the government literally has to subsidize EVs with tax credits and the
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The estimated 177-179 mile range could also be an issue. It's fine if you have a distribution center just out of a city and the route is to drive around the city and then back.
But it wouldn't work for something like appliance delivery to customer's homes which would be all over the place. By the times you made the morning deliveries you'd be under 50% of the range, and you wouldn't have 5-10 mins to refuel and get back on the road. Though you normally wouldn't need to refuel at that range with an ICE, norma
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You're correct, if your route is not predictable then that could be a problem.
But there are loads and loads of applications where this isn't a problem, or where the organization that would use them for their own technicians, mechanics, and other support personnel are geographically constrained to where it would be difficult to even come close to that sort of range anxiety.
At one point I worked for a K-12 school district doing IT support, and that district had hundreds of vans as part of the "white fleet", s
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There's also the very large cost to construct the charging infrastructure to support a fleet of that size.
Add in that the BrightDrop is $66,000 MRSP, while gas powered vans of roughly the same cargo capacity are $15-20,000 less.
That could be two to three fleet replacements cycles to break even on the construction costs when calculating out the total cost of ownership.
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Realistically for that school district the construction costs for charging infrastructure would not have been as bad as for say, private entities, the school district as a political subdivision of the state had self-inspection and self-permitting powers on its own properties, and that process was incredibly streamlined. They could have realistically had the grounds underground-located by the utilities using their own records ("Blue stake"), and then had some underground-detection done to confirm specific a
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That was my city example. 177 miles / 8 hours = ~22 miles to drive per hour giving time for loading/unloading, etc. Many scheduled routes will be 50% if not longer than that.
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AND EVs bring additional inconveniences.
AND ICEs bring additional inconveniences.
A lot of delivery and vans spend the entire day tooling around the same city. This is very predictable, and the ranges aren't huge. Electric vans are better in stop/start conditions, need less maintenance and don't even need refuelling, you just plug it when it's returned to the depot, end electricity is cheaper than fuel.
The other thing that's frankly weird about American is the obsession with huge pickup trucks. They're like
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The stupidest thing about pickups is the actual load bed is almost vestigial in a lot of models - it's so short it's useless for anything.
Gravel, topsoil, debris.... Admittedly this is less useful in place than don't have suburbia, but that is not North America.
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AND EVs bring additional inconveniences.
AND ICEs bring additional inconveniences.
Perhaps consider a hybrid electric to get the best of both. Of course the counter argument is it means the worst of both as well.
There's more than one way to build a hybrid electric and the early attempts at building hybrids seemed to be overly complicated and so I'm not surprised they had performance and repair issues. This left a lot of people with bad experiences driving them, which would get reported to others and so discourage adoption. It appears the technology has improved greatly, and much of it
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Perhaps consider a hybrid electric to get the best of both.
It depends on what you want, really. LEVC do make hybrid electric vans. They make the current london black cabs, which mostly run on electric but cabbies do need to be able to randomly go very far sometimes, so that makes sense.
There's more than one way to build a hybrid electric
The Chevy one with a motor generator and optional direct drive via a dog clutch seems to me to be the best, or a good one. It's arguably simpler than a pure ICE drivetrain,
Re:VW expanding lecce van factory (Score:5, Insightful)
The real reason why they are stopping production of the Brightdrop is because it is manufactured in Canada and the tariffs are making it unprofitable. Even if it still had the subsidies, there's no way for it to survive a 25% import tax. Every problem in this story is uniquely American.
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When EV pricing in the U.S. is on par with comparable ICE vehicles, or cheaper, then EV sales will dominate.
Used EVs are cheaper than used ICE cars, but that hasn't significantly improved the uptake. Recently I read that, right now, commercial fleets are the biggest growth market for EVs, not individuals.
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Aside from lower fuel costs,
which do not completely justify the price difference,
and lower maintenance costs and lost downtime
which actually probably tip the scales to making them more cost-effective,
you have the fact that these are designed from the ground up for deliveries.
They speed up your workers. They reduce accidents and injuries. They save you lost time warming up, and seconds each and every time you start the vehicle moving. They have way more start-f
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FTFY.
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I was in Europe a couple of weeks ago.
The cost of diesel for our rental car certainly got my attention.
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. For example all the hard work we put into electricity conservation (with LED light bulbs and so on) has been undone by massive data centers making AI cartoons of frogs
Wow, its almost like resources are getting allocated by a just few people at the top whose only qualifications are that they have wealthy parents and made a lucky bet.
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With the increased range we're starting to see on EV models in the US this problem is becoming irrelevant to most Americans.
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EVs add nothing to long distance travel in Europe due to rules about maximum time behind the wheel without a break, but even in the US you are looking at an additional hour per 10+ hours of driving at most.
Maybe that's the issue. Contractors instead of employee drivers.
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What is wrong with the US that businesses can't take advantage of the obvious cost savings that EVs offer?
The USA isn't as densely populated as Europe, that means often driving longer distances. With lower population density and few EV drivers yet there's something of a chicken and egg problem of finding places to put EV chargers where they can be profitable. If there aren't enough people seeking a recharge then that can drive up the recharge rates to a point where there's no cost savings to EVs over the life of the vehicle. Commercial cargo vans might not drive long distances often, and could likely find wa
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We wont develop the right products.
We have a deeply captive market that prevents actual competition. Therefore preventing true and useful innovation.
We have flawed laws designed to keep existing industry and products on top.
We don't have sufficient or effective regulations.
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Yeah. Anything! It can't do ANYTHING right anymore! That certainly explains away a lot of economics......
Re: VW expanding lecce van factory (Score:1)
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I don't even notice where my beef comes from. I just buy whatever Costco is selling.
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Similar product, similar market (first world). Not sure why anyone should need that explained to them.
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Similar product, similar market (first world). Not sure why anyone should need that explained to them.
The first world is hardly a consistent and homogenous concept. Take the difference between Texas and California (or BC and Alberta), and then figure the difference between the EU and North America is some multiples of that. Very different places.
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The first world is hardly a consistent and homogenous concept.
And yet it is utterly routine for the social sciences to compare between first world countries because they are so similar. Turns out the whole reason why we use the term "first world" is that there are in fact a shit ton of socioeconomic similarities between the countries we label as such.
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I was speaking specifically of socioeconomic stuff but yes, those as well.
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The use of first, second, and third worlds were originally about political affiliation. The reason the first world was the first world is because the people that came up with this ordering were people that lived in this world. The ordering is arbitrary.
The second world comes second because those would be second on the minds of people that live in the NATO nations that generally defined the first world. These would be nations that had generally communist/socialist/Marxist/whatever political leanings and s
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Yes, I am familiar with both the outdated definitions for the terms that you have provided as well as the modern ones which are of course the ones I was using. Was there something you were getting at with this?
Too specific (Score:4, Insightful)
This is really only suitable to large package delivery, so you either land one of the handful of fleet contracts or you're shot.
A small percentage of Americans could barely get used to cab over vans, but those ultra-utilitarian box vans aren't going to sell as work vans or even small independents delivery.
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This is really only suitable to large package delivery, so you either land one of the handful of fleet contracts or you're shot.
A small percentage of Americans could barely get used to cab over vans, but those ultra-utilitarian box vans aren't going to sell as work vans or even small independents delivery.
Ford has made an electric version of their Transit van, this is a GM problem rather than an America problem. Just about every van manufacturer in Europe now offers an electric version of their van product.
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And yet the lack of policy, availability and willpower of the governments isn't driving fleet sales, bonus points that tax credits are being rolled out. In the meantime DHL has partnered with Peugeot, Ford, Renault, Fiat, and VW to effectively electrify their entire European fleet. It's not just a DHL thing either. American companies such a FedEx have moved to exclusively purchasing Mercedes eSprinters, UPS has new IVECO eDaily trucks as part of their delivery fleet. There seems to be enough fleet orders to
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It also helps that in Europe, many big cities ban ICE trucks from doing deliveries during the day to limit pollution. Of course, EV trucks are fine.
EV trucks are also rather zippy - their ability to accelerate means they fit in very well with traffic - you're not having to deal with the dread of being stuck behind one where the light will turn red before they're even clear the intersection.
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In Europe these types of van are used for all sorts of things beyond delivery. Because they are enclosed you can build a little workshop in there, or at least have nicely organized tools on shelves and racks. With seats they can be used for crew transport as well.
Basically most of the times an American would have a truck, Europeans have a van.
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Transit/Sprinter/Crafter/etc do not have exactly square rear bodies like the Rivian and Brightdrop vans though.
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Basically most of the times an American would have a truck, Europeans have a van.
Also... doesn't it rain in America? We have drop side vans (i.e. small lorries, but they're built on van chasses) in Europe which are functionally equivalent to pickups, except with usually a bigger bed, better visibility and lower loading. The pickup covers people use are very low and they have very little storage compared to a van.
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A small percentage of Americans could barely get used to cab over vans
Driving a cab over is not hard. We got a diesel pusher bus where you're way further out in front of the front axle than that, and the only adjustment really is turning a little later. You get reasonably used to it in short order. If you don't have to deal with an 8' vehicle in a 10' wide lane (yeah they're meant to be 12' but then there's bridge crossings and such) then I bet it's not even scary.
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GM's plan was to sell to the large fleet buyers -and they did... but now the winds are against going electric if your business is big enough to garner government attention. Gotta get along to stay in the game!
The Ford EV Transit van was a better choice for small businesses & tradesmen than the GM van. Cheaper, customizable, and similar to the gas Transit vans most were already driving.
Not just EV credits (Score:3)
This sounds like a hot potato nobody wanted from the beginning. It couldn't survive as a separate project under the BrightDrop name, so it gets brought back into the GM fold. Then it gets "assigned" to Chevrolet. Yeah, maybe these were warning signs.
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If a tax credit is required for it to be a viable sale, then no, people don't want it sufficiently to be a viable product.
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These aren't people. They are corporations exclusively focused on cost. People were the ones who voted a government in that introduced tax credits. The people wanted it.
Corporations will fuck you over any way they can if it saves them a dollar. They don't "want" their current diesel trucks either. They want the diesel truck of your granddaddy, the one that belches black fumes as it drives down the road giving you cancer.
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Corporate decisions are made by people.......
As for private citizens...yeah, I don't know anybody who cares primarily about cost. Not me, not my neighbors....not anyone. Cost is at the bottom of their list of things to consider when making a purchase........yeah...that's the ticket.
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Corporate decisions are made by people.
Not so sure about that, I rather suspect that most of the C-suite executives are really reptilian aliens. They don't seem to have a conscience like real humans do. /s
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Corporate decisions are made by people.......
No they aren't. They are made by corporations. What a person wants and what is best for the corporation is usually wildly different. Take for example what happened today after I made my first post: I had a project work that needs to be done. Now me as a person wants it done properly, and I have specific names in my head of competent people in our engineering department that can do this job. But I as a person don't get to make this choice, I am part of a system and that system has policies that have nothing
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The guys at GM are, arguably, idiots. They are definitely good at making a part cost less -- removing fastener counts, reducing casting complexity -- they have massive talent there. But they're design for use has always been terrible, as have most of their marketing decisions.
The BrightDrop vans were odd, because they were a really nice design. They were more fit-for-purpose than any delivery van ever made by GM.
I completely agree with you that the guys at GM didn't want to do it. How do you shave costs
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Maybe it was a hot potato at GM, but Rivian seems to be doing just fine with its Electric Delivery Van, used by Amazon.
Way to go America (Score:3)
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Mining reform in USA (Re:Way to go America) (Score:1)
I'm seeing that there are shortages in a lot of minerals that are critical to adoption of renewable energy and battery storage that will slow and/or delay any "next industrial revolution" in energy.
One thing that can help speed things along is some relaxation and reform to environmental rules on mining in the USA. Some of the rules are based on bad science and need to be brought to reflect reality, such as rules on naturally occurring radioactive materials (or NORM) which mades a lot of old mines no longer
And the first to cry foul. (Score:2)
So GM is their EV production but they are also crying foul about cheap Chinese EVs? Sounds like just another day the the land of greed and bullshit.
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So GM is their EV production but they are also crying foul about cheap Chinese EVs? Sounds like just another day the the land of greed and bullshit.
Yes, because there is absolutely no other reason why Chinese EVs are cheaper. Just ignore the virtual (and actual) slave labor, skipping R&D costs by stealing IP hand over fist, strip mining for materials with no regard to environmental concerns, disregard of consumer safety, and massive subsidies from the authoritarian single-party government.
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Just ignore the virtual (and actual) slave labor, skipping R&D costs by stealing IP hand over fist, strip mining for materials with no regard to environmental concerns, disregard of consumer safety, and massive subsidies from the authoritarian single-party government.
Are you sure you're talking about China there? That sounds like the MAGA party to-do list, especially if you add on corporate extortion and mandatory bribes to the leader of said one party state.
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Are you sure you're talking about China there? That sounds like the MAGA party to-do list, especially if you add on corporate extortion and mandatory bribes to the leader of said one party state.
Comparing the crap China does right now, and has done for decades, with your speculations on what 'bad orange man party' purportedly wants is some really advanced whataboutism.
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Yes, because there is absolutely no other reason why Chinese EVs are cheaper.
You have made the error of splitting. It's not an all or nothing and I never suggested there was only one cause.
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I guess all of the other stuff was implied in your 'American companies bad and greedy' comment, sorry I missed that.
First! (Score:2)
This article is the first that I have seen or heard of these vehicles.
If no one knows they exist, how can they expect sales?
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No, you would not. A hidden gem is HIDDEN.
These things kick ICE delivery vans' butts. When you're delivering one heavy object, driving a good distance on a highway, the benefits are small (aside from more ability to pass and to see traffic around you, and possibly a smaller crew since getting cumbersome things on and off these is easier than on ICE vans). But in a city, when you need to move into a stream of traffic, EV vans are massively better than ICE. They a low, and have a flat floor, so each and e
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This article is the first that I have seen or heard of these vehicles. If no one knows they exist, how can they expect sales?
Who are you again? I'm wondering if you work in commercial fleet management. Because if you don't, not only can you not have a basis for saying that no one knows they exist, but it is also completely irrelevant that you know about them.
The world is full of special purpose products marketed specifically only at the people who are inclined to buy them. Quickly off the top of your head name 10 models of electric 3.5tonne trucks. They do exist. There's likely whole companies you've never heard of that provide p
Their product was 50 percent (Score:2)
gm vehicle. (Score:2)
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Second question, who here buys corporate fleets of delivery vehicles?
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Amazon, although they already contracted with Rivian for 100,000 electric delivery vans.
OT: Rivian was unable to get financing to build its factory, since banks were hesitant to fund yet another US vehicle startup after everything but Tesla had failed in the past. Then Amazon committed to buy the delivery vans (which they designed specifically for the company's needs) and money suddenly appeared.
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You can be certain that "Amazon" has heard of these vans in question, even if the denizens of Slashdot, who have nothing to do with the purchase of corporate fleets of delivery vans, have not.
Sad and wasteful (Score:3)
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I think it's a good thing. EVs are a dead end and they use SO MANY RARE EARTH METALS. People think petrol emissions are bad, lithium mining is horrific and it's expanding all over the US. Global warming is bullshit and replacing everything with batteries is impractical and will end up causing more pollution.
Really? How?
Re: Sad and wasteful (Score:2)
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People think petrol emissions are bad, lithium mining is horrific and it's expanding all over the US
As a worker in the oil industry, you have no fucking idea and I highly recommend you stop feeding yourself a diet of crap misinformation. Lithium mining is orders of magnitude cleaner than mining and refining oil.
EVs are a dead end and they use SO MANY RARE EARTH METALS.
Even given the crappy use of the word "so many" as if that is a meaningful figure, the amount of rare earths used in an EV barely qualifies for capitalising the first word of your sentence much less any other word.
Please get a clue. Oh wait please GET ALL THE CLUES.
Before you dunk all over this van... (Score:3)
It's awfully difficult - at least in real space - to claim to be an expert on something you never heard of. I'm sure that won't stop people here but nonetheless it is worth pondering why we had never heard anything of this vehicle. If regular consumers hadn't heard of it, how many potential commercial customers hadn't either? Plenty of commercial customers exist in this country who would do well with an electric van, if only they knew this one existed.
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I am an aware of them because I read. I have also seen videos of the inside of them. And I have seen them on the street, here in Chicago, because I look at things around me.
I think you're suggesting that the whole US has it's head firmly planted in the sand, just like you. I worry you are correct.
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I've never heard of this van. I work in several metropolitan areas on a regular basis and I've never seen one anywhere. I fully acknowledge they exist, but I've never seen one. I could well be unique in having never seen one, but if they aren't in any of the markets where I frequently drive then there are likely a lot of other people who have never seen them in the wild either.
The point I was after is that there are
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They are well known in their niche.
Grounded used them for RV conversions: https://www.groundedevs.com/camper
IEA:s yearsly Global EV Outlook (Score:2)
Trucks: https://www.iea.org/reports/gl... [iea.org]
Strong growth in China while Europe and the US falling behind.
"In 2024, Europe saw more than 10 000 electric trucks sold for the second year in a row,
"In the United States, electric truck sales in 2024 were similar to in 2023. Nevertheless, the number of electric trucks sold in 2024 – over 1 700 – was more than the cumulative number of electric trucks
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Yikes. One graph shows that the US customers bought about 2,000 electric trucks last year, European about 12,000, and Chinese 76,000. Of course China also has some of the cheapest electricity in the world, at an average of $0.08/kwh, as opposed to $0.18 in the US and $0.24 to $0.48 in Europe. I'm a bit surprised to see that India has the same cost per kwh as China.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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Strong growth in China while Europe and the US falling behind.
This implies it is a race. It is not.
Build it ... (Score:3)
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The economy only justifies the market. The market is based on policy. The policy is driven by subsidies. Pretending one isn't intrinsically and inseparably linked to the other is just ignorance.
You would shit your pants like a new born baby if you saw what your fuel price would be like without subsidies for oil and gas, and without the fantastically and abnormally low fuel excise taxes levied in the USA that can't even remotely keep up with basic infrastructure investment requirements and require additional
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The market is based on policy.
Command economies pretty much died after 1991. China tries, but it keeps stepping on its own dick every time Xi issues an edict trying to buck market forces.
You would shit your pants like a new born baby if you saw what your fuel price would be like without subsidies for oil and gas
It's pretty much neutral. In our state, oil and gas subsidize other programs. I would be shitting in my pants, because without the socialist fingers in our till, we'd be paying about a buck a gallon less for gas.