Can GM Challenge Tesla With a Long-Range Electric Car?

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."

Comments

betteridge's law of headline

[poetmatt]

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.

Re:betteridge's law of headline

[TWiTfan]

I'm sorry, but I refused to buy genetically-modified cars.

Re:betteridge's law of headline

[NinePenny]

Sounds like you are the perfect candidate for an all electric Pontiac Aztek!

Re:betteridge's law of headline

[Nadaka]

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

[amiga3D]

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.

Re:betteridge's law of headline

[jedidiah]

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

[CastrTroy]

You are correct in a way, but I think that unions tip the scales too far in the other direction. Now instead of the corporation holding all the power, the union holds all the power. There's been more than a few cases where the union priced the workers out of a job. "American" cars are now manufactured in Mexico. Hostess had to stop making Twinkies. Lots of other examples abound. When the option is to either give employees the desired wage increase, or shut down operations while you find and train new workers, the corporation doesn't have much of a choice but to give the workers what they want.

Re:betteridge's law of headline

[poetmatt]

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.

Re:betteridge's law of headline

[guises]

Both of your examples are a little off. The auto unions certainly had influence, and it's true that ridiculous pension plans are a part of what brought down the US auto industry, but it wasn't because the unions were demanding ridiculous pension plans. Those happened because it was a concession that the auto execs could give to the unions that wouldn't negatively impact short-term investors.

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:Nissan Leaf

[shadowrat]

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.

Sell the car, lease the batteries.

[jfisherwa]

.. 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.

Re:I don't believe that GM is serious about an EV

[nojayuk]

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.

Re:No.

[beanpoppa]

Well, most people are idiots. There are PLENTY of two-car households that could replace one of their 'commuter' cars with an all-electric car that has 100-200 mile range. Most people drive 50 miles, round-trip, for work. They plug in nightly, and are fine for their commute. Their other car can either be a regular ICE, or a hybrid, or a range-extended hybrid (if it would be justified), and would serve as the car to use when they have a long family road-trip.

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.