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Cadillac Unveils Pricier Alternative To Tesla Model S
An anonymous reader writes "Cadillac has officially unveiled its Tesla S alternative, but at $5,000 more than the Tesla, it may not be the cheaper option you've been looking for. 'Cadillac is touting the ELR's 8-inch touchscreen powered by its CUE infotainment system — which two years in is still a buggy mess — along with a range of safety and convenience features, including lane departure warning, forward collision alert, and a 24-hour concierge service to answer questions. There's also a "regen on demand" feature that allows the driver to boost the brake regeneration, slowing the vehicle and recouping energy by pulling on the flappy paddles behind the steering wheel. GM's bean counters are quick to point out that depending on what federal and state tax incentives buyers are eligible for, the net pricing could be as low as $68,495, but that's still a tough sell considering you're basically getting a Volt with more presence and less practicality.'"
Since TFS doesn't give any detail worth noting, this thing has two doors (not four like the S), a laughable 35mi electric range before the gasoline engine kicks in for 300mi total (which is still fairly bad, especially when the S has 208-265mi range pure electric depending on the model), a smaller (8" vs 17" for the S) touchscreen with a poorer OS/UI, all that for $75k. Oh yeah, and it looks like a blockier Volt. In fact, it's pretty much a Volt with a few extra features at twice the price.
If this is the best GM can do, they better get back to the drawing board quick.
The press is looking for something to compare Tesla to, almost obsessively so. Fisker blew out a while ago so they're really hard-pressed to find something. The Leaf, i-MiEV and Volt are competitors to the Model S, which says a lot about the state of the industry. From that perspective, the ELR is very much a competitor; in fact, considering the price point and styling, it's the closest competitor I can think of. All the other electric cars are going for the Prius style of eco-friendly compact car.
It is unbelievable that this article is taken seriously. The writer refers to the shift paddles as "flappy paddles behind the steering wheel". This tells me that the person writing the article knows nothing about cars and did very little research to reach their conclusions.
Actually, you just showed you know less about the automotive world than they do.
"Flappy paddle" has been the derogatory term Jeremy Clarkson and the other Top Gear presenters have used for years upon years, and it's now in widespread popular use. It referred to three things, early on: 1)Automatics with paddles that simply said to the transmission "shift up or down now", which usually happened eons after you pushed the paddle and the transmission still has all the inefficiencies of an automatic 2)Automated-manual transmissions which had horrendous "creeping" functionality, poor usability/interface (ie 3 point turns were mind-numbingly hard/slow/complex), and broke down a lot because of the complexity of actuators/sensors/etc. 3)Sequential transmissions that were brutal in terms of comfort (having been adopted from racing applications) and poor creeping functionality.
Nowadays the term is mostly used by automotive fans who hate anything that doesn't have a manual gearbox, even if it's a perfectly reliable 7 gear, double-clutch transmission that shifts so smoothly you can do so mid-corner and not upset the car's balance, and can shift so fast it has to wait for the engine to match revs...
Please help metamoderate.