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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.
I'm Elon Musk and I approve this negative review of my competitor's product.
It looks like news outlets all over the place are comparing this to the Model S, but then like 2 sentences later point out how it is mechanically basically a Volt. How does that make it an alternative to the Model S at all? Doesn't that just make it an alternative to the Volt? Was the Volt an alternative to the Model S?
...to help pay for the heath and retirement benefits of union employees who already retired at 55.
Yeah, a real shame that people negotiated decent benefits for themselves. Wadda they think they are, CEOs?
Fucking Randroids.
1) Subjective. I fail to see much difference, except I'd bet the dashboard seams in the Model S don't squeak after 5k miles like every GM product's dashboard, ever.
2) Subjective. The Model S is a beauty, and the Volt is not. This car is a boxier Volt, which makes it even uglier, IMO. Then again, I've never known GM to build anything that looks better than the average pile of animal feces.
3) Its battery life is pathetic, so it makes up for it with a mediocre ICE to charge with. Wake me when it has a range near 1000 miles, which is what a setup like this should be sporting.
4) A GM? Not likely. I have yet to see one last much beyond the warranty, and I've seen several that didn't last even that long. GM should be replacing Country Time any day now.
5) Where is GM from 10 years ago? Gone? Buyouts and bailouts are two different things, and GM was bought out. Meanwhile, Tesla paid back their loan nearly a decade early. And that loan wasn't part of a bailout or a buyout, it was an R&D loan for their electric vehicle technology.
6) Window dressing. Any idiot can bolt on more irrelevant crap, and GM hires the best idiots they can find to do exactly that.
1) A nicer interior
2) A nicer exterior (tesla is bland, this is one of the nicest looking cars ever)
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and you need to get your eyes checked. This so far from one of the "nicest looking cars ever" that it makes me wonder if you've ever seen any other car in your life.
3) A car you can drive anywhere without charging
Of course, not charging it will eliminate most of the benefits of lugging that 400 lb battery around everywhere and will make your fuel economy go down significantly, but hey... you can still point at it and claim you're environmentally conscious, right?
5) Support from a company that wont be out of business in 10 years
Let's just ignore the fact that GM filed chapter 11 bankruptcy just four years ago and had to be rescued by the government. That's completely irrelevant to whether the company will be around in 10 years.
6) A lot more technology features (the tesla has a rear view camera but not much else)
"Cadillac is touting the ELRâ(TM)s 8-inch touchscreen powered by its CUE infotainment system â" which two years in is still a buggy mess"
Technology that is badly designed and doesn't work properly isn't a selling point.
That article is awesome. You know that somebody is being extra fair with their comparisons when they start adding things like payroll tax and unemployment insurance to the cost of an employee to inflate the number, as if that has anything to do with unions. And my heart just breaks for the auto manufacturers that they pay a third more than base salaries because their workers have to work on average hundreds of hours of overtime per year.
Here's the real takeaway from that article for me: base wages are $30/hr, the effective wage due to the overtime ends up being $40/hr, and the general rule of thumb for the fully loaded cost of a worker is usually 150%-200% of salary, so they are right on target. Remember that, for instance, 4 weeks total of vacation and sick leave costs 7.7%, unemployment insurance costs another few percent, payroll tax is another 6.8%, throw in a few more percent for worker's comp. You're north of 20% before you even start paying for health insurance and retirement.
If you think that's too much compensation for somebody working in a factory, you don't believe that the United States should have a middle class.
I agree with everything with the exception of number 2, "Then again, I've never known GM to build anything that looks better than the average pile of animal feces." The 69 Camaro was pretty nice.
No, the word remains "negotiation". The fact that GM was managed by incompetent, but sadly typical, executives who refused to take any notice of those "dirty hippies" and "tree huggers" who said things like "Uh, gasoline isn't always going to be cheap" and "Wait, isn't the middle east unstable these days? Shouldn't we develop some better, more fuel efficient, vehicles just in case the shit hits the fan", doesn't change the fact that the union and the crappy management did negotiate a deal that would have been perfectly fine had they, you know, produced decent vehicles.
BTW, isn't criticizing someone else's negotiation compensation "the politics of envy" and "class warfare", or does that only apply when it's criticism of executives who get obscene bonuses for running their companies into the ground?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
as for having touch as an interface is beyond stupidity in a car, why do 99% of cars have knobs and buttons ? clue: it isnt a technological problem its more of a "how can i adjust ac/settings/radio/nav without taking my eye of the road"
good luck in court
I agree, real knobs and buttons in a car are a necessity. Try adjusting temperature or fan setting via a touch screen, especially a GLOSSY touch screen. Now compare to a simple illuminated button which you can ALWAYS see (and feel, and feel the feedback). It's like typing blind on a simulated keyboard on your tablet vs. on a "real" keyboard.
most of GM parts are made in mexico, they just do the final assembly here
I'm not aware of any other production long-range battery car? The Model S is the only all electric car with a 200+ mile range that does not include an ICE, luxury or not.
I'm more impressed each press release by Tesla - not because of anything in particular, but because it seems so impossibly hard for every other manufacturer in the world to even get to half of the Model S range on batteries alone. In fact, if there weren't actual, on the road vehicles I would say - based on their marketing literature and the performance of every other manufacturer - that they were full of shit and may as well be hyping the Moller AirCar.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Why can't cell phone companies make good cell phones? Why did Apple and then Google have to show them how? Why didn't Sony build iPods? How did they let Apple do it first, years after Sony should have dominated the market? Why can't big car companies make a good electric car? Why did Tesla have to show them how? Why is GM even offering this stupid model, and why did BMW offer an even dumber one? Is it to prove to themselves that electric cars are a bad idea? Why are all of these examples Silicon Valley innovations?
Honestly, I just can't figure out whats wrong with GM, BMW, Motorola (before being bought - the Moto-X rocks), Sony, and so many other large iconic corporations. It's one thing to lack a marketing genius like Steve Jobs. It's another to be so incredibly stupid that even the average slashdot geek can see your product will be a dismal failure. There is simply no way that this car, or BMW's freak-show of an electric car will succeed. Why are they wasting their time and money? Why are they so stupid?
Honestly, I don't know. I know a bit about business, but I can't make sense of corporations acting so illogically.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
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.
That was 44 years ago. The guy who designed it is probably dead.