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General Motors Plans 20 All-Electric Cars By 2023 (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: General Motors joined a growing group of automakers promising an emissions-free future for cars by pledging to sell 20 all-electric vehicles by 2023. The largest U.S. automaker, which generates most of its profit with large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, plans to have a lineup of both battery-powered cars and hydrogen fuel-cell autos, which also run on electricity. Two new EVs will debut in the next 18 months to follow the Chevrolet Bolt that's been on sale for less than a year. The planned lineup demonstrates GM is doubling down on electrification despite the Bolt's slow start in U.S. showrooms and companies' inability thus far to profitably sell EVs. The automaker has delivered fewer than 12,000 units of the battery-powered Bolt, which goes about 238 miles between charges. Deliveries have primarily been concentrated thus far in California, which mandates sales of emissions-less vehicles.
They produce around 10 millions cars a year, and expect to sell just 20 all-electric ones in 5 years (to be kind) ?
(Yes, I understand that "models" was lost somewhere. "Implied" as they pretend :) )
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
"Major Automakers Pretend To Be Interested In Electric Vehicles At Auto Show" - totally haven't seen that one many times per year for the past decade. Auto shows are a giant displaycase for A) concept cars that will never see the light of day, B) vehicles that will be made only in the minimum number needed to be compliance cars, and C) vehicles that will be produced (also in small numbers) in a radically different form (for the worse) than actually presented.
If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they'd put any sort of real effort into advertising it.
If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they'd be trying to ensure that you can actually drive places with it, with reasonable charge times and a complete network with multiple, well-monitored and maintained chargers at each well-spaced stop.
If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they'd be putting as much effort into it in non-ZEV states as they do in ZEV states.
If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they wouldn't make it as a BMW-priced car with a Fischer-Price interior.
Etc, etc, etc.
Perhaps there's some people with GM who thought that all you need to make an EV succeed is a semi-decent range figure at a midrange price. Sorry, but as with all vehicle purchases, there's many different aspects, and you can't just ignore half of them.
(To be fair to GM, the Model 3 has taken a lot of wind out of their sales. Having half a million people on a waiting list for a different vehicle means taking the vast majority of that half million out of your potential sales pool)
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
They're not bad these days on the mid/high end, on par or above comparable offerings from Toyota of VW. On the low end, they're trash.
...to marry a supermodel.
To me the Volt remains the sweet spot for people in the suburbs. Most days you can get by on using little or no gasoline at all but if you need the freedom to gas up and hit the road you retain that option.
I test drove a 2015 Camaro Z28 a while back and it ripped my clothes off. I'm holding out for the 2018 Z1 though. I've got a friend with a Chevy dealership and I think it's time I get something nice. My wife says, "nah", but I'm working on it, daily.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There's been more than half a million electric cars sold in the US, and the largest car company by cap size (for the time being) is entirely electric cars. There are a number of countries which have enabled laws that they will only allow electric cars to be sold within the country. Certainly every single car company is serious about electric cars, because that's just a part of the business now.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I own a 2017 ZL1 and a 2016 2SS. Neither is like that. In fact. My 17 ZL1 absolutely stomps 6 figure cars on the track.
Old gm, yes. My Gen4 and Gen5 FBody and Zeta platform Camaro were indeed poorly braked and rattle traps.
Electric cars don't work when the power goes out, ICE powered cars do.
That is until you go to gas up, and there's no power to the pumps.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Electric cars don't work when the power goes out, ICE powered cars do.
Gas pumps need electricity to pump the gas. If your gas station is out of power then you're not getting any gas.
On the other hand, during an emergency if your charging station does have power then you can charge your car, even if the fuel trucks can't get through.
And you also have the option of charging your car at your house with a generator or solar panels (though that would be pretty inefficient).
I stole this Sig
Set the goal to "sell 20 all-electric vehicles by 2023". You end up selling 35 per month through 2023, and you total somewhere over 2,000 sold. You crushed the goal by two orders of magnitude! Bonuses all around!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If GM cared about selling the Bolt...
It costs several hundred million dollars to bring a new vehicle to market, especially with a new drivetrain, as type acceptance on new drivetrains takes years.
I know a lot of people don't quite get this concept, but companies don't like spending money on things that don't make money.
If GM DIDN'T care about the Bolt, they wouldn't have spent the time, effort and money developing it.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Electric cars don't work when the power goes out, ICE powered cars do.
Well you can't charge them if the infrastructure gets wiped out, I suppose, but you also can't re-fill a tank of gas if the infrastructure gets wiped out.
Electrics cars are a rich man's toy, ICE powered cars are practical vehicles.
You can lease an electric car for $200/month, with very small fuel charges. They're not a rich man's toy unless you buy an expensive one...same as with ICE cars.
Mary Barra is just another beancounter in a long line of beancounters who has no understanding of the technology her company sells for a living.
Or she reads the news and sees that many countries are mandating all-electric driving fleets in the future, and the there are already cars that are good enough to make this law practical. Giving up on electric cars means giving up on China, India, France, etc.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Electric cars are the perfect commuter car. Most trips are not "long trips." They are to the grocery store or to work. Electric cars can be "re fueled" at home with solar panels, which are getting cheaper by the day. They are hardly a "rich man's toy." They are the working man's salvation. And BTW, how many ties have you been without electricity in the last year? you plug the sucker in when you get home. We will all be driving the within ten years. And when the do-gooder governments prevent ICEs from being sold, that's the practical end of them.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Gasoline and diesel are liquids, meaning they can
Be stockpiled in man-portable containers for an emergency which knocks out power
Be hand-pumped and/or distributed directly from a tanker truck if push comes to shove
Sorry guy, not until "electric" cars run on easily storable and portable fuel will they be a viable alternative for "traditional" cars.
Or she reads the news and sees that many countries are mandating all-electric driving fleets in the future, and the there are already cars that are good enough to make this law practical. Giving up on electric cars means giving up on China, India, France, etc.
News written by English majors quoting politicians who went to law school or B-school. Not people who understand the basics of cars.
Last time I looked at a GM product they were STILL, after a couple decades, building them for drivers with a short left leg and passengers with a short right leg. (The wheel well clearance for the front wheels impinged on the space for the front-seat personnel's footwells. On the driver's side they produced a footrest at the same distance as the height of the fully-retracted brake (and, in the manual shift, clutch) pedal(s), with the accelerator pedal being farther forward.)
Of course that was quite a while back - before the Federal Government took them over (and also PAID Fiat to TAKE Chrysler). These days Ford is the only old-school private-enterprise US car maker, thanks to not taking the bailout money and busting their butts to make quality vehicles.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Certainly said one company is. So far among the others it's just the usual talk and auto show showpieces. Funds invested in actually changing their business models lag far behind the huge sums actually required to do so.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
Meanwhile, here's how emergencies actually play out for EV owners.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
Over half of American households have two or more cars. Electric cars are an ideal second vehicle, used exclusively for commuting or running errands. This is a huge market opportunity and completely moots your points. Two car families can always fall back on their ICE car in the short term. In the long term, the problems you cite will likely be resolved by improved battery and charging technology.
I dont own a boat right now. But I am just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire planning to buy a boat and haul it once a year to lake Tahoe from Vermont. If the truck can not make the entire round trip without refueling, it is not worth it. And no one would buy such a truck. Hence I pontificate from the lofty hills that this move is doomed to fail.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Two car families can always fall back on their ICE car in the short term. In the long term, the problems you cite will likely be resolved by improved battery and charging technology.
Pfffft. This is slashdot, whose denizens are far too absorbed in being snarky to ever even contemplate having a "family".
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
You can lease an electric car for $200/month, with very small fuel charges.
Less, even. I'm paying $129/mo for a 3-year lease.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
No amount of band-wagon nonsense is going to change these fundamental facts
No amount of armchair prognostication is going to change the fact that there are lots of people out here in sunny California driving around in electric cars. Somehow, all of these people make it work, despite your dire predictions that it will never work. In fact, it already does.
Why should I listen to anything you have to say, when I can see with my own eyes that you are dead wrong?
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
No amount of band-wagon nonsense is going to change these fundamental facts unless there's a fundamental breakthrough in technology to stockpile and transport electrons. So far, there there has been no such breakthrough.
It reads like you have been living with your eyes shut. Feel free to make a public display and repeat your nonsensical rant in 20 years because I'd love to laugh at you in person. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
But what do you do if you run yours down to 40% one day and then you find out you have to escape from a forest fire or a hurricane? Tell the emergency to wait until your car charges? Or do you not use your EV if you know an emergency is coming just so that it will be ready when you have to evacuate?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Electric cars don't work when the power goes out, ICE powered cars do.
That is until you go to gas up, and there's no power to the pumps.
I recall this was a laughably common problem in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Those that learned from this have installed backup hand crank pumps and generators that run off the same fuel that's in the underground tanks. Those that didn't learn from this will be like the idiots that packed pallets of canned food but forgot a can opener. The people that did learn their lessons will be able to get fuel from the tanks so long as there is fuel in those tanks.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
A small electric car company in my town is expanding again, you've probably never heard of them unless your neighbor owns one because they've pre-sold everything they ever made and factory expansion is the growth limiter. Why advertise?
There are electric cars all around you. Those little Ev markings on the back of cars are not a new rock band or fraternal organization; those are electric cars!
Tesla stock may or may not be correctly priced, but they sell everything they can make, too. In the past GM had a hard time selling electric cars mostly because they refused to sell any.
You don't actually need a new drivetrain, you can connect a modern three phase electric car motor directly to where the transmission used to be.
It is a really weak excuse. Electrics do not need an altered drivetrain, and the reason it is altered is to save money.
You should be able to predict that that would be true just from knowing that hobbyists turn old used internal combustion cars into high performance electric vehicles in their garages.
You can lease an electric car for $200/month, with very small fuel charges. They're not a rich man's toy unless you buy an expensive one...same as with ICE cars.
In college my roommate bought an ICE car for $500. I sold my old car for $500 on trading up, and it likely to sold in the $1000 range once they fixed the gas leak, changed the oil, and scrubbed the cola I spilled from the carpet. $200/month may not be in the realm of a "rich man's toy" but it is still a lot more than a rust box on four wheels that gets people from point A to point B and back in relative safety and comfort. A cheap car in the $1000 range can be saved up for in 5 or 6 months instead of 5 or 6 years of payments of the same amount to lease. A used $10,000 ICE vehicle is still pretty nice, and cheap to run. After 5 or 6 years of $200/month payments the vehicle is owned, not leased, and is free and clear to run for years after with no further payments. Even taking fuel costs into account the ICE is still considerably cheaper.
There may come a day when used BEVs sell for prices in the same range as ICE cars. Until then any arguments on BEVs being even close to "cheap" is lost on me.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Yeah, but my penis gets bigger the more I think about that Camaro.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they'd put any sort of real effort into advertising it.
Perhaps GM doesn't care if the Bolt sold.
I read somewhere that the big automakers are really only selling their electric cars to comply with certain state and federal regulations. They are often sold at a considerable loss on each vehicle. Electric cars are still a very small portion of the market, and are likely to remain so for a long time yet. A quick Google search tells me that 17 million cars are sold in the USA each year. A quick Google search didn't tell me how may electric cars have been sold each year, only that 500,000 electric cars in total are on US roads right now.
If people wanted electric cars then they can buy them. GM will make what people will buy, excepting the regulations imposed on them as I mentioned above. When people start buying electric cars, like the Bolt, then GM will start advertising them. I realize that this is a bit of a chicken and egg problem but GM is still interested in making a profit. If they don't make a profit today then they won't be around to make electric cars next decade.
Is this announcement showing a shift in what people want to buy? Or, is this just more money spent on electric cars to satisfy regulators and tree huggers? (Or rather tree hugging regulators?) There's still the matter of following through on this announcement. They might quietly reverse this next year, next month, or even next week.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You're right, it is owned by Fiat now.
I checked up on Jeep as well. Also owned by Fiat Chrysler. No wonder they're so terrible.
Relative safety? A $500 car is safe compared to what?
Why not biofuels? No nasty radioactive waste to deal with.
They have a buttload of inventory just sitting in California. I can't even come CLOSE to seeing one in person anywhere near Albuquerque. I have to drive all the way to Denver to MAYBE see one in stock. So right now a MAJOR part of their problem is retarded distribution.
Loved your comment "BMW price with a Fisher-Price interior", by the way.
Looked at a BMW i8 at an electric car meet here in ABQ about a month ago. Sales dude was reluctant to even let me sit in it (first mistake), I ask "What is the electric only range?" and he says "Battery only? Oh, uhm, 15 miles"... Seriously? I asked "So why are you here?"
For a car that takes two people to open the hood otherwise the carbon fiber it's made of will split in half, to cost a buttload more than a Tesla Model S that would blow its doors off the line? Puhleeze. Whomever buys an i8 (uncomfortable as Hell, visibility blows) they have too much money and should really give me some :)
I'd personally go for the "Fisher-Price Interior" over those pompous asshat blowhard tards at BMW. Why? Because at 238 miles at least they frigging _tried_ to make an actual electric car and not a overpriced sports car with an extra battery.
Never have a philosophy which supports a lack of courage
You'll have like half a mile of charge on an electric Hummer.
It's safer than a $500 motorcycle. Safer than a $500 bicycle. Safer than trying to walk to work in freezing rain, or waiting for a bus in a crime ridden neighborhood.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
That's Chryslers for you. They're not GM and they're not even real cars. Never driven a Chrysler that didn't feel like complete amateur hour.
Why not biofuels? No nasty radioactive waste to deal with.
Because bio-fuels don't add up.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c...
I think one conclusion is clear: biofuels canâ(TM)t add up â" at least, not in
countries like Britain, and not as a replacement for all transport fuels. Even
leaving aside biofuelsâ(TM) main defects â" that their production competes with
food, and that the additional inputs required for farming and processing
often cancel out most of the delivered energy (figure 6.14) â" biofuels made
from plants, in a European country like Britain, can deliver so little power,
I think they are scarcely worth talking about.
The problems of nuclear waste is not only solvable but largely already solved. Encasing the waste in glass and burying it in the ground is a completely viable solution.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c...
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
So I need to carry a generator and a can of gasoline? Maybe I'll keep the generator in the front trunk of my Tesla and the gasoline in the back. I might even run a pipeline between them and set it up so that the generator turns on when the battery runs down and there's no 480 in sight.
When they have to, eh? Well by that logic, we should make people buy silk pyjamas to prop up the domestic silkworm trade.
Try running your ICE car without power. It won't work. Even as a bicycle. Just ask Max.
WTF?
Practical purchases are covering what you do 90% of the time, while not trying to satisfy the 10% with expensive and burdensome effort.
Only if there are no good and cheap alternatives. Asserting that there aren't doesn't magic them away.
Especially given the secondary harm from burning gasoline.
Like what? And if there is any, how do you arrive at the conclusion that it outweighs the benefits of ICE? It's just your opinion.
Nope. There are far more toys in the ICE market than the EV one. Try a Bugatti or Bentley for example. But on real terms, spending on gasoline is wasting money. Just ask the people who lost 15+ dollars a tank when Houston had problems.
Irrelevant and incorrect. By that logic, food is a rich man's luxury because some caviar is $200/ounce. Further, the money "wasted" on gasoline pays for availability in an emergency and the ability to have extended range with less planning than an electric. The cost of gasoline is the cost of those benefits, which have real value. Otherwise we'd all be clamoring to buy electrics and nothing but. We're not.
None of what you said is true, it is all meaningless gabble from a fool.
You've refuted none of it. You've only asserted that I'm a fool and used that as the reason to dismiss my points without bothering to argue against them.
It is the future. The dinosaurs know the fate of gasoline burning vehicles. They are it. Extinction.
Just like Juicero is The Future(TM) of juice, it takes Courage(TM) to get rid of the 1/8" audio jack on your phone, and something something Disrupt(TM) something something. I really hope you're being paid to troll. I feel sorry for you if you actually believe the naked propaganda you wrote.
What bullshit. The never ending car snobbery on /. is ridiculous. I've driven the Chevy Impala and Chrysler 300 multiple times from rental agencies over the last couple of years. Both cars were excellent. The only problem with the 300 is that the luggage area is tiny for a supposed "large" car. I drove the Toyota Camry several times also and I'd say the Impala was at least equivalent.
Claiming electric cars don't really solve anything while nuclear does is ridiculous. Over a quarter of current emissions come from the transportation sector, second only to electrical generation. Electric cars bridge the gap; sure, if they're fueled primarily by coal they're not an orders of magnitude improvement, but as coal is replaced, they get cleaner without upgrades as their source of power gets cleaner. In the Pacific NW, they're way lower emission (because half the power is hydro), and across the U.S. they've been getting cleaner for years (as coal plants are replaced with natural gas, plus the incremental moves to wind and solar).
Despite your optimism, all commercially viable, scalable forms of biofuels to date have been at best marginal improvements (and often required engine replacements anyway; E85 ethanol destroys engines not designed to handle it); in practice, a gas engine doesn't get cleaner without replacing it, and that's tons of upgrades applied to every car. An electric engine becomes instantly cleaner the moment a coal plant is turned off, and anything else is turned on.
There is nothing terribly wrong with nuclear, but it works best in tandem with electric cars, and electric cars work well with any improvement on electrical generation, not just nuclear.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
"General Motors Plans 20 All-Electric Cars By 2023"
Only 20 cars ?
Telsa plans 500 000 electric cars by 2023
aaaaaaa
Here's a graph that I think is really telling [statista.com]. The size of the market for vehicles with an average selling price of nearly six figures is vastly smaller than that for vehicles with an average sale price in the ~$35-40k range - and the tax credits on the latter far more meaningful to their buyers. Yet both the Model S and Model X still outsell the Bolt and Leaf in the US.
I don't know how to interpret that. What does it tell you?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The big problem is, and until it's resolved, the dealerships. To get a scope of the problem, a new vehicle really only comprises about 20-30% of a dealerships' revenue. The vast majority of a dealership's income is the service department.
As such, they HATE EVs. Because the drive train is so simplified, there is actually very little that needs to be maintained (you have your usual brakes and other things, but those don't really need a lot of servicing).
And a lot of the "no maintenance" parts are prematurely replaced by dealerships just because they can bill you for it - a car may only need an oil change once a year, but you can bet your dealership will have you coming in at least twice a year to do an oil change.
The EV, you don't really have to bring it in even once a year - maybe once every couple of years just to replace common consumables and check on the brakes (which will last a lot longer since they aren't used as much - regenerative braking reduces brake wear significantly). The biggest parts that will go wrong are the electronics, which can be electronically monitored, and being solid state, are extremely reliable.
Tesla sells you a bumper to bumper everything-but-tires service package for $600 a year - cheap compared to ICE vehicle services but even overkill for an EV (especially since the tires aren't included, and they're about the only part that wears out at the same rate).
Electric cars don't work when the power goes out, ICE powered cars do.
Gas cars don't work when the gas goes out.
During a disaster you can make your own electricity but you can't make your own gas.
If you get really stuck you can use gas to make electricity making this complaint of yours probably the single dumbest thing I've ever heard said about electric cars.
Electric cars aren't practical for long trips, or for unplanned medium-length trips, ICE powered cars are.
Electric cars are fine for both, unless your long trip includes travelling so far for so long without break that range becomes a problem. But you won't get to that point because you'll have driven your car into a tree when your brain gives up long before that. If you do this in an ICE car you're an unnecessary risk and should have your licenses suspended.
Electrics cars are a rich man's toy, ICE powered cars are practical vehicles.
Except for the Tesla Model X and Model S nearly every other electric car costs less than the mean US new car sales price. That is before rebates you get in many states.
No amount of band-wagon nonsense is going to change these fundamental facts unless there's a fundamental breakthrough in technology to stockpile and transport electrons. So far, there there has been no such breakthrough. Mary Barra is just another beancounter in a long line of beancounters who has no understanding of the technology her company sells for a living. This too shall blow over.
Let me rearrange what you wrote. In your own words:
"No amount of facts is going to change this technology, [RightwingNutjob] is just another who has no understanding of the technology"
Dammit I hope you were going to use an "I" in that paragraph. Guess square brackets will have to do to emphases just how braindead your comments are. You really are just another RightwingNutjob
commuter cars are really a small part of our total carbon output.
Passenger transport accounts for over 20% of our CO2 output.
Electric vehicles that are charged from coal are not "green".
Electric vehicles are not "charged from coal". Coal is baseload and is running regardless of what is happening in the country. If the USA switches to electric cars it will put more strain on generation requiring the construction of new power plants. These are not powered by coal.
To be clear are you talking the kind of forest fire that you didn't know was coming and could not be escaped by driving over 100 miles? If so, man you're screwed. No ICE car will save you there.
Also to be clear are you talking about outdriving a hurricane? Travelling at 0 km/h in a traffic jam won't help you. Also there's those facts that more people die during an evacuation than the hurricane itself. I mean the USA just got hit with an almost unprescedented storm and had a death toll of what ... 60, after plowing through a city of 2.3 million and cruising through a state with 8% of the population of the entire USA? Shit man I'll take my chances with the storm even if I had an all American Ford F350.
But it's good that you're thinking of disaster scenarios now. It will stop you making stupid decisions when the disasters actually hit.
And here's how it plans out for ICE owners: http://www.chron.com/news/hous...
Oh it gets better too. These guys idled all their gas out of their exhaust only to find they couldn't fill up at any pump. https://www.dallasnews.com/new...
10 billion over 8 years = a pittiance.
I was very obviously talking about Tesla. The only company pumping many billions per year into EVs, and the company with both of the top slots on EV sales despite being priced out of the vast majority of EV consumers' budgets, in a normally tiny market segment, where they're even beating their ICE competition.
False. The US incentive - being a fixed value - is more favourable to low-end EVs, versus countries where incentives are percentage based (such as VAT deductions).
And to reiterate: Tesla has both of the top slots in the US - and is still high ranked in Europe - despite being in a vastly smaller market segment. A market segment 1 1/2 orders of magnitude smaller than that in which its cheaper competitors are competing in. Which is why reservations for the Model 3 are 1 1/2 orders magnitude larger.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
1) Companies generally don't like paying competing companies.
2) It's only incentive to sell just enough to meet compliance specs
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
EV conversions are generally lousy. In an EV, batteries should be down low, making up the floor, not crammed into wherever you could find space by removing the ICE and/or giving up trunk space / seat space / etc. The motor should be inline with the wheels, not in in some old ICE space and connected by an unnecessary linkage. The shape of the front should be dictated by aerodynamics and safety alone, not by the constraints of a nonexistent ICE. Etc, etc, etc.
EVs should be designed, from the start, as EVs. You get a worse car when you make it as a conversion. Worse handling, worse range, worse performance, just worse. When you see a company selling a conversion EV, it should scream at you, "I Do Not Believe EVs Are The Future; Otherwise I Would Be Investing In A Proper EV Platform".
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
I do give GM credit for one thing, they've certainly been putting more of an effort forth than a lot of their competitors, even if not as much as an actual electric car company like Tesla.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
In Florida with Irma, 2/3rds of the entire state's power went out. Let alone in the worst hit areas.
And EVs continued working like a dream there, for the reasons mentioned in the article.
Yeah, good luck with that when you join us in the real world.
Meanwhile, find any home or business with power from any source - somewhere that maintained their grid connection, somewhere with a natural gas generator, somewhere with solar, whatever - and you can charge. Not like you generally need to. Unlike gas, which has terrible efficiency when driving in the sort of low speed / stop-start conditions of disaster aftermath, EV ranges become much longer at low speeds, surpassing gasoline. And can "idle" with the AC on for 1/2 to 1 order of magnitude longer.
The article presents peoples' real-world experience with EVs in real-world disasters. Including one that was the greatest electrical system disaster in US history. You're free to disbelieve it if you want.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
The announcement is simply a means to satisfy potentially stricter EPA rules and for PR. So far most manufacturers build ugly or grossly overpriced EVs to satisfy the emissions rules that are applied across all offered models. Add a bunch of EVs designed not to sell and keep cranking out the gas guzzling trucks and SUVs.
Passenger transport accounts for over 20% of our CO2 output.
Let's do some math, shall we?
Transportation is about 30% of our CO2 output, but only about 1/3rd of that is passenger cars. The rest of that is aircraft, ships at sea, and so forth that cannot run on batteries. Replacing an ICE passenger car with an electric car cuts the CO2 output to 1/4 of what it was, because the electricity we use now comes largely from coal and natural gas. So, by replacing every passenger car with an EV we take maybe 10% of the total CO2 output and turn that into 2%. I am not impressed.
I say that electric vehicles solve only half the problem because replacing passenger vehicles would mean very little improvement. It's not nothing but it's small. Nuclear power, on the other hand, takes the larger slice of the pie (about 30%) that is electrical production and take that to zero. Does it all have to be nuclear? No. Have some wind and hydro in there, quite likely some natural gas too. I don't believe we'll get rid of natural gas any time soon because it's just so cheap, very convenient, very clean (compared to coal at least), easy to store and transport, and perhaps more.
Use nuclear power for industrial processes and we reduce CO2 output further. Nuclear power would be great for fertilizer production, desalination of water, perhaps even providing heat for things like making cement.
Can't we use wind and solar for this? Not totally. Wind and solar are very unreliable, we'd need a back-up for those.
http://www.power-eng.com/artic...
The NBER report quoted one grid manager in Germany as saying that 8 MW of back-up capacity are required for any 10 MW of wind capacity added to the system.
If we use natural gas for this then we run the risk of not reducing our CO2. Running a turbine means getting 30% efficiency in turning that natural gas into electricity. Burning that in a combined cycle plant, a plant that cannot be used to backup wind, gets 60% efficiency. If we see the wind blow half the time and have to run the turbines half the time then we saved nothing in fuel costs and CO2 output. We'd be better off just burning the natural gas in the combined cycle plant.
Fourth generation nuclear power plants may offer the ability to load follow. Using nuclear to backup wind gains nothing because nuclear is as zero carbon as wind. The fuel costs in running nuclear is next to nothing, other operating costs dominate. If for every 10 MW of wind it takes 8 MW of nuclear for backup then wind would have to be an order of magnitude cheaper than nuclear to compete. Similar math applies for solar. This does not apply to natural gas so it can compete with nuclear with near parity prices.
Electric vehicles are not "charged from coal". Coal is baseload and is running regardless of what is happening in the country. If the USA switches to electric cars it will put more strain on generation requiring the construction of new power plants. These are not powered by coal.
Coal still dominates, being roughly 1/3rd of our electricity production. Calling electric vehicles coal powered is not inaccurate. New generation is dominated by natural gas. With wind and solar, as history tells us, would need large investments in inefficient natural gas to remain viable. Future developments in battery or nuclear fission technology may change this but for now we have three choices to make:
- Nuclear power
- Fossil fuels
- The lights going out
I'd like to see people choose nuclear power.
GM is not in the business of solving all of our energy problems, so I cannot lay this all at their feet. With that said I would like to see some recognition by GM and others in the EV business to recognize the need to have nuclear power to take us the rest of the way on reducing CO2 output.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Whilst it is possible to synthesise liquid fuels using nuclear power, the process of generating it in this way, in terms of input energy to final drive power is likely to be under 10% efficient and so is unlikely to be commercially viable.
You are speculating. Also, the efficiency is largely irrelevant, it's the costs that matter for commercial viability. Certainly efficiency of the process is part of the cost computation but that's not the only thing. There are articles and video presentations out on the internet of people from the US Navy talking about their fuel synthesis process. They claim that it can produce fuel at a cost "competitive" with current fuel sources if scaled up to mass production. Does "competitive" mean $6/gallon? Or, $2/gallon? We cannot be sure until we try. If this does work then we could turn every plane, train, and automobile that runs on fossil fuels into zero emission vehicles overnight.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
An electric engine becomes instantly cleaner the moment a coal plant is turned off, and anything else is turned on.
What would that "anything else" be? There's not a whole lot of choices out there. We'd need something reliable, cheap (at a cost comparable to coal), safe, and if we agree that CO2 output is a problem then it needs to have a low CO2 output. There are only two energy sources we have today that meet those requirements, hydro and nuclear. We've already dammed up nearly every river worth a dam. That leaves nuclear. This might change in the future with some future technological development but that's what we have right now.
There is nothing terribly wrong with nuclear, but it works best in tandem with electric cars, and electric cars work well with any improvement on electrical generation, not just nuclear.
Electric cars can solve only a portion of the transportation CO2 problem. Electric vehicles cannot fly any meaningful distance, or sail across oceans, or even do long haul trucking. Synthesized fuel solves the CO2 problem and it does not require new vehicles. To synthesize fuels requires nuclear power, nothing else we have today will do.
With synthetic fuels every car on the road today becomes instantly cleaner. We don't need electric vehicles to do this. That's not saying electric vehicles don't have a place, only that electric vehicles are not required to get a carbon neutral economy.
Here's something I found real quick on the technology, do some more searching on your own to find more.
https://www.nrl.navy.mil/media...
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Wrong. 10 billion per year would not be a pittiance. Over 8 years is nothing. Especially considering that they're most likely considering it backloaded.
Oh, I'm sorry, I was under the impression that this was a conversation about how serious manufacturers are about EVs, not an attempt to convince a given manufacture to take EVs seriously. My bad.
Wrong on both counts. A) R&D != total investment; and B) others don't.
100% of the money Tesla spends (excepting powerwall/powerpack/solar city, which are at present a vanishingly small percentage of their business) is toward EVs. And at present, that's an order of magnitude more than the (backloaded) amount Mercedes is claiming.
Funny, I didn't know that "The US" is now "The World". Did I miss a war?
I'll repeat what I wrote: Tesla has both of the top slots in the US - and is still high ranked in Europe - despite being in a vastly smaller market segment. A market segment 1 1/2 orders of magnitude smaller than that in which its cheaper competitors are competing in. Which is why reservations for the Model 3 are 1 1/2 orders magnitude larger.
1) Model 3 is most definitely Not strongly hyped. Tesla has an active strategy to anti-sell it, because they want to instead convert people to Model S / X sales, which they can get profit on immediately. The Tesla website is packed full of pages trying to convince people to buy an S or X over a 3 - even on the reservation pages for Model 3.
2) Tesla deposits (as with most car deposits) have long strongly tracked with actual sales.
3) Quite to the contrary, Tesla has always fulfilled its promises - with the Roadster, with the S, and with the X. And yes, I don't plan on forgetting the flood of naysayers who - almost exactly as you are doing now - insisted that they're vapourware, will never be delivered, nobody will buy them, Tesla will crash and burn, etc.
Go create a new version of TTAC's "Tesla Deathwatch", why don't you ;)
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
Nissan offers car-to-home battery backup for your house in the event of a power cut. Instead of all your food rotting and you being unable to power up the CB or turn on a light, your car keeps the power on for a few days. That's a few days with the old 24kWh Leaf battery.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is why a lot of manufacturers have just replaced the ICE with an electric motor, rather than do a proper EV drivetrain. Most of those cars suck immensely.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Except that they're not. I'm sorry, but you don't get to just make up facts. In Q2 alone Tesla took in $2,8B, spent all of it, and 404M in debt, and did a $1,8B capital raise. In one quarter. Mercedes promising to spend a backloaded 10B over eight years is a pittiance. Period. It's missing a zero.
Are you blind? Do I need to repeat it again? Will boldface help? "Tesla has both of the top slots in the US - and is still high ranked in Europe -"
If you're going to be this intellectually dishonest, this conversation ends here. Goodbye.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
You focus a lot on the efficiency of natural gas, the fact that EVs are actually coal powered, and then proceed to conclude exactly what I said: Rising EVs will increase power demand which will not be coal powered. While I'd like to see people choose nuclear as well it will be a mixture between gas and green for political reasons which will make a huge dent in our carbon numbers.
Also you're getting different numbers than I am on the contribution of passenger vehicles, so I looked up another source and got different numbers again, so I'm going to drop that argument but would be happy to find a peer reviewed breakdown of CO2 emissions per transportation method.
When is the last time you bought a $500 or $1000 car? People are holding onto cars a lot longer now, so these types of cars are basically junk - or they'd keep it.
The point is, you still can't use the EV the day before you have to leave. Unlike gas, which you could buy a month before if you want.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
GM also loses $7000 a vehicle on the Bolt, I don't blame them for not pushing it (it is quite ugly too) while they try to work out the best way to manufacture battery electric cars.
The problem GM has always had is that battery electric requires that you basically go back to the drawing board and redesign the car from the ground up, there are a ton of systems and things on a gas car that simply aren't needed on an electric car. Tesla went this route, but GM as a traditional manufacturer is handicapped by their supply chain already producing all these things that could be 50% cheaper if they were redesigned around an electric drivetrain with energy recovery. As it is GM is putting gas designed parts into the electric car which dramatically increases the cost, decreases efficiency etc.
Gas cannot be stored for more than about a month, it sucks water out of the atmosphere and will be so saturated with moisture in a month that it will be worthless.
Wow, I don't think I'm going to read the 50 page paper but looks interesting. Biofuels from food crops is stupid. It sounds like he's saying biofuels from cellulose won't work either, though apparently he's talking about the UK and it might work better in the US. Researchers are looking into biofuels and lots of other stuff from algae, which might solve all the shortcomings.
Nuclear waste is solved in theory, but nobody has found an acceptable location for permanent storage, at least not in the US. Maybe if we reprocessed fuel or used thorium reactors the problem would be manageable.
Sure you can. In fact the chances are that when you get into your fancy EV to escape your last minute doom it will have a full charge, whereas your car could be mostly empty and if you didn't plan ahead you'll find yourself either at an empty station or in a queue for a nearly empty station.
The odds are if you're better off with the ICE then you're also a disaster prepper (because if you're talking about buying gas a month before, they you could just out-walk your disaster scenario), in which case why are you running instead of retreating into the underground city you built just for this case?
If you want people to use them then they need to be (as I said before) cheap, safe, reliable, and low CO2.
Wind, cheap (or at least within double the price of coal) but not reliable.
Solar, far from cheap, not reliable.
Tidal, perhaps it is quite reliable, maybe it is safe, also likely low CO2. It is not cheap. Seawater is very abrasive, carrying sand with the water. This sand destroys turbines. There may come a day when we figure out how to make this cheap but that is not today.
Geothermal, unless you happen to live on top of volcanic activity it is not cheap. Making it more plentiful means digging deeper, and that adds to the cost.
Biowaste, there is no such thing. Biowaste does not exist. I grew up on a farm and we wasted nothing. Cornstalks were used as cattle bedding and then spread out on the fields for fertilizer and erosion control. Spoiled corn was sold for non-food (industrial ethanol mostly) uses. Generally anything "bio" that is not food is returned to the soil for fertilizer. Taking that "waste" for fuel and something needs to replace that or we will ruin the soil and we grow nothing.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
As long as my previous post was I failed to complete my thought. If we do not burn natural gas efficiently, in combined cycle plants, then it produces as much CO2 output as coal. Mix unreliable energy like wind and solar with natural gas turbine backup and you end up with as much energy per CO2 as if you burned coal.
Wind and solar do not reduce CO2 output per energy produced because we have no other technology to back that up than natural gas and coal. What else is there? Nuclear. Any other technology, such as some sort of storage, is not mature enough for utility scale use.
Even if we can replace current coal with a mix of natural gas and "unreliables" the net CO2 output is no different than if we burned coal. You can say it's not coal powered, and that might be true technically, but the outcome in CO2 output is no different.
Germany tried to reduce CO2 output without nuclear power and failed.
http://www.environmentalprogre...
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
apparently he's talking about the UK and it might work better in the US.
No, it won't.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Have you ever hugged a tree? It's quite pleasant.
Yes, I have. It's not that great. It also smells like cinnamon.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Okay then, let's assume a $500 to $1000 is somehow unacceptable. There's a lot of $5000 to $10,000 cars out there and they are not junk. Can anyone buy an EV in that price range? One that doesn't need a new battery or some other high dollar repairs?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Over half of American households have two or more cars. Electric cars are an ideal second vehicle, used exclusively for commuting or running errands. This is a huge market opportunity and completely moots your points. Two car families can always fall back on their ICE car in the short term. In the long term, the problems you cite will likely be resolved by improved battery and charging technology.
You realize commuting and running errands comprise the large majority of miles put on a car, right? Most people average about 30 miles a day which is well within the range of any EV. Electric cars are the ideal PRIMARY vehicle.
And for long trips beyond battery range (which are infrequent for most people) from home there's the supercharger network. Not perfectly convenient, but free 'gas' for your road trip isn't the worst thing in the world.
If you're like my friend who drives between RI, PA and NY most weekends then sure, there's some advantages to the range and 'recharge' time of an ICE...however given what she spends on GAS in a month I'd bet she would jump on an EV and superchargers given the option.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
I'll add to that...
Getting fuel during widespread power outages has been proven problematic...or nearly impossible more accurately. Power tends to come back well before the supply chain replenishes itself and fuel is readily available. Hence EVs will be refueling before ICE cars.(why more people don't get a simple diesel generator and use their heating oil to run it is beyond me)
An EV like the Model S can handily sleep two people in climate controlled comfort (google tesla camping) for a bit under 10% of the battery per night. Not so bad if it's hot/cold out and your house has been wrecked/flooded/etc. and your other option is sleeping on a gym floor in a shelter for a week.
An EV drive train is far more durable if SHTF and facilities aren't available for an extended period.
Oh, and you can generally use the EV battery in reverse to power your critical appliances, etc. A 100kwh battery will easily meet your power needs for a week or more under emergency conditions.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
I'm not sure why you are being so snarky. It's not like it is unheard of for people to have to flea certain situations at last minute. Recently we had a forest file up here in canada and there are pictures of people fleeing in their vehicles with the fire raging behind them on the highway. These people wouldn't have had an EV charging station available to them on this highway, but they did have gas stations. People were caught unaware by gas shortages and there was an hour wait for fuel which was limited to a $20 fill. You have to appreciate how the matter would be worse with EVs. Presume a person only had an EV to use and they had to rush around town to make preperations, and were only able to charge to 50% before having to leave. If everyone had EVs then the same number of people waiting for an hour of fuel and doing a 10 minute fill up each would be made how much worse having to do a 30 minute charge each? Compounded by the fact that the next EV station would be further away than the next gas station with fuel, and also by the fact that there is NO getting an EV filling truck to vehicles that have run out as it would be possible with ICE vehicles.
I think as more people get EVs this will become a larger concern and you are totally downplaying how serious it could be.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I'm not sure why you are being so snarky.
I'm only snarky where people come up with ridiculous doomsday scenarios involving activities that don't affect the majority of a population with scenarios that never actually play out in real life (really we're not talking fleeing last minute, you can do that in your EV, you specifically added criteria to it like having a flat battery and storing your own gas months in advance), as justification for something.
Your justification was poor.
These people wouldn't have had an EV charging station available to them on this highway
Tell me again why they would need to flee more than 300 miles in a forest fire? EVs don't need highway charging stations. They are most likely to be charged when you leave the house. Your justification is STILL poor.
Presume a person only had an EV to use and they had to rush around town to make preperations, and were only able to charge to 50% before having to leave.
So now we're rushing around town making preparations? I thought this was a last minute emergency, make up your mind.
Compounded by the fact that the next EV station would be further away than the next gas station with fuel
Citation needed. Most of Texas was out of fuel but not out of power while the hurricane swept through.
I think as more people get EVs this will become a larger concern and you are totally downplaying how serious it could be.
If more people get EVs it does become a concern. You know what happens when there's a general concern about something, the market corrects. Europe has already got a charging station that can fully recharge an EV in under 15min, and is planning a wide spread international rollout of it. Tesla also has them in the works. You can fill up at a petrol station? Congratulations, While you're running around town burning gas and then leaving your car at the shopping centre, mine is being recharged, at the shopping centre. On the street side, hell my local squash centre has EV charging point, and so does my work (I work at an oil refinery, let that sink in for a moment).
Your dooms day scenario won't play out. Or rather it plays out daily and would be improved by not having people do runs on gas stations which utterly fail to handle non-normal demands during disaster scenarios. And if you're really interested in disaster prepping, buy a generator, or better still just join the millions of other people in their local shelters who managed just fine rather than attempting to outrun the disaster (where you can burn your entire gas sitting stuck in traffic).
If more people get EVs it does become a concern.
Thanks, that's all that matters.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.