As the article says, both companies produced these as regulatory compliance vehicles. Now they're shifted that effort over to electric because the incentives are better for them.
The only companies trying to make hybrids for real are Toyota and Honda. Everyone else is just pumping out low effort compliance vehicles. It is hardly surprising that these vehicles haven't been hugely successful.
I'd love to buy an electric vehicle. Unfortunately prices remain impractical ($30K+ for a sedan) and the federal tax incentive is both expiring and regressive (the richer you are the more you'll get back up to $7.2K, after the new standard deduction ($25K) I'd need to earn near $90K with two dependants to get the full amount).
They're great for those living in California or similar. Our state offers no incentives and actually stabbed people who installed solar in the back (decreased the buy-back amount to almost nothing).
Where are you located? The Chevy Bolt is being offered with pretty good incentives. Between those prices, gas savings, etc. Getting a Bolt might make sense.
It used to be much higher tax credit, if you purchased an EV a while back in CA you got around $10k total (federal + state) tax credits which was VERY significant (it explains why you can find very cheap second hand EVs, the 10k credit is already accounted for in the second hand pricing).
It's the general high price of new EVs that kept me away from buying one when I was in the market last year, I'm also the type that likes to pay for their car in cash. But second hand EVs are definitely a very intriguing choice for a second/commute-only car. You can get $7k electric Smart for very low mileage (under 10k).
A bolt vs a 3-series is probably the same situation as the detailed comparisons we've seen from limo operators comparing the Tesla Model S vs MB S-class, BMW 7-series, Lincoln Town car, etc.. In those comparisons the Tesla proved to be 1/5-1/4 the maintenance cost per 100,000 miles.
Nobody buys a BMW in the US for good value when you factor in maintenance costs & overall TCO. The only reason you buy one is cause you like the driving dynamics. That's a perfectly fine reason IMO.
It doesn't seem there are any limo operators who are going to operate a Bolt and rapidly drive it to 400k-500k miles to find out just how reliable it is. But I really suspect a Chevy could be less of a hassle to maintain than a Tesla.. since GM is a much more established manufacturer and has a long built out dealer/service network it's hard for me to believe it could be worse than Tesla.
Not sure what your mileage needs are, but I recently picked up an off lease 2016 eGolf with 33k miles for $12,500 from the VW dealer as my commuter. Gets about 80 miles to a charge in town/city driving, more than enough for my daily commute. Wife drives the long range ICE family vehicle. Some day I hope to be able to affordably replace that as well!
Unfortunately they don't/didn't ever sell the e-Golf here. Looking at used car sites the nearest ones are in California (about a two day drive). Still might be worth the drive at those prices (although charging it to get it home might require some pre-planning).
Shipping it would be somewhere between $500 and $1500 depending on your distance. Alternatively, you can rent a one-way U-Haul (or similar) with car towing and tow it :). The fuel alone though at say 15 mpg while towing is probably about $250 though.
Yeah, the challenge for me is that they don’t sell them locally and my state doesn’t do an incentive. Would have been hard to beat $12,500 without a bunch of hassle although I’ve read that there are ridiculous deals happening if you qualify for all of the incentives available.
> both companies produced these as regulatory compliance vehicles.
At one point I was completely fascinated with the Fiat 500e. Here was an electric car that was stylish, quirky, and could be had on the used market at a great price. But as I got further into it I realized that FCA hated producing this car. Its only reason to exist is to allow them to produce more pollutant vehicles as a regulatory balance. And if it did have a future there would be the barest minimum invested into it. So I'm back to looking at Teslas, even though I haven't liked the styling since the Lotus designed Roadster.
One of these passed me on the highway the other day. I've only seen a handful of Lotus in my life and never a Tesla Roadster.. it really is a beautiful little car. Pretty small (and impractical for cargo/passengers I'd imagine) though.
They also innovated, one example was the side skirts used on their black and gold JPS F1 car in the late 70's or 80's. The side skirts gave greater down force when going around corners, its also a discreet way to improve handling on todays road cars as the FIA regs no longer permit the side skirts.
BBC TopGear covered this in their last episode.
>FCA is paying Tesla billions of dollars in ZEV credits
That's an interesting interpretation. FCA is buying ZEV credits in the market, of which Tesla has a large supply. Would you describe Facebook buying servers as "Facebook paying Intel billions so they can keep selling advertisements online"?
>Please buy that Tesla
Every time Tesla comes up and there's negativity, there are accusations of "paid short-sellers", which I am not. What about your disclosure? You own a Tesla, are you a shareholder? Do you have a financial interest in people buying the cars? Is it fair to be constantly flooding these forums with Tesla rumours, often from vapid fan sites, when you stand to benefit?
Why is acceptable from one side, and not the other?
Sure, happy to oblige. I usually add the disclaimer to my posts, but forgot to add it here. Added to my HN profile as well. Thanks for keeping me honest! If you refer to my comment history, I don't believe I've ever mentioned "paid short sellers".
Disclaimer: TSLA investor, Model S/X owner. If I ask you to buy a Tesla, it is not to help my stock, but to help move the world to electric transportation faster. If you find a better EV product, I encourage you to buy it regardless of manufacturer. I will hold my Tesla stock all the way to zero, and climate change keeps me up at night (seriously, it's terrifying; Rome is burning and the band plays on). Any sources I cite regarding Tesla have been and will continue to be from reputable online publications.
>Any sources I cite regarding Tesla have been and will continue to be from reputable online publications.
If you consider Teslarati, Eletrek and Cleantechnica "reputable", not sure what to tell you.
That said, I appreciate the disclosure. You may have not whined about "short-sellers", but I've got it often here. It's ridiculous, and says more about the person making the accusation than anything. Even sama and pg got on-board on Twitter. We can disagree about the prospects of Tesla without resorting to conspiracy theories.
Either FCA is paying Tesla billions of dollars for ZEV credits or they aren’t. It’s a demonstrable fact, not an interpretation. Actually I didn’t realize it was that much, but here’s a source. [1]
They need these ZEV credits in order to sell their ICE fleet. This is also indisputable.
And absolutely, yes, Facebook pays Intel billions of dollars to power the servers they use to serve ads on the internet. Now hopefully more AMD though.
> That's an interesting interpretation. FCA is buying ZEV credits in the market, of which Tesla has a large supply. Would you describe Facebook buying servers as "Facebook paying Intel billions so they can keep selling advertisements online"?
That's a specious comparison. ZEV credits are a punitive measure designed to make automakers want to convert their fleet to electric where the market itself can't force it. Facebook buying components for their datacenter from said manufacturers of components has nothing to do with it. A more apt comparison would be Facebook being forced to pay doubleclick for each ad served on facebook.
As an environmentalist this vehicle goes against my ethics. It exists to allow them to sell more pollutant vehicles in California. It's all sizzle and no steak. There are better EVs out there. Most car manufacturers will take customer feedback to incorporate into newer models. FCA is having none of that with the 500e. They aren't interested in customer feedback just government CAFE regs.
The 500e is an underwhelming compliance vehicle but they seem to have already changed their mind considering that next year the Fiat 500 won't even be available as a gas model, it'll be electric only.
You should probably be angry at the CAFE regs too. It's what (supposedly) had prevented all the manufacturers from selling a small pickup, which is why Ford stopped selling the Ranger. They basically switched to making the F150, then making it larger (actually, I have suspected without proof that what they did was move models downline - sometime post 1990s, the F150 became really larger - the size of that era's F250, and the F250 became the size of the F350 - Ford's re-introduction of the Ranger? About the size of the 1990s F150...again, I have no proof of this).
Lots of people want a small pickup like the Ranger (Toyota also followed along - compare sizes of the Tacoma of the 90s vs today - I suspect they all changed in size), but they can't buy one. It has something to do with CAFE rules, plus some weird calculation of area - so the larger the vehicles footprint, the more it'll pass or offset or something; I'm not sure how it works.
But something changed in the 1990s - and now we have this.
Yeah I remember something vague about CAFE and EPA rules from that era. It created a lot of perverse incentives do to poor planning. Like Hummer H2s were classified as work utility trucks and didn't have to adhere to the tight emissions rules of smaller vehicles. So you had soccer moms and realtors slap a magnetic sign on the back and, TADA!, commercial vehicle. And your "work truck" with heated leather seats was now eligible for all kinds of tax deductions.
Because, in dev speak, the parts of the code base that get the most love are the ones the devs enjoy working with. The car that was produced begrudgingly as a means to get back to the cars the engineers wanted to make doesn't exactly inspire confidence that parts will be available and cheap, mechanics will be able to service it in a decade, people will make 3rd party parts, etc..
In cars there is a lot of hidden value in buying popular models.
Things made as a result of cynical box-ticking are never good. It's better to fill your life with things designed by people trying to make something great. Even if they didn't fully succeed, you can appreciate the effort. Whereas something made grudgingly will depress you with every detail.
> What counts as a trick? Roughly, it's something done with contempt for the audience. For example, the guys designing Ferraris in the 1950s were probably designing cars that they themselves admired. Whereas I suspect over at General Motors the marketing people are telling the designers, "Most people who buy SUVs do it to seem manly, not to drive off-road. So don't worry about the suspension; just make that sucker as big and tough-looking as you can." -- http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html
> Things made as a result of cynical box-ticking are never good.
The original versions of the Fiat 500 itself, the Morris Mini, the Beetle, and the 2CV would disagree. Ok, you might have a point on the 2CV, but it's owners loved it.
> "At one point I was completely fascinated with the Fiat 500e ... I realized that FCA hated producing this car."
There is an all-new electric Fiat 500, based on a new electric-only platform, in development for a 2020 release. This will be built in much higher volumes than the old 500e, on a dedicated production line in Italy.
Sergio Marchionne, FCA's CEO until he passed away a few months ago, used to say that the company would lose approx. $6,000 for every Fiat 500e sold, but that they had to sell some of these anyway.
The 500e I had, I think 2014 version, had a serious reliability issue. Its electric system failed me multiple times. One time the car just suddenly stalled in the middle of the San Mateo bridge. I love the look of the car, but maybe the fact that they don't want to make it (but have to) leads to them putting less resource on QA?
Volkswagen has had a similar attitude to its electric range. They are forever unavailable for this or that reason, and dealers just ignore them. Considering their typical timescales, even if this cut of hybrids actually results in better work in fully-electric, we won’t get to see it before 2020/2021 anyway.
While I mostly agree with your statements, I think you could argue that Ford is up there with Honda, if not ahead of them in supporting (if not pushing) hybrids. The Fusion hybrid outsells the Accord hybrid (at least in the U.S.) by a wide margin, and not far behind the Prius.
Honestly you're right. While they've been selling more and more Fusion hybrids every year, they have largely shifted plans away from the sedan. My bad - not sure where they're going next. They might get behind hybrids, but the past performance is not indicative of the future!
Used Nissan Leafs are unusually cheap. Generally around $12-14K from Carmax. Yes the battery is already a bit worn out, but the price cut is very worth it.
There are good reasons why those early Leafs are so cheap. Namely battery packs that lose effectiveness very quickly due to lack of cooling. Stay away.
The federal tax incentive is a refundable tax credit. So it doesn't interact with deductions.
It's regressive in the sense that you need to be buying a new car to get it. But it passes to used car owners in the form of a lower residual value for the car. A one year old plug-in hybrid lease-return can be a great deal.
It is a credit, but it is not refundable and cannot be carried over into future years. However, it has led to some pretty good lease deals for people that can’t get the full credit themselves, since for leases the credit goes to the company providing the lease. Also good points about the value of the credit being effectively passed on for used car sales.
What about the Korean makes? I have the impression that Kia/Hyundai are giving things a reasonable go, but are maybe just a little late to it. Is this wrong? (A friend has a Niro and I've been impressed with it for the price.)
You're missing the point: There's basically a point sometime in the 2020s when an electric vehicle becomes cheaper than a gas car. We just don't know that date yet.
The biggest cost of an electric car is the battery; and the cost of batteries is dropping very fast. Everything else is significantly cheaper in an electric vehicle except for the cost of the battery.
(Tesla used to say there's a "Moore's Law" of battery capacity, which is that every 7 years the capacity doubles for the same cost.)
Everyone (in the auto industry) knows this, it's just a matter of deciding how to plan for this. Either you can make a lot of hybrids for a decade; or you can sell EVs side-by-side with conventional cars.
>> sometime in the 2020s when an electric vehicle becomes cheaper than a gas car.
Maybe, but the limitations of electric vehicles still mean it is an apple and oranges comparison. Electric cars are still a long way off in terms of range, towing capacity, utility and winter performance. They might seem great in California, especially as a second car, but they are still a long long way off from replicating how many non-rich people use their vehicles.
We don't all live in SF. Personally, I'd need a stable 1000km/day range capacity, in winter/-30, in mountains, pulling several hundred pounds of people/stuff, before I'd even consider electric for my one and only car. Price is beside the point. I'm starting to think that zero net emission tech (diesel from air etc) might catch up before all-electric becomes the widespread standard.
I'd say the breakeven point for electric vehicles has already come. Electric cars have yet to hit this breakeven point, but waves of people have modeswitched to eBikes and electric scooters to get out of snarled traffic, shorten their commutes and lower their cost of transport
what? Electric vehicles are vastly superior in towing capacity. The Model X from tesla can TOW a boeing jet -- 230,000 pounds. Now that has some tradeoffs for range, i believe. but in terms of actual towing capacity, it's leaps and bounds ahead of any other vehicle capable of towing. if you'd said 'towing range', i might be willing to accept that.
range itself is also just not really a concern any more. 300+ miles of range on a single charge is more than enough for the vast majority of drivers.
winter performance is possibly somethign to worry about, but when you can charge overnight at your home, you can still leave every morning with a 'full tank', so it's also just not really a concern any more.
Towing capacity isn't same as being able to pull heavy things. Pulling has to be matched with the corresponding braking power, which with regenerative braking means a massively over-spec regenerative system. Or you give up on regenerative braking and just install bigger disks, hammering range. That tesla can move an airbus along a runway (so can any honda civic btw) but try moving that aircraft down a hill at speed ... heading towards a sharp turn ... beside a cliff .. over a river... and maybe there is some ice.
The towing capacity of a Model X is around 5k pounds. It's illegal to tow more the door sticker says on public roads in the US. For comparison, depending on what kind of Ford F-150 you get, you can tow from 5k to 8k pounds. According to some [1], you're also looking at a 45-60% decrease in range if you tow something like a camper.
You must be living under a rock. A Long Range Tesla Model 3 can easily do 1000km/day range using a supercharger and can now charge 75 miles in 5 minutes or up to 1,000 miles per hour (https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-v3-supercharging).
EVs are being widely adopted in Europe, with Norway (harsh winters) taking the lead. I don't get the whole "EVs are only suitable in California" narrative.
I live near Boise Idaho (also harsh winters) and I see 2-4 Teslas in my commute and I only drive to the office 3 times a week.
Around June of last year, we bought a used Model S and eventually replaced my wife's SUV with a used Model X. So far, we do not foresee going back to ICE cars. I haven't been into a gas station in forever.
They can do that today. I;m driving a car from 2010. How are the 10+yo teslas doing? And when I say 1000km/day I mean 1000km in perhaps eight hours of driving, not eight hours of driving plus another eight hours of battery logistics.
>> and I only drive to the office 3 times a week.
So you have a part-time job in an office? That's part of the California narrative. You aren't a forestry worker. You aren't a local equipment rep. You aren't a tradesperson. You are someone with a relatively short and stable commute to a fixed location around which you can plan the battery recharge cycles. That is a luxury many people cannot afford.
>> and I see 2-4 Teslas in my commute ...
So they are still the freak/edge cases then. I saw at least a few hundred vehicles on the highway over the weekend (BC, Canada, proper mountains, sometimes 200+km between gas stations) not one seemed electric, certainly none were teslas. Lots of teslas in Vancouver, but I don't live in Vancouver.
At some point in history, there was only one gas station in the world. It takes time to build infrastructure. People like you seem to miss that. My Tesla can go 300 miles and charge most of that in about 15 minutes. Plug it in, walk into the gas station to take a piss and buy a snack and walk out. Done. I did that a month ago when I drove to vegas. It's not perfect, but it's incredible.
There's a second thing that most people with gas cars don't realize. EVs do REALLY well in traffic. The slower the better. Gas cars continue to burn fuel while idling. When I'm in traffic, my 300 mile tesla goes to 500+ mile range because moving an EV at 5-10mph is optimal conditions.
Unnecessarily rude, and clearly untrue considering the poster displayed an excellent understanding of the logistics of the situation. I don't think he or anyone else is opposed to the infrastructure catching up, but he's alive and working today and needs solutions that work right now.
Yeah, it was a bit rude. Thanks for calling me out. It's just annoying to hear the same complaints over and over when things are improving so much. 10 years ago what we have now was futuristic and a joke.
I have a friend who is a real estate agent that drive up to 350 miles (563km) a day. He has zero issues. He does not have to "plan" to recharge since the car's nav system does it for him.
>> I mean 1000km in perhaps eight hours of driving, not eight hours of driving plus another eight hours of battery logistics.
You are grossly underestimating the current state EV charging (you seem to be just a tad ignorant on the subject). A typical charging session on a Tesla supercharger is only 10-20 minutes.
>> I saw at least a few hundred vehicles on the highway over the weekend (BC, Canada, proper mountains, sometimes 200+km between gas stations) not one seemed electric, certainly none were teslas
I can't tell if your being serious or not. ICE cars have like a 100+ year head-start, not to mention the infrastructure. Of course that would be the case, but not for long...
I'm ignorant? Do you know how many supercharging stations there are in my area?
Google "Tesla Chargers BC". The closest one to me now is literally hundreds of kilometers away. There are places near me, places that I sometimes work, that are literally a thousand kilometers from a tesla supercharger. Please do not assume that everyone lives in teslaland.
Indeed, just came back from a two-week vacation in Northern Germany, had to drive there from the South.
Didn't drive EV, but still couldn't help but notice that at every rest stop we made at a bigger Autobahnrasttätte there was either a Tesla supercharger station or some other brand EV charger. Could probably have made the same 600 km trip with an EV.
Tesla's have also become quite a common sight on German autobahnen, don't really notice the other brand EV's because I'm not much of a car guy.
I drove 1000km in my Tesla in one day last week in Europe.
It took approximately 12 hours in total with approx 1.5-2 hours of charging time.
"8 hours of battery logistics" is something you've just made up.
It's more like you're in range of a rapid charger and it's a non issue, or you're not in which case you cannot do more than a full charge in a day (a European 230V outlet takes more than a day for a full charge, American 110V is slower).
Granted it won't do that in winter in the mountains whilst pulling several hundreds pounds worth of stuff. That's something that, like, 0.5% of car owners actually do. The emissions from that sort of activity are probably less important than stuff like tractors.
Good for you. They work well where there are chargers to be had, but the three EV trips I've taken over a few 100km all resulted in silly side trips to find charging stations, which were often closed or the wrong type for the vehicle we had. Those side trips meant more time charging and less time getting to where we wanted to go. Net result = 50% of the drive time was wasted as we dealt with finding charge. It was a laughable situation while on vacation, but totally unacceptable when work is on the line.
And not everyone can afford a tesla. They are still luxury vehicles.
The breakeven for electric vehicles has already come, but not in the form of a multi-ton car.
When I bike around Seattle, there are a plethora of Radpower eBikes with various modifications, either for towing, or hauling kids. Cost, traffic and the convienence of parking has driven this modeswitch, as you can park near anywhere and rarely have blocking traffic like in traditional cars.
Electric Scooters are also extending the range people are willing to walk, making short trips much more convenient, and leveraging distant transit much easier.
>You're missing the point: There's basically a point sometime in the 2020s when an electric vehicle becomes cheaper than a gas car. We just don't know that date yet.
I think a case could be made for us already being at that point, if the total lifetime cost of car ownership is factored in. ICE vehicles are obscenely mechanically complex. That complexity inevitably leads to lots of repair bills over an ICE vehicle's lifetime.
Contrast that with the average electric car, which doesn't even have a multispeed transmission, just a single-speed step-down. About the most complex mechanical systems in an electric are differentials and shocks. I'm sure someone will pitch in here with a horror story about a high repair bill on an electric, but I'd suggest that's because economies of scale on electrics' parts haven't ramped up yet, and there isn't a large corps of electric-experienced mechanics.
Most of the longer term maintenance costs of Model S's seem to be down to luxury components that aren't necessary (like air suspension, funky door handles, big touchscreen).
> if the total lifetime cost of car ownership is factored in
EVs lose out here because of battery degradation. You can quite happily buy a 10 year old ICE car and get good reliability at a good price. Trying to do the same with an EV just gets you a car with a worn out battery and low range.
The batteries for EVs need to get cheaper and more durable for the second-hand EV car market to be competitive with the second-hand ICE car market.
>> EVs lose out here because of battery degradation. You can quite happily buy a 10 year old ICE car and get good reliability at a good price. Trying to do the same with an EV just gets you a car with a worn out battery and low range.
Can you back this up with actual data? Because this is simply not true:
TESLOOP’S TESLA MODEL S SURPASSES 400,000 MILES (643,737 KM)
"Battery degradation over the course of the first 194,000 miles was ~6% with multiple supercharges a day to 95-100%, instead of the recommended 90-95%. Between 194,000 and 324,000 miles Tesloop experienced battery degradation of ~22% (see below for details)."
What's important to note is that the vehicle was mainly charged using dc fast chargers (often multiple times a day). Had this not been the case, degradation would have been even lower.
The time factor has already been solved by the battery management system (BMS) as it keeps the pack at an ideal temperature to vastly prolong the life. Battery chemistry will not change much over time as long as it does not get too hot/cold.
In addition, current data indicates that for the first 50,000 miles (100,000 km), most Tesla battery packs will lose about 5% of their capacity, but after the 50,000-mile mark, the capacity levels off and it looks like it could be difficult to make a pack degrade by another 5%.
>EVs lose out here because of battery degradation.
You're absolutely correct. That's why every Tesla with over 100,00 miles on it has been sent to the junkyard because it no longer takes a charge.
Oh, and one consequence of rapidly falling battery prices is that if at some point your battery capacity eventually does get too low, you can buy a replacement at a small fraction of what the original cost.
> you can buy a replacement at a small fraction of what the original cost.
For how much? If your future cheap battery costs $100 per kilowatt hour at the pack level, you're spending $8,000 for an 80 kilowatt hour battery. That's a large small fraction.
Ten years from now it will probably be more like 25$ per kilowatt hour. And don't forget that any capacity the old pack has means it can be sold for grid storage. But even if it is higher, you still will have saved a lot more in total operating cost.
An that is the basic point the OP was making. EV's are already a better deal, it's just that they are new and so most people don't realize it.
And one more point. Once the swing to EV's starts to happen in a few years, then the resale value of ICE's is going to plummet, and you would lose a lot more that way if you bought one than you would pay for a replacement battery.
>You've fallen victim to wishful thinking. Show me even one projection at that price point.
Battery prices have been falling rapidly. They went down 35% in the last year alone. This is partly due to improved technology and partly to increasing economies of scale. Those two trends are predicted to continue.
>Which makes it a buyer's market which is even more reason to buy a secondhand ICE vehicle over a secondhand EV.
The problem is that if ICE resale prices drop, then the effective price of buying an ICE new goes up, which steer people toward buying an EV instead. EV prices are predicted to reach sticker price parity with ICE's around 2024. And their total lifetime ownership costs are already lower. When that happens then ICE sales are going to drop rapidly and be replaced by ICE's.
Remember, the original article is about GM and VW giving up on hybrids and switching to battery EV's. They are doing this because they are aware of what is going to happen and realize they will go bankrupt if they don't switch as fast as possible (and they make their money selling new cars, so people buying used ICE's is not going to save them).
I have just noticed that the Volvo V60 twin-engine (hybrid) is not listed on their US nor UK sub-websites - I wonder why...? (it is listed e.g. on their Swiss and German sub-sites)
Volvo's selection of engines in the UK has always been lacking. Tbf it could be due to an actual technical issue with adopting the drivetrain to right-hand-drive car, but in general I see that many manufacturers just pick a few engines that they think the British customer will like and that's all you can get, while people in France or Germany get the full choice of all drivetrains. UK vs US is even more funny because it's extremely common to see cars which are only available with a diesel in the UK, but only available with a big petrol engine in the US. Again, it's based on what the customer supposedly wants.
Buy a BMW i3 used; they go for sub-20k. I live in Colorado and it’s fine all year round. If you need to drive more than 120 miles in a day then yes this is still impractical, otherwise it’s the best bargain in EV land and a fun car to jet around town in.
The range extender version is also quite neat for a fairly small increase in purchase price. We rarely use it but we fairly often cut it close with battery capacity and it's nice to have the backup.
I really wanted to love the i3, but the bicycle tires looked liked they'd be fundamentally unsafe on the ice or on any unmaintained (pothole-filled) road.
The narrow tyres of the i3 sure look funny, but I wouldn't expect it to be an issue on ice. It's pretty common knowledge around here to have narrower winter tyres than summer tyres so you don't just glide over snow, so I guess the i3 has just the right profile... for winter.
A bit late but hopefully helpful. I find it to be very unstable on snow/ice, and I grew up in Michigan driving in much worse than Colorado typically gets. The caveat is that you buy real winter tiles (x-ice, Blizzak,etc) and it's pretty rock solid.
I agree the bicycle tires are terrible looking. I actually just bought a 2017 today for 22k and the salesmen mentioned one of the mechanics has an i3 and has tricked his out, including bigger rims/tires. I'm going to reach out and do the same now that I own one (had been leasing a 2017).
> Later, [GM] found some success with the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid that runs on electric power but also has a backup gas engine. The car was too expensive, though...
As a happy Volt owner (I've yet to met one who didn't love theirs), I can't help but wonder if "expensive" is code for "lost service revenue because the thing is too dang low maintenance and reliable". ;)
Are you a product manager, a marketer, an accountant, an engineer, or what? I've often been surprised to find out how the sausage is made in most businesses where I quickly learned making the best product is rarely a goal (and sometimes this is actually the right decision since you should focus on "good enough" for most applications) and that planned obsolescence is a real thing. In the case of autos, many of the dealerships in the US make most of their money on maintenance. And the dealerships have a lot of influence on what cars sell and what should be sold by their respective motherships.
All I can say, as a person who has been interested in electric cars for some time, when I went to my local GM dealer I was surprised at how much lies he used to try and discourage me from buying a Bolt.
Worse, when he started saying there were no local charger available he refuse to do a web search to prove his point since the last time I looked there were plenty available locally.
I just walked out, on the other hand I could have bought the car CASH if he had not lied.
Luckily this is very easy to circumvent. Just agree to whatever financing terms they offer, negotiate on the sale price, then pay off the car ASAP. You'll likely save several thousand dollars (depends on the car and new vs used) and, at most, pay a couple hundred dollars in interest. It usually ends up being less than a hundred but obviously each contract is different.
There are specifications. We don't buy overkill material.
At worst, we stop tracking issues of they are too old, like after 5 years of use.
Edit, due to HN limits. The person below me doesn't understand engineering and how specs work. You make your product at specific costs and quality. Not everything can be made out of titanium.
I'm guessing you're an engineer (please correct me if I'm wrong). And what you're effectively saying is cars aren't designed to last longer than their warranties, and in fact you don't even have data on what happens afterwards. It sounds like you're passively participating in obsolescence, even if it's not intentional. Apart from that, the people actually selling the cars absolutely have a financial incentive for the cars to fail as soon as the warranties are up, which is conveniently when you stop looking at the data.
Literally every engineering project has to balance cost vs quality.
Typically, “planned obsolescence” refers to an intentional defect that is artificially added in order to prematurely cause a failure.
However, that doesn’t mean every failure is a result of planned obsolescence — defects can also can be expected under the normal course of a product’s lifetime.
Premium product lifetimes are a result of premium materials and construction, which cost a premium price. Choosing the correct materials to balance the expected lifetime along with other performance and price characteristics is good engineering practice, not malice.
The Volt was also conceived in the late 2000s when gas prices were high. It was partially a hedge against skyrocketing gas prices. Between the first major oil price crisis in the '70s and today, people reliably buy bigger, more polluting cars when oil is cheap and smaller, less polluting cars when oil is expensive.
Fracking may have semi-permanently put a cap on the cost of oil, which is horrific from a global warming standpoint but does seem to have altered what cars most people purchase.
The Volt also had the wrong body style based on changing consumer preferences. If GM had put the Voltec drive train in a compact SUV it probably would have sold better.
I firmly believe this was done on purpose. They knew what they were doing by making it look like a tonka toy. EVs were just a write-off attempt by GM that didn't get the gov backing they wanted, so they made sure production remained low by making the cars hideous.
That seems unlikely considering how much engineering effort GM put into the Volt. It wasn't just a compliance car, at least not at first. If they expected it to fail they would have minimized that investment and half-assed it.
When GM started Volt development in about 2006, sedans were still popular and the Toyota Prius was selling relatively well. So I think GM just failed to anticipate the market shift.
It actually wasn't just a compliance car, but they knew up front that it would fail.
About 20 years ago, the classic The Innovator's Dilemma came out. Included was a chapter based on a report the author had done for the auto industry back in the 1990s. On existing technology curves he found that mass market electric cars for the American model should become commercially viable around 2020, and in the next several years after that would become dominant. Until then it was a bad business to be in, and after that success was imperative for any car manufacturer that wants to remain in business.
The same author in that book and its follow-up The Innovator's Solution said that conventional car manufacturers would come up with hybrid cars first, but that route would lose to fully electric. Exactly how sailing ship companies came up with hybrid steam/sailing ships (go under steam for short trips, and you have sails if you run out of coal on a long trip), but all manufacturers who invested in that lost.
GM's actions show that they understood a lot of the message of those books. They worked on hybrid cars once that was commercially feasible, and put in the effort to figure out how to make good electric cars. They did this knowing that the technology wasn't yet commercially viable. They have declared that their future is electric only, and are explicitly avoiding committing to the tempting hybrid mistake.
That said, it remains to be seen whether they are committing another mistake pointed out in The Innovator's Solution. Which is that they are trying to make the switch without doing it as a spinoff, without separating the companies, and trying to leverage existing dealer networks. Which opens them to the problem that dealers have come to expect maintenance costs as a big part of their profit model, and therefore will try to steer customers away from electric, or will try to charge extra to stay in business. If GM can't resolve this conflict, they will fail.
Isn't that also a bit tautological given how fixed costs are divided over units produced? If they produced and sold more they would be cheaper. Of course that assumes they would sell well if they put more effort into doing so.
>Of course that assumes they would sell well if they put more effort into doing so...
And there's the rub. People say they want these things, but when it comes time to open the pocketbook, their calculations change. Worst thing is that the people who can afford this stuff will instead drop more money on an ICE SUV.
That works if they're losing money due to not selling enough volume to recoup the startup costs. However if they're actually selling them for less money than they cost to make, every unit sold is just adding to the loss.
If it costs $1,000,000 to design a car and I sell that car for $30,000 and I sell 33 cars, I've lost $10k. But just selling one more car will turn a profit.
On the other hand if that car costs $32,000 to make and I'm selling it for $30,000... GM has long been in the business, for whatever reason, of selling cars below cost [1]. And for the Volt, it's more like selling a $40k car that actually costs $80k to manufacture [2], not even taking engineering and marketing costs as a factor.
Selling more Bolts and Volts would hurt GM, not help.
Although technology has taken huge leaps, particularly in the specific energy of batteries and combustion engines, after the 2000 Honda Insight, the first new model car (in Canada) to match or exceed the Insight's efficiency came in 2017(!) with the Hyundai Ioniq.
From my perspective, energy prices and auto regulations are the biggest reasons it took that long.
in effect, when the ZEV credit rules changed so GM which has a ZEV credit printer in the Bolt no longer needed the Volt and this also coincided with their decision to drop the Cruze and other smaller sedans. From 2018 and onward the credit a PHEV could get is sufficiently lower than before.[1]
GM rushed the Bolt out because also ending in 2017 were two ZEV related credit (CARB credits by another name) traits that were easily exploited, banking them for future use and double dipping by getting credit in a non CARB state for a sale there plus the CARB credit.
The key thing to note about EV sales, how to tell if a manufacturer is serious about selling them. The common figure of twenty to twenty five thousand units is bandied about as where the CARB value falls off after. As in, selling into that maximum allows GM and others to exploit the credit system to the extent it covers all possible sales for their other vehicles. This number will slowly increase but when they say "we cannot sell more because we cannot get batteries" don't believe them
> "While it was a financial loser, it did what was intended," said retired GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who shepherded the Volt into production. "We viewed it as a stepping stone to full electrics, which were totally out of reach due to the then-astronomical cost of lithium-ion batteries."
> GM needed to stop making it due in part to changing consumer preferences for SUVs, he said. The company also lost money on every Volt, cash that is needed for research on autonomous vehicles and more advanced electric cars, he said.
Yes, one of the nicest cars I ever owned. I am about to reach the end of my 3 year lease and would get another Volt in a heartbeat if that was an option.
Did they mean expensive to produce, or an expensive price tag (or both)? The Volt was a good car, but it was a $17,000 premium over something like the Prius when it launched. Even with price cuts for later model years, it was still not an easy sell for a buyer focused on economy.
I think it would have sold a lot better if they had positioned it as a more upscale vehicle to match the asking price, or at least had given it some other value proposition beyond economy. I've never been able to figure out exactly who the target market for the Volt was.
As a 2017 Volt owner, this makes me sad. If they so choose, there could be a huge market for plug-in hybrids, where you get all the benefit of EV for local transit but you still have the fuel backup for long range trips. The infrastructure for a fully EV fleet just isn't there yet to assuage range anxiety, though they are working hard on it. Plug-in Hybrids are the perfect stepping stone to help a society learn how to move into a more electric-only future.
At the same time it is good to see more companies jumping into full EV designs, so the future is, IMO, bright, but it may be harder to sell this in the short term.
All my fellow Volt owners who have gone Tesla don't have any range anxiety issues. People that went Bolt have SOME but mostly they are happy with their path too.
The most annoying thing about that naming scheme is that Chevy also makes the Spark, which is 100% gasoline-powered. What was their rationale in greenlighting that name?
The spark was being sold under other names since long before the volt or the Bolt. When they started calling the Spark the Spark the Bolt was still several years off and they certainly didn't have a name for it at that point. The choice of "Spark" coincided with they giving all their small cars a bunch of active sounding names.
The Bolt may have been long off but the Spark name was announced in 2009 and started selling at the same time as the Volt. The Spark was available for the 2011 model year in Europe and for the 2013 model year in the U.S (with a BEV option). The Chevy Volt on the other hand was available for the 2011 model year. So they definitely seemed to be going for electricity themed names.
I would rather they upsized it slightly. The Volt is essentially a Cruze body with a different drivetrain, and it is pretty small. I looked at buying one but banging my head on the roof on my way to sit down made me rethink the plan. It doesn't even need to be that much bigger, maybe just taller. A Prius, by comparison, is pretty spacious.
The Gen 1 Volt wasn't just a Cruze body and was a hatchback closer to the "cross-over" territory that is currently all the rage for them. For cost cutting GM moved the Gen 2 Volt into a Cruze body, and then GM killed the Gen 2 Volt for not being a cross-over or hatchback.
I read recently that Honda has stopped all Clarity sales except for CA, especially since the Volt is no longer available. That is a shame because it is a really nice car and fills in the gap between pure EV and a hybrid. 40 miles on full electric, but a gas engine run at peak efficiency for long trips.
but it's a ridiculously constrained trunk rather than hatchback form factor...which removes Honda from consideration for many, i imagine. Tesla and Chevy (and BMW and Mercedes) get the hatchback audience rather than Honda, in this case.
May be because they can't compete with Toyota, Honda, and now Hyundai on Hybrid vehicles. It's too late to invest in hybrids for them. They can only compete in full EV's as most companies don't have a solid product yet.
At a supercharger/equivalent. We're getting to the point where EVs have enough range that they can be charged on nearly the same schedule as a gas car is refueled.
Recharging after the same intervals isn't enough. How long does it take to charge? Do I have to spend an hour standing around at the "pump" each week, whereas a gas pump takes two minutes?
Longer range might let you get the frequency of charging stops down to a similar schedule as a gas car, but it doesn't do anything about the length of those stops.
In terms of time at the pump for a gas vehicle that gets 25 miles per gallon, and time on the charger at the newest Supercharger that Tesla announced a few months ago for an EV, to add enough gas or add enough charge, respectively, for a given number of miles, it takes about 15 times as long on the EV.
That's assuming a gas pump that can pump 10 gallons per minute, which is the fastest rate allowed by law in the US. A lot of pumps aren't that fast, so in practice the gas car might only "charge" 5 to 10 times faster than the fastest charging EV.
If someone goes in every 250 miles, then we are talking a minute at the gas pump best case (for a 25 mpg car), and 15 minutes for an EV, best case. With the gas car, that's fast enough that many people don't even have to think about it--they just go about their business and whenever the see that it is low, stop and get gas. You only need a little slack in your schedule to add an impromptu fill up. With the EV, you'll have to plan more, allowing for the longer charge breaks in your schedule (or stopping more often for shorter range changes).
I think the answer for dealing with EVs for people who do not a way to charge at home will not be the electric gas station model (unless charging can get an order of magnitude faster). Those stations will be for people passing through. For people who aren't just passing through, I think the answer will be to build charging stations at key places that people already visit regularly for 15 minutes or more at a time. Supermarkets, Walmart, Target, and places like that.
Evolution and time will keep making the EV charge time shorter and shorter until it literally takes longer to park & plugin.
With the 150kW spreading all over, and already some 350kw [1] superchargers you are already just 10ish minutes to fully charge from empty. The 1.2mW [2] chargers seem insane, but over time they will get more and more capacity. As long as the cars keep up / catches up!
I agree though that gas/petrol stations will be a thing of the past. As you say charge in normal parking lots, or at home.
I expect restaurants, especially fast-food joints will be the charging places of the future.
It takes about three minutes to buy a week's worth of fuel in any settled area. It would be a challenge to plan a route anywhere that doesn't pass a gas station. How does public charging compare, half an hour per day if you can find one?
People are buying pure electrics betting on charging at home, but some of them are going to be screwed when they move.
EVs are pretty popular in China where owned personal parking spots are relatively more rare. Somehow they make it work out, though I personally wouldn’t bother with an EV until I had somewhere to power it at home.
Your replies are mostly hostile, sadly. The electric vehicle "future" has yet to identify how to handle this. The charging infrastructure is incredibly weak unless you have a garage with a charger installed. A lot of people rent or have a small plot of land w/o a garage and they park on the street.
The public charging infrastructure outside of California cities is weak. There are very few fast chargers, and the electric vehicles charge slow unless they're a Tesla.
The Chevy Bolt from GM? The fast charger is optional and is only 50kW. This means about 50 miles every 17 minutes. That's over an hour to refill the tank.
The rebuttal to how slow the public charging charging is is always "top off at home" and the rebuttal to no at home charging is always "public fast charging". Yet we see neither is doing well.
But isn't this pretty obviously identifiable as a "chicken and egg" problem? You say "The electric vehicle "future" has yet to identify how to handle this", but I totally disagree. In Austin it costs $4.17 a month for unlimited charging at public charging stations, and there are a lot of them: https://austinenergy.com/ae/green-power/plug-in-austin/charg....
It's not hard to imagine that if the number of EVs goes to a very sizable share of all vehicles, instead of the low single digits that it is now, that the number of charging stations would explode.
Sadly I think the answer to this is "more consumerism". As you get more all electrics, you'll see more chargers showing up at restaurants and shopping centers, encouraging you to "charge while you spend".
Either that or cities are going to have to deal with a bunch of really long extension cords all over the street!
I suppose another option is that you'll see an AirBnB type thing for garages with chargers, or small "charge garages" opening near places with only street parking.
> As you get more all electrics, you'll see more chargers showing up at restaurants and shopping centers, encouraging you to "charge while you spend".
Reading a lot of these replies makes me think that Austin must be ahead of the game. I can't think of the last time I went to a grocery store that they didn't have a charging station available.
In older cities there are sometimes still garages that one can rent a bay in. I understand that this was not uncommon at one point: you didn't keep your car at your house. Someone else stored it, maybe even a service station and you rang them up when you wanted to take it out.
Perhaps an arrangement like that will come around again in dense areas.
I appreciate that this is a problem, especially in denser cities; hopefully there will be a clever curbside solution, but in the meantime what about at work or while shopping?
I think you'll see a lot of "40 minute" chargers at places like grocery stores, or anywhere where you already park for about an hour on a regular basis.
Do they have a front yard? I'd price out the cost to trench to a NEMA 6-15 (240v/15a) socket on a pole near the curb where they park. This will get you 3.6kW using the ubiquitous gauge (read: cheap) electrical wiring, which will give a Hyundai Kona about 12 miles per hour of charging. More than adequate as a daily driver, and they can always hit a rapid charge station on the rare event that they drive more than 120 or so miles back-to-back over two consecutive days.
Amortize the cost of installation against the savings they'll have by spending 1/3 of the amount that they currently spend for gasoline.
Third: street parking is common, so even if the above two items were not a problem, there is no guarantee that there would be a space in front of their place.
Yeah, sounds like they're just about maximally impeded from charging at their home. They'd have to hit a rapid charging station once or twice a week. If they work, then charging at work can be a thing, which is what I do. But for the record, I was suggesting installing the charge port at the curb, if at all possible. Cords across sidewalks aren't just a tripping hazard. If they come loose, they can make life difficult for people with disabilities too.
There's no reason they couldn't spring for a PHEV though and opportunistically charge where they can while out shopping or whatever. Every little bit helps.
Even if one lived on the "parking-side" of such a street (which my parents do not), there's no way installing a charge point without messing up the sidewalk. And there's no way people would agree to messing up the clear sidewalks we have on the residential streets. The busier commercial streets are another matter; around the corner in the same neighbourhood:
> There's no reason they couldn't spring for a PHEV though and opportunistically charge where they can while out shopping or whatever. Every little bit helps.
Yes, but the originating article was about the elimination of hybrids by GM and VW: this is a non-starter for some folks.
So the article says that GM will keep making Plug-Ins so isn't a Plug-In is also considered a Hybrid? I was of understanding that these vehicles use the same underlying hybrid tech too such as regen braking.
Well, I love my Volt. Maybe it will be a collectors car some day. Amazing piece of engineering. I charge at work and at home and use gas about once every two months.
I don't have "range anxiety", I have "range requirements"; no way I'm going on an 8 hour drive to go skiing in the Adirondacks or in Vermont with a pure electric.
Admittedly it is still a small compromise, but I’ve done 8 hour road trips in my Tesla to go snowboarding in Vermont and having to stop and charge adds under an hour to the trip. The Volt does seem like a great car, but to me it’s not worth the maintenance/space/reliability compromise of a gas engine in exchange for not having to take a relaxing break every few hours when I’m road tripping; obviously my values may be different but to me the extra time spent feels pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
No, it only needs an only change when the number of hours logged on the motor necessitates it, or every 2 years, whichever comes first.
I've had my Volt for 2.5 years, almost 70,000km. Have done one oil change. Only one visit to dealer, which was oil change and some cleaning of the brakes since they barely get used.
No offense, but deep in the mountains or out in rural northern Ontario, etc. where I'd like to go... will be the last place that DC fast chargers will go.
I'm a big fan of the EV movement, I'll own a BEV someday, but I feel that GM and EV-boosters in general have thrown the Volt-type range extended EVs under the bus. It is an amazing technical achievement and with the right marketing and product development could take the market by storm.
(I don't consider the Volt a PHEV, btw, but a range extended electric vehicle. It is the only "plugin hybrid" on the market that can operate purely electric without using the gas engine. And even when the gas engine kicks in, it performs like an EV.)
> (I don't consider the Volt a PHEV, btw, but a range extended electric vehicle. It is the only "plugin hybrid" on the market that can operate purely electric without using the gas engine. And even when the gas engine kicks in, it performs like an EV.)
Not true at all: Prius prime, Pacifica Hybrid can all run on the battery without the engine.
I can get 30 miles on my Pacifica hybrid without the engine turning on, I even drive it at highway speeds without the engine turning on.
No, you are not telling the whole picture. Those cars cannot run 100% on the battery, because the moment you hit the accelerator hard ICE kicks in. If you're gentle on the accelerator or avoid high speeds on the highway, yes, you can avoid the gas engine. But you have to work for it. It's almost impossible to drive those vehicles for extended periods of time without using the gas engine.
The Volt is designed explicitly so that the gas engine is never necessary. Top speed, hardest acceleration, etc. all is the same experience as a 100% pure battery electric vehicle. Until you run out of battery. And then it meets all the same performance characteristics, but with the ICE involved.
Electricity is everywhere. You'd be surprised at how many things are already using that capacity right on top of the mountains. It'll eventually be built out there too. Especially with the declining price of equipment needed to set it up there too.
I drove my Model 3 from Cannon (very far in Northern New Hampshire) to Cape Cod (south of Boston) just stopping to charge once.
BTW, if you can do a minivan, my other car is a Pacifica plugin hybrid. It has some problems charging off of 240 volts, but it does about 30 miles on a charge. I almost never use gas.
FYI: If you're in cold weather, assume that you can loose 40% of range on the coldest day of the year. Thus, when it's 20 degrees, the 120 mile trip will take 200 miles of range.
Furthermore, you need a bit of a safety buffer, because you shouldn't plan to drive an EV to 0% everyday, so if you plan on driving in cold weather, you should have about 240 miles of range.
FWIW: My wife and I had some very close calls in our 2014 Leaf. (EPA rated for 80ish miles) One 40 mile round trip on a 10 degree New Years Eve nearly left us with a dead battery.
I'm trying to replace my 2012 SUV with another SUV. I've been looking all over for a plug in hybrid SUV, and there aren't any good ones. I want the plug in hybrid because 95% of the time we do less than 30 miles locally, but once in a while we drive a couple hundred.
I would be fine with an all electric SUV with a decent range, but those don't exist either. The model X is not sufficient, and is also terrible for everyone who isn't the driver (and also costs way too much for what you get).
Hopefully this change means that in a few years I'll be able to find what I want.
Yeah, this is what I don't understand, but maybe it's because my wife and I are a one car and mostly public transit oriented family.
What I want: A hybrid electric with ~40 miles of battery and a 300mi gas tank for longer trips
What Auto Manufacturers assume (I'm guessing): 2 car households where one is 100% electric and the other 100% gas.
Seems to me like the plug in hybrid is the best of all worlds. Everyone can use battery for all the short trips we do and we don't make any compromises for our long distance needs.
Yeah the manufacturers don't seem to aim for the single car household in America. I guess they assume most of us either live in the burbs and have two cars or live in the city and have no cars.
The truth is where I live I'm just too far to have single car. Most of the time we only need one car, but we have just enough cases of my wife and I needing to go two different places that it doesn't make sense to rent or Uber/Lyft. And maybe that's why they don't cater to that segment. There just isn't enough people who want one car.
My ideal would be a plug in hybrid van. Our van gets the most use because I often have to drive around my in-laws, so I need the six seats. But almost all of our trips are within 20 miles round trip. But sometimes we go 400 miles to LA. I'd love it if I had a van that could do that.
If Honda made an all-electric or hybrid Odyssey, I'd buy it the day it came out, pretty much regardless of price. It would be the perfect car for us.
I have problems charging mine at 240 volts, so I'm stuck with a long overnight charge.
Also, the entertainment system is glitchy. Yesterday I had to do a magic dance of turning the car off and on and opening and closing the screens to get them to turn on.
I don't want a hybrid I want a plug-in or all electric. Also, yeah, the reputation of repairs on the Chrysler. It was considered by eventually we chose the all gas Odyssey for now.
I have a Chevy Volt. It’s awesome. I just hate that more of these are being killed off. There are more in the market, but every loss feels like a step backwards.
50 years from now we'll look back on hybrids as a brief transition phase in the history of automobiles. They're much more complicated than ICE cars and vastly more complicated than electric cars. Once good enough, cheap enough batteries happen (i.e. now) there's no reason for hybrids to exist.
One of the reasons I love the Volt so much is that it still drops much of the complexity of ICE cars, since the drivetrain is fully electric. It's basically just a low-range EV with a backup gas generator bolted on.
Under normal load and conditions the Volts are both primarily serial hybrids. There are only a few specialized situations where they include the direct engine connection to optimize output.
It's as if everyone if forgetting that tonnes of people live in houses without designated parking. I have friends who'd love a fully electric vehicle but they live in a terraced house without a driveway so there is just no way to charge it. But a hybrid that achieves good fuel economy without needing to be plugged in makes a lot of sense instead.
I think there is a massive difference between long-range commute and just living in a city and needing a place to charge. Yes, if I wanted to drive down from Newcastle to London, or hop on the ferry to Amsterdam and drive down to Berlin, absolutely no problem - there is enough charging points along motorways that you will get pretty much anywhere without any issues.
But if you live in Newcastle, say in Jesmond, fancy terraced house with no private parking space - where are you going to charge your car? In one of the 2 public spaces that are nearby? Drive few miles out to a quick charger near the motorway? At one of the public car parks where the charging time is limited? Like, I can't see any way to do that that wouldn't be a massive inconvenience every few days.
I'm not sure why you seem to be basing this on the current layout of chargers.
Right now it might be inconvenient, sure. Owning a Tesla was a few years back before superchargers existed.
I've moved out now but I didn't find it an issue to charge in London in a suburban apartment, and I deliberately went out of my way to only ever use free chargers. If I'd used the pay ones it really would have been trivial.
I'm only moderately familiar with this topic (mostly from following racing, where many major series have integrated hybrid powertrains), but this doesn't seem accurate to me. All the hybrid vehicles have to develop and integrate an ICE in addition to the hybrid system, not instead. I don't see where the simplicity gains you refer to would come from.
Again, I'm not very knowledgeable here, I just have intuition to go on and familiarity with the fact hybrids are definitely viewed as more complex to develop and race, in motorsports. I'd love to be more informed if I'm missing some major factors
The Volt has a 1.4L ICE engine, three clutches, two electric motors (of two different types--ferrite and neodymium), a large battery, a wall charger, an inverter, and a complicated mechanical transmission that accepts drive input from any motor. The Volt may be more efficient than an ICE car, but it is in no way simpler.
The Volt may not be simpler (Not saying it isn’t, but many of the parts you listed are in regular ICE cars, just in different proportions) — but that’s not inherently because it’s a hybrid.
Look at Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive. It is rather beautiful in its simplicity, and bypasses the need for a traditional automatic transmission — a part so complicated the big auto makers have mostly given up on designing in-house. Toyota’s HSD scales from the tiny Prius to Hylander, something a CVT can’t do reliably.
Hondas’s hybrids are also mechanically simpler by bypassing a transmission as well, and the ICE motor driving the wheels directly at highway speeds.
Failing transmissions are often the cause of a totaled older car, because it is an extremely complex and expensive part to replace.
Not necessarily. There's the added complexity of having an additional electric powertrain, but many this enables many hybrids to concurrently remove the transmission that a conventional ICE car would have.
Prii didn't get their reputation for reliability by being unnecessarily complicated. Of course EVs are obviously simpler, but I'm not sure I'd say a Prius is more complicated than many ICE vehicles of today. Twin turbos and 10 speed autos aren't something exotic anymore -- those are available on the base trim of the F150.
In practice the added complexity of hybrids does not make them less reliable than ICE vehicles. They spend of lot of time on EV mode. Plugin hybrid only use the gasoline engine rarely. When the gas engine does run, it does so at an optimized pace that doesn’t stress the engine as much.
According to the WLTP standard for measuring gasoline consumption the new Toyota Corolla hybrid does 22 km/l whereas the comparable VW Golf 1.5 TSI DSG does 16 km/l.
It's always struck me as weird that they aren't producing hybrids in the vehicles that can most benefit from them: vans, pickups, trucks and tractors.
All of these are vehicles with a focus on power and range that would benefit from the torque and simplicity of electric motors, and could easily absorb the weight penalty of a motor-generator and fuel versus more batteries. The people who buy these for functional reasons would appreciate the long range, easy refueling, and reduced maintenance costs.
I have a friend who is a diesel mechanic for fleet operations. We've talked about his customers and their views on electric or hybrid vehicles. Obviously this is an anecdote, but he says many of the customers he has are planning to stick to diesel for quite a while because they don't have a team of mechanics who are qualified to work on electric drivetrains. The ones who exist are expensive, and it's expensive to train new ones.
Sure they don't need spark plugs and oil changes and they don't break down often, but when they do apparently it's hard to find non-dealership technicians who can repair/replace parts.
GM used to make a Tahoe Hybrid. It was okay, but I think the price premium was a bit much for the economy gain.
It also doesn’t help that the units of “miles per gallon” are not linear with consumption. A improvement from 10 to 15 mpg doesn’t sound nearly as impressive as an improvement from 20 to 60 mpg... but unintuitively, over 20,000 miles, it’s the same amount of fuel savings.
We had a Gen 1 Volt for nearly two years. A greatly underrated car in my opinion. No maintenance issues at all, it just worked like it was supposed to. Frankly people are scared of them, we sold ours locally and everyone that looked at it was obsessed with the battery and everything to do with the hybrid features. Our car had a few years left on the GM hybrid component warranty even! It was difficult for people to understand even though the car had 45k miles on it the engine did not (it ran probably 20% of our use). Over the 2 years we owned it we averaged about 75mpg.
Well, that's just stupid. Hybrids would be the fastest way to improve fuel economy for the most common types of vehicles that Americans are buying (SUVs, trucks, etc).
Not unexpected given the trends in the EV market (dropping battery prices, increasing ranges, faster charging times, massive growth in charging infrastructure, etc.). A VW executive made some interesting comments about this recently: https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/vw-exec-says-tipping-...
Basically they are talking about a tipping point where BEVs are flat out cheaper and more cost effective for everyone. They are not talking about decades but the next few years. Right now it's a luxury thing for early adopters. A few years from now, it will be the obvious cost effective choice across all price rangers and vehicle types.
The WSJ article seems to suggest that battery vehicles are not profitable currently. I'd argue that's probably not true. At least Tesla is apparently enjoying pretty decent margins on their cars; even before you consider tax advantages.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 261 ms ] threadAs the article says, both companies produced these as regulatory compliance vehicles. Now they're shifted that effort over to electric because the incentives are better for them.
The only companies trying to make hybrids for real are Toyota and Honda. Everyone else is just pumping out low effort compliance vehicles. It is hardly surprising that these vehicles haven't been hugely successful.
I'd love to buy an electric vehicle. Unfortunately prices remain impractical ($30K+ for a sedan) and the federal tax incentive is both expiring and regressive (the richer you are the more you'll get back up to $7.2K, after the new standard deduction ($25K) I'd need to earn near $90K with two dependants to get the full amount).
They're great for those living in California or similar. Our state offers no incentives and actually stabbed people who installed solar in the back (decreased the buy-back amount to almost nothing).
[0] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/taxevb.shtml
It's the general high price of new EVs that kept me away from buying one when I was in the market last year, I'm also the type that likes to pay for their car in cash. But second hand EVs are definitely a very intriguing choice for a second/commute-only car. You can get $7k electric Smart for very low mileage (under 10k).
At that price point you need to be buying the car specifically because it's electric, not because it's a good value.
With my commute, suburban+urban with high traffic. Definitely not true. The bolt will be way cheaper.
It will be also quicker, even if it was not meant to be.
Nobody buys a BMW in the US for good value when you factor in maintenance costs & overall TCO. The only reason you buy one is cause you like the driving dynamics. That's a perfectly fine reason IMO.
It doesn't seem there are any limo operators who are going to operate a Bolt and rapidly drive it to 400k-500k miles to find out just how reliable it is. But I really suspect a Chevy could be less of a hassle to maintain than a Tesla.. since GM is a much more established manufacturer and has a long built out dealer/service network it's hard for me to believe it could be worse than Tesla.
Unfortunately they don't/didn't ever sell the e-Golf here. Looking at used car sites the nearest ones are in California (about a two day drive). Still might be worth the drive at those prices (although charging it to get it home might require some pre-planning).
I got mine almost two months ago for 10k off msrp + state and federal.
There was a thread on Slickdeals a while back about it https://slickdeals.net/f/13163326-21-000-off-msrp-2019-volks...
At one point I was completely fascinated with the Fiat 500e. Here was an electric car that was stylish, quirky, and could be had on the used market at a great price. But as I got further into it I realized that FCA hated producing this car. Its only reason to exist is to allow them to produce more pollutant vehicles as a regulatory balance. And if it did have a future there would be the barest minimum invested into it. So I'm back to looking at Teslas, even though I haven't liked the styling since the Lotus designed Roadster.
One of these passed me on the highway the other day. I've only seen a handful of Lotus in my life and never a Tesla Roadster.. it really is a beautiful little car. Pretty small (and impractical for cargo/passengers I'd imagine) though.
The Lotus philosophy is to create small lightweighted sport cars, after all.
EDIT: Please buy that Tesla and support a company who actually cares about selling EVs.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/8/18300393/tesla-fiat-chrysl...
That's an interesting interpretation. FCA is buying ZEV credits in the market, of which Tesla has a large supply. Would you describe Facebook buying servers as "Facebook paying Intel billions so they can keep selling advertisements online"?
>Please buy that Tesla
Every time Tesla comes up and there's negativity, there are accusations of "paid short-sellers", which I am not. What about your disclosure? You own a Tesla, are you a shareholder? Do you have a financial interest in people buying the cars? Is it fair to be constantly flooding these forums with Tesla rumours, often from vapid fan sites, when you stand to benefit?
Why is acceptable from one side, and not the other?
Disclaimer: TSLA investor, Model S/X owner. If I ask you to buy a Tesla, it is not to help my stock, but to help move the world to electric transportation faster. If you find a better EV product, I encourage you to buy it regardless of manufacturer. I will hold my Tesla stock all the way to zero, and climate change keeps me up at night (seriously, it's terrifying; Rome is burning and the band plays on). Any sources I cite regarding Tesla have been and will continue to be from reputable online publications.
If you consider Teslarati, Eletrek and Cleantechnica "reputable", not sure what to tell you.
That said, I appreciate the disclosure. You may have not whined about "short-sellers", but I've got it often here. It's ridiculous, and says more about the person making the accusation than anything. Even sama and pg got on-board on Twitter. We can disagree about the prospects of Tesla without resorting to conspiracy theories.
They need these ZEV credits in order to sell their ICE fleet. This is also indisputable.
And absolutely, yes, Facebook pays Intel billions of dollars to power the servers they use to serve ads on the internet. Now hopefully more AMD though.
[1] - https://electrek.co/2019/05/07/tesla-tsla-2-billion-fiat-chr...
Elektrek is not a source, it's a Tesla PR mouthpiece. Here's a better one:
https://interestingengineering.com/gm-and-fiat-chrysler-unve...
Fred has an article up based on an Elon Musk tweet within half an hour, and has repeatedly printed baseless rumours.
That's a specious comparison. ZEV credits are a punitive measure designed to make automakers want to convert their fleet to electric where the market itself can't force it. Facebook buying components for their datacenter from said manufacturers of components has nothing to do with it. A more apt comparison would be Facebook being forced to pay doubleclick for each ad served on facebook.
As an environmentalist this vehicle goes against my ethics. It exists to allow them to sell more pollutant vehicles in California. It's all sizzle and no steak. There are better EVs out there. Most car manufacturers will take customer feedback to incorporate into newer models. FCA is having none of that with the 500e. They aren't interested in customer feedback just government CAFE regs.
Lots of people want a small pickup like the Ranger (Toyota also followed along - compare sizes of the Tacoma of the 90s vs today - I suspect they all changed in size), but they can't buy one. It has something to do with CAFE rules, plus some weird calculation of area - so the larger the vehicles footprint, the more it'll pass or offset or something; I'm not sure how it works.
But something changed in the 1990s - and now we have this.
In cars there is a lot of hidden value in buying popular models.
> What counts as a trick? Roughly, it's something done with contempt for the audience. For example, the guys designing Ferraris in the 1950s were probably designing cars that they themselves admired. Whereas I suspect over at General Motors the marketing people are telling the designers, "Most people who buy SUVs do it to seem manly, not to drive off-road. So don't worry about the suspension; just make that sucker as big and tough-looking as you can." -- http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html
The original versions of the Fiat 500 itself, the Morris Mini, the Beetle, and the 2CV would disagree. Ok, you might have a point on the 2CV, but it's owners loved it.
There is an all-new electric Fiat 500, based on a new electric-only platform, in development for a 2020 release. This will be built in much higher volumes than the old 500e, on a dedicated production line in Italy.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-geneva-motor-...
https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10301
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/ford-stop-making-all-...
https://www.autonews.com/sales/ford-says-fusion-output-will-...
It's regressive in the sense that you need to be buying a new car to get it. But it passes to used car owners in the form of a lower residual value for the car. A one year old plug-in hybrid lease-return can be a great deal.
Or look for a dealer demo car. They tend to list them for exactly $7500 under MSRP.
But yeah, never buy new if you can't claim the full amount, since the value of your car has gone down by that amount when it leaves the lot.
The biggest cost of an electric car is the battery; and the cost of batteries is dropping very fast. Everything else is significantly cheaper in an electric vehicle except for the cost of the battery.
(Tesla used to say there's a "Moore's Law" of battery capacity, which is that every 7 years the capacity doubles for the same cost.)
Everyone (in the auto industry) knows this, it's just a matter of deciding how to plan for this. Either you can make a lot of hybrids for a decade; or you can sell EVs side-by-side with conventional cars.
Maybe, but the limitations of electric vehicles still mean it is an apple and oranges comparison. Electric cars are still a long way off in terms of range, towing capacity, utility and winter performance. They might seem great in California, especially as a second car, but they are still a long long way off from replicating how many non-rich people use their vehicles.
We don't all live in SF. Personally, I'd need a stable 1000km/day range capacity, in winter/-30, in mountains, pulling several hundred pounds of people/stuff, before I'd even consider electric for my one and only car. Price is beside the point. I'm starting to think that zero net emission tech (diesel from air etc) might catch up before all-electric becomes the widespread standard.
what? Electric vehicles are vastly superior in towing capacity. The Model X from tesla can TOW a boeing jet -- 230,000 pounds. Now that has some tradeoffs for range, i believe. but in terms of actual towing capacity, it's leaps and bounds ahead of any other vehicle capable of towing. if you'd said 'towing range', i might be willing to accept that.
range itself is also just not really a concern any more. 300+ miles of range on a single charge is more than enough for the vast majority of drivers.
winter performance is possibly somethign to worry about, but when you can charge overnight at your home, you can still leave every morning with a 'full tank', so it's also just not really a concern any more.
The towing capacity of a Model X is around 5k pounds. It's illegal to tow more the door sticker says on public roads in the US. For comparison, depending on what kind of Ford F-150 you get, you can tow from 5k to 8k pounds. According to some [1], you're also looking at a 45-60% decrease in range if you tow something like a camper.
[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1122487_towing-a-camper...
EVs are being widely adopted in Europe, with Norway (harsh winters) taking the lead. I don't get the whole "EVs are only suitable in California" narrative.
https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/07/Europe-EV-Sales-Janu...
I live near Boise Idaho (also harsh winters) and I see 2-4 Teslas in my commute and I only drive to the office 3 times a week.
Around June of last year, we bought a used Model S and eventually replaced my wife's SUV with a used Model X. So far, we do not foresee going back to ICE cars. I haven't been into a gas station in forever.
They can do that today. I;m driving a car from 2010. How are the 10+yo teslas doing? And when I say 1000km/day I mean 1000km in perhaps eight hours of driving, not eight hours of driving plus another eight hours of battery logistics.
>> and I only drive to the office 3 times a week.
So you have a part-time job in an office? That's part of the California narrative. You aren't a forestry worker. You aren't a local equipment rep. You aren't a tradesperson. You are someone with a relatively short and stable commute to a fixed location around which you can plan the battery recharge cycles. That is a luxury many people cannot afford.
>> and I see 2-4 Teslas in my commute ...
So they are still the freak/edge cases then. I saw at least a few hundred vehicles on the highway over the weekend (BC, Canada, proper mountains, sometimes 200+km between gas stations) not one seemed electric, certainly none were teslas. Lots of teslas in Vancouver, but I don't live in Vancouver.
There's a second thing that most people with gas cars don't realize. EVs do REALLY well in traffic. The slower the better. Gas cars continue to burn fuel while idling. When I'm in traffic, my 300 mile tesla goes to 500+ mile range because moving an EV at 5-10mph is optimal conditions.
Unnecessarily rude, and clearly untrue considering the poster displayed an excellent understanding of the logistics of the situation. I don't think he or anyone else is opposed to the infrastructure catching up, but he's alive and working today and needs solutions that work right now.
>> I mean 1000km in perhaps eight hours of driving, not eight hours of driving plus another eight hours of battery logistics.
You are grossly underestimating the current state EV charging (you seem to be just a tad ignorant on the subject). A typical charging session on a Tesla supercharger is only 10-20 minutes.
At most, a 1017+ km road-trip would only add 40-60 minutes of combined supercharging (3 stops https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=1366ac4f-d815-4e9...). I know because myself and many others have done it.
>> I saw at least a few hundred vehicles on the highway over the weekend (BC, Canada, proper mountains, sometimes 200+km between gas stations) not one seemed electric, certainly none were teslas
I can't tell if your being serious or not. ICE cars have like a 100+ year head-start, not to mention the infrastructure. Of course that would be the case, but not for long...
Google "Tesla Chargers BC". The closest one to me now is literally hundreds of kilometers away. There are places near me, places that I sometimes work, that are literally a thousand kilometers from a tesla supercharger. Please do not assume that everyone lives in teslaland.
Indeed, just came back from a two-week vacation in Northern Germany, had to drive there from the South.
Didn't drive EV, but still couldn't help but notice that at every rest stop we made at a bigger Autobahnrasttätte there was either a Tesla supercharger station or some other brand EV charger. Could probably have made the same 600 km trip with an EV.
Tesla's have also become quite a common sight on German autobahnen, don't really notice the other brand EV's because I'm not much of a car guy.
Remember, an electric motor has much more torque than a gas motor. The only obstacle is battery cost.
BTW, go look up Ford's video of the F150 conversion to EV that they did. It towed a crazy amount of weight.
It took approximately 12 hours in total with approx 1.5-2 hours of charging time.
"8 hours of battery logistics" is something you've just made up.
It's more like you're in range of a rapid charger and it's a non issue, or you're not in which case you cannot do more than a full charge in a day (a European 230V outlet takes more than a day for a full charge, American 110V is slower).
Granted it won't do that in winter in the mountains whilst pulling several hundreds pounds worth of stuff. That's something that, like, 0.5% of car owners actually do. The emissions from that sort of activity are probably less important than stuff like tractors.
And not everyone can afford a tesla. They are still luxury vehicles.
The same for chargers below 22kW. Only for overnight or opportunistic use.
I hope that in 10 or so years there's the equivalent of a Civic or Corolla that just keeps on going - new cars are luxury in general.
When I bike around Seattle, there are a plethora of Radpower eBikes with various modifications, either for towing, or hauling kids. Cost, traffic and the convienence of parking has driven this modeswitch, as you can park near anywhere and rarely have blocking traffic like in traditional cars.
Electric Scooters are also extending the range people are willing to walk, making short trips much more convenient, and leveraging distant transit much easier.
I think a case could be made for us already being at that point, if the total lifetime cost of car ownership is factored in. ICE vehicles are obscenely mechanically complex. That complexity inevitably leads to lots of repair bills over an ICE vehicle's lifetime.
Contrast that with the average electric car, which doesn't even have a multispeed transmission, just a single-speed step-down. About the most complex mechanical systems in an electric are differentials and shocks. I'm sure someone will pitch in here with a horror story about a high repair bill on an electric, but I'd suggest that's because economies of scale on electrics' parts haven't ramped up yet, and there isn't a large corps of electric-experienced mechanics.
Most of the longer term maintenance costs of Model S's seem to be down to luxury components that aren't necessary (like air suspension, funky door handles, big touchscreen).
An EV Civic could well be bulletproof.
EVs lose out here because of battery degradation. You can quite happily buy a 10 year old ICE car and get good reliability at a good price. Trying to do the same with an EV just gets you a car with a worn out battery and low range.
The batteries for EVs need to get cheaper and more durable for the second-hand EV car market to be competitive with the second-hand ICE car market.
Can you back this up with actual data? Because this is simply not true:
https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-...
TESLOOP’S TESLA MODEL S SURPASSES 400,000 MILES (643,737 KM)
"Battery degradation over the course of the first 194,000 miles was ~6% with multiple supercharges a day to 95-100%, instead of the recommended 90-95%. Between 194,000 and 324,000 miles Tesloop experienced battery degradation of ~22% (see below for details)."
What's important to note is that the vehicle was mainly charged using dc fast chargers (often multiple times a day). Had this not been the case, degradation would have been even lower.
Additional data: https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2019/2/6/tesloops-high-mileage-...
Tesla warrants their batteries at 70% capacity for 8 years for the Model 3. The Model S and X have an 8 year warranty with no capacity guarantee:
https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty
So that's about what you should expect from a Tesla battery.
In addition, current data indicates that for the first 50,000 miles (100,000 km), most Tesla battery packs will lose about 5% of their capacity, but after the 50,000-mile mark, the capacity levels off and it looks like it could be difficult to make a pack degrade by another 5%.
There's a ton of data and anecdotes on this subject at the https://teslamotorsclub.com forums.
3% degradation after 35k KMs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avGUGFrLrVc
Then 8% degradation 1 year later at 100k KMs and the car now has a reduced rate of charge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loulJ3ResDg
So why would I buy a 10 year old Tesla? If it requires a new battery I'd be better off just buying a different or newer car.
You're absolutely correct. That's why every Tesla with over 100,00 miles on it has been sent to the junkyard because it no longer takes a charge.
Oh, and one consequence of rapidly falling battery prices is that if at some point your battery capacity eventually does get too low, you can buy a replacement at a small fraction of what the original cost.
For how much? If your future cheap battery costs $100 per kilowatt hour at the pack level, you're spending $8,000 for an 80 kilowatt hour battery. That's a large small fraction.
An that is the basic point the OP was making. EV's are already a better deal, it's just that they are new and so most people don't realize it.
And one more point. Once the swing to EV's starts to happen in a few years, then the resale value of ICE's is going to plummet, and you would lose a lot more that way if you bought one than you would pay for a replacement battery.
You've fallen victim to wishful thinking. Show me even one projection at that price point.
> then the resale value of ICE's is going to plummet
Which makes it a buyer's market which is even more reason to buy a secondhand ICE vehicle over a secondhand EV.
Battery prices have been falling rapidly. They went down 35% in the last year alone. This is partly due to improved technology and partly to increasing economies of scale. Those two trends are predicted to continue.
>Which makes it a buyer's market which is even more reason to buy a secondhand ICE vehicle over a secondhand EV.
The problem is that if ICE resale prices drop, then the effective price of buying an ICE new goes up, which steer people toward buying an EV instead. EV prices are predicted to reach sticker price parity with ICE's around 2024. And their total lifetime ownership costs are already lower. When that happens then ICE sales are going to drop rapidly and be replaced by ICE's.
Remember, the original article is about GM and VW giving up on hybrids and switching to battery EV's. They are doing this because they are aware of what is going to happen and realize they will go bankrupt if they don't switch as fast as possible (and they make their money selling new cars, so people buying used ICE's is not going to save them).
Show me a single projection that claims $25 a kwh at the pack level in 10 years.
https://www.volvocars.com
Why do you say that they haven't been successful? At least in CA they, especially Prius, has done very well.
How does it do on potholes? And on ice?
I really wanted to love the i3, but the bicycle tires looked liked they'd be fundamentally unsafe on the ice or on any unmaintained (pothole-filled) road.
I agree the bicycle tires are terrible looking. I actually just bought a 2017 today for 22k and the salesmen mentioned one of the mechanics has an i3 and has tricked his out, including bigger rims/tires. I'm going to reach out and do the same now that I own one (had been leasing a 2017).
Say hello to 2006-2011 Honda Civic IMA with non cooled non charge balanced battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_Hybrid#Battery_lif...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkwOAUDdf0A
As a happy Volt owner (I've yet to met one who didn't love theirs), I can't help but wonder if "expensive" is code for "lost service revenue because the thing is too dang low maintenance and reliable". ;)
In 2019, people don't want their cars to break at all. Even a trivial matter might have you lose a customer.
Worse, when he started saying there were no local charger available he refuse to do a web search to prove his point since the last time I looked there were plenty available locally.
I just walked out, on the other hand I could have bought the car CASH if he had not lied.
The dealers are more than 50% of the problem!
There are specifications. We don't buy overkill material.
At worst, we stop tracking issues of they are too old, like after 5 years of use.
Edit, due to HN limits. The person below me doesn't understand engineering and how specs work. You make your product at specific costs and quality. Not everything can be made out of titanium.
Typically, “planned obsolescence” refers to an intentional defect that is artificially added in order to prematurely cause a failure.
However, that doesn’t mean every failure is a result of planned obsolescence — defects can also can be expected under the normal course of a product’s lifetime.
Premium product lifetimes are a result of premium materials and construction, which cost a premium price. Choosing the correct materials to balance the expected lifetime along with other performance and price characteristics is good engineering practice, not malice.
In short, expensive means expensive. They cost a lot to make.
Fracking may have semi-permanently put a cap on the cost of oil, which is horrific from a global warming standpoint but does seem to have altered what cars most people purchase.
When GM started Volt development in about 2006, sedans were still popular and the Toyota Prius was selling relatively well. So I think GM just failed to anticipate the market shift.
About 20 years ago, the classic The Innovator's Dilemma came out. Included was a chapter based on a report the author had done for the auto industry back in the 1990s. On existing technology curves he found that mass market electric cars for the American model should become commercially viable around 2020, and in the next several years after that would become dominant. Until then it was a bad business to be in, and after that success was imperative for any car manufacturer that wants to remain in business.
The same author in that book and its follow-up The Innovator's Solution said that conventional car manufacturers would come up with hybrid cars first, but that route would lose to fully electric. Exactly how sailing ship companies came up with hybrid steam/sailing ships (go under steam for short trips, and you have sails if you run out of coal on a long trip), but all manufacturers who invested in that lost.
GM's actions show that they understood a lot of the message of those books. They worked on hybrid cars once that was commercially feasible, and put in the effort to figure out how to make good electric cars. They did this knowing that the technology wasn't yet commercially viable. They have declared that their future is electric only, and are explicitly avoiding committing to the tempting hybrid mistake.
That said, it remains to be seen whether they are committing another mistake pointed out in The Innovator's Solution. Which is that they are trying to make the switch without doing it as a spinoff, without separating the companies, and trying to leverage existing dealer networks. Which opens them to the problem that dealers have come to expect maintenance costs as a big part of their profit model, and therefore will try to steer customers away from electric, or will try to charge extra to stay in business. If GM can't resolve this conflict, they will fail.
And there's the rub. People say they want these things, but when it comes time to open the pocketbook, their calculations change. Worst thing is that the people who can afford this stuff will instead drop more money on an ICE SUV.
:(
If it costs $1,000,000 to design a car and I sell that car for $30,000 and I sell 33 cars, I've lost $10k. But just selling one more car will turn a profit.
On the other hand if that car costs $32,000 to make and I'm selling it for $30,000... GM has long been in the business, for whatever reason, of selling cars below cost [1]. And for the Volt, it's more like selling a $40k car that actually costs $80k to manufacture [2], not even taking engineering and marketing costs as a factor.
Selling more Bolts and Volts would hurt GM, not help.
[1] https://www.hotcars.com/gm-admits-bolt-not-profitable/
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2012/09/10/stu...
It looks like engineering is included as "Development" in the original report: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-generalmotors-volt/factbo...
From my perspective, energy prices and auto regulations are the biggest reasons it took that long.
GM rushed the Bolt out because also ending in 2017 were two ZEV related credit (CARB credits by another name) traits that were easily exploited, banking them for future use and double dipping by getting credit in a non CARB state for a sale there plus the CARB credit.
The key thing to note about EV sales, how to tell if a manufacturer is serious about selling them. The common figure of twenty to twenty five thousand units is bandied about as where the CARB value falls off after. As in, selling into that maximum allows GM and others to exploit the credit system to the extent it covers all possible sales for their other vehicles. This number will slowly increase but when they say "we cannot sell more because we cannot get batteries" don't believe them
[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/california-and-western...
> "While it was a financial loser, it did what was intended," said retired GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who shepherded the Volt into production. "We viewed it as a stepping stone to full electrics, which were totally out of reach due to the then-astronomical cost of lithium-ion batteries."
> GM needed to stop making it due in part to changing consumer preferences for SUVs, he said. The company also lost money on every Volt, cash that is needed for research on autonomous vehicles and more advanced electric cars, he said.
I think it would have sold a lot better if they had positioned it as a more upscale vehicle to match the asking price, or at least had given it some other value proposition beyond economy. I've never been able to figure out exactly who the target market for the Volt was.
At the same time it is good to see more companies jumping into full EV designs, so the future is, IMO, bright, but it may be harder to sell this in the short term.
With Tesla, you are showing off that you bought a luxury vehicle.
It's surveying a different question.
Saves you the trip to the gas pump!
(BTW, the Whole Foods closest to me has a CCS charger.)
In terms of time at the pump for a gas vehicle that gets 25 miles per gallon, and time on the charger at the newest Supercharger that Tesla announced a few months ago for an EV, to add enough gas or add enough charge, respectively, for a given number of miles, it takes about 15 times as long on the EV.
That's assuming a gas pump that can pump 10 gallons per minute, which is the fastest rate allowed by law in the US. A lot of pumps aren't that fast, so in practice the gas car might only "charge" 5 to 10 times faster than the fastest charging EV.
If someone goes in every 250 miles, then we are talking a minute at the gas pump best case (for a 25 mpg car), and 15 minutes for an EV, best case. With the gas car, that's fast enough that many people don't even have to think about it--they just go about their business and whenever the see that it is low, stop and get gas. You only need a little slack in your schedule to add an impromptu fill up. With the EV, you'll have to plan more, allowing for the longer charge breaks in your schedule (or stopping more often for shorter range changes).
I think the answer for dealing with EVs for people who do not a way to charge at home will not be the electric gas station model (unless charging can get an order of magnitude faster). Those stations will be for people passing through. For people who aren't just passing through, I think the answer will be to build charging stations at key places that people already visit regularly for 15 minutes or more at a time. Supermarkets, Walmart, Target, and places like that.
With the 150kW spreading all over, and already some 350kw [1] superchargers you are already just 10ish minutes to fully charge from empty. The 1.2mW [2] chargers seem insane, but over time they will get more and more capacity. As long as the cars keep up / catches up!
I agree though that gas/petrol stations will be a thing of the past. As you say charge in normal parking lots, or at home.
I expect restaurants, especially fast-food joints will be the charging places of the future.
[1] https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/first-350kw-chargi...
[2] https://insideevs.com/news/347476/350-kw-12-mw-fast-charging...
People are buying pure electrics betting on charging at home, but some of them are going to be screwed when they move.
The public charging infrastructure outside of California cities is weak. There are very few fast chargers, and the electric vehicles charge slow unless they're a Tesla.
The Chevy Bolt from GM? The fast charger is optional and is only 50kW. This means about 50 miles every 17 minutes. That's over an hour to refill the tank.
The rebuttal to how slow the public charging charging is is always "top off at home" and the rebuttal to no at home charging is always "public fast charging". Yet we see neither is doing well.
It's not hard to imagine that if the number of EVs goes to a very sizable share of all vehicles, instead of the low single digits that it is now, that the number of charging stations would explode.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Charging_System#Versi...
Until then, I hope that hybrids will be an option.
Don't know about you, but I usually have at least 8 hours every night available for this purpose.
Either that or cities are going to have to deal with a bunch of really long extension cords all over the street!
I suppose another option is that you'll see an AirBnB type thing for garages with chargers, or small "charge garages" opening near places with only street parking.
Reading a lot of these replies makes me think that Austin must be ahead of the game. I can't think of the last time I went to a grocery store that they didn't have a charging station available.
Perhaps an arrangement like that will come around again in dense areas.
Amortize the cost of installation against the savings they'll have by spending 1/3 of the amount that they currently spend for gasoline.
Second, having a cord across the sidewalk is a tripping hazard and illegal:
* https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/09/01/toronto-electric...
* https://archive.is/29o0a (in case)
Third: street parking is common, so even if the above two items were not a problem, there is no guarantee that there would be a space in front of their place.
There's no reason they couldn't spring for a PHEV though and opportunistically charge where they can while out shopping or whatever. Every little bit helps.
Typical sidewalk in older parts of the city (use Street View):
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Westminster+Ave,+Toront...
Even if one lived on the "parking-side" of such a street (which my parents do not), there's no way installing a charge point without messing up the sidewalk. And there's no way people would agree to messing up the clear sidewalks we have on the residential streets. The busier commercial streets are another matter; around the corner in the same neighbourhood:
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/385+Roncesvalles+Ave,+Toro...
> There's no reason they couldn't spring for a PHEV though and opportunistically charge where they can while out shopping or whatever. Every little bit helps.
Yes, but the originating article was about the elimination of hybrids by GM and VW: this is a non-starter for some folks.
I don't have "range anxiety", I have "range requirements"; no way I'm going on an 8 hour drive to go skiing in the Adirondacks or in Vermont with a pure electric.
A pure BEV won't meet my needs.
I assume the Volt requires at least an oil change every year?
I've had my Volt for 2.5 years, almost 70,000km. Have done one oil change. Only one visit to dealer, which was oil change and some cleaning of the brakes since they barely get used.
Fast DC chargers are going to be everywhere in the near future. They're already on every major highway except i94.
I'm a big fan of the EV movement, I'll own a BEV someday, but I feel that GM and EV-boosters in general have thrown the Volt-type range extended EVs under the bus. It is an amazing technical achievement and with the right marketing and product development could take the market by storm.
(I don't consider the Volt a PHEV, btw, but a range extended electric vehicle. It is the only "plugin hybrid" on the market that can operate purely electric without using the gas engine. And even when the gas engine kicks in, it performs like an EV.)
Not true at all: Prius prime, Pacifica Hybrid can all run on the battery without the engine.
I can get 30 miles on my Pacifica hybrid without the engine turning on, I even drive it at highway speeds without the engine turning on.
The Volt is designed explicitly so that the gas engine is never necessary. Top speed, hardest acceleration, etc. all is the same experience as a 100% pure battery electric vehicle. Until you run out of battery. And then it meets all the same performance characteristics, but with the ICE involved.
I constantly drive 75mph without ever using the engine. I even merge on extremely steep inclines without ever using the engine.
Yes, it turns on for hard acceleration, but that's not the kind of thing you need to do in day-to-day driving.
BTW, if you can do a minivan, my other car is a Pacifica plugin hybrid. It has some problems charging off of 240 volts, but it does about 30 miles on a charge. I almost never use gas.
Furthermore, you need a bit of a safety buffer, because you shouldn't plan to drive an EV to 0% everyday, so if you plan on driving in cold weather, you should have about 240 miles of range.
FWIW: My wife and I had some very close calls in our 2014 Leaf. (EPA rated for 80ish miles) One 40 mile round trip on a 10 degree New Years Eve nearly left us with a dead battery.
I would be fine with an all electric SUV with a decent range, but those don't exist either. The model X is not sufficient, and is also terrible for everyone who isn't the driver (and also costs way too much for what you get).
Hopefully this change means that in a few years I'll be able to find what I want.
What I want: A hybrid electric with ~40 miles of battery and a 300mi gas tank for longer trips
What Auto Manufacturers assume (I'm guessing): 2 car households where one is 100% electric and the other 100% gas.
Seems to me like the plug in hybrid is the best of all worlds. Everyone can use battery for all the short trips we do and we don't make any compromises for our long distance needs.
The truth is where I live I'm just too far to have single car. Most of the time we only need one car, but we have just enough cases of my wife and I needing to go two different places that it doesn't make sense to rent or Uber/Lyft. And maybe that's why they don't cater to that segment. There just isn't enough people who want one car.
My ideal would be a plug in hybrid van. Our van gets the most use because I often have to drive around my in-laws, so I need the six seats. But almost all of our trips are within 20 miles round trip. But sometimes we go 400 miles to LA. I'd love it if I had a van that could do that.
If Honda made an all-electric or hybrid Odyssey, I'd buy it the day it came out, pretty much regardless of price. It would be the perfect car for us.
Also, the entertainment system is glitchy. Yesterday I had to do a magic dance of turning the car off and on and opening and closing the screens to get them to turn on.
A Toyota Prius Prime will do 25 miles of EV range and 640 miles total range: https://www.toyota.com/priusprime/
A Honda Clarity plug-in hybrid will do 47 miles EV range and 340 miles total range: https://automobiles.honda.com/clarity-plug-in-hybrid
(For me, I needed 3 rows, so we just went with the Pacifica Hybrid. Handles well in snow even though it's just a front wheel drive minivan.)
Hadn't heard about it until today. :)
Source: http://gmauthority.com/blog/2015/02/secrets-of-the-2016-chev...
About 7 years ago, EV charging points essentially did not exist.
Right now we have rapid chargers that allow you to drive across Western Europe with 30 minute stops.
In about another 7 years the chargers will be a complete non issue. Certainly in a place like the UK that has very few real "rural" areas.
It may be the case that for that short period it made sense to produce hybrids. We'll still look back on it as a transition period.
But if you live in Newcastle, say in Jesmond, fancy terraced house with no private parking space - where are you going to charge your car? In one of the 2 public spaces that are nearby? Drive few miles out to a quick charger near the motorway? At one of the public car parks where the charging time is limited? Like, I can't see any way to do that that wouldn't be a massive inconvenience every few days.
Right now it might be inconvenient, sure. Owning a Tesla was a few years back before superchargers existed.
I've moved out now but I didn't find it an issue to charge in London in a suburban apartment, and I deliberately went out of my way to only ever use free chargers. If I'd used the pay ones it really would have been trivial.
If Newcastle doesn't have that now, it will soon.
You can simplify those cars significantly due to them being an hybrid.
Again, I'm not very knowledgeable here, I just have intuition to go on and familiarity with the fact hybrids are definitely viewed as more complex to develop and race, in motorsports. I'd love to be more informed if I'm missing some major factors
Look at Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive. It is rather beautiful in its simplicity, and bypasses the need for a traditional automatic transmission — a part so complicated the big auto makers have mostly given up on designing in-house. Toyota’s HSD scales from the tiny Prius to Hylander, something a CVT can’t do reliably.
Hondas’s hybrids are also mechanically simpler by bypassing a transmission as well, and the ICE motor driving the wheels directly at highway speeds.
Failing transmissions are often the cause of a totaled older car, because it is an extremely complex and expensive part to replace.
Prii didn't get their reputation for reliability by being unnecessarily complicated. Of course EVs are obviously simpler, but I'm not sure I'd say a Prius is more complicated than many ICE vehicles of today. Twin turbos and 10 speed autos aren't something exotic anymore -- those are available on the base trim of the F150.
Seems to me a quite substantial improvement.
All of these are vehicles with a focus on power and range that would benefit from the torque and simplicity of electric motors, and could easily absorb the weight penalty of a motor-generator and fuel versus more batteries. The people who buy these for functional reasons would appreciate the long range, easy refueling, and reduced maintenance costs.
Sure they don't need spark plugs and oil changes and they don't break down often, but when they do apparently it's hard to find non-dealership technicians who can repair/replace parts.
It also doesn’t help that the units of “miles per gallon” are not linear with consumption. A improvement from 10 to 15 mpg doesn’t sound nearly as impressive as an improvement from 20 to 60 mpg... but unintuitively, over 20,000 miles, it’s the same amount of fuel savings.
I’d love to own a suburban but I’d never consider paying that much in gas. Maybe I’m not a typical customer?
Maybe this will kill GM. Good riddance.
Basically they are talking about a tipping point where BEVs are flat out cheaper and more cost effective for everyone. They are not talking about decades but the next few years. Right now it's a luxury thing for early adopters. A few years from now, it will be the obvious cost effective choice across all price rangers and vehicle types.
The WSJ article seems to suggest that battery vehicles are not profitable currently. I'd argue that's probably not true. At least Tesla is apparently enjoying pretty decent margins on their cars; even before you consider tax advantages.