Nearly every news outlet and publication does this and not just Reuters. It's very pervasive and it's not new. Sometimes, it's official, other times it's just a PR agency with a story and a reporter who needs one. I'm sure there's a lot of quid pro quo, but there's little that I've seen written on the subject beyond Paul Graham's essay.
Let's not blame the journalists here, if GM was proud of how many they sold out of, they would say so. A journalist asking them isn't going to change that.
The job of a journalist is to ask questions and not be satisfied with just repeating what a corporation wants them to say. Just repeating a company's PR is the job of an advertiser.
pretty much this same issue came up with the Mach E but they were more than willing to let the news out there were 3500 first edition Broncos. Also concerning is Ford still has not revealed the EPA numbers on the Mach E, still only shows projected.
>Also concerning is Ford still has not revealed the EPA numbers on the Mach E, still only shows projected.
Why is that "concerning"? It probably hasn't been officially tested yet.
Anyway, what does it matter when you can make adjustments to your EPA number have the car actually under-perform range in the real world by 25% or more:
Still, it's so expensive GM will make money on it. They probably won't have any problem making however many people are willing to order. It's a niche item, though.
Ford has an electric F-150 truck coming out.[1] Ford's goal is to make a cost-effective work truck, not a "lifestyle vehicle". If they succeed at that, the impact on the industry will be huge.
Amen, brother. Modern bed height is untenable. I'm 6', and I can only reach the tools that miraculously didn't roll more than a foot from the side. All day, it's constant climbing up on the tire or bumper. Sometimes something is close enough to reach by jumping and belly-flopping over the side. Give me an old Toyota mini pickup any day.
Misguided people will tell us that it's all about 4WD, but you see the same phenomenon in 2WD trucks and besides it didn't used to take so much clearance to add another differential under the engine and engines are smaller now anyway. The real reason is to sell pickups to people who don't need pickups. If they worked for a living they'd get annoyed just like we are. They should have been sold lift kits instead.
I am always skeptical about what car makers say about sales.
The media will tell you that Americans only like to buy large cars, but try to buy a small car and you will find they don't have any in stock -- but look, here are 50 trucks for 40% off lined up in a row.
It used to be just American car manufacturers that did that, but it happened to me when I went to a Honda dealership looking for a Fit, which they didn't have new because the factory washed out, but here we have 20 CR-Vs from the same factory on sale, why not take one of them?
> The media will tell you that Americans only like to buy large cars, but try to buy a small car and you will find they don't have any in stock -- but look, here are 50 trucks for 40% off lined up in a row.
Lots of Americans don't like to buy things without thinking they're getting a sweet deal.
Most small cars your average American will consider are fairly low-margin items unless you go uptrim. Often the only times incentives are possible are because of severely slumped sales of a model, usually the only time you'll see those kinds of numbers off on a car is if it's an older MY or otherwise definitely on it's way out of the lineup.
SUVs and Trucks have historically been priced higher, with larger margins. The Automakers can give nice looking discounts to prospective buyers while still making more money.
> It used to be just American car manufacturers that did that, but it happened to me when I went to a Honda dealership looking for a Fit, which they didn't have new because the factory washed out, but here we have 20 CR-Vs from the same factory on sale, why not take one of them?
The Fit was assembled in Mexico; my gut says the new trade agreement made it unprofitable to continue selling under that setup (possibly foreign parts content?)
The other thing to note; It's a lot easier to fit a battery pack in an SUV than a car, doubly so when we consider these manufacturers are likely looking to retrofit existing unibody designs to electric if they can.
The Fits sold in North America were assembled in Suzuka, Mie, Japan, up until 2014. Parent commenter is probably referring to the Tōhoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 2011.
Car dealers have to pay upfront for all the cars on their lot. They're not going to stock vehicles that don't sell. So naturally there aren't a lot of small cars on the lots because those cars just sit there losing money and depreciating in value.
Same reason it's nearly impossible to find a rear-wheel drive car in areas where it snows regularly. You can go further south and find plenty of RWD cars, but few northern dealerships will stock cars that can't be driven half of the year.
CRVs sell in large numbers so dealerships stock them. Fits don't sell in large numbers so dealers don't stock as many. It's not a conspiracy.
Exactly, this number is conspicuously absent from any stories about this. Googling for this information ("hummer preorders") only finds a bunch of similar articles about being sold-out, or reserved-out, with no numbers either.
The following article credits Electrek.co with the info, but no mention of it on their website.
>Exactly, this number is conspicuously absent from any stories about this.
This is a legacy company trying to implement the Tesla marketing strategy, and, as often happens, it feels a bit contrived.
Interesting that people question everything when it's GM and question nothing when it's Tesla though. Remember 450,000 Model 3 reservations? Have they even sold that many yet?
Meanwhile Tesla just keeps taking pre-orders regardless of their production projections for next year. Tesla may be afraid to admit to the public how many pre-orders they've actually taken.
> The number is "at least 200,000." Musk made the comment during an interview with Automotive News on Sunday, and it's a significantly lower figure than the running total compiled by a crowdsourced list. Fans keeping track of their order numbers estimated that there have been approximately 727,000 reservations for the electric pickup truck.
I guess fans/media won't be as upset when production doesn't meet projected targets? Or maybe Musk just forgot the actual number and was guesstimating.
Thought Musk said they stopped counting after half a million pre-sales of the Cybertruck.
Of course since most of these trucks won't see the light of day until sometime in 2022, it really doesn't make too much difference at this point. If Riviian or Tesla starts shipping in volume before the Hummer (or Cybertruck if Riviian is out the door first) is out, what is a refundable presale deposit worth?
The Hummer brand signals military machismo with emphasis on isolationist individualism and little to no regard for the environment.
An electric Hummer counters that brand signaling in unexpected and, for me, surprisingly welcome ways. Converting a large gallons-to-the-mile ICE to an emissions-free electric drive train shows a willingness to cannibalize a previously successful marketing brand with a more responsible offering.
Ideally, the EV Hummer would offer comparable or better performance than the ICE, though achieving such will likely take further research and investment.
Such manufacturing and marketing moves, though late in coming, are laudable and I sincerely hope such companies blow through their wildest sales projections in the EV market.
With an estimated 200kWh battery pack and only 350 miles of range, the EV Hummer continues to show little to no regard for efficiency, making it perfect for the Hummer brand.
This isn't scheduled to be out until the end of next year. Is it possible they are saving themselves future PR by announcing improvements before its release?
But other EVs also improve in that time so kinda irrelevant.
And just by the look of it it aerodynamically simply cant compete with a car and no one should expect that.
Hey, you only need about 200 200W solar panels to charge this during a typical clear day. You could build a farm like that on a Texas ranch and be a true 100% self-reliant individualist and drive a Hummer.
A 200KWh battery could also power a large (e.g. 4br+) house for at least a few days.
You can only power a house if the car is setup to be able to push power back to the grid. sadly teslas are not. Did the hummer launch announce such capability?
I don't know, but they should have an option where it can have 200 200W thin film panels in the back that can unfold. That would make it the green solar renewable version of the Canyonero from the Simpsons.
the transition to EVs will only increase driving and efficiency will be far down on the list as many will chime in that it does not matter because its not oil and further enforce their view by pointing to solar and wind energy.
it is very much the same scenario that played out with the move to LED lighting, suddenly you can so much more lighting because it cost so little compared to previous lighting.
if anything our next bogeyman may be all the excess heat we generate by increased power usage
I think is a good example of how the narrative around EV's is shifting.
When Tesla first started to gain traction people talked about them like they were a company that wanted to save the world. People talked about EVs like driving one was an altruistic endeavor for the future of mankind.
Now if someone as, like you said, individualistically isolationist as an EV Hummer can sellout then that's a sign the narrative around EV are changing as they become more mainstream.
> Converting a large gallons-to-the-mile ICE to an emissions-free electric drive train shows a willingness to cannibalize a previously successful marketing brand
The marketing brand for Hummers is girth and power, male sexual machismo in car form, and that isn't changing at all. Nobody evaluates their proxy phallus in terms of fuel consumption. They do it in terms of manly things like horsepower, towing capacity, and taking up a lot of space so that the whole world notices you. Electric vehicle marketing has been all over the "MOAR POWAR!" angle from the very beginning. There's zero reason for a car to accelerate to 60MPH in 3 seconds, but here we are with every electric tank advertising that it flies like a bullet.
> There's zero reason for a car to accelerate to 60MPH in 3 seconds
For an electric motor driven by batteries, the primary cost of a high power system is the ability to push lots of current to the motor. The motor itself is relatively cheap.
Any electric car that has the ability to charge quickly also has the ability to discharge quickly, to deliver lots of power to the motor.
Fast-charging is the cake, insane 0-60 times are the icing.
The Hummer EV gets about 58mpge if it has a 200kW battery. That's 571 Wh/mile or more than 2.25x less efficient than a 2019 Tesla model 3 SR+ which gets 240Wh/mile.
I'm into off roading as well, my weapon of choice was a Cherokee 4.5" lift on 32" tires. Lots of time in the woods. Built it up myself.
I'm super excited for electric off road vehicles, but when you're way out there you really still need a gasoline engine. It's just too convenient to store 100+ miles of fuel in ~60lbs strapped to the back of your truck, your friends truck, and every other person's truck who you meet on the trail. On a longer trip it's easy to be a day or more from fuel (because the roads are bad, and average speed is very low)
Torque from 0 and independent control of each motor is going to be a game changer. Add in new suspension possibilities when you don't have differentials and axles (hub motors?) and next-gen trucks could be extremely capable. If we can figure out the range/refueling problem (...and I don't think we can for 10+ more years for this use-case)
I think folks are getting confused about 'off road' in the comments here. Image search '4x4 rock climbing' - that's the stuff many trails have short (or long) sections of. Add in the isolation, constant use of aircon or heat (or both), high power demands to go very short distances, and electric just won't do it right now. We need better batteries or some way of producing electricity from liquid fuels.
The Tesla Cybertruck with 500+ miles range, plus the solar tonneau vault door that generates 40+ miles a day might be pretty good though. Super excited to see the production model with all the improvements Elon has been mentioning from his recent visit to the design center in the past week. I can't believe it's already been in manufacturing design for a year next month!
For energy density it's pretty hard to beat things like gas or diesel. Do you see any practical reason you couldn't carry liquid fuel and a generator for offroading? It would take longer to recharge than just dumping fuel into the tank but I'm not convinced that would be a dealbreaker.
Even if the generator is less efficient than a truck with an ICE engine I think it would be a net win. You would only be using the generator on long off road trips where you're isolated and don't have an alternative way to charge the vehicle. If having the generator means the EV is a viable choice then you would still get the environmental benefits of someone using an EV instead of ICE for 95% of their driving.
Model 3 is an impressive vehicle. But it can’t tow anything. If you need to haul a lot, then the difference in efficiency between Hummer EV and an equivalent capability but efficiency optimized vehicle shrinks dramatically. If the thing you’re towing is bigger than the tow vehicle, then the difference is minimal.
> "That's 571 Wh/mile or more than 2.25x less efficient than a 2019 Tesla model 3 SR+ which gets 240Wh/mile."
The ICE Hummer was at least 3X less efficient than the Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys of its era.
I'd say it actually reflects pretty well on the Hummer if it's only uses 2.25x more energy than the Model 3, which is known to be very well optimized and highly aerodynamic.
The Hummer EV is also bigger, weighs significantly more, and is designed for offroading capabilities.
Pretty much all highway-legal vehicles with strong offroad capabilities are less efficient than their non-offload-capable counterparts. (See, pretty much every Jeep ever; the Toyota offroad versions of their trucks and SUVs vs the standard models.)
I agree with everything you've said but it makes me wonder, who is buying these things? I remember seeing an H2 (in 2005 or so) with a custom license plate that proudly read "5mpg" which sums up the ethos IMO and still angers me to this day. I think a lot of people, like me, feel like the Hummer brand is poisonously associated with many things we don't believe in to the point where I would never consider buying one.
On the other hand, I can't imagine their prev base of the flamboyantly anti-liberal is going to be excited about an EV either. So are all their new buyers those sheepish in-the-middle people who don't care that much about the gross brand and always wanted to buy a Hummer themselves but were too embarrassed?? Seems like an odd niche to focus on.
Anyway I'm confused about the marketability of this product unless they openly disavow and almost apologize for their previously brazen/gas guzzling/tree-hating positioning. That they've sold out the first year means nothing without knowing the volumes involved. My gut tells me this isn't actually going to be a big seller and unlike you I don't imagine their intentions are laudable. More likely this is a callous and misguided resurrection of a dead and vile brand and they aren't even thinking about that history and their culpability in perpetuating the associated culture.
You underestimate the middle. The world isn't defined by the stereotypes we interrupt it by and this isn't any different. My friends sort of fall in this group. Imagine jock but not quite smart enough to be a nerd. Disposable incomes because we refused to grow up. They're going to wake up and be pissed when they see its already sold out.
I think your oversimplifying the appeal of a Hummer to only be had by some stereotype you have. I would purchase one of these as I have always liked the way the Hummer looks. I don't care for its association with the military or anything else. I'm not "flamboyantly liberal" and pretty center on a lot of things. It is just a nice looking car, simple as that. I also find the Tesla truck appealing as a homeowner I need something with ample cargo area to get various things for my home. It isn't that its electric that draws me, it wouldn't be that it was an ICE that would draw me either. Its just nice looking and featureful.
> as a homeowner I need something with ample cargo area to get various things for my home
This might be off-topic and I don't mean to come across as confrontational, I would like to ask: I've read this as a reason to own a truck many times and, assuming you don't have something like a farm, I'm very interested to know what it is you're hauling on the regular?
I've owned property three times in my life, twice in Texas (where there's no shortage of trucks) and have never owned a truck. All three properties have been single-family detached structures with yards, once with a pool, the works. The few times I needed to bring something home my regular sedan couldn't handle, I rented a truck for a couple of hours or a day.
Full disclosure: I loathed driving the things, too. Pedestrians were virtually impossible to see, a staggering number of blind spots, felt like it took an entire county to bring the thing to a stop, and one refueling of the rental was about what I spent on a month of gas for my usual vehicle.
I'm with you on this, but I do find that the inertia of having to rent a truck discourages me from operating my abode optimally.
For example, I've been looking at appliances, and occasionally see nice appliances on sale on craigslist or the like... these would be dead simple to pick up if I had a truck, but I'm a small car kind of person.
Similarly, I've been putting off a Home Depot trip to buy lumber for a project because I would need to get the plywood cut down pretty small to fit in my car, and I can't be bothered to rent a truck.
> "For example, I've been looking at appliances, and occasionally see nice appliances on sale on craigslist or the like... these would be dead simple to pick up if I had a truck, but I'm a small car kind of person."
A good way to solve this issue is a small car with a trailer. Even the smallest trailers available here (750kg gross weight) are plenty to haul home any appliance or piece of furniture.
And the trailer doesn't impact your fuel budget when you're not using it.
Yup, I have seen on forums that you can even hook a trailer up to a Nissan Leaf. That would get you light and local towing (no big loads, no big hills).
Lumber and building materials for remodeling like my bathroom (shower and closet doors stuff like that), topsoil and grass seed/sod for redoing my yard. 2000lbs of lava rock most recently. A new water heater when mine went out. Taking loads to the town dump during spring cleaning. There is always something here to do. Not to mention the times I've been in the store looking at a new TV, lawn mower or anything else that I would like to take home immediately (I realize that delivery exists but the convenience is what a truck provides). I've also had times where I've gone to pick such things up and the local truck rentals were out which is super frustrating.
I also don't currently own a truck, but a small sedan so all of these recent things I had to wait/pay for delivery, borrow a truck, or depend on rentals so I'm familiar with "truckless" lifestyle and can say I would prefer at the least a beater truck for these tasks, at which point trading my current car would come out equal to a standard truck in that scenario.
no one really needs a truck. even construction workers don't really need a truck, or at least not more than one per job site, as the supply company will deliver what you need. for some reason of identity people in the US like trucks. I think we enjoy feeling capable and strong, and hatchbacks for some reason make us feel weak. I drive a hatchback now and people ask me a lot of questions about it, mildly incredulous that I am willing to take the image hit.
As a kid, I really wanted a Hummer H1, and then H2, no regards towards their fuel inefficiency or the environment. I think they still are amazing. I think some people have put batteries and an electric drive train in H1's. (Arnold owns one I think?) I think you are off about the Hummer fan base. Many just want a good sized, rugged vehicle that can go into the mountains of Colorado without a worry. Yes, the "5mpg lulz" guys are out there, I agree with that. Even when I could afford an H2, I then knew about things like the environment and how owning one looks. So I didn't.
This EV Hummer looks awesome. I think their timeline to delivering is VERY optimistic and their tech will lag behind Tesla in every single way. I have a deposit on a Tesla Cybertruck and will be keeping that.
It's mostly marketing fluff with a bit more explanation, but this video dives into a lot of the little things that seem to indicate GM is at least taking things that come with a three-motor EV and helping make this a better all-around (especially off-road) vehicle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkM0L4_W_pM
Any appeal to the environment is just branding though. A private vehicle of this weight is going to be highly destructive however we look at it. Even in terms of local air quality there will be significant pollution from non-exhaust emissions such as car tyre wear and brake dust (even with regenerative braking).
"military machismo" isn't this a bit simplistic view of the army? 16% of military personnel (19% of officers corp) is female. I am not sure they would be happy to be qualified as "machos".
"isolationist individualism" - is that something bad or good? Sounds like description of pretty large number of people working in IT (typically called "nerds").
Given my anecdotal experience with the parking abilities of the average hummer owner, I would say that isolationist individualism manifests itself as 'screw everyone, I've got mine, and I don't think we live in a society.'
So, at least part of that isn't too radically different from the politics a large number of folks working in IT profess.
It turns out that marketing is not based on realistic appraisals of the world, but on assessing human beliefs about the world. These can diverge greatly.
I don't think they were saying that people in the military tend to buy hummers, but instead that people who buy hummers have a sense of military-style machismo.
I think the timing happens to be pretty much perfect.
Cybertruck came out with a radical design. The Hummer EV looks tame in comparison. There's also the new Ford Bronco that feels like it's in the same category (unique, off-road capable vehicles) and a few other truck platforms coming out.
To me, it feels a bit like the modern-retro muscle cars of the late 00's. Challenger, Charger, and Camaro all coming out in a similar timeframe generated hype about the category. I don't think any of those cars would be as successful without they're competitors.
You're quite right about the timing. Cybertruck is a very polarizing design while the Hummer EV looks like, well, a Hummer which does still appeal to quite a lot of people. Throw in the Rivian and now we're in a new segment. I'm generally happy to see more brands leaning into EV since ultimately consumers win.
It is a low volume production run to the point where this is a boutique novelty car.
Plenty of people see this more as a fun cool toy than some kind of statement of their allegiance to the wanton destruction of all that is good in the world.
Is it a little silly? Sure. It it some kind of thing to make you as mad as you’ve just become? Likely not.
> It is a low volume production run to the point where this is a boutique novelty car.
Tesla started out the same way with the Roadster, and that paved the way for the more mainstream models later on. It punched a hole in existing expectations and cleared a path for what was to come.
Tesla started out that way because EVs were entirely unproven and they had extremely limited capital.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but it says a lot about GM that what they are doing in 2020 is on the same scale as what Tesla was doing in 2004-2008 with $60 million in funding.
Ok. I was just talking about strategy/significance: the Roadster opened up EVs for "car guys" and the luxury market. This low-volume hummer could open up EVs for the "military machismo" market, or whatever you want to call it. That could have a big impact, even if it's late.
Given that it's more efficient than its ICE counterpart, this could become the standard consumer-model Hummer for the foreseeable future.
It's tough. It's freaking huge. And it's the only EV that can off-road. Subaru and Jeep are going to be facing extremely tough competition if GM can produce this in any significant volume.
If you were an "isolationist" with prepping tendencies would you prefer your car to run on oil that needs to be highly refined or electricity, potentially generated in a thousand different ways?
An electric motor doesn't really _need_ all the electronics they're just there for optimisation and comfort.
If The Shit Hits The Fan for reals, you can just plug in any power source to an electric motor and make it go. Adjusting power can be done with really simple electronic connections. Just an on/off switch will do in a pinch.
Good luck trying to find a head gasket for a certain model of ICE though =)
> An electric motor doesn't really _need_ all the electronics
These ones do. You're probably thinking of brushed motors, like the kind you can buy at Radio Shack as "hobby motors". EVs typically run brushless or induction motors, which require sensors and electronics to time the power to each coil.
I've always had a soft spot for them thanks to Earth 2 (https://imgur.com/a/yikYi5V) and I would love to see them used in that regard: as more a cargo/utility EV with less emphasis on the military machismo.
"An electric Hummer counters that brand signaling in unexpected and, for me, surprisingly welcome ways."
Compare and contrast to the Volvo brand, and marketing, which sends all of the signals you're looking for ... and can barely be bothered to enter the electric car market.
It's basically 2021 and what they have to show is an iMobile or eCar "mobility" initiative (Polestar 2) which is barely more than a concept car.
If corporate image manipulation had any basis in reality, we'd have a plain old Volvo V90 electric car by now, based on about 6-8 years of platform development at "the good car company". (I would buy this car, by the way)
Instead, I think Volvo and Hummer are both just carmakers and they will behave the way incumbent carmakers behave.
> and can barely be bothered to enter the electric car market.
WHAT?
Volvo is I think the only traditional car producer that sells absolutely no ICE-only vehicles (all of them are at the very least "mild hybrid"). Its declared goal is to be electric-only, and they certainly seem to be making good progress on that. Sure, they're not Tesla, but I think it's unfair to compare them with Hummer.
Hybrid cars are stop-gap, bullshit technology that we should have weaned ourselves from 5-6 years ago. Not only do they marry all the complexity of an ICE vehicle to the electric car, but in the specific case of Volvo (with their extremely high tolerance, low displacement high output motors (YES, turbo and supercharged)) involves even greater complexity.
Volvo and their inability to commit to electric (and all of the marketing and advertising to the contrary) is a master class in the reality of incumbent ICE manufacturers. It also shows how much of the volvo branding and market segment is just bullshit.
"Their goal is 50% plugin hybrid, 50% full electric by 2025"
Yes, we all saw those press releases but the reality is the actual volvo cars (V60, V90, XC90, S60, S80) will be the hybrids[1] and the space-tron eMobility iDrive ecoTrans "initiative" cars will be the electric ones.
Show me an actual volvo (not a space-tron concept car and not their little XC40 golf cart) that is electric and I will happily recant (and go purchase one).
[1] With tiny, loud, high vibration lawnmower engines mated to turbos and blowers.
Considering that most apartment and condo dwellers don't have the option of recharging their vehicles at night, and that the electrical grid would not be capable of charging that many cars simultaneously even if the charging stations were in place, switching to EV-only sales is still years into the future.
Hybrids may not be perfect, but they're better than the alternative of ICE-only vehicles, and the sale of hybrid consumer vehicles has done wonderful things for air quality in CA (wildfires notwithstanding).
World with MHEV/HEV/PHEV is far better than the world only has ICE and EV. It's not possible to ship ten million EVs, and we're not enough rich to buy EV at this time. HV uses less battery cells than EV so they can ship many efficient cars with fewer cells.
"Emissions-free" is a lie anyway. Tire rubber dust/oil/windshield wiper fluid etc. There is no such thing as an emission-free car. Also gray energy emission (embodied energy) is completely ignore as allays. If we compare average emission per mileage per car over the whole lifetime EVs are just as bad as any other car. The only way to change that is if cars stop being parked 99% of their lifetime. Environmentally the worst thing for a car to do is not being in use. It means more cars are build than work is there for them. Thats how we actually waste resources and pollute completely unnecessary.
Sounds reasonable to me. Embodied energy. One example, it takes a heck of a lot of energy to mine and process all that copper that goes into the motor windings. Another, it takes a heck of a lot of energy to mine and process all that lithium that goes in the batteries. Plus, where is the electricity comming from to charge them? Here in Montana, that generally means coal, burned hundreds of miles away and transported at great loss.
But when the coal plants get shut down and replaced with less polluting options, all electric cars in the state will instantly become less polluting.
You do know that the car industry only uses a fraction of a fraction of all electric motors created, right? And the stuff dug out of the ground doesn't mystically disappear, it can still be recycled.
Coal and oil will actually just go poof when it's used. It can never be used again.
They can't because it's not true. The only way to find a third-party source to back that up is either use the one Swedish(?) study, which has been refuted by its original authors or some really ancient source with old data.
Depending on the way a country produces most of its electricity, EVs will outperform ICEs in emissions in just a few years. And that's mostly ignoring the emissions from drilling oil, refining it to petrol and moving said petrol to stations.
This wasn't meant to be a scientific publishing so no I'm not gonna back this up with any source. Do your own research or simply skip the part of my comment if you think its wrong.
And to all the people commenting below. It doesn't even matter if EVs are better. Even if they have half the emission to a normal car. Reusing a existing car is almost certainly still better. Also no one really know what the lifespan of any modern car is. If you assume cars follow the trend of anything else then EVs will probably be obsolete after 5 years by the time we have 50% EVs on the road. Building a car EV or not that last 10, 15 even 20 years outperforms in emission. Also my main point was that humanity should reduce cars that aren't moving that would reduce pointless emission.
>"Emissions-free" is a lie anyway. Tire rubber dust/oil/windshield wiper fluid etc. There is no such thing as an emission-free car.
True, all cars pollute, but EVs pollute their environment less.
>Also gray energy emission (embodied energy) is completely ignore as allays. If we compare average emission per mileage per car over the whole lifetime EVs are just as bad as any other car.
For one, I'm pretty sure that CO2 emissions per lifetime of EV is significantly less than ICE although it is absolutely not zero, that's true.
But point two: Containing emissions from a factory is much simpler than containing emssions from a million cars driving around.
>The only way to change that is if cars stop being parked 99% of their lifetime. Environmentally the worst thing for a car to do is not being in use. It means more cars are build than work is there for them.
True, personal vehicles are rather wasteful but it is definitely worse for the environment to drive an ICE than to not drive it.
>Thats how we actually waste resources and pollute completely unnecessary.
I agree, cars should be taxed a lot at purchase and their usage billed (with road usage taxes for instance).
> If we compare average emission per mileage per car over the whole lifetime EVs are just as bad as any other car.
You had me up to this point. EVs are certainly responsible for some emissions.
But ICE cars share all the "Emissions" you mention (Tire rubber dust/oil/windshield wiper fluid etc.), plus the massive emissions of just burning gasoline increasingly inefficiently over the lifespan of the vehicle. Plus wasteful oil leaks and just oil burning over the life of the vehicle; the environmental cost of shipping oil and gasoline all over the planet; the environmental damage from massive oil spills and small gasoline spills from everyday fill-ups; transmission fluids, the list goes on and on.
EVs aren't perfect in terms of the environment, they aren't even great, but they are a metric ton better than ICE vehicles.
The total CO2 cost of an EV vs an ICE has been calculated by multiple groups and the results are only a search away. Even the studies funded by oil companies can't fudge the numbers enough to really make them worse.
> "Ideally, the EV Hummer would offer comparable or better performance than the ICE, though achieving such will likely take further research and investment."
The Hummer EV easily beats any ICE Hummer, as well as it's contemporary ICE peers, on all performance metrics except range.
In fact, the ICE Hummer was such a gas guzzler that even its range was worse than the Hummer EV. With fuel efficiency as low as 9 miles to the gallon, the Hummer H2's 32.0 US gallon fuel tank would have only given it a range of 288 miles compared to the Hummer EV's 350.
> What is wrong with “isolationist individualism”?
The enormous externalities of supporting that lifestyle, whose costs are frequently borne in the form of municipal debt, climate devastation, and by (in net, when everyone demands this and fills in-demand areas with widely spaced housing) reducing the available housing stock.
It wouldn't be such a problem if people were willing to accept the simpler, less opulent and lower-impact lifestyle such a housing choice should entail.
Living semi-off grid and with a low environmental impact is possible, but it demands deliberate choices and trade-offs.
How? You get energy from solar panels, water from a well, and internet through satellites. What type of remote living are you condemning? Do you have any evidence for this?
Also, I do not understand how someone living further away from a city reduces the housing in a city.
I think the Hummer EV is fantastic. It isn't a compromised version of a gasoline vehicle. It truly is an ambitious approach to an electric vehicle. Like triple the power of past Hummers and with more range (!) than the conventional gas guzzlers.
It has a bunch of interesting features that showcase the best of GM's engineers. It really is a good flagship. By going for the most machismo vehicle in the line-up, they're helping Tesla destroy any last vestige of electric vehicles as just fancy golf carts.
I mean, this was (and in some circles, still is) the popular perception of electric vehicles 17 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcmZ1dof3Qw
(Also, in absolute terms, they get the biggest emissions advantage over a conventional powertrain this way. Convert a Hummer from conventional to electric saves like 1 pound of CO2 per mile driven versus like 0.25 pounds saved per mile for, like, a subcompact car.)
Vehicles like this are super important for helping convince the general public that climate action and electrification of transport doesn't mean diminished capacity and a smaller, more boring future.
I was super impressed by the video GM released on it. I have said skeptical things about past "Tesla killers" and I am very much a Tesla fan, but I only have good things to say about this.
With such a huge battery capacity, it might even be useful for towing, who knows!
> The brawny truck can “crab walk” sideways on rough terrain using its four-wheel steering system, and has a “Watts to Freedom” mode that accelerates the truck to 60 miles per hour (97 kph) in 3 seconds.
I am all about electrification but as a cyclist and pedestrian, I really don't want to be around 3000kg vehicles that can accelerate this fast.
Agreed! I really feel that it is time for our city centers to put restrictions on the type of vehicles that are allowed on the streets. I imagine this would be based on size, weight, and horsepower (or something similar). Exceptions would only be granted for verifiable business reasons.
If you want this truck for cruising in rural areas or on the highway, fine, but don't bring it to the city where there are pedestrians, cyclists, narrow roads, and limited parking.
Because they’re driven by trained professionals? I’ve never seen a bus or garbage truck run a red light at full speed, drive 50 on a neighborhood street, or do donuts in an intersection. I see cars do those things all the time.
Those vehicles are driven by professional drivers. IME busses are extremely respectful to cyclists whereas SUV drivers seem to actively hate anyone not in an SUV.
So I recently moved into a larger city and have taken to try and bike/walk more. I also live in an area with quite a few stop signs/red lights.
It has actually really surprised me ancedotally how many times I see a sports car (mustang, challenger, porsche, etc.) or other type of vehicle with a high acceleration (motorcycle) accelerate in a REALLY short distance. I am talking less than 100 ft/30 m, and possibly as little as 50 ft/15 m. Even more so, it happens on a busy street with a lot of pedestrians or where a lot of folks would bike. On a few occasions the vehicle almost hit another car that was trying to take a turn.
Yes indeed. And where's the panic? Where's the calls to sports cars from the city center? People get killed on Berlin's Ku'damm on the regular by these maniac drivers. (I am not joking or being sarcastic. Germany treats this as murders, and the drivers are on trial for murder.)
I don't understand? You were asking how a fast accelerating car is worse than a bus/garbage truck, so I answered your question.
It sounds like Berlin is doing the right thing. You can get a sports car if you want, but if you kill someone you should be treated as if you murdered someone.
I’ve had a bus overtake me with one inch to spare on my right[0] handlebar for the bus while one inch to left[0] handlebar was an uneven wooden fence.
Less vehicles means less chances for that to happen.
That said, I really hope for self-driving so we can all have whatever and it’s fine, and until then grade-separated cycle lanes are also good — but the danger is there, and I wouldn’t oppose car limits if there was a vote.
There are a lot fewer of them and they provide much more essential services to the city. It would still be better if they didn't share infrastructure with cyclists.
Commercial vehicles are not as powerful as you think... The Scania P-series which is often used for garbage trucks in Europe has engines ranging from 200hp to 500hp [0]. Cargo vans like the Fiat Ducato are typically not much more than 100hp.
Cars on the other hand... The Mercedes GLE mid-range SUV starts at 245hp, and has options all the way up to 612hp. Why on earth do you need so much power in a family car?
Anything more than 150hp for a non-sports car is just silly.
I actually feel that the insane acc that Tesla makes normal for non-sport cars might be a safety hazard. There will probably be many "hits the acc pedal instead of brakes" accidents when they get more common.
You're not thinking big enough. Our city centers should be putting restrictions on ALL vehicles entering. Exceptions for emergency services, shipping and transit.
This is ridiculous. Do you think your weight is significant in comparison to a lighter vehicle? If it was a Tesla hitting you while doing 0-60 in under 3 seconds, do you think you would be less dead?
Acceleration stats aside, SUVs are, statistically, much more likely to kill more people--pedestrians and riders alike--than other types of cars. The increasing popularity of SUVs is one of the main reasons behind the rise in pedestrian deaths in the past decade. Given their bulk, they also cause slower traffic in general. Their popularity is a lose-lose for drivers (and everyone else trying to get around) at the end of the day.
I have mixed feelings about this car: on the one hand, it does give me hope that mainstream consumers who are attracted to trucks and SUVs will start to accept EVs as the standard, and the brand cache will accelerate EV adoption overall. It's also a pretty darn cool car; they did a great job with their initial marketing. On the other hand, it's going to suck to drive (or cycle, or walk) alongside people driving these vehicles. We're going to be complaining about selfish Hummer drivers when we see these on the roads again based purely on their behavior as drivers, EV or not.
Personally, I'm hoping we start to see a more diverse mix of electric vehicles on the market, including new kinds of micromobility. The Biro (https://biro.nl) is apparently a very cool car to own among wealthier Europeans. I've heard of a couple electric motorcycle brands that are trying to copy Tesla's playbook as a high end, prestige brand. More efficient delivery vehicles are desperately needed, too. But unfortunately, when other people drive SUVs, it makes it harder for you to drive these other vehicles safely and incentivizes you to drive an SUV, too.
I really dislike that I have a SUV, but TBH I find them WAY more comfortable than sedans. Maybe it'c suz I'm tall, maybe cuz I have tight hamstrings and fragile lower-back. I donno. I'm really itching to get an hybrid/electric SUV, but for hybrid it's hard to swallow spending 10k more for like <10mpg more. The only exception being the new rav4 which would be like 20mpg more AFAICT.
I recently started paying my utility company extra for green energy enough to offset my entire carbon footprint, including car and it's like $15 a month, so that's a lot of years of ICE before $10k delta difference is overcome...
I never really thought of it until I did this but converting cars seems like a pretty inefficient (per dollar) way of reducing carbon.
Slightly OT, but if I were a company selling an "Offset your whole carbon footprint" subscription, I would charge $15/month too (with a bunch of "calculations" in the background to justify it).
I am nervous about the carbon-offset space, but what warmed me to the idea is it's through my utility so it should be straightforward to measure/calculate/act, as opposed to farm/rainforest protection which is a lot more fussy with much more unknown side-affects.
And part of the justification is the state's regulation requires them to sell you the cheapest power, so it makes sense that you can volunteer for slightly more expensive power that is more green. Also the program is certified by green-e and apparently endorsed by NREL.gov.
And FWIW, it's not a "offset your whole footprint" program; I just used a national kwh-co2 calculator to calculate how much green power I would need to put into the market to offset my entire footprint (instead of only paying to offset the power I use). So very napkin math-y.
SUVs are a relatively recent phenomenon, with some exceptions such as the Wagoneer. And we did like large cars, but switched to minivans as cars downsized, then switched to SUVs as Minivans become stigmatized.
And even if you're ambivalent about SUVs, after a while you start thinking "It'd be nice to be able to see beyond this giant block in front of me".
Besides what the sibling comment said my brainstorming is:
- Culture
- Cost (sedans are cheaper), but income has gone up, especially in suburbs.
- More people living in urban areas with more money, but our urban areas still need cars. People who would buy a truck if they were rural, buy a SUV when suburban.
- Smaller family sizes so minivan isn't needed.
- Gas prices have plummeted so worse MPG doesn't matter as much compared to sedans.
> I've heard of a couple electric motorcycle brands that are trying to copy Tesla's playbook as a high end, prestige brand
Not really addressing anything in your post, but I saw this and wanted to provide some info for those curious.
There are a couple of motorcycle brands that technically produce or are planning to produce electric bikes, but so far there is only one that reliably produces them on scale, and they are definitely treated as Tesla of motorcycles in the community. The brand I am talking about is Zero Motorcycles, and it is pretty much Tesla down to a T when it comes to branding and the experience.
The pricing is notably more expensive than comparable ICE motorcycles, but not outrageously so (their premium models go for a bit above premium Kawasaki models and comparable to BMW ones). Everything is very clean and nice, but looks subtly more different than ICE bikes (similar to how it was with Tesla Model S). A lot of controls through the app and digital screens. Delivers on value great.
Unfortunately, that's the only realistic electric motorcycle option at the moment. Harley Davidson made Livewire, but it was a terrible EV bike that had issues with charging, and had to get recalled multiple times due to software bugs (yes, this is as ridiculous as it sounds). Not even mentioning the price (on both their EV and ICE) being in a whole other category compared to literally any other motorcycle manufacturer. Livewire started at $30k, while Zero premium street bike started at $20k (with even much cheaper models available).
The other one that looks promising is Lightning, but there weren't many sales and i haven't seen virtually a single one on the road (with plenty Zero bikes everywhere btw), so, I suspect, something is not right. Pricing is a bit cheaper, but comparable to Zero.
P.S. I promise I am not affiliated with Zero motorcycles in any way lol. I don't even own one, I have just been researching heavily into electric bikes since last year, because I am looking to upgrade from my trusty Honda cbr500r.
For one thing, the lighter vehicles' brakes and turning abilities are better. A truck can accelerate quickly, but that doesn't mean it can reasonably brake or turn any more effectively.
Weight increases friction, which means a heavier thing can typically brake just as fast as long as it has proportionally more tire surface to avoid skidding.
Is acceleration a factor that contributes to injuries to cyclists or pedestrians? Most accidents in city centers are vehicles travelling at relatively slow speeds and drivers who are already at speed, but not paying attention.
The amount of energy imparted upon impact to a pedestrian is mostly a factor of momentum and the shape of the vehicle.
As an avid cyclist, I can say that wide vehicles with high acceleration are my bane. When a vehicle is accelerating, the driver is intending to make it move both faster, and farther. It takes the driver time to shift their intent, then time to shift their feet, then time for the vehicle to stop. This is exacerbated by fast acceleration, is that the vehicle will gain both more speed and more distance by the time the driver shifts their intent, and their feet, than slow acceleration vehicles.
Also, wide vehicles have a much harder time dealing with pedestrians on bike lines and shoulders. I've been forced off the road so many times by Hummers and their ilk, and almost never by a sedan.
Yes, having a higher speed decreases the amount of time the driver has to react to impending collisions. Even the slowest of passenger vehicles are capable of reaching unsafe speeds for surface streets within a couple of seconds. The majority of pedestrian collisions are due to inattention -- which is almost universally correlative with a lack of driver inputs. Someone looking at their phone is almost never applying 100% throttle.
I would bet that your relative difference in experience between different types of vehicles is more of a function of:
1. vehicle size and shape compared to the total available road space
2. differences in driver attitudes as they correlate with the vehicles they choose to drive
It is worth noting that the Hummers you find to be particular problematic are some of the slowest vehicles on the road. The average sedan today accelerates faster than any hummer ever made.
That’s not my experience in Kansas City. The city has been putting in bike lanes and special intersections everywhere the last couple years. I can count the number of cyclist I’ve ever seen using them on one hand.
Projecting from GM Sierra production in a year, and a comment elsewhere that the Edition 1 reserve was one year's production, this could be as many as 200 thousand Hummer EV Edition 1, each at $112K per.
That means each person who reserved an Edition 1 could have bought a $30k car instead and the rest of the money could have bought a house for a homeless, resulting in no homeless families in our country. We need to get our priorities straight.
I am all for EVs, but we need them mandated as the norm, not luxury status symbols that cost as much as a house. When they are mandated and gas models aren't sold then manufacturers will make cheaper models to meet the market's demand.
>I am all for EVs, but we need them mandated as the norm, not luxury status symbols that cost as much as a house. When they are mandated and gas models aren't sold then manufacturers will make cheaper models to meet the market's demand.
That isn't how that works. You can't just make something cheaper by fiat. It takes time, demand and technological advancement. Banning new ICE vehicles unilaterally will make it so nobody can afford a new car.
> That means each person who reserved an Edition 1 could have bought a $30k car instead and the rest of the money could have bought a house for a homeless, resulting in no homeless families in our country.
And does that have to do with the price of butter?
They said it was a limited edition and do you really think so many people would be willing to spend $100k plus?
GM also admitted they don't have a real, working hummer EV at this point. All the numbers are "GM Estimates", so I highly doubt they'd offer more than 1000 units on something they might not be able to achieve.
edit: heck, even the number of motors is "estimated"
>That means each person who reserved an Edition 1 could have bought a $30k car instead and the rest of the money could have bought a house for a homeless, resulting in no homeless families in our country. We need to get our priorities straight.
Priorities are definitely not straight in this country, but I'd bet 95% of those sold are going to be financed. Very few people have 100k liquid, and even fewer are willing to drop it on a car. Your point stands though, those people didn't finance a 30k car and agree to pay 82k via convenient monthly payments over a number of years to end homelessness.
This brings up another point - why are massive new vehicles seen as such a status symbol in the US? 120 month loans on a rapidly depreciating asset are insane, same with rolling over debt from prior vehicles. Millions of people have 7+ year car loans which are holding them back from achieving economic stability. They won't have positive equity in the vehicle until the last couple years of the loan, by which point their vehicle needs have likely changed and they've already gotten a different car.
> That means each person who reserved an Edition 1 could have bought a $30k car instead and the rest of the money could have bought a house for a homeless,
Instead of attempting to control the luxury purchasing habits of the wealthy, we should instead just tax them more (their income/wealth, not the sale) rather than relying on their selective and conditional charity.
I doubt the sales of these would drop much if we did.
This is ridiculous on so many levels. Who are you to tell someone else how they should spend their money? Not sure how you arrived at your estimate of production either. Are you basing it on how many units they produced of some completely different and somewhat popular vehicle?
If we could just hand housing to homeless persons to solve the problem, it would have been solved long ago. Mental health is the true issue, and that is far trickier with no purely monetary solution (you get into conflicts with personal autonomy and freedom quickly).
If you see a problem that could be obviously, easily solved, especially with nothing but money, then maybe it's wise for you to assume that you're underestimating the problem.
Actually some places have started just giving the homeless housing. It turns out it’s much easier to get other services to someone with a stable living environment.
The GMC Sierra is half of the GM truck twins, and when combined with the Chevrolet Silverado are some of the absolute highest selling vehicles in the United States, more then the single model Ford F150.
To put it another way, the production of the Sierra is a horrible place to start assumptions for how many units of a novelty/niche six-figure electric SUV will be produced.
It's a bit like saying "there are a lot of Corollas, I bet they'll sell a few million Lexus LFAs!"
While I personally agree that buying a 6-figure vehicle is excessive, you can make this argument about anything that you don't strictly need for survival. What's the threshold for something to be a "luxury status symbol", and who gets to decide that? My vehicle cost roughly $18,000 and I considered that expensive. Does that mean I get to scold you for thinking people "need" a $30K vehicle?
Great on paper, but have you seen this thing? It looks like a Cybertruck and a Jeep JK had a baby, then a 2021 Ford Bronco and a Delorean had a baby. Then the kids grew up and got married to each other and gave birth to this EV monstrosity.
One thing people aren't talking enough about is, the charging.
A 200kwh battery that only gets 300mi of range is TERRIBLE. Especially if they are making the numbers pretty like Tesla does.
Even the fastest at home charger you can buy will take ~22 hours to charge the vehicle, or more like 18 hours if you do standard 20% to 80% charging. If you daily drive this thing 300 miles a week, you will need to charge it for almost an entire day of that week. Let's take 40 miles a day as an example, it will need a charge by Saturday, and it will basically charge all the way until late Sunday...
The 800v charger they are referencing has no network, I cannot even find one in the entire state of Florida. This thing is years out from being practical, where as a Tesla is practical today.
charging time is an issue wherever it takes longer than the vehicle is expected to park.
i genearally agree that people overvalue fast charging, but if the parent comment is accurate and it will take 22hrs to charge on a home charger, that's longer than overnight charging. that's really not acceptable.
Yeah, the charger for my model 3 charges at the car's max onboard charger current of 48a; 48a * 240v = 11.520kW.
We charge the car to 90%, every time the battery is down to perhaps 100 miles of range, and it takes ~3h. Technically 0-75kWh at max current (which wouldn't happen but let's play) would take 6.5 hours.
You only need 200kWh if you empty your battery every day. Few people drive 300 miles every day. A normal power plug can provide 3.6kW or so, so around 40kWh in a night. That's probably already enough for most drivers. I assume people who can afford this car can also afford a 48A circuit for charging.
For a vehicle of this size, that might be only 60 miles or so. It's possible to drive normally and still find yourself short on charge every night. A 48A circuit is probably required for acceptable charging times.
Plus it would be legitimately expensive, since you're blowing through 40 kWh every day. Compared to a gasoline car that's normally sized, this might be more expensive to drive.
A Hummer H2 got less range with an 32 gallon tank. At standard LA prices of $3.50 (right now), that was $112 every time the tank was refilled. A normal sedan like a 2020 Camry has a 14 gallon tank, which would cost approximately $49 to refill.
How much you pay for electricity depends on where you live, so it's very possible that a Hummer EV would cost less than an ICE sedan on a refueling cost basis.
A normal sedan would get around 35 mpg. If you pay more than $0.15/kWh, a Hummer EV would be the more expensive vehicle to drive. This figure gets worse if you compare it to a hybrid sedan that can reach 50 mpg.
Excess is the point of the Hummer. If you want practical, get a Prius. I'm closer to the Prius end of the spectrum, but the Hummer has always unapologetically owned what it is and its fans like it for that.
Which is why the Hummer EV is a terrible idea. If excess is the point, then it should be banned or heavily discouraged. There's no point in having such a vehicle around.
I thought in this thread the problem was that you can't charge your Hummer quickly enough. I'm not arguing that a Hummer is a sensible choice for transportation. I'd choose a bicycle instead.
Tesla has pretty much perfected this. You tell the car where you are going and it tracks where the Superchargers are and will automatically redirect you to one when needed. It will also tell you when you can/should leave - which in most cases isn't at 100%.
This isn't surprising, considering the fuel economy of an a regular Hummer compared to an ICE car.
I'm actually glad a luxury priced vehicle finally has a decent range, considering the I-pace, E-tron, EQC, taycan have equivalent range to the much cheaper Tesla model 3 and Chevy Bolt. (~220-240mi)
If this is the case and the source of energy is unclean, then how does it compare to its ICE counterpart in terms of CO2 output?
I will need to lookup the source, but electricity generated by fossil fuel sources are to a certain degree dirtier than just using the fossil fuel source directly in the vehicle.
Anyone who has tried to purchase anything from GM that wasn't a truck or an econobox knows that they never make enough cars that people actually want to buy (or more accurately, cars the I want to buy). So I'm not surprised GM sold out of e-Hummers, they're probably making all of six of them.
I'm sure there's some MBA-speak that explains it, like keep supply low on halo vehicles to make the overall GM brand seem appealing. But the end result has been that I've owned one GM car about 30 years ago (Geo Prizm), and only because my parents worked for GM and got a substantial discount. Since then, I've just kind of given up on them. Even if they make something I like, they won't make enough of them.
What I meant was they managed to cheapen an already affordable budget car. It still was a decent car mechanically and provided you take care of it would still run fine today.
Growing up with friends who had one or the other the plastics tended to fail a lot more often with the Geo models. Same could be said for the headliners and vinyl on the dash and A-pillars. The vinyl in one friends Prizm seemed to have shrinkage issues as it pulled itself away from all the corners before falling apart.
I can be biased against American cars at times, because at one point they did fall far behind the quality coming out of Europe/Asia. Ever since global models of cars took off they have improved greatly.
I worked for nearly 5 running an online auto parts store and yeah no car is perfect and they all suffer from some issue in the end.
>Anyone who has tried to purchase anything from GM that wasn't a truck or an econobox knows that they never make enough cars that people actually want to buy
GM produces millions of cars a year and has been around for over a hundred years but doesn't sell cars people actually want?
To me, the big story about the Cybertruck has always been that it's a Tesla that's being launched price competitive with equivalent ICE vehicles. A 2WD Tundra or F150 with King Cab style 4 doors is only a couple grand less than the Cybertruck. A year of gas savings puts you ahead of the game in the Cybertruck.
With the Hummer at $110,000? All that goes out the door. You can buy a loaded to the gills gas guzzler and pay for 10 years of gas and still have $10,000 in the bank.
Ultimately the Cybertruck is the sort of EV which might hit mass adoption. The price is decent, Tesla has the brand to carry it, so long as the truck delivers on it's promises, I can see the Cybertruck being a huge hit. The Hummer is destined to ship a few thousand in the first couple years, then gather dust in showrooms.
Honest question. Except for wild game and things that stink in general, why do you get a pick-up instead of eg. a big combi? They are so common in the US but only hunters and farmers have them where I live.
I ride mountain bikes, often there will be 4-5 of us in the truck with 4 bikes on the rack and one or two in the bed. Sometimes we'll have the truck full of people and 2 people in the bed along with a couple bikes.
I might be able to get away with a Model Y, or something comparable.
The hybrid F-150 is coming out in 2021, and more news about the electric F-150 is coming out in 2021 as well for a 2022 release. Ford definitely wants to move on this, but traditional pickup owners are slightly resistent to change (see the hubbub over Ford's own transition to twin turbo V6 engines from V8s, and a switch from steel to aluminum for body construction).
Right now the eTruck market is rife with rumors and potential products so it's really hard to know where this market is going.
For the moment anyhow, the Cybertruck is by far the most affordable of the eTruck options announced. The base model and the base 4WD are $20,000+ less than the rest of the truck EVs out there. Since Ford is seemingly pretty far behind in the EV game, if they announce an F150 well under that mark, I'd be surprised.
But if they do, it'll likely be hugely popular.
The Cybertruck's looks don't do it any favors in this market. Also, those giant sides on the bed really put a hit on the utility.
Yeah, I don't think people outside of very specific areas realize how easy it is to "option up" trucks to $80/$90k. There are hundreds of GMC 3500 Denalis going for >$80k on Autotrader:
>To me, the big story about the Cybertruck has always been that it's a Tesla that's being launched price competitive with equivalent ICE vehicles.
Where can a person go buy a Cybertruck for the advertised price? Tesla has a history of claiming their cars will be cheaper than they end up being. I'm extremely skeptical that they manage to build that truck for $40k.
I live near Beverly Hills. 1/2 of cars are here are either a Mercedes G-Class, Range Rover, Porcshe Cayenne or BMW X6.
The EV Hummer car will sell like hotcakes here. It achieves it's main goal of looking cool and distinct from the other cars here, not to mention it can use EV parking spots.
If 1/2 of cars are in one of 4 categories, than at least one of those categories has to have 1/8th of the car population. That’s all fine and good, but at that point buying one of those vehicles is more about fitting in than standing out.
The shape of this thing reminds me of one of those desktop calculator apps that have on-screen number keys. Physical calculators need number keys, or else there’s no way to enter numbers, but a device with a keyboard doesn’t need a bunch of number keys that no one is ever going to click on. They’re just decoration, and there’s no reason to add them aside from telling people “hey, this is a calculator”.
Likewise a vehicle like the electric Hummer (or the Rivian truck and SUV) doesn’t need that visibility- and pedestrian-killing codpiece that they have mounted over the electric drivetrain (which likely doesn’t extend beyond the envelope of the wheel wells). There’s no need for it except to tell people “hey, this is a truck”. Except in this case it’s a design element that is literally killing an increasing number of people every year[1], not just a bit of wasted screen real estate.
I really hope this design language eventually goes the way of way of the Landau[2], either by way of some forward-thinking EV designer who doesn’t keep copying the mistakes of ICE vehicles, or that people finally wake up to how utterly ridiculous these vehicles look[3], or by way of some kind of minimal standards around forward visibility[4] and pedestrian injury potential.
The concept you're referring to with drawing obsolete design features from the past is called Skeuomorphism. It's a huge pet peeve of mine. Apple products used to be bad about this.
Tesla has done well to design away the ICE front grill. Though even the original Model S had a fake grill to not throw people off.
When I was a kid and was taught using a mouse, the standard practice was to press these little tiny buttons on a calculator app to practice fine motor skills.
As much as I agree with your general point, this electric hummer [0] looks great in my opinion. I'm hoping there is a way of making good looking and safe cars that don't have to look like eggs. Probably easier to say being in Australia where giant trucks like the hummer are still the exception.
I have a 1987 Econoline modified for offroading. Previous models had the engine inside. Subsequent models had the engine entirely in front. But the generation I have split the difference with a short, downward sloping hood.
For this reason and many more - ever since Tesla announced their SUV, I have wished that someone in the EV space would consider this era of van when building anything meant to appeal to overlanding. Despite the many many issues, the design has excellent approach and departure angles, extremely good utility, has the same footprint of a full sized truck, and (for many reasons) has been a favorite for aftermarket conversion for a long time (see Sportsmobile or any of dozens of RV builders). Professional conversion companies and hobbyist like myself spend a lot of time building electrical systems into these vans to make them into better campers. Unlike your average truck owner (farmer, rancher, contractor, etc), the entire van-building niche would embrace a solid EV alternative.
Rivian (of all companies) is building a very cool looking delivery van for Amazon. Not sure if they're going to be available for civilian use, or if there's going to be an all wheel drive option, though.
IMO there are very few situations where a van isn't superior to a pickup truck, and I don't understand the continued popularity of trucks versus vans in the US. About the only advantages of pickups are for bulk materials (e.g. soil/gravel), messy materials (e.g. straw bales) and really tall things that need to stay upright (e.g. refrigerators), and of course towing certain extremely large trailers.
Only thing I can think of is that pickups have better visibility, both to see out/down... and to see who is driving.
I've had a pickup and a van and it's easier to get stuff in and out of a pickup - you can walk around the side and haul stuff over your head and get in the bed and walk around. motorcycles fit in a pickup, or 3 of them.
I'm a bit confused about this "SUV's kill pedestrians" hatred.
Don't buses, vans and trucks kill people too? How about solving problem of mixing pedestrian and car traffic to begin with. Also slowing the streets themselves to the point you're comfortable cycling next to traffic? Make parking spots smaller so that it's just inconvenient to use ${car_type_I_dont_like}.
Pedestrian deaths have been rising in the US for a few years after falling steadily, and the number of private vehicles that are light trucks and SUVs has been rising steadily. So there's a clear correlation, as well as a mechanism in that the higher, blunter front ends of these vehicles are more likely to kill pedestrians in a collision (hitting vital organs instead of legs).
It's hard to know if there was a commensurate rise in buses, vans and (commercial) trucks, but they have a couple of mitigating factors: Drivers usually have more training, and they're often designed with reasonable forward visibility (especially cab-over designs).
You're 100% right that street design is a super important variable here. If this kind of thing interests you I'd recommend the book Right of Way by Angie Schmitt (no relation).
This car is more about rebranding GM as an electric vehicle company. Even if they only break even, it's an extremely inexpensive PR campaign to change what people are talking about when they talk about GM.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 290 ms ] threadhttp://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Why is that "concerning"? It probably hasn't been officially tested yet.
Anyway, what does it matter when you can make adjustments to your EPA number have the car actually under-perform range in the real world by 25% or more:
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a33824052/adjustment-f...
Still, it's so expensive GM will make money on it. They probably won't have any problem making however many people are willing to order. It's a niche item, though.
Ford has an electric F-150 truck coming out.[1] Ford's goal is to make a cost-effective work truck, not a "lifestyle vehicle". If they succeed at that, the impact on the industry will be huge.
[1] https://www.autoblog.com/2020/09/17/electric-ford-f-150-deta...
Misguided people will tell us that it's all about 4WD, but you see the same phenomenon in 2WD trucks and besides it didn't used to take so much clearance to add another differential under the engine and engines are smaller now anyway. The real reason is to sell pickups to people who don't need pickups. If they worked for a living they'd get annoyed just like we are. They should have been sold lift kits instead.
The media will tell you that Americans only like to buy large cars, but try to buy a small car and you will find they don't have any in stock -- but look, here are 50 trucks for 40% off lined up in a row.
It used to be just American car manufacturers that did that, but it happened to me when I went to a Honda dealership looking for a Fit, which they didn't have new because the factory washed out, but here we have 20 CR-Vs from the same factory on sale, why not take one of them?
Lots of Americans don't like to buy things without thinking they're getting a sweet deal.
Most small cars your average American will consider are fairly low-margin items unless you go uptrim. Often the only times incentives are possible are because of severely slumped sales of a model, usually the only time you'll see those kinds of numbers off on a car is if it's an older MY or otherwise definitely on it's way out of the lineup.
SUVs and Trucks have historically been priced higher, with larger margins. The Automakers can give nice looking discounts to prospective buyers while still making more money.
> It used to be just American car manufacturers that did that, but it happened to me when I went to a Honda dealership looking for a Fit, which they didn't have new because the factory washed out, but here we have 20 CR-Vs from the same factory on sale, why not take one of them?
The Fit was assembled in Mexico; my gut says the new trade agreement made it unprofitable to continue selling under that setup (possibly foreign parts content?)
The other thing to note; It's a lot easier to fit a battery pack in an SUV than a car, doubly so when we consider these manufacturers are likely looking to retrofit existing unibody designs to electric if they can.
>> Production of the current-generation Fit in Mexico will end, and Honda will ramp up production of the related HR-V crossover as a result.
(https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33337398/honda-fit-discon...)
Same reason it's nearly impossible to find a rear-wheel drive car in areas where it snows regularly. You can go further south and find plenty of RWD cars, but few northern dealerships will stock cars that can't be driven half of the year.
CRVs sell in large numbers so dealerships stock them. Fits don't sell in large numbers so dealers don't stock as many. It's not a conspiracy.
The following article credits Electrek.co with the info, but no mention of it on their website.
https://www.motor1.com/news/450123/hummer-ev-edition-1-sold-...
I wonder if there will be vocal GM short-sellers now too.
This is a legacy company trying to implement the Tesla marketing strategy, and, as often happens, it feels a bit contrived.
Interesting that people question everything when it's GM and question nothing when it's Tesla though. Remember 450,000 Model 3 reservations? Have they even sold that many yet?
Marketing is telling half the story, the best half.
(except for the superbowl ad, which was inventing a story to tell)
It's too bad they didn't capitalize on a few more differentiating points.
"Full sized dashboard in front of you"
"We will sell you parts and a service manual."
"You don't have to hook your car to the internet if you don't want."
> The number is "at least 200,000." Musk made the comment during an interview with Automotive News on Sunday, and it's a significantly lower figure than the running total compiled by a crowdsourced list. Fans keeping track of their order numbers estimated that there have been approximately 727,000 reservations for the electric pickup truck.
source: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/elon-musk-tesla-cybertruc...
Downplaying demand is the conservative position to take, since it's not clear how many reservations will actually convert to sales.
Of course since most of these trucks won't see the light of day until sometime in 2022, it really doesn't make too much difference at this point. If Riviian or Tesla starts shipping in volume before the Hummer (or Cybertruck if Riviian is out the door first) is out, what is a refundable presale deposit worth?
That's probably why he says something low - I bet they estimate deposit -> sale conversion rate to be ~25%
[edit] Thanks for the responses reg models years vs calendar years. Makes sense.
An electric Hummer counters that brand signaling in unexpected and, for me, surprisingly welcome ways. Converting a large gallons-to-the-mile ICE to an emissions-free electric drive train shows a willingness to cannibalize a previously successful marketing brand with a more responsible offering.
Ideally, the EV Hummer would offer comparable or better performance than the ICE, though achieving such will likely take further research and investment.
Such manufacturing and marketing moves, though late in coming, are laudable and I sincerely hope such companies blow through their wildest sales projections in the EV market.
My Focus EV 2017 has a lifetime of about 275Wh/mi (and I have a lead foot).
A 200KWh battery could also power a large (e.g. 4br+) house for at least a few days.
it is very much the same scenario that played out with the move to LED lighting, suddenly you can so much more lighting because it cost so little compared to previous lighting.
if anything our next bogeyman may be all the excess heat we generate by increased power usage
When Tesla first started to gain traction people talked about them like they were a company that wanted to save the world. People talked about EVs like driving one was an altruistic endeavor for the future of mankind.
Now if someone as, like you said, individualistically isolationist as an EV Hummer can sellout then that's a sign the narrative around EV are changing as they become more mainstream.
The only time I think IC vehicles are useful are for the power density of gas, which should just be super-long trips with no infra.
The marketing brand for Hummers is girth and power, male sexual machismo in car form, and that isn't changing at all. Nobody evaluates their proxy phallus in terms of fuel consumption. They do it in terms of manly things like horsepower, towing capacity, and taking up a lot of space so that the whole world notices you. Electric vehicle marketing has been all over the "MOAR POWAR!" angle from the very beginning. There's zero reason for a car to accelerate to 60MPH in 3 seconds, but here we are with every electric tank advertising that it flies like a bullet.
For an electric motor driven by batteries, the primary cost of a high power system is the ability to push lots of current to the motor. The motor itself is relatively cheap.
Any electric car that has the ability to charge quickly also has the ability to discharge quickly, to deliver lots of power to the motor.
Fast-charging is the cake, insane 0-60 times are the icing.
As for the original H1 it turned out to be a fine vehicle for the "Green Zone" but did not sufficient force protection for today's urban warrior.
Can you offroad in a model 3? What lift kit do I need to install to fit 40" tires? What's the departure angle? Approach angle?
Apples and oranges, but this is probably beyond the scope of HN. I doubt we have many other people here who are into offroading.
It's appealing to me.
If Chrysler made an electric Wrangler or Ford an electric Raptor, now that'd be interesting.
FWIW the model 3 is better than one would expect off road since there's a lot less stuff to worry about on the underside (no oil pan, for example).
I'm super excited for electric off road vehicles, but when you're way out there you really still need a gasoline engine. It's just too convenient to store 100+ miles of fuel in ~60lbs strapped to the back of your truck, your friends truck, and every other person's truck who you meet on the trail. On a longer trip it's easy to be a day or more from fuel (because the roads are bad, and average speed is very low)
Torque from 0 and independent control of each motor is going to be a game changer. Add in new suspension possibilities when you don't have differentials and axles (hub motors?) and next-gen trucks could be extremely capable. If we can figure out the range/refueling problem (...and I don't think we can for 10+ more years for this use-case)
I think folks are getting confused about 'off road' in the comments here. Image search '4x4 rock climbing' - that's the stuff many trails have short (or long) sections of. Add in the isolation, constant use of aircon or heat (or both), high power demands to go very short distances, and electric just won't do it right now. We need better batteries or some way of producing electricity from liquid fuels.
The difference is, I'm guessing the Sedan can't pull my 9,000lb trailer very well.
The ICE Hummer was at least 3X less efficient than the Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys of its era.
I'd say it actually reflects pretty well on the Hummer if it's only uses 2.25x more energy than the Model 3, which is known to be very well optimized and highly aerodynamic.
Pretty much all highway-legal vehicles with strong offroad capabilities are less efficient than their non-offload-capable counterparts. (See, pretty much every Jeep ever; the Toyota offroad versions of their trucks and SUVs vs the standard models.)
On the other hand, I can't imagine their prev base of the flamboyantly anti-liberal is going to be excited about an EV either. So are all their new buyers those sheepish in-the-middle people who don't care that much about the gross brand and always wanted to buy a Hummer themselves but were too embarrassed?? Seems like an odd niche to focus on.
Anyway I'm confused about the marketability of this product unless they openly disavow and almost apologize for their previously brazen/gas guzzling/tree-hating positioning. That they've sold out the first year means nothing without knowing the volumes involved. My gut tells me this isn't actually going to be a big seller and unlike you I don't imagine their intentions are laudable. More likely this is a callous and misguided resurrection of a dead and vile brand and they aren't even thinking about that history and their culpability in perpetuating the associated culture.
This might be off-topic and I don't mean to come across as confrontational, I would like to ask: I've read this as a reason to own a truck many times and, assuming you don't have something like a farm, I'm very interested to know what it is you're hauling on the regular?
I've owned property three times in my life, twice in Texas (where there's no shortage of trucks) and have never owned a truck. All three properties have been single-family detached structures with yards, once with a pool, the works. The few times I needed to bring something home my regular sedan couldn't handle, I rented a truck for a couple of hours or a day.
Full disclosure: I loathed driving the things, too. Pedestrians were virtually impossible to see, a staggering number of blind spots, felt like it took an entire county to bring the thing to a stop, and one refueling of the rental was about what I spent on a month of gas for my usual vehicle.
For example, I've been looking at appliances, and occasionally see nice appliances on sale on craigslist or the like... these would be dead simple to pick up if I had a truck, but I'm a small car kind of person.
Similarly, I've been putting off a Home Depot trip to buy lumber for a project because I would need to get the plywood cut down pretty small to fit in my car, and I can't be bothered to rent a truck.
A good way to solve this issue is a small car with a trailer. Even the smallest trailers available here (750kg gross weight) are plenty to haul home any appliance or piece of furniture.
And the trailer doesn't impact your fuel budget when you're not using it.
More important for city living, the trailer doesn't make the vehicle fundamentally more difficult to parallel park in a tight spot.
I also don't currently own a truck, but a small sedan so all of these recent things I had to wait/pay for delivery, borrow a truck, or depend on rentals so I'm familiar with "truckless" lifestyle and can say I would prefer at the least a beater truck for these tasks, at which point trading my current car would come out equal to a standard truck in that scenario.
This EV Hummer looks awesome. I think their timeline to delivering is VERY optimistic and their tech will lag behind Tesla in every single way. I have a deposit on a Tesla Cybertruck and will be keeping that.
I'd be interested in Sandy Munro's take (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj--iMtToRO_cGG_fpmP5XQ)
"isolationist individualism" - is that something bad or good? Sounds like description of pretty large number of people working in IT (typically called "nerds").
So, at least part of that isn't too radically different from the politics a large number of folks working in IT profess.
Cybertruck came out with a radical design. The Hummer EV looks tame in comparison. There's also the new Ford Bronco that feels like it's in the same category (unique, off-road capable vehicles) and a few other truck platforms coming out.
To me, it feels a bit like the modern-retro muscle cars of the late 00's. Challenger, Charger, and Camaro all coming out in a similar timeframe generated hype about the category. I don't think any of those cars would be as successful without they're competitors.
It is a low volume production run to the point where this is a boutique novelty car.
Plenty of people see this more as a fun cool toy than some kind of statement of their allegiance to the wanton destruction of all that is good in the world.
Is it a little silly? Sure. It it some kind of thing to make you as mad as you’ve just become? Likely not.
Tesla started out the same way with the Roadster, and that paved the way for the more mainstream models later on. It punched a hole in existing expectations and cleared a path for what was to come.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but it says a lot about GM that what they are doing in 2020 is on the same scale as what Tesla was doing in 2004-2008 with $60 million in funding.
It's tough. It's freaking huge. And it's the only EV that can off-road. Subaru and Jeep are going to be facing extremely tough competition if GM can produce this in any significant volume.
wait until eM1 Abrams. With additional benefit of improved IR signature.
Vs. creating a rendered biomass pipeline to feed an extremely fiddly engine with hundreds of moving bits and bobs?
The fiddly engine's moving bits and bobs will degrade with use, so it should be possible to pull replacements from disused alternatives.
If The Shit Hits The Fan for reals, you can just plug in any power source to an electric motor and make it go. Adjusting power can be done with really simple electronic connections. Just an on/off switch will do in a pinch.
Good luck trying to find a head gasket for a certain model of ICE though =)
These ones do. You're probably thinking of brushed motors, like the kind you can buy at Radio Shack as "hobby motors". EVs typically run brushless or induction motors, which require sensors and electronics to time the power to each coil.
Compare and contrast to the Volvo brand, and marketing, which sends all of the signals you're looking for ... and can barely be bothered to enter the electric car market.
It's basically 2021 and what they have to show is an iMobile or eCar "mobility" initiative (Polestar 2) which is barely more than a concept car.
If corporate image manipulation had any basis in reality, we'd have a plain old Volvo V90 electric car by now, based on about 6-8 years of platform development at "the good car company". (I would buy this car, by the way)
Instead, I think Volvo and Hummer are both just carmakers and they will behave the way incumbent carmakers behave.
WHAT?
Volvo is I think the only traditional car producer that sells absolutely no ICE-only vehicles (all of them are at the very least "mild hybrid"). Its declared goal is to be electric-only, and they certainly seem to be making good progress on that. Sure, they're not Tesla, but I think it's unfair to compare them with Hummer.
[edit] here are their (public) goals: https://www.volvocars.com/intl/why-volvo/human-innovation/el...
- Since 2019, all cars electrified, all cars available in "plug in hybrid" version
- 2020, launch full electric vehicles (they did, XC40)
- Their goal is 50% plugin hybrid, 50% full electric by 2025
This is the same company that released the seat belt patent to public domain[1], just to make stuff safer for everyone.
[1]https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-patent-issue...
Volvo and their inability to commit to electric (and all of the marketing and advertising to the contrary) is a master class in the reality of incumbent ICE manufacturers. It also shows how much of the volvo branding and market segment is just bullshit.
"Their goal is 50% plugin hybrid, 50% full electric by 2025"
Yes, we all saw those press releases but the reality is the actual volvo cars (V60, V90, XC90, S60, S80) will be the hybrids[1] and the space-tron eMobility iDrive ecoTrans "initiative" cars will be the electric ones.
Show me an actual volvo (not a space-tron concept car and not their little XC40 golf cart) that is electric and I will happily recant (and go purchase one).
[1] With tiny, loud, high vibration lawnmower engines mated to turbos and blowers.
Hybrids may not be perfect, but they're better than the alternative of ICE-only vehicles, and the sale of hybrid consumer vehicles has done wonderful things for air quality in CA (wildfires notwithstanding).
That sounds totally outside the realm of reason. Please do cite some third-party sources.
You do know that the car industry only uses a fraction of a fraction of all electric motors created, right? And the stuff dug out of the ground doesn't mystically disappear, it can still be recycled.
Coal and oil will actually just go poof when it's used. It can never be used again.
Depending on the way a country produces most of its electricity, EVs will outperform ICEs in emissions in just a few years. And that's mostly ignoring the emissions from drilling oil, refining it to petrol and moving said petrol to stations.
And to all the people commenting below. It doesn't even matter if EVs are better. Even if they have half the emission to a normal car. Reusing a existing car is almost certainly still better. Also no one really know what the lifespan of any modern car is. If you assume cars follow the trend of anything else then EVs will probably be obsolete after 5 years by the time we have 50% EVs on the road. Building a car EV or not that last 10, 15 even 20 years outperforms in emission. Also my main point was that humanity should reduce cars that aren't moving that would reduce pointless emission.
True, all cars pollute, but EVs pollute their environment less.
>Also gray energy emission (embodied energy) is completely ignore as allays. If we compare average emission per mileage per car over the whole lifetime EVs are just as bad as any other car.
For one, I'm pretty sure that CO2 emissions per lifetime of EV is significantly less than ICE although it is absolutely not zero, that's true. But point two: Containing emissions from a factory is much simpler than containing emssions from a million cars driving around.
>The only way to change that is if cars stop being parked 99% of their lifetime. Environmentally the worst thing for a car to do is not being in use. It means more cars are build than work is there for them.
True, personal vehicles are rather wasteful but it is definitely worse for the environment to drive an ICE than to not drive it.
>Thats how we actually waste resources and pollute completely unnecessary.
I agree, cars should be taxed a lot at purchase and their usage billed (with road usage taxes for instance).
You had me up to this point. EVs are certainly responsible for some emissions.
But ICE cars share all the "Emissions" you mention (Tire rubber dust/oil/windshield wiper fluid etc.), plus the massive emissions of just burning gasoline increasingly inefficiently over the lifespan of the vehicle. Plus wasteful oil leaks and just oil burning over the life of the vehicle; the environmental cost of shipping oil and gasoline all over the planet; the environmental damage from massive oil spills and small gasoline spills from everyday fill-ups; transmission fluids, the list goes on and on.
EVs aren't perfect in terms of the environment, they aren't even great, but they are a metric ton better than ICE vehicles.
The Hummer EV easily beats any ICE Hummer, as well as it's contemporary ICE peers, on all performance metrics except range.
In fact, the ICE Hummer was such a gas guzzler that even its range was worse than the Hummer EV. With fuel efficiency as low as 9 miles to the gallon, the Hummer H2's 32.0 US gallon fuel tank would have only given it a range of 288 miles compared to the Hummer EV's 350.
A lot of people enjoy living in far places away from communities. I think that’s my perfect retirement scenario honestly.
The enormous externalities of supporting that lifestyle, whose costs are frequently borne in the form of municipal debt, climate devastation, and by (in net, when everyone demands this and fills in-demand areas with widely spaced housing) reducing the available housing stock.
Living semi-off grid and with a low environmental impact is possible, but it demands deliberate choices and trade-offs.
Also, I do not understand how someone living further away from a city reduces the housing in a city.
Cybertruck is larger again at 5,885 mm, but that may differ for the production version.
It has a bunch of interesting features that showcase the best of GM's engineers. It really is a good flagship. By going for the most machismo vehicle in the line-up, they're helping Tesla destroy any last vestige of electric vehicles as just fancy golf carts. I mean, this was (and in some circles, still is) the popular perception of electric vehicles 17 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcmZ1dof3Qw
(Also, in absolute terms, they get the biggest emissions advantage over a conventional powertrain this way. Convert a Hummer from conventional to electric saves like 1 pound of CO2 per mile driven versus like 0.25 pounds saved per mile for, like, a subcompact car.)
Vehicles like this are super important for helping convince the general public that climate action and electrification of transport doesn't mean diminished capacity and a smaller, more boring future.
I was super impressed by the video GM released on it. I have said skeptical things about past "Tesla killers" and I am very much a Tesla fan, but I only have good things to say about this.
With such a huge battery capacity, it might even be useful for towing, who knows!
I am all about electrification but as a cyclist and pedestrian, I really don't want to be around 3000kg vehicles that can accelerate this fast.
If you want this truck for cruising in rural areas or on the highway, fine, but don't bring it to the city where there are pedestrians, cyclists, narrow roads, and limited parking.
It has actually really surprised me ancedotally how many times I see a sports car (mustang, challenger, porsche, etc.) or other type of vehicle with a high acceleration (motorcycle) accelerate in a REALLY short distance. I am talking less than 100 ft/30 m, and possibly as little as 50 ft/15 m. Even more so, it happens on a busy street with a lot of pedestrians or where a lot of folks would bike. On a few occasions the vehicle almost hit another car that was trying to take a turn.
In Berlin there's a low-key idea to ban all cars from city center though: https://www.berlin.de/tourismus/infos/verkehr/nachrichten/63...
(Too bad Madrid rolled their progress back...)
I don't understand? You were asking how a fast accelerating car is worse than a bus/garbage truck, so I answered your question.
It sounds like Berlin is doing the right thing. You can get a sports car if you want, but if you kill someone you should be treated as if you murdered someone.
Less vehicles means less chances for that to happen.
That said, I really hope for self-driving so we can all have whatever and it’s fine, and until then grade-separated cycle lanes are also good — but the danger is there, and I wouldn’t oppose car limits if there was a vote.
[0] UK, hence which sides
Cars on the other hand... The Mercedes GLE mid-range SUV starts at 245hp, and has options all the way up to 612hp. Why on earth do you need so much power in a family car?
[0] https://www.scania.com/uk/en/home/products-and-services/truc...
I actually feel that the insane acc that Tesla makes normal for non-sport cars might be a safety hazard. There will probably be many "hits the acc pedal instead of brakes" accidents when they get more common.
I have mixed feelings about this car: on the one hand, it does give me hope that mainstream consumers who are attracted to trucks and SUVs will start to accept EVs as the standard, and the brand cache will accelerate EV adoption overall. It's also a pretty darn cool car; they did a great job with their initial marketing. On the other hand, it's going to suck to drive (or cycle, or walk) alongside people driving these vehicles. We're going to be complaining about selfish Hummer drivers when we see these on the roads again based purely on their behavior as drivers, EV or not.
Personally, I'm hoping we start to see a more diverse mix of electric vehicles on the market, including new kinds of micromobility. The Biro (https://biro.nl) is apparently a very cool car to own among wealthier Europeans. I've heard of a couple electric motorcycle brands that are trying to copy Tesla's playbook as a high end, prestige brand. More efficient delivery vehicles are desperately needed, too. But unfortunately, when other people drive SUVs, it makes it harder for you to drive these other vehicles safely and incentivizes you to drive an SUV, too.
I recently started paying my utility company extra for green energy enough to offset my entire carbon footprint, including car and it's like $15 a month, so that's a lot of years of ICE before $10k delta difference is overcome...
I never really thought of it until I did this but converting cars seems like a pretty inefficient (per dollar) way of reducing carbon.
I am nervous about the carbon-offset space, but what warmed me to the idea is it's through my utility so it should be straightforward to measure/calculate/act, as opposed to farm/rainforest protection which is a lot more fussy with much more unknown side-affects.
And part of the justification is the state's regulation requires them to sell you the cheapest power, so it makes sense that you can volunteer for slightly more expensive power that is more green. Also the program is certified by green-e and apparently endorsed by NREL.gov.
And FWIW, it's not a "offset your whole footprint" program; I just used a national kwh-co2 calculator to calculate how much green power I would need to put into the market to offset my entire footprint (instead of only paying to offset the power I use). So very napkin math-y.
And even if you're ambivalent about SUVs, after a while you start thinking "It'd be nice to be able to see beyond this giant block in front of me".
Not really addressing anything in your post, but I saw this and wanted to provide some info for those curious.
There are a couple of motorcycle brands that technically produce or are planning to produce electric bikes, but so far there is only one that reliably produces them on scale, and they are definitely treated as Tesla of motorcycles in the community. The brand I am talking about is Zero Motorcycles, and it is pretty much Tesla down to a T when it comes to branding and the experience.
The pricing is notably more expensive than comparable ICE motorcycles, but not outrageously so (their premium models go for a bit above premium Kawasaki models and comparable to BMW ones). Everything is very clean and nice, but looks subtly more different than ICE bikes (similar to how it was with Tesla Model S). A lot of controls through the app and digital screens. Delivers on value great.
Unfortunately, that's the only realistic electric motorcycle option at the moment. Harley Davidson made Livewire, but it was a terrible EV bike that had issues with charging, and had to get recalled multiple times due to software bugs (yes, this is as ridiculous as it sounds). Not even mentioning the price (on both their EV and ICE) being in a whole other category compared to literally any other motorcycle manufacturer. Livewire started at $30k, while Zero premium street bike started at $20k (with even much cheaper models available).
The other one that looks promising is Lightning, but there weren't many sales and i haven't seen virtually a single one on the road (with plenty Zero bikes everywhere btw), so, I suspect, something is not right. Pricing is a bit cheaper, but comparable to Zero.
P.S. I promise I am not affiliated with Zero motorcycles in any way lol. I don't even own one, I have just been researching heavily into electric bikes since last year, because I am looking to upgrade from my trusty Honda cbr500r.
The amount of energy imparted upon impact to a pedestrian is mostly a factor of momentum and the shape of the vehicle.
Also, wide vehicles have a much harder time dealing with pedestrians on bike lines and shoulders. I've been forced off the road so many times by Hummers and their ilk, and almost never by a sedan.
I would bet that your relative difference in experience between different types of vehicles is more of a function of:
1. vehicle size and shape compared to the total available road space
2. differences in driver attitudes as they correlate with the vehicles they choose to drive
It is worth noting that the Hummers you find to be particular problematic are some of the slowest vehicles on the road. The average sedan today accelerates faster than any hummer ever made.
To put this in perspective, there are perhaps 171,670 homeless families in America, according to https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless....
That means each person who reserved an Edition 1 could have bought a $30k car instead and the rest of the money could have bought a house for a homeless, resulting in no homeless families in our country. We need to get our priorities straight.
I am all for EVs, but we need them mandated as the norm, not luxury status symbols that cost as much as a house. When they are mandated and gas models aren't sold then manufacturers will make cheaper models to meet the market's demand.
That isn't how that works. You can't just make something cheaper by fiat. It takes time, demand and technological advancement. Banning new ICE vehicles unilaterally will make it so nobody can afford a new car.
And does that have to do with the price of butter?
GM also admitted they don't have a real, working hummer EV at this point. All the numbers are "GM Estimates", so I highly doubt they'd offer more than 1000 units on something they might not be able to achieve.
edit: heck, even the number of motors is "estimated"
Priorities are definitely not straight in this country, but I'd bet 95% of those sold are going to be financed. Very few people have 100k liquid, and even fewer are willing to drop it on a car. Your point stands though, those people didn't finance a 30k car and agree to pay 82k via convenient monthly payments over a number of years to end homelessness.
This brings up another point - why are massive new vehicles seen as such a status symbol in the US? 120 month loans on a rapidly depreciating asset are insane, same with rolling over debt from prior vehicles. Millions of people have 7+ year car loans which are holding them back from achieving economic stability. They won't have positive equity in the vehicle until the last couple years of the loan, by which point their vehicle needs have likely changed and they've already gotten a different car.
Instead of attempting to control the luxury purchasing habits of the wealthy, we should instead just tax them more (their income/wealth, not the sale) rather than relying on their selective and conditional charity.
I doubt the sales of these would drop much if we did.
If you see a problem that could be obviously, easily solved, especially with nothing but money, then maybe it's wise for you to assume that you're underestimating the problem.
To put it another way, the production of the Sierra is a horrible place to start assumptions for how many units of a novelty/niche six-figure electric SUV will be produced.
It's a bit like saying "there are a lot of Corollas, I bet they'll sell a few million Lexus LFAs!"
Honestly we should be praising this - we need more electric vehicles and while this is a luxury toy that is where Tesla started.
EDIT: Honestly, I say honestly way too much :)
A 200kwh battery that only gets 300mi of range is TERRIBLE. Especially if they are making the numbers pretty like Tesla does. Even the fastest at home charger you can buy will take ~22 hours to charge the vehicle, or more like 18 hours if you do standard 20% to 80% charging. If you daily drive this thing 300 miles a week, you will need to charge it for almost an entire day of that week. Let's take 40 miles a day as an example, it will need a charge by Saturday, and it will basically charge all the way until late Sunday...
The 800v charger they are referencing has no network, I cannot even find one in the entire state of Florida. This thing is years out from being practical, where as a Tesla is practical today.
i genearally agree that people overvalue fast charging, but if the parent comment is accurate and it will take 22hrs to charge on a home charger, that's longer than overnight charging. that's really not acceptable.
We charge the car to 90%, every time the battery is down to perhaps 100 miles of range, and it takes ~3h. Technically 0-75kWh at max current (which wouldn't happen but let's play) would take 6.5 hours.
For the Hummer, 200/11.520 = 17.4 hours. Yikes.
Plus it would be legitimately expensive, since you're blowing through 40 kWh every day. Compared to a gasoline car that's normally sized, this might be more expensive to drive.
How much you pay for electricity depends on where you live, so it's very possible that a Hummer EV would cost less than an ICE sedan on a refueling cost basis.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/american-excess-is-back...
HVDC chargers are mostly used for roadtrips, not daily charges.
Tesla has pretty much perfected this. You tell the car where you are going and it tracks where the Superchargers are and will automatically redirect you to one when needed. It will also tell you when you can/should leave - which in most cases isn't at 100%.
I'm actually glad a luxury priced vehicle finally has a decent range, considering the I-pace, E-tron, EQC, taycan have equivalent range to the much cheaper Tesla model 3 and Chevy Bolt. (~220-240mi)
I will need to lookup the source, but electricity generated by fossil fuel sources are to a certain degree dirtier than just using the fossil fuel source directly in the vehicle.
I'm sure there's some MBA-speak that explains it, like keep supply low on halo vehicles to make the overall GM brand seem appealing. But the end result has been that I've owned one GM car about 30 years ago (Geo Prizm), and only because my parents worked for GM and got a substantial discount. Since then, I've just kind of given up on them. Even if they make something I like, they won't make enough of them.
I'm unclear on your meaning. I loved that car, where does "horrible" fit in?
Growing up with friends who had one or the other the plastics tended to fail a lot more often with the Geo models. Same could be said for the headliners and vinyl on the dash and A-pillars. The vinyl in one friends Prizm seemed to have shrinkage issues as it pulled itself away from all the corners before falling apart.
I can be biased against American cars at times, because at one point they did fall far behind the quality coming out of Europe/Asia. Ever since global models of cars took off they have improved greatly.
I worked for nearly 5 running an online auto parts store and yeah no car is perfect and they all suffer from some issue in the end.
GM produces millions of cars a year and has been around for over a hundred years but doesn't sell cars people actually want?
With the Hummer at $110,000? All that goes out the door. You can buy a loaded to the gills gas guzzler and pay for 10 years of gas and still have $10,000 in the bank.
Ultimately the Cybertruck is the sort of EV which might hit mass adoption. The price is decent, Tesla has the brand to carry it, so long as the truck delivers on it's promises, I can see the Cybertruck being a huge hit. The Hummer is destined to ship a few thousand in the first couple years, then gather dust in showrooms.
This car is too big for European streets. Might sale well in parts of the US but that's it.
Yep, but then most American trucks it's designed to offset are as well.
I might be able to get away with a Model Y, or something comparable.
Maybe the eF150 will be the stuff. Just haven't seen anything on it.
For the moment anyhow, the Cybertruck is by far the most affordable of the eTruck options announced. The base model and the base 4WD are $20,000+ less than the rest of the truck EVs out there. Since Ford is seemingly pretty far behind in the EV game, if they announce an F150 well under that mark, I'd be surprised.
But if they do, it'll likely be hugely popular.
The Cybertruck's looks don't do it any favors in this market. Also, those giant sides on the bed really put a hit on the utility.
A "loaded to the gills" gas pickup is the same price range as this electric Hummer. Pickups are very expensive.
https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/all-cars/gmc/sierra...
And that's before you get to the really bougie stuff -- some Ford F350s start at $85k and there's a handful of MSRP >$100k:
https://shop.ford.com/build/superduty/#/config/Config%5B%7CF...
Where can a person go buy a Cybertruck for the advertised price? Tesla has a history of claiming their cars will be cheaper than they end up being. I'm extremely skeptical that they manage to build that truck for $40k.
The EV Hummer car will sell like hotcakes here. It achieves it's main goal of looking cool and distinct from the other cars here, not to mention it can use EV parking spots.
Likewise a vehicle like the electric Hummer (or the Rivian truck and SUV) doesn’t need that visibility- and pedestrian-killing codpiece that they have mounted over the electric drivetrain (which likely doesn’t extend beyond the envelope of the wheel wells). There’s no need for it except to tell people “hey, this is a truck”. Except in this case it’s a design element that is literally killing an increasing number of people every year[1], not just a bit of wasted screen real estate.
I really hope this design language eventually goes the way of way of the Landau[2], either by way of some forward-thinking EV designer who doesn’t keep copying the mistakes of ICE vehicles, or that people finally wake up to how utterly ridiculous these vehicles look[3], or by way of some kind of minimal standards around forward visibility[4] and pedestrian injury potential.
[1] https://www.codot.gov/safety/traffic-safety-pulse/2019/march... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landau_(automobile) [3] https://twitter.com/verge/status/1318208829675491329 [4] https://twitter.com/ItsMcMikeTime/status/1296801390862446597...
Tesla has done well to design away the ICE front grill. Though even the original Model S had a fake grill to not throw people off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph
I thought consensus was opposite.
Don't underestimate the number of people who like to lean back in their chair and do everything with a mouse.
"Don't review large vehicles if you don't like them."
"There are bigger vehicles on the roads."
"It's not a problem because I personally have never hit anyone."
"It's supposed to be big an imposing."
People really are addicted to their oversized silly-mobiles.
[0] https://www.rushlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2021-hum...
For this reason and many more - ever since Tesla announced their SUV, I have wished that someone in the EV space would consider this era of van when building anything meant to appeal to overlanding. Despite the many many issues, the design has excellent approach and departure angles, extremely good utility, has the same footprint of a full sized truck, and (for many reasons) has been a favorite for aftermarket conversion for a long time (see Sportsmobile or any of dozens of RV builders). Professional conversion companies and hobbyist like myself spend a lot of time building electrical systems into these vans to make them into better campers. Unlike your average truck owner (farmer, rancher, contractor, etc), the entire van-building niche would embrace a solid EV alternative.
IMO there are very few situations where a van isn't superior to a pickup truck, and I don't understand the continued popularity of trucks versus vans in the US. About the only advantages of pickups are for bulk materials (e.g. soil/gravel), messy materials (e.g. straw bales) and really tall things that need to stay upright (e.g. refrigerators), and of course towing certain extremely large trailers.
I've had a pickup and a van and it's easier to get stuff in and out of a pickup - you can walk around the side and haul stuff over your head and get in the bed and walk around. motorcycles fit in a pickup, or 3 of them.
An EV chassis could converge driving, lighting, appliances, heating and cooling into one system, and make off-grid and solar a real possibility.
Don't buses, vans and trucks kill people too? How about solving problem of mixing pedestrian and car traffic to begin with. Also slowing the streets themselves to the point you're comfortable cycling next to traffic? Make parking spots smaller so that it's just inconvenient to use ${car_type_I_dont_like}.
It's hard to know if there was a commensurate rise in buses, vans and (commercial) trucks, but they have a couple of mitigating factors: Drivers usually have more training, and they're often designed with reasonable forward visibility (especially cab-over designs).
You're 100% right that street design is a super important variable here. If this kind of thing interests you I'd recommend the book Right of Way by Angie Schmitt (no relation).
But is there clear data? Seems pretty straightforward data to collect...
You can also correlate it to price of bitcoin, smartphones, avocado futures, airpods and social media /s
Finally, how much professional training to minivan and MPV drivers get?
In states like Texas a huge portion of vehicles are not cars but these behemoths.
GM decides 105k just short of an Escalade, prolly seats 6-8.
And I'm sure I will see them here in NY/Long Island, and just like every other car on the road, you'll see one person behind the wheel.