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My 2017 Volt is what took me to my 2018 Model 3. Now I can no longer see myself driving any car that is not electric. This from someone who loves the sound of a

My 2017 Volt is what took me to my 2018 Model 3. Now I can no longer see myself driving any car that is not electric. This from someone who loves the sound of a good muscle car even to this day. GM's issue has always been they have played the compliance game while claiming otherwise. Even Ford is doing it now with the Mach E by limiting availability to 50k models, a number a third of the sales of vehicles they have cancelled for low unsustainable sales. I never bought my TM3 to save money, buying any new car pretty much is a losing proposition. I bought it because it was cool. It was the closest I have even seen to those dream/concept cars from the seventies and eighties. All those cars with radical exteriors and even more radical interiors. Well someone built it. Is it perfect. No. However as an EV is had my most important feature. Range. I could care less about its 0-60mph times. I want range. I want to drive to my friends in the boonies and back in all seasons without having to divert to charge. I want to be able to skip chargers because I have the range to do so. Plus remember, every range number given should be hedged by multiplying it by 0.90 as no manufacturer suggests charging to 100% all the time. On a side note : Do not buy FSD. Tesla will not let you transfer it to another Tesla and even right now trade ins to Tesla are hit and miss as they have been giving ZERO dollars on trade for the feature. You don't need it for lane keep assist or traffic aware cruise control. I don't care if you believe Tesla can or cannot deliver it, the simple matter here is they don't honor you by giving you anything for it on trade; something that Elon claims to be looking into

nickik 6y ago
Mach-E started as a compliance EV and the realised that their compliance car might not sell at all and they would have to lose like 10-15k on each one of them, and potentially sell them in fairly large numbers compared to compliance cars of the past. So they have a team inside Ford and they basically told them to go all out on the vehicle and they did a nice job. These guys however are still sort of separate from overall Ford and the car is basically designed to sell well and not lose them to much money. Ford has the issue that they simply don't have battery supply to scale their EV production. They are getting batteries from LG in Europe right now but all new capacity is basically already reserved for all the Europeans. They simply can't copy the Model Y and sell 300k a year, specially because to match the Y in specs, they needed to put more battery into it. I agree with your point on FSD. They said they would start to value it during trade in now, but even so, when you sell it privately, if the buyer doesn't want FSD its harder to sell, its limits the pool of people who want it.
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  Do you have a source on the Mach-E history?
  - cptskippy 6y ago
    This was Ford's own narrative when they announced it. Almost every article written about it in Nov of 2019 shared that narrative. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/11/heres-everything-we-know-about-the-electric-ford-mustang-mach-e/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/11/heres-everything-we-kno... https://www.motor1.com/features/382783/ford-mustang-mach-e-boring-front-drive-compliance-car/ https://www.motor1.com/features/382783/ford-mustang-mach-e-b...
    - reitzensteinm 6y ago
      Ah sorry, I mean specifically the economics discussed - loss per car for a compliance car, the need to produce more compliance cars, that the car is expected to lose money still. I'd be quite interested in a peek behind the curtains with that much detail, but I don't think that much has been said publicly and I wonder if it's just the parent making inferences.
      - cptskippy 6y ago
        It is conjecture but we'll founded. GM lost money on every Volt and loses money on every Bolt. Tesla is rumored to sell at a lost and make up for it by selling clean energy credits to the likes of Fiat Chrysler. It's well known that all of Ford and GM's past EVs were compliance cars.
        reitzensteinm 6y ago
        The details are important, though. The industry factors R&D in to gross margin, and typically reports of per unit losses include it. If you spend $1bn to develop a car you sell 100k of break even, you just lost $10k per car. But that doesn't mean you're going to lose twice as much if you double the production. If they were going to lose 10-15k per incremental unit, that's horrific and I'd love to know the details, that's why I'm asking.

nickik 6y ago

Mach-E started as a compliance EV and the realised that their compliance car might not sell at all and they would have to lose like 10-15k on each one of them, and potentially sell them in fairly large numbers compared to compliance cars of the past. So they have a team inside Ford and they basically told them to go all out on the vehicle and they did a nice job. These guys however are still sort of separate from overall Ford and the car is basically designed to sell well and not lose them to much money. Ford has the issue that they simply don't have battery supply to scale their EV production. They are getting batteries from LG in Europe right now but all new capacity is basically already reserved for all the Europeans. They simply can't copy the Model Y and sell 300k a year, specially because to match the Y in specs, they needed to put more battery into it. I agree with your point on FSD. They said they would start to value it during trade in now, but even so, when you sell it privately, if the buyer doesn't want FSD its harder to sell, its limits the pool of people who want it.

reitzensteinm 6y ago
Do you have a source on the Mach-E history?
- cptskippy 6y ago
  This was Ford's own narrative when they announced it. Almost every article written about it in Nov of 2019 shared that narrative. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/11/heres-everything-we-know-about-the-electric-ford-mustang-mach-e/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/11/heres-everything-we-kno... https://www.motor1.com/features/382783/ford-mustang-mach-e-boring-front-drive-compliance-car/ https://www.motor1.com/features/382783/ford-mustang-mach-e-b...
  - reitzensteinm 6y ago
    Ah sorry, I mean specifically the economics discussed - loss per car for a compliance car, the need to produce more compliance cars, that the car is expected to lose money still. I'd be quite interested in a peek behind the curtains with that much detail, but I don't think that much has been said publicly and I wonder if it's just the parent making inferences.
    - cptskippy 6y ago
      It is conjecture but we'll founded. GM lost money on every Volt and loses money on every Bolt. Tesla is rumored to sell at a lost and make up for it by selling clean energy credits to the likes of Fiat Chrysler. It's well known that all of Ford and GM's past EVs were compliance cars.
      - reitzensteinm 6y ago
        The details are important, though. The industry factors R&D in to gross margin, and typically reports of per unit losses include it. If you spend $1bn to develop a car you sell 100k of break even, you just lost $10k per car. But that doesn't mean you're going to lose twice as much if you double the production. If they were going to lose 10-15k per incremental unit, that's horrific and I'd love to know the details, that's why I'm asking.