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Totally agree The ideal model, if I had some power/leadership 10 years ago with some foresight would have been: - add a plug to the Prius for all-electric mod

Totally agree The ideal model, if I had some power/leadership 10 years ago with some foresight would have been: - add a plug to the Prius for all-electric mode, get the technology to as many carmakers as possible with whatever negotiated means possible. - push them to increase the all-electric mode to 50 miles - once tech was doable, impose incentives/requirements/taxation that required all new cars be PHEV. Especially for trucks/SUVs. - incentivize home charging and start incentivizing gas stations to have plugs as well as a requirement to staying in business Given the current supply of cobalt, nickel, lithium, etc, the most effective way to electrify consumer transportation is the 50 mile PHEV. It would have electrified 95% of daily trips for those vehicles, and eliminates range anxiety for the longer trips until the infrastructure is done. With that and Toyota's lead, the plug in hybrid would have provided practical market "EV" leadership probably through 2030. It is mystifying to me why they dragged their feet to add a simple plug to the system. A massive management failure that ceded not only pseudo-EV leadership, but leadership in the hybrid market. Toyota may be able to coattail the nascent OEM market for EV components and leverage their status as current #1 to keep afloat, but so many companies are far ahead in the vertical integration for the EV. An OEM component EV will be inferior to vertically integrated manufacturers (Tesla currently, VW and probably GM soon). I'd guess that the OEM model of ICE drivetrains is basically an extreme optimization of a long-running design. Early ICE companies were probably vertically integrated intheir parts/components manufacturing until specific market competition for components between dedicated OEM manufacturers could eventually beat the in-house teams. But EVs are a MASSIVE revolution in terms of the core components, and designs are innovating/evolving so rapidly that you can't tie yourself to components. Look at Tesla, they are building their own motors, batteries/chemistries, and even minerals extraction pipelines per battery investor day. OEM ecosystems only exist once a sufficient number of cars are using a component. So an automotive OEM EV motor won't be competitive with Tesla until several generations of EVs go through the market, and a generation for a car is at least 5 years traditionally? Almost all the car companies annoucing EV programs/funding aside from VW and maybe GM are just doing the OEM model: we'll get some OEM motors and OEM batteries, slap them onto a traditional OEM ICE platform. And boom, the CEO gets to tell major activist shareholders that he isn't being left behind: please don't fire me like you canned the BMW CEO. Toyota is likely still stuck in OEM mode. They can't maintain leadership with that mentality, the vertical integration model will win for the next two decades at least, even if solid state closes some of the tech gap with Tesla for the main auto people (which is what they are basically all gambling on)

minhazm 5y ago
I agree with the 50 mile PHEV. Before my fully electric car I had a Chevrolet Volt (not the crappy Bolt). It had a ~50 mile electric range (40-60 depending on weather), and then it just turned into a normal hybrid. It was a great car and I almost never had to use the gas on the car. I had to do a few longer distance drives a year and the > 300 mile gas range covered that easily. It's unfortunate that Chevy killed off the Volt. It was a great car and was an excellent transition car for people to go electric but without the range anxiety issues. It got me used to having to charge my car, but without the risk of getting stranded if I wasn't able to for some reason.
- freeopinion 5y ago
  It turns out that a car that is good for consumers is almost never good for GM. Who could blame GM for scrapping a $20K car with $4K margin or a $40K car with $5k margin when they can use their resources to build a $30K car with $12K margin or a $65K truck with $30K margin? Innovation is cute and everything. But profit is king.
  - to11mtm 5y ago
    One thing everyone forgets about the Volt and the timing of it's demise; the end of production coincided with the phasing out of a lot of the tax credits/incentives provided by the govt. For most of it's life it was a 40k vehicle you could get for closer to 33k. GM likely saw the writing on the wall, people probably weren't willing to pay the full MSRP. Especially when Kia/Hyundai is managing to provide plug-in hybrids for 30k. (As far as quality/fit, I sat in an early Niro Plugin and the interior was something in between the Bolt and a Sonata... but some people care more about price nowadays.)
    - freeopinion 5y ago
      Whenever I get frustrated with GM killing off another promising project, I try to be fair to them about what their motivations should be. GM doesn't mind selling a $40k car instead of a $33k car. What matters is volume x margin. You hit on the volume factor. I suggest that GM could have increased their volume dramatically by actually marketing the car. In my opinion they actively discouraged sales. They did not want to sell more of them. I think this points to a margin problem. Every hour of labor and every square foot of production facility given to the Volt was actually hurting GM. Not because the Volt had a negative margin, but because the Volt had a negative _relative_ margin. If GM layed off every line worker/engineer/artist etc working on the Volt and closed every production facility that manufactured it, GM would have lost money. But if they repurpose all that into the production of a 1/2-ton truck, they make more money than they do on the Volt. If they repurpose it all into the production of the Bolt that sells for $40k, they make more money than on the Volt. You can argue that the Volt is 2x or 3x better than the Bolt. But that would be arguing from the wrong perspective. With a little marketing the Bolt should sell as well as the Volt (even at a higher price tag) and provide significantly higher margins. Same volume x higher margin = kill the Volt.

minhazm 5y ago

I agree with the 50 mile PHEV. Before my fully electric car I had a Chevrolet Volt (not the crappy Bolt). It had a ~50 mile electric range (40-60 depending on weather), and then it just turned into a normal hybrid. It was a great car and I almost never had to use the gas on the car. I had to do a few longer distance drives a year and the > 300 mile gas range covered that easily. It's unfortunate that Chevy killed off the Volt. It was a great car and was an excellent transition car for people to go electric but without the range anxiety issues. It got me used to having to charge my car, but without the risk of getting stranded if I wasn't able to for some reason.

freeopinion 5y ago
It turns out that a car that is good for consumers is almost never good for GM. Who could blame GM for scrapping a $20K car with $4K margin or a $40K car with $5k margin when they can use their resources to build a $30K car with $12K margin or a $65K truck with $30K margin? Innovation is cute and everything. But profit is king.
- to11mtm 5y ago
  One thing everyone forgets about the Volt and the timing of it's demise; the end of production coincided with the phasing out of a lot of the tax credits/incentives provided by the govt. For most of it's life it was a 40k vehicle you could get for closer to 33k. GM likely saw the writing on the wall, people probably weren't willing to pay the full MSRP. Especially when Kia/Hyundai is managing to provide plug-in hybrids for 30k. (As far as quality/fit, I sat in an early Niro Plugin and the interior was something in between the Bolt and a Sonata... but some people care more about price nowadays.)
  - freeopinion 5y ago
    Whenever I get frustrated with GM killing off another promising project, I try to be fair to them about what their motivations should be. GM doesn't mind selling a $40k car instead of a $33k car. What matters is volume x margin. You hit on the volume factor. I suggest that GM could have increased their volume dramatically by actually marketing the car. In my opinion they actively discouraged sales. They did not want to sell more of them. I think this points to a margin problem. Every hour of labor and every square foot of production facility given to the Volt was actually hurting GM. Not because the Volt had a negative margin, but because the Volt had a negative _relative_ margin. If GM layed off every line worker/engineer/artist etc working on the Volt and closed every production facility that manufactured it, GM would have lost money. But if they repurpose all that into the production of a 1/2-ton truck, they make more money than they do on the Volt. If they repurpose it all into the production of the Bolt that sells for $40k, they make more money than on the Volt. You can argue that the Volt is 2x or 3x better than the Bolt. But that would be arguing from the wrong perspective. With a little marketing the Bolt should sell as well as the Volt (even at a higher price tag) and provide significantly higher margins. Same volume x higher margin = kill the Volt.