General Motors Is Going All Electric | Hacker News Reader

General Motors Is Going All Electric

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45 pointsDimitris63 comments

I'm impressed that the American car companies have embraced electric technology so quickly.

I'm also disappointed that the Japanese companies are falling behind. The Prius was a very innovative car when it was first released 20 years ago (that's right, the first Prius was a 1997 model!), but it is falling behind. The Nissan Leaf is just not competitive anymore, and I see no sign of a newer version of it with better range.

However, these new electric cars are mostly of interest to homeowners. People who park on the street have no realistic way to charge their cars at their homes, and all but the newest luxury apartments lack charging stations. Relying on public charging infrastructure is not realistic, and relying on charging at work is unwise -- it will limit your next job opportunity to companies that also have charging stations, unless you are willing to replace your car. Even relying on charging at an apartment is unwise, because it will limit where you can move to.

So, I guess electric car ownership is effectively another perk of home ownership.

The 2018 Nissan Leaf has a 400km range and has charge times like a Tesla.

http://www.caradvice.com.au/581046/2018-nissan-leaf-revealed...

> Nissan claims the new Leaf’s 40 kWh battery will provide 150 miles of range under EPA testing and 400km (248.5 miles) under the Japanese JC08 cycle

From: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/5/16254460/nissan-leaf-2018-...

For the 400 km, is the A/C or heater on, or the headlights, the speed nice and slow, not much cargo, and heavy use by the driver of pedals?

I still want a 20 gallon gas tank and a lot of filling stations.

I don't know that this is true. To compare, would you expect every house to have a gas station built in?

Granted, a full electric charge doesn't last as long as a full tank of gas, but that's going to be decreasingly relevant as battery technology improves.

What matters isn't how long the charge lasts, but how long it takes, and how awkward that is when you really need a charge.

If I remember right, the stats for the Bolt were that (when empty) it can charge 100mi of range in 30 minutes, but after that the charge rate falls off quickly, and a full charge actually takes much longer than you'd expect.

If you get unlucky and get to a charge point but the charger is occupied, you're going to be waiting up to 30 mins to get a 30 min charge, taking an hour to gain 100mi range. If I'm on a longer drive, that's just not something I want to put up with.

Imagine going skiing at a place that's 100mi away. It's winter, so you're running the heater in the car, and the ski resort is inherently uphill from where you live, so you use more than 50% of the car's range to get there. When you get to the ski resort, early arrivers have already filled up the chargers. So now you have to park somewhere else (possibly a shuttle ride away from the lifts), and come back off the mountain at lunch see if a charger is available, fetch your car, maybe hang around until the others actually move their cars off the chargers, etc. Ugh. Sorry, but I don't want to be the early adopter in that situation, and I'm wondering if there will be enough chargers to make the problem disappear once EV adoption is high. Range extenders in the car make a lot of sense to me.

Fiction? Just what is it you have against fiction? Fiction can be fun! Besides, we're talking way out there, and between now and then can be some delays, etc.

We had electric cars way back there, likely before the Model T. The problem is the same -- the batteries. Long ago a Ford executive said, "You build me a good battery, and I'll build you a good electric car.". We're still waiting for that good battery. We also hoped for a good capacitor from EEStore, and we're still waiting for that, too. And we tried steam engines and gas turbine engines.

For my car, the problems have been corrosion and the transmission, not the engine. Otherwise the problems have been suspension bushings and springs past their fatigue life. Engines? Mostly fine. Currently a big problem is that it's > $1000 in labor to remove the dashboard to replace the lights that burned out.

Mostly those Tesla batteries solve a problem I don't have and give me new problems I don't have and won't be able to solve.

> To compare, would you expect every house to have a gas station built in?

If I could get a full charge at a charging station in the amount of time it takes to fill up a gas tank, it would not be a problem to drive to a charging station the same way I drive to gas stations now. But a full charge on an electric car takes hours, even with fast charging.

They are embracing it now, that's mostly because Tesla has been testing the grounds for the rest.

Don't forget that GM had not only terminated all leases then went out of their way to crush all their EV1s[1]. Like a public execution to show that electric cars are bad.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

The Chevy Volt has been around for as long as Tesla (Roadster) has been available to the public.

Revenge of the Electric Car [2] is a great follow-up to Who Killed the Electric Car.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Electric_Car

To be clear, I think the Volt is relevant because it's a plug-in series-hybrid that drives like an EV: it drives on battery power while available, and then uses the engine mostly as a generator. It came out in 2011 and I would imagine that it gave GM a great testbed to learn more about electric drivetrains (than they knew from the EV1) before putting out the Bolt.

GM was headed to fuel cell cars (even talking about how you could power your home at one point) and put a lot of money into electric after their first attempts were deemed unacceptable. Its been a slow burn for them.

> The Nissan Leaf is just not competitive anymore, and I see no sign of a newer version of it with better range.

Depends on your needs. My Leaf has been incredible. I paid $5k for an older one off lease and it gets me round trip to work/school/running errands for essentially zero marginal cost. People are stuck in an ICE mindset where they can't imagine a car being useful with less than 400 miles range. But the reality is that you never end up using a full charge, and charging is available everywhere (in cities) now. I can guarantee that there will be a class of ultra cheap EV's that stick to the 100-150 mile range as it is all most urban dwellers need on a day-to-day basis. If the price/kWh of lithium ion batteries continues falling at it's current rate, we'll see sub $20k ~150 mile range EV's for sale within 5 years.

>People who park on the street have no realistic way to charge their cars at their homes, and all but the newest luxury apartments lack charging stations. Relying on public charging infrastructure is not realistic, and relying on charging at work is unwise -- it will limit your next job opportunity to companies that also have charging stations, unless you are willing to replace your car. Even relying on charging at an apartment is unwise, because it will limit where you can move to.

Not really. I live in a tiny Bay Area apartment and street park my Leaf. Charging has never been a problem. My office has level 2, there's a level 2 across the street from me, and there's two level 3's on the way home if I need a quick top off. Granted we have better infrastructure than most, and I'll admit there's definitely some getting used to how it all works, but I'll never go back to an ICE.

This is all well and good if you're in a two-car household, but we only have one car and we do pretty regularly do longer road trips, e.g. to go skiing. Even with a 240mi Bolt those trips could be awkward.

Then get a PHEV. I've had my Volt for almost a year now and although I don't drive a ton, I've managed to get about 80% of my driving done on pure electric. The other 20% is road trips where I still get ~40-45 mpg.

See my other comments--I drive a Volt too. :-)

This reminds me of a car sales strategy I heard a long time ago. Don't sell people the car they need for the life they have, sell them the car for the life they want. That's one way you end up with huge pickup trucks being grocery getters and such. They were sold on the idea of owning horses and pulling them around, but that isn't the life they have...

The same ideas work well to discourage EV ownership.

I live in a rural area that exemplifies what you are saying. The grocery store parking lot is full of trucks and SUVs that, at most, see a bit of snow on the plowed roads in the winter. At the same time I own two vehicles, a Ford F-150 and a Nissan Xterra. I use both for a lot more than grocery getting. I own three horses and tow a trailer regularly. The Xterra is used for camping and climbing trips that require a bit of off roading on a regular basis. All that being said, I would love to have an electric for commuting and short trips. I live 10 miles from work, I don't need much range.

While you bring up an interesting point, I'm not sure why my comment reminded you of it--the lifestyle that makes it awkward for me to drive an EV is the lifestyle I actually already have.

AWD is something that everybody thinks they need while much of the time FWD + snow tires is equally good or better in normal snowy conditions. I was willing to give up AWD because I'd only need it about 1% of the time and I'm comfortable with FWD+snow tires. I wasn't willing to add the hassle of charging the car to a day trip to go skiing.

Random thought of mine is charging becomes less of an issue when the cars range is several multiples of daily use. If say your electric car has 200 miles of range and you drive it 40 miles a day, then it needs to be charged once every 5 days. Which is in line with the US average of 12,000 miles a year. Or 230 miles a week which is about the range of a Bolt or Tesla.

Other random thought. Someone that has charging at work, does not need to charge their car at home. Which emphasizes the idea that an electric car owner just needs charging to somewhat ubiquitous. Charger at work, charger at the store, charger at a parking lot, coffee shop, etc.

>Random thought of mine is charging becomes less of an issue when the cars range is several multiples of daily use. If say your electric car has 200 miles of range and you drive it 40 miles a day, then it needs to be charged once every 5 days. Which is in line with the US average of 12,000 miles a year. Or 230 miles a week which is about the range of a Bolt or Tesla.

The reason this line of thinking doesn't line up with reality is because of how lithium ion batteries work. Storing your car at a full charge will increase the rate of battery degradation as much as 5x. Similarly, discharging to (or near to) 0% State of Charge is stressful to the battery because you are causing voltage imbalances among the individual cells within each pack. The reality is that most EV drivers keep their cars between 20-80% at all times. This is optimal for battery health and it ends up being the most practical charging pattern for daily use as well.

With gas cars, you are forced to think in terms of "time between fill ups", but with an EV you are constantly "filling up" anywhere you go because it's so seamless to park and charge.

> People who park on the street have no realistic way to charge their cars at their homes

Perhaps there could be combined parking meters and charging stations. You would pay a certain amount of money if you just wanted to park and you would pay more if you wanted to charge your car too.

That's an amazing idea.

Also imagine solar covered parking which could be a good moneymaker (sell energy and/or sell preferred parking spots).

I wonder how viable covering parking lots would be in areas where you get a lot of snow. At some point, you will have to find a way to remove it - sometimes even a bunch of ice.

But, it has a bonus of keeping the precipitation that would land on your vehicle. That might just be its best feature.

Those are slowly beginning to pop up in more places. It possibly the most common charger style you see popping up in garages and streets in major cities.

Something I find interesting: There are cities investigating adding chargers that blend in to lamp posts (especially historic lamp posts where adding meters would be unwanted in a historic neighborhood).

These are in a lot of municipal parking lots for the cities/towns that fill the land between San Jose and San Francisco. At the coast haven't seen any in the smaller rural towns only 30 miles away.

> So, I guess electric car ownership is effectively another perk of home ownership.

It's another chicken-and-egg bootstrapping problem, though. If everyone had electric cars, there would be more market demand for electrified street parking, and there would be more demand for electric parking spaces in apartment complexes. At some point it becomes less of a market differentiator (luxury apartments use it to stay competitive) and increasingly a market force (every apartment needs it to stay relevant).

Given the pace that the car manufacturers seem to be moving, that transition likely needs to start happening sooner rather than later. (2023 is six years from now.)

Fortunately it's a chicken-and-egg problem where all the homeowners already have eggs.

I think you will see good electrics coming from Japan. The e-class racing teams have been doing great work, as have their f-class. They are certainly capable of holding their own. They also have some good hybrids that will make their way to personal vehicles.

In London street lamps are being converted into EV charge stations for kerbside charging:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/london-street-lamps...

I recently bought an inexpensive electric (Ford Focus Electric 2017), and I can't imagine going back.

No gas stations, no oil changes, no transmission failures, no engine breakdowns, no timing belt, no transaxles, overall less costs even energy wise.

Also it's got amazing pickup and can beat guzzlers off the line (I've edged out Mustangs, but I haven't gone head to head with a Porsche).

So I have to charge every day - great, same with my iPhone (which, amusingly, is increasingly more important than my car - I can always hire a Lyft/Uber with my phone).

I think the electric revolution is like the SSD one - 10 years ago it was "unreliable" but today no one goes spinning rust unless they have absolute need to.

I just got a 2014 C-max energi (plug in). The battery indicators are pretty unreliable, I would be scared of running out prematurely if I was driving an all electric, because when I turn it on after a charge, it says I can go 22 miles on battery only, but it usually runs out in about 15 miles, and if I have the opportunity to drive at highway speeds, it does even worse. I wouldn't be comfortable driving anywhere in an electric unless I had a safety factor of 2.5x the expected mileage, since running out of battery is going to be way less convenient than running out of gas.

I bought (leased, actually) a car that can easily do 150% of my max daily range. It's designed to be a commute car.

I also have it charging often at charge spots at work, shopping, and even when I drive to visit local customers. I noticed a recent 90m trip we took our minivan, but my electric could have done it - the hotel we stayed in had chargers. If you're staying with relatives, you can bring your own charge cable (110v is slow but ubiquitous).

Range anxiety is a non issue once you own a car that has sufficient battery capacity/range assuming you have a regular commute.

I've gotten it down to 5% battery - it was 5.5m over the listed range of 110m at the time (not being lead-foot at the time).

I think the PHEV -> EV shift is a significant paradigm shift for a driver.

There are still maintenance/wear items you'll need to address. There are still mechanical components the make up a drivetrain.

Replacing wheel bearings, brakes, and tires? Easy for a garage mechanic, and cheap too.

What about batteries wearing out year after year? How much would it cost to change all the batteries in your car?

Recent HN posts for a Tesla indicated wear levels of 10-15% over 5 years. If it's worse than that for me, chargers are now becoming commonplace where I live.

Buy a vehicle with 150% of your maximum daily range and you're fine. Lease if you're even more concerned.

There is very little year over year wear. After a decade or two in a moderate climate you can expect 80% capacity still.

I remember the talking point 15 years ago about Prius batteries being more expensive than the gas they offset. I owned one for 12 years and it still got 50+mpg (old method - more like 48mpg with new EPA calcs) to the day it died (my fault) - same battery.

Also aftermarket reconditioned Prius batteries are like $400.

How can you possibly make that claim when the oldest electric-only vehicles are 10 years old?

How can you possibly make that claim without knowing the driving patterns of the person you're addressing?

What is a moderate climate ?

I mean, I'd love to just assume what you said is true (I'm as much as an electric car fan as your typical HN'er), but you're going to need to provide some data to back those claims up.

Go to the Tesla forums. You can estimate 10 year degradation rate based on the 5 year rate.

Moderate climate probably refers to not having many freezing or >100 temp days.

Yes, estimates, not certainties.

Thanks for proving my point.

Similar experience. Bought a used Leaf and the simplicity and convenience makes me resent using my petrol banger. My commute is only about three miles, so it only needs charging once or twice a week.

If fully electric cars don't quite work for your needs because of the range or the charge times, I recommend looking at the Chevy Volt. I think the Voltec drivetrain is a great design. It drives like an EV, even when the engine is active, but eliminates range anxiety. The integration of the electric motors and gas engine is really good.

With my driving pattern, I end up driving on pre-charged electric 50% of the time and gas about 50% of the time. On gas, the car gets the advertised 42mpg.

My problem is seats. Ideally I want a vehicle that sits 8 people (minimum is 7) -- and not cost a small fortune. So, for the time being electrics are out of the running for me. I'll check back in 10 years when most of my kids have moved out.

Might be worth looking at the hybrid Chrysler Pacifica as a compromise.

I thought the Voltec drivetrain would be great in a minivan, but apparently GM engineers say it won't work in heavier cars [0].

[0] https://www.autoblog.com/2010/04/22/gms-randd-head-says-volt...

Isn't your eligible list of vehicles tiny - 7 seater? Forget not costing a small fortune, off the top of my head a Mercedes Sprinter van and Chevy Suburban are not cheap to buy or run.

Every minivan is a 7-seater (2 + 2 + 3) and many bigger SUVs are, as well.

About Time.

Just like Leica dropped the ball on moving on to Digital Cameras, General Motors was slow to get on the Electric Vehicles bandwagon.

> "General Motors believes the future is all-electric," says Mark Reuss, the company’s head of product. "We are far along in our plan to lead the way to that future world."

Glad to see that they are going all-in.

GM had one of the first EVs in the 90s, the EV1. They jumped in before the technology was there.

They've also been working with gas-electric mixed technology with the Volt since 2010 and more recently the Bolt.

I was driving by some town houses[0] in a dense city recently and wondered: How would electric car owners who live there charge their cars? They don't have a driveway or garage or any designated parking place; they find parking on the street in their neighborhood. Unless someone installs charging stations up and down the streets, where will the residents charge their future electric cars?

I read about one city that discontinued a program where electric car owners could reserve a spot on the street and install a charging station. But that is inefficient use for a parking spot that may be empty most of the day.

[0] By "town houses", I mean houses that share the walls on either side with their neighbors; they are lined up side by side. You see them often in dense urban areas. There is no place for a driveway and rarely is precious real estate used for a garage.

I don't see how this can work in anything but a commuter-centric car. Want to drive from LA to SF or from Austin to Tulsa? Too bad. Want to drive an electric, loaded pickup from Austin to Dallas? Also not going to happen.

Unless they make some significant technological strides, nations larger than Norway are going to take a serious economic hit.

Have you seen Tesla's Superchargers [1]? Or a Model X hauling cross country?

[1] https://www.tesla.com/supercharger

[2] http://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-x-hauling-freight-ca-hi...

I plotted this out (PlugShare app) and with DC fast chargers or Superchargers it's totally doable (would hate to do it with just 6.6W L2s).

And that's the great part. Things are improving, and the rate of improvement is quickening too.

Though I don't own a Tesla, they're to be commended for bringing long-range EV travel to reality.

You've heard of Tesla right?

According to the article, GM is also investing in fuel cells.

They also aren't converting to all electric right now, they're rolling out some new electric models and are planning to eventually stop building gas-burning cars. If that doesn't happen for another ten or twenty years, we can probably expect some significant improvements in battery capacity per unit of mass and cost in that time.

According to Google maps, Austin to Dallas is 195 miles, LA to SF is 382 miles, and Austin to Tulsa is 454 miles.

~200 mile road trips are possible now with current technology. There aren't any electric pickups on the market as far as I know, but it should be possible (though expensive) with current technology for an electric truck to make the trip if it had a battery that's sized appropriately for that kind of use.

~400 mile road trips are a bit too far for a single battery charge at highway speeds without some kind of new technology or a vehicle that's optimized for range over other concerns, but I wouldn't want be driving that long without a break anyways. I expect if there's a market for that kind of vehicle, someone will build it eventually.

Smart. Elon should feel very proud.

What I like most is that I bet they will make use of some of his patents, for free. Tesla's patent library is free for use, by any company. He has pretty much written his name into automotive history.

I am very impressed that GM decided to do this. I realize that this is apples and oranges. Cars are all different and each model has to be certified in all he different countries. But my first thought (besides "Awesome!") when Elon musk announced his mars plans was that it's amazing he wants to do all this in less time than car makers are able / willing to ditch fossil fuels. Good to see GM on the right track.

It would seem Detroit no longer feels the need to emphasize the importance of traditional energy companies to our future. Very nice too see after so many years of them promising hydrogen will solve everything and make your wife and dog come back home.

From the article:

> The new all-electric models will be a mix of battery electric cars and fuel cell-powered vehicles.

They don't specify whether the fuel cells will be hydrogen or something else, but it may be premature to say that Detroit has given up on hydrogen as a fuel.

I test drove a Bolt EV last week. Neat car. The interior was lacking for me, though. I ended up with an Audi.

> That product onslaught puts the company at the forefront of an increasingly large crowd of automakers proclaiming the age of electricity and promising to move away from gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles.

Uh, call that for small, mostly urban, pregnant roller skate cars but not much for SUVs or light trucks and certainly not for the main uses of Diesel in long haul 18 wheel trucks, backhoes, earth moving equipment, boats, etc. "Vehicles" is way too strong, has the authors dreaming.

Also, so far the recharging time is too long for nearly everyone. And for rural drivers, mostly "No way"; they still need gasoline, put in 20 gallons in a few minutes.

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