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Comment by mike_d | Hacker News Reader

It was always going to be easier for [your favorite traditional car company] to figure out non-internal combustion drive trains than it was going to be for Tesla to catch up on 100 years of how to build really good cars.

The smart move from the beginning for everyone except Elon was to become a drivetrain OEM.

Edit: removed the reference to a specific car brand because people got hung up on it.

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GM's been trying to figure out the non-ICE drivetrains for three decades. They have a tradition of one step forward, three steps back. I'm confident that GM will take another step forward. I'm also fairly certain they'll take as many steps back as well.

My Bolt is awesome. I don't know how they would significantly improve it.

Unfortunately it's a lease. Due to the upcoming glut of used cars, I'll probably switch to a used hybrid when the lease runs out. I'll miss the Bolt and the full EV drivetrain though.

Is it the version GM recommends parking outside because it could spontaneously combust? That seems like an area they could improve on.

that was their battery supplier who screwed up

Formerly, thanks to a screw up by LG.

Chevy replaced my 2019 Bolt's battery a couple months ago without charge. New models don't have the problem. The overall incidence of fires was extremely limited and never worried me though.

Pinning all the blame on LG maybe over simplifying the problem. Bad cells are inevitable, GM doesn’t have a good system for isolating bad cells in the bolt hence why you see catastrophic failure when manufacturing faults happen.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/a38252667/battery-experts-expl...

The Bolt is not available where I live. I'd love to hear your impression of it.

My biggest complaint is that the torque is too much for the tires, so it is way too easy to spin rubber when you want to make a quick move into traffic. Other than that, I find I like their implementation of 'one pedal' driving and use it exclusively. I can often get to where I'm going without touching the brake pedal. Range is fine for my Bay Area driving(<120 miles per trip). Some folks complain about slower fast-charging speeds but that doesn't bother me because I mostly use L1/L2. The seats could be more comfortable, but I hear that is fixed on newer models. The entertainment system gave me a few issues for a while but it seems to be working fine lately.

Great to know. I also almost exclusively use one-pedal driving (Model 3). That simple change makes driving so much less stressful, however, I'm afraid of loosing the "jump on the brakes" muscle memory if an emergency does crop up.

plus one for Bolt being a really great car, GM nailed it (if you can tolerate a small car)

You picked a strange company to make that point.

GM sold 7k "plug in" cars in Q2 2022. That's compared with ~250k pure EV by Tesla. It's 1.2% of GM's total sales.

Their overall sales are declining for the past 5 years.

That doesn't look like a company that has figure out how to make EV at scale.

The supposedly "smart move" isn't reflected in GM's EV sales or their profit margins.

Don't read too much in to it, I just picked a random car company that had been around for a long time.

You don't have much point either way.

Of the top 10 ICE car makers, only VW is a serious EV player. And they are still loosing to Tesla and BYD and in China they're loosing to china-only EV brands like NIO or XPeng or SAIC.

Other than that there is almost an inverse correlation with how big the ICE business is vs. how big the EV business is.

Toyota and Honda are doing the worst, with almost no EV sales.

Stellantis and GM are also doing extremely poorly.

Ford, with 50k / year, is also nothing to write home about.

Of legacy, it's the smaller players like Hyundai / Kia / Audi / Porsche / Renault / Jaguar that did move into EVs earlier than other ICE companies.

Judging by what they've done so far (as opposed to what their PR teams say about the future), the legacy auto has not yet figure out how to make and sell EVs at volume.

Ford has more pre-orders for the F150 Lightning than Tesla shipped cars last year. Almost 80% of the reservations are from first time EV buyers, so people who theoretically could have bought a Tesla but didn't want one.

In 5 years, I doubt Tesla will be in the top 10.

I see no mention of GM in the article. It talks about Chinese automaker BYD.

I find the implication here that GM makes good cars amusing.

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