GM is investing almost $1B in new V8 engines | Hacker News Reader

GM is investing almost $1B in new V8 engines

jalopnik.com

20 pointsbluedino56 comments

This is the right move for GM.

* These 'generations' last about 10 years. The are sold in a wide variety of products: Chevy, GMC, Cadillac, sports cars, trucks, and SUVs.

* Full transition to electric is at least 10 years away. This is the right time to make a 10yr investment.

* These vehicles are probably going to be some of the last to have really compelling electric options. Lots of sport car enthusiast find the engine to be part of the experience, and may never feel an electric car is a replacement (I'm that way with motorcycles). SUVs and Trucks are often used in ways and places unsuited for EVs, but this is changing overtime.

* GM has ~$240B in assets. On the scale of GM this is just another gear turning.

* Only a percent or two of GMs sales are EVs. They should invest in things their customers are buying.

* This isn't the end of GM and EVs. They were in on this early with the Volt, and have shown continued investment.

I'm certain they could sell more EVs if they made it a priority. I had to wait a couple of months for them to manufacture my Chevy Bolt, in which time I could have gotten cold feet or bought one from someone else. Apparently now there are 4 people on a waiting list at the dealership, which has 0 EVs in their inventory.

> * Full transition to electric is at least 10 years away. This is the right time to make a 10yr investment.

Wouldn’t that mean they need to invest in electric now so they have something ready in 10 years?

I don't think those goals are mutually exclusive

Except with a billion investment in the V8 and 64 million in EVs, GM has decided they are.

$64million new investments in EVs were announced on Friday along with the V8 investment.

This is in line with GM's stated goal of being all electric by 2035, and their lineup of EVs planned to be sold in 2023 is actually fantastic. Their Bolt and Equionix both offer great value propositions compared to anything on the market.

We can't go full electric tomorrow, we don't have the production or the infrastructure. This is a ten year investment, on what might be the last generation of mass manufactured V8 engines.

The future is combustion, plus hybrids, plus electric. Getting rid of investment into combustion and hybrids is mistake similar to the mistake of neglecting nuclear for electricity generation.

An analogy is the people still use the post office, despite email, text messages, instant messages, and video calls.

Combustion and hybrids will be banned in most markets by 2035-40. Until then, it'll market of declining sales year after year.

Investing in anything in them is a huge mistake. It's like investing in improving black and white tv at a time when color tv have 10% market share and growing 50% a year.

Car companies have no choice but to sell ICE for a while. The demand is still there and they can't convert to EV production overnight.

Yet, the winner of tomorrow will be companies that convert to EV quickly and without going bankrupt. Spending $1B on non-EV technology is not going to help GM do that.

When the electrical grid begins to collapse under the weight of "migrating to EV," people will be quite happy these legacy companies didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

There are massive needs that ICE is still servicing, and will continue to service for many decades to come.

If "Many decades" is two to three, probably yes, else i don't think so. Oil EROI is declining faster than ever. New oil wells have shorter and shorter lives. Russia's aggression is just moving the timetable two or three years ahead of time.

"Smart phones will never succeed. The cellular networks will collapse under the weight of all that data" - someone in 2006

It's not even remotely close to being the same issue though

I still use a diesel powered flip phone.

Perhaps, but a lot of discussions around EVs seems to focus on the state of technology today, while discussing the impact at some point in the future. The implication that cars and the grid won't improve is disingenuous.

It is just experience. Look at Germany. They are building ONE power line from north to south called SuedLink, they started planning in 2013 and operation should start in 2026. Maybe.

So it is completely correct to take current state of the network and consider it virtually unchanged for decades to come.

Last time I checked, my smart phone did not consumed 150kW during quick charging.

I think we spend way more on air con than ev charging overall. The average of 10kwh per day or so is nothing.

And electric heat and cooking. This thing lately with trying to ban gas stoves everywhere does not seem realistic. There is a reason everything wasn't done with electricity shortly after it was invented in the first place. It takes an absurd amount of capacity to duplicate the energy delivery of hydrocarbons with electricity. Does that much copper even exist?

'will be banned by 20xx' there will surely be attempts but no way it will actually work.

Banning gas stoves is entirely realistic; Americans have been using electric stoves for many, many decades. Gas stoves were only popular with some because the old 50s-style calrod stoves just sucked, for many reasons, but even back then the electric grid had no problem with them. Modern glass-top induction stoves are far superior to gas cooking in every way. The amount of energy needed for electric stoves is really quite tiny, and very short-term too; it's nothing like that needed for EV charging.

GM will make their money back on this many times over.

While I’m an EV enthusiast, they are in no way ready for prime time in the commercial market for trucks. Battery energy density by weight will need to go up several X before You get into competition with diesel engines for heavy or long range towing needs.

Source: I tow. A lot. I carefully evaluated every EV option on the market, none of them are within a factor of 5 of meeting my needs, including the highest end CyberTruck.

It’s really hard to compete with a high flow diesel nozzle.

> Combustion and hybrids will be banned in most markets by 2035-40.

Banned from being sold, not used*

There's still plenty of time to have those laws repealed.

My main issue with combustion isn't really CO2 emissions, but that conventionnal oil has already peaked, and in general, oil EROI will soon reach values between 5.5 and 1.5, when it historically was closer to 45.

Investment into nuclear never stopped, it just doesn't achieve anything positive.

Which makes it a perfect analogy for investment in a V8.

That's an arrogant and profits-before-survival proclamation only fools should follow.

ICE should go on ice, like DC power grids: effectively extinct before we do.

There is no second earth and there's no time to waste on the tranquil soma of gradualism, denial, and delay. Delay will be measured in millions of avoidable deaths, if not billions.

If you want that on your conscience, by all means, keep drilling, burning extracted fuels, and adding carbon to the atmosphere.

"Merchants of Doubt" - a book, with a website, about the topic of a tiny subset of shills and crazy people in "scientific" fields who have stood in the way of ending such hits as DDT, widespread smoking, ozone depletion, and, of course, climate change denial[0]. It's always the same pattern with them: deny, distract, trivialize ("It's not so bad"), equivocate, delay, calls to "slow down", and be "concerned" that not spraying DDT on kids at school "will harm the economy".

0. https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org

"GM expects to still be selling a lot of gas trucks and SUVs for years to come, likely in part because towing range in electric vehicles still sucks."

I have to imagine that towing has the same impact on range for gas trucks as it does electric trucks. It's just that gas trucks don't mind stopping for fuel more often.

If charging were as ubiquitous as gas stations, would the same ultimately be true of e-towing?

What’s the current state of the art for electric charging times? There’s a big difference in frequent 5 minute stops for gas, where a 30 minute charge would be a deal breaker.

Hyundai/Kia EVs take 18 minutes for 0-80% charging. After 80% the charging rate slows down on most EVs as fast charging to 100% will cause more 'wear' on the battery. Most drivers do more frequent, but faster stops charging to 80%.

That assumes a 150kw+ charger, which aren't super common. I did a trip from Houston to San Diego in my Kia EV6, and those chargers (I believe Electrify America is the only one with those speeds) were roughly every 60-100 miles. Many areas you can't even find one close enough to not run out on the freeway (for instance, anywhere in Texas south of San Antonio). Slower level 3 chargers will typically take 3x as long, and the level 2 chargers that are common will typically take 5-8 hours.

Interested in getting a ev myself looks like 800v egmp is thr way to go. Would be interested in seeinf how your trip went! Care to throw a blog up?

I took pics at each charging stop, and do plan on doing a write up "soon" :-)

150kW+ is also super expensive. Charging Enyaq iv80 on Ionity in France and Italy for 0,79EUR/kWh for 1 hour so I can go 2 hours at 130km/h on highway to another Ionity charger.

You can also try the slower charger, but it is really hit or miss regarding compatibility with your car. Yes, everything has CCS, but what's the point when you can't start charging session because there is some software incompatibility. Happened to me repeatedly.

You'd still need to solve the 5 min to full issue. Higher throughout 30 minutes fillups, even if they're ubiquitous would be a major negative. Particularly for lots of fillups. That may be some crazy 200A 440V standard (and battery tech to match) or battery swaps.

The EU is standardizing a 3MW charger. There are passenger vehicles that can charge 10%-80% at 250-300kW which is roughly equivalent to a gallon every minute and a half to two minutes.

Stopping for 20 minutes every two hours isn't as prphibitive as people like to imagine.

I have one of those cars (Kia EV6), and when at a 350kW charger, I've never seen it go over 180kW. As for every 2 hours, that's only true once there are more fast chargers, especially on long stretches of freeway between major cities. I did a drive from Houston to San Diego, and we had to stop every 60-90 minutes, not because we needed it, but because the fastest charging locations (Electrify America) weren't close enough to skip any. Also, freeway range is far less than city range, due to wind resistance.

Wow. 400A * 440V delivery is 176kW. I didn't know that was already standard for commercial fillups. How long does it take to fill up with that? Is a "3MW charger" of GP a bunch of these at once? Or nominally a bunch of 2x these (350kW delivery) that typically only do 180kW for safety conditions or compatibility? I guess they are already being spec'd for "as fast as gas", now they just need to be as prevalent? (and work at a full 350kW, but that should come with time and improved standards)

There's a few different standards being discussed, with battery buffering being a major component in most proposals. Using 2 750kW bays for a truck was one proposal.

There is a limitation imposed by the size and cooling capacity of the battery too, although that improves every year.

The current marketing buzz phrase is 20 minutes to 80%. Daimler is proposing 3,000A and 1.25kV https://insideevs.com/news/535918/megawatt-charging-system-e...

Stopping for 20 minutes every two hours is collossally ridiculously stupendously untennable overhead.

You have to think in terms of fillups per hour or per minute that a standard gas station can process. If every one of those 1, 2, 5 minute fillups now takes 30 minutes to several hours, that translates into gas stations having to be parking lots and parking garages that can hold hundreds of cars, and a doubling or tripling in travel expenses and travel time. A million trips now need whole extra days and associated hotel stays and meals and generate a million extra junk boredom purchases at rest stops just because what else are you going do while waiting around for the charger?

Anf this is all in the mythical world where high speed charging stations actually exist in all the places where gas stations currently exist, and all actually work at full speed, and your car is allowed to use any of them. That world is not even close to existing, and doesn't do the job even if it did.

That was for the specific subset of cars towing a heavy load.

A new passenger EV designed for range only has to stop for 20 minutes every 6 hours and this is dropping quickly.

The lack of standards is also a purely US thing. The rest of the world has some sanity.

> gas stations having to be parking lots and parking garages that can hold hundreds of cars

So like bucees?

Yes, except somehow crammed into every other street corner in every place that isn't Texas.

You've somehow stumbled onto the answer whilst thinking it's a problem. It's not that petrol stations will become car parks, car parks will become petrol stations.

Chargers are not overly expensive, and very little driving consists of 500km road trips. Unlike petrol stations they require very little dedicated infrastructure and don't stink.

The overwhelming majority of charging will happen over a regular 20-40A circuit in the places the car parks anyway.

Truck stops will get a little larger, but will be competing with every cafe, tourist shop, and shopping mall on the route to get people to stop and charge there instead. The people that don't want to stop for a coffee will be able to use a 750kW fast charger which will take no longer than a petrol bowser.

I think you're right.

Fast charging is mostly needed in highways, not cities

Sounds like the trailers could carry batteries. Then you could get to same range as without trailer.

There are a lot of situations where the energy density of gasoline is still impossible to avoid, namely aviation and trucking.

A net-zero kerosene process will absolutely be a part of a carbon-free future and it's naive to assume otherwise.

Kerosene? Maybe.

A net-zero kerosene? No, because it's a made up stuff, like Toyota's self-charging ICE cars or "clean" coal, gas or whatever.

BTW: Tesla just released a semi truck that does 500 miles fully loaded and it's a v1 technology. It's already good enough for most trucking and an EV semi 10 years from now will be both cheaper and longer range than that.

Well net zero fuels are a theoretical possibility, and it's a big startup scene.

I'd wait for more Tesla semis on the road before agreeing with that SF to LA semi test. I think they can pull it off, but the economics should make sense.

The future's a big place; there are plenty of use cases for a truck where it's fine to have a 200-500 mile battery for hauling stuff on the last mile or between warehouses. There are plenty of other use cases where you need lots more energy density. It's silly to assume the same vehicle needs to be able to do either on alternating sundays.

For trucking, at least, a modular approach seems reasonable where some are all electric and some are hybrid where you chose the maximum generator output based on your expected duty cycle. A truck to lug cement over the Rocky Mountains on a daily basis will have a different load curve from one hauling across Texas.

Hybrid focused ICE engines will likely be quite different from those designed as the primary motivation for cars, and there are probably not many situations where a v8's the right size. (Hybrid where they only run a generator to charge a battery will likely be optimized for only a couple RPMs and loads intermittent operation, etc)

The big challenge for electrification is how to cope with energy demands of commercial vehicles. The Tesla semi needs 1MW for the fast charge. Yes -- that's 1000A at 1000VDC going into a single truck, which is a lot of power! Simultaneously charging multiple semis at a single truck stop means there needs to be many MW of capacity the electric grid has to deliver to that location. I can imagine that truck stops are going to need some form of local energy storage to smooth out the bursts on the grid for the trucks that need fast charging. Thankfully, a good portion of long haul trucks can use slower charging while the driver takes mandatory rest periods, so not all semis will need fast charging.

To get a better idea of the scope of the problem: take a semi with a 300 gallon tank that takes roughly 5 minutes to fill at a fast 60 gal/minute pump. In those 5 minutes, roughly 12.2MWh of energy is delivered into the semi. In other words, one diesel fuel pump today can deliver close to 144MWh of energy in an hour (assuming 50% idle time per pump). Which means that to replace 6 diesel fuel pumps, you would need upwards 864 x 1MW fast charge stations. Even dividing the energy delivery rate by 10 still leaves you with an 86MW capacity requirement for a single truck stop.

I think there's still a lot of work to be done before electrification of commercial vehicles on any large scale is viable.

> truck stops are going to need some form of local energy storage to smooth out the bursts on the grid

The truck stops will have a few tanks of off-road diesel to run a generator to create electricity to charge the truck batteries.

Local energy storage for rural truck stops will be diesel in underground tanks, rather than diesel in truck tanks.

Is this engine used in freight vehicles? Then it might make sense. A new generation of V8 for passenger cars doesn’t seem like a good technology investment. That of course depends on whether there will still be buyers of V8 passenger cars and pickups in the near future. And what’s worrying is that GM probably not only does this so that they have a product for those buyers, they’ll want to ensure there are buyers through marketing.

This is the type of engine you might see on a truck or a van that a tradesperson might use. The truck pulling a trailer filled with landscaping equipment, the plumber van, or a package delivery van. It'll also probably find it's way into the camero, the escalade, and more consumer focused automobiles, but I imagine it's in more trucks than anything else.

I'm not sure what the EV story around these small-business focused vehicles are. Some professions, like commercial plumbers, would put a larger focus on cold weather performance than current EVs have. Some professions follow a pattern of going to a job site for an hour, and then go to the next one. They might be convinced if their total daily millage is within one charge or if they can charge at their job sites. Some uses of these vehicles are literally driving eight+ hours a day, and probably will be among the last to leave ICUs.

> Defiance Operations in Ohio – GM will invest $55 million in the Defiance facility. $47 million will be invested to prepare the facility to build a variety of block castings to support future V-8 engine programs. In addition, the investment includes $8 million to build a casting development cell for castings to support future EV strategies.

The investment in castings is a good one. They probably won't be creating large scale chassis castings like Tesla does, but electric motor & inverter housings for EVs are about the same size as engine blocks, so retrofitting this facility to create both is a good use of money.

I can already smell the parallel arguments for not stopping hunting whales for fuel, continued use of lead paint and asbestos, whining about freon, and the health "benefits" of tobacco.

Ban ICEs now. The sooner, the better. They're an unsustainable threat to our survival, excess death-causing, petrostate-supporting cancer that we can already replace with clean EVs now.

Those against rapid decarbonization of economies are delusional, suicidal, sociopathically greedy, or stupid because there's no rational evidence to counter the hard science of reality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com