GM delays $4B EV truck factory plan by another year | Hacker News Reader

GM delays $4B EV truck factory plan by another year

techcrunch.com

27 pointsPaulHoule47 comments

I was hoping that this would allow them to continue to produce the Bolt, but it doesn’t sound like it.

I still can't believe that GM though it wise to release the Chevy Bolt and the completely separate, completely different Chevy *V*olt.

They already are continuing to produce the bolt, they’re just (understandably) re-releasing it with different battery tech.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a44639082/chevrolet-bolt-e...

If EVs are the future and oil is done for, why would they delay?

1. $4B is a massive commitment even to a company as big as GM.

2. Truck buyers are very conservative in both the political and non-political sense, making them much slower to adapt new technology.

3. Electric trucks haven't achieved product-market fit quite as well as electric cars have. Long range towing is a weak spot.

4. Electric trucks aren't as well designed as electric cars. The best example, the Lightning, has some issues like charging speed.

2. Technology doesn’t just mean “electric motors”. Technology also includes suspension, materials science, engine design, towing and hauling, and so on.

Trucks like the RAM TRX and the Raptor are more technologically sophisticated than 99% of the stuff on the road. Try taking a Toyota Tacoma 80MPH over a jump off-road without breaking anything. Try hauling more than a travel trailer through a winter storm with a Rivian. It’ll become instantly clear what technology platform is superior.

> Truck buyers are very conservative in both the political and non-political sense, making them much slower to adapt new technology.

While there is some truth, this is a meme. In places like Texas, truck ownership cuts across many lifestyles. You're as likely to see an attorney or doctor drive an F-150 as opposed to the stereotypical Mercedes. Walk around the parking lot of tech companies in Austin - you'll still see trucks.

> Electric trucks haven't achieved product-market fit quite as well as electric cars have. Long range towing is a weak spot.

Many pickup owners will never tow anything. They may carry weight in their bed, but overall, they're rugged cars capable of non-paved terrain.

For those using their truck for work, the Lightning actually provides some unique advantages over their gas counterparts, powering equipment.

>> Many pickup owners will never tow anything.

About 1/3rd of pickup trucks sold are to commercial buyers, though.

Sure, but that doesn't mean they're used for towing. Across a wide array of business types, they're used as rugged cars with a company logo on them.

Those numbers include 3/4 and 1-ton trucks which are used for all kinds of commercial purposes, the might not "tow" but they are still carrying thousands of pounds of work equipment etc.

Just because a truck isn't being used to a tow a trailer 24/7 doesn't mean it's just being used as a 'rugged car'.

I don't think there are any announced plans for an 3/4 or 1 ton electric trucks, so these will be competing with the "overgrown passenger car" class of pickups, not the "miniature big rig" class.

The Cybertruck is technically a medium duty truck, or at least it was according to the 2019 announcement specs.

The truck-driving doctors and lawyers I know are also the among the most conservative people I know.

Does it matter if they never tow anything? People want to be ABLE to tow something. Every truck commercial features giant trails or a loader dumping rocks into the bed. Probably <10% of pick up trucks owners ever do this, but people still like the image of having a truck than can do this.

It's very common for truck owners to not tow or haul 95% of the time. But when they do need to, the truck damn well better work.

I asked a couple contractors what they thought about the Lightning, to them it's an expensive toy but nothing that will replace the ability to haul equipment to the next state over and back in the same day, all with 1 gas fillup or less. Time is money for them, and they have no time to sit around waiting for stuff to charge.

EV trucks are immensely heavy, cost 30 to 50 percent more, and have terrible range. Not to mention you have to charge them. You can't make the range better like you can on a EV car by making it more aerodynamic, because towing completely negates that.

Maybe one day we'll get better battery tech or some other dense energy storage.

Because it doesn't make them money. Look at what sore state Volkswagen has put itself in when it comes to EVs: "Volkswagen to temporarily cut production of two EV models due to weaker demand -spokesperson" [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

I think that we are at the point of - everyone that likes electric cars already has one. And it neads a leap up in usability or leap down in price.

From 1Up is strictly urban car, and the ID.x are tok damn expensive.

It's going to take a majority of used ICE vehicles to reach disarray before I get an EV!

It's not even that I'm against them specifically.

Look at new ICE cars, useless features and upsells. EVs are doing that but taking it to another degree. Like with any new thing, terms change

I can't help but think Car 2.0 is going to continue down this rent seeking/nearly hostile pattern

I'd rather fall back to a rusted beater than buy one of these, under these terms.

Someone makes a mostly low-tech EV? I may be interested

I’m in your boat. I’m tempted to buy a cyber truck and could probably accumulate the capital when I come up on the reservation list next year but the idea that I’m being tracked and I don’t “own” all the features in the car is really off putting to me.

The ford lighting generally seems to be better in this regard but offer me the base model with longer range. I’m a big diy guy and I’m going to end up beating up a lot and I just want minimal features.

For now I now I’ll stick with my 1996 K1500 6.5L diesel with 300k miles. It will probably run until I’m dead if I keep up basic maintenance.

The owning thing you talk about is it, for me.

We're paying dozens of thousands of dollars for these things. They need to be serviceable, durable, and generally utilitarian. Especially with the common squeeze getting ever-tighter.

The average consumer may not care and permit the EVs to take away what used to be expected... but I'm not having it.

Useless features required by federal regulations .

There are all kinds of affordable, simple, proven private cars running decades old tech available in other countries, from Ladas to Land Cruisers.

Not all of my complaints originate with regulation but many surely do.

A decent example of one I think is free/clear is OEM weight reduction. Pay more for them to do/include less.

The argument is that it's for performance, but we're talking maybe a couple dozen pounds. Anyone buying that is the fool we heard about and their money.

The cars are fine the infrastructure is sorely lacking even with Tesla chargers. We’re a decade out on infrastructure maybe more

And we haven't solved the "I am not rich enough to own my own damn house with garage/carport" issue. Few apartments/HOA allow EV charging installation, even fewer have it for renters and even the power distribution isn't often there to power up a whole garage with EVs. A few cars maybe, but what if 50% or more are EVs?

It's the price. The base Toyota Camry is $26k, the hybrid starts at 36k and there is no all-electric. At 10,000 miles a year and $4 a gallon, the base costs $1600/y in gas and the hybrid costs $1000, so you need to keep the cars 15 years to make the hybrid break even.

It is also inconvenience of charging. The fact that I need to waste an hour on a charger instead of being filled up in 5 minutes like with ICE.

And most of people are not going to charge at home. 50% of people in EU live in an apartment and in USA charging will be killed by HOA.

I'd like to see the HOA contract that specifies what I can put into the interior of my garage, such as a charger.

yeah, but driveway charging is DoA with HOA

That's demonstrably not true in all cases. I see driveway charging in front of multi-million dollar houses that I know full well have HOAs. Now, it very well could be that it's not enforced, but I see it regularly. (Redmond, WA, if that matters to anyone.)

And I'll ignore that the goalposts suddenly moved.

You can ignore what you want, but HOA won't ignore you.

Obviously the HOA will ignore such things, as I’ve anecdotally demonstrated. As for yourself, you just keeping repeating yourself without even an attempt of an anecdote or a link to support your counter argument.

So I’m bowing out of an unproductive back-and-forth. Enjoy the rest of your day.

> And most of people are not going to charge at home.

I'm in Berlin, most apartment blocks around me have courtyards (with entrances large enough to drive a horse-and-carriage through), the one I'm in has a courtyard with off-street parking with chargers.

There's also on-street parking outside many apartments in my area, and some of them come with charging points.

> USA charging will be killed by HOA

Even if that was true, HOA rules can always be altered or unmade by any sufficiently higher authority.

> I'm in Berlin, most apartment blocks around me have courtyards (with entrances large enough to drive a horse-and-carriage through), the one I'm in has a courtyard with off-street parking with chargers.

Like those massive commie blocks in Berlin with parking lots planned for 1 car per 3 apartments? Yeah sure, please step out of your bubble, you have no clue what are you talking about.

Either you missed the bit about the horse drawn carriages or you have a very surprising idea of how people got about in the DDR.

> Yeah sure, please step out of your bubble, you have no clue what are you talking about.

For the second time today, I'm drawn to the biblical quote about motes of dust and beams of wood and their respective impacts on visual acuity.

I am not sure, why are you citing me Bible. I am talking about the fact, that people in apartments does not have way to charge, because there is nowhere to park at a first place. And that's an issue when EU has 50% of people living in apartments.

Because your claim is false (in two distinct ways one of which would still be true even if all courtyards were removed and that should have been clear even from the message you replied to in the first place), and you're the one who needs to get out of their bubble.

The hybrid Camry starts at $28.8k in the US, just $2k more.

Not according to me asking Toyota's website to build one.

Yes, weak demand.

Tesla delays construction of their Mexico factory, because Elon Musk is concerned about high interest rates. https://ts2.space/en/tesla-delays-construction-of-giga-mexic...

Right? Interest rates are at their highest level in 20 years. That $4B will cost a lot more now than it may a year from now. This is not a good time for making such capital investments.

EVs will be "the future" when I can buy one with 180km km on the clock for ~3kEUR that I'll be able to use as a normal car I can expect to make a 350km motorway round trip driving at 140kmh without having to charge more than once for no more than ~20 min.

At the moment EVs are a luxury item for the most of the people in the world.

What ICE vehicles are available in Europe with 180k km on the clock that's selling for ~3k EUR? Here in the States that kind of money gets you a car with 325k - 475k km on the clock. As you can imagine, there aren't many cars available in that price range and the ones that are have maybe 1-3 years of life left. Only the poor buy such vehicles because they live in a car-centric area lacking public transit.

Well it is little bit higher that 3k EUR, but for example Hyundai Getz is around 4500EUR, 150k km. USA does not have small cars for small price.

For example the one I bought 6 years ago. A VW golf 4x4 2.0 TDI 2005 with 180k km on the clock. I paid 16k pln, which was then about 3.5k EUR.

Before you say, this was 6 years ago, I can tell you I just went to a popular used car sales site in Poland and when I put in 15k pln (~3.4k EUR) and no older than 2011 I got 1700 hits many like this https://www.otomoto.pl/osobowe/oferta/renault-megane-ID6FKwv... (a 1.7ctdi Renault megane 2012 for 14k pln).

When I bought my car it was 12 years old, with one previous owner imported from the south of France(no snow/salt on winter roads). It has been 6 years, that car is now 18 years old and is approaching 210k km, in these 6 years I had to do the total of: -Replaced front springs -Replaced all 4 disc brakes -Replaced all 4 front bushings -replaced the egr valve -sealed a porous head with a coolant additive (that year 2005 is famous for porosity in their cast aluminum heads).

Finally, for last 2 years I could hear slightly increased noise levels from the turbo, so it might need a replacement soon.

Furthermore, parts like disk brakes or bushings can be bought here very cheaply, but still good quality. On average a third of the oem price and much better quality (yes, you can get them even cheaper, but then quality is not the same). Expensive parts like a turbo, or a "new" engine are all bought from used cars. When one buys such parts one usually buys from a reputable scraper that has a return policy etc.

Over these 6 years I probably spent €2k on repairs (I did half of them by myself?

So I hope you can understand how ridiculous a proposition it is for someone like me to buy new (although I could afford it without much difficulty. )

So I hope you

Why not delay? Things don't look all that rosy, economically speaking, for the predominate users of trucks right now. The factory investment is massive to find out that the market for trucks has cratered once it is finished.

People are giving a lot of reasons. But what one should really pay attention to is batteries. GM has had a catastrophic time with their battery factory. Their Ultium factory has been far, far worse then they claimed a few years ago.

I believe, quite simply, they wouldn't have the battery packs available even if they built the factory.

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