The news came down on Thursday: General Motors pledged to stop making gasoline-powered passenger cars, vans, and sport-utilities by 2035, promising to move past the internal combustion engine and forward into a future that GM leader Mary Barra called an “example of responsible leadership in a world that is faced with climate change”. GM has said that they are willing to invest $27 billion dollars in electric vehicles between 2020 and 2025 in the past and is intending to have at least 40% of it’s U.S. market vehicles be battery-powered electric vehicles. On top of that, they want the factories to be carbon neutral by 2040.
Well…okay then. So, this leads me to a question: Just how, exactly, do they intend to do this when there is, at best, minimal infrastructure to support EV vehicles nationwide, when there are still a myriad of questions regarding serviceability and eventual disposal of the batteries once the vehicles age out, and whether or not the buying public, on the whole, will accept them in place of current models?
Tesla’s success in the EV market has to be lauded, for sure. What was nearly a joke in 2008, an electrified Lotus Elise that had the interior room of a Power Wheels, became the new fourth in the American brands, a Silicon Valley startup that has transcended past “plaything” and into the day-to-day. There’s a bank of Tesla chargers at my local grocery store and routinely there’s a Model 3 or a Model X sitting, sucking up that sweet, sweet energy. But they are ONLY for Teslarati and their vehicles. The only other EV charging point in Bowling Green is at the National Corvette Museum. After that? Hope you brought an extension cord and the adapter, buddy.
It’s easy to shove off the EV revolution as faddish. It’s accurate to raise criticisms about sourcing the materials for the batteries or to ask about disposal, or to bring up issues with safety. Remember the Rimac Concept 1 that Richard Hammond crashed during the filming of The Grand Tour? Reportedly, the car kept catching fire in the storage lot after it was removed from the Swiss hillside where it wound up. The same has been said of Teslas that have crashed. In one incident, a Tesla that had already been involved in a fatal accident and had been on fire reignited while sitting in a tow yard after it had been hauled away.
Rimac is a small, boutique manufacturer. Tesla is a new company hell-bent on working with new technology, and they have been for over a decade. But GM?
It’s not that GM is new to EVs. There was the EV1 program of the 1990s, electric Chevrolet S-10s, the hybrid Chevrolet Volt and Cadillac ELR, the SEMA concepts, the eCOPO Camaro, and currently the Bolt EV. In the spirit of transparency, a 2017 Volt has replaced the perpetually problematic 2012 Cruze at BangShift Mid-West as the daily-driver car and in the near one month of ownership at time of writing, the car has proven to be the ideal daily knockaround car, staying all but completely away from the gasoline engine unless it’s cold enough to warrant waking it up for cabin heat or for the two times we’ve depleted the battery during our errands rounds. I’ve had similar positive experiences with a first-generation Ford Fusion Hybrid at the tail end of my Army days in 2010. Hybrids make sense. But full EVs from a mass manufacturer? There’s a lot of questions that seem to need answers before I can swallow a pill that big. And I don’t think I’m alone in that respect.
Who’s going to break to news to these clowns, that there’s not enough electricity in the grid to charge them?
Oh and, the tree huggers aren’t going to welcome ANY sort of energy production capability with open arms in the next 15 yrs.
Wind Farms: Too bird hungry
Oil: Badness!
Coal: More badness!
Natural gas: Badness, but not quite as bad
Nuclear: Many half-lives of badness.
The announcement by GM was that all light duty vehicles would be EV by 2035. The question is what is GM’s definition of light duty, does it follow a federal emissions standards breakpoint (8500gvwr), a DOT standard for commercial truck (10000), or a manufacturer classification where anything Class III and under is light duty. As a supplier, GM has told us that there will be no further investment in R&D for ICE powertrains on anything 1500 series pickup and lighter, including corvette, just implementation of their current technologies. Ford made a similar statement to us with no deadlines. VW has previously announced their full EV intentions. I’m researching a micro CHP system for home so that I will never be out of juice in a storm, which I plan to run on fossil fuels.
Look……I wouldn’t get my panties in a twist over this recent press release. It’s political posturing, plain and simple. Mary Barra and her minions are just saying what the current administration wants to hear. Come the year 2032, when car/truck sales are 85% internal combustion and 15% EV, who’s gonna remember this statement? She got her 15 minutes of news airtime, trying to sound cutting edge and relevant. Move along now….nothing to see here.
It’s laughable. Do the proponents of EVs really think the nation is going to continue to operate as it does today based on EVs with a 300 mile range before charging?
Fuckin’ hippies . . .
Where do they think the materials to make these vehicle come from? Pixie dust?
And here is Ca, the power goes out from wind, a light drizzle and then there are rolling blackouts in summer because of too many A/C’s being run. Just imagine everybody trying to charge their car at once!
As a GM employee, we were told almost two years ago that Powertrain was
history. No new engine development. The corporation felt the current engine lineup and projects were sufficient until the switch to EVs. I was discussing this with someone at the Dream Cruise that Aug. He said Ford was basically
of the same mindset.
I have been wondering the same thing about infrastructure for the last two years. In metro Detroit there has been some development, but at no where near the rate needed to pull this off.
Sell your Stock in GM NOW !!!!!
do you see anyone putting the money out of their corporate pockets to build EV charging stations without Tax incentives/ Grant money ?
Elections have consequences
Y’all area all right, it’s it all a political show Glad the head of Toyota is both a gearhead and a racer,
“When politicians are out there saying, ‘let’s get rid of all cars using gasoline,’ do they understand this?,” said Toyota president Akio Toyoda during a Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association news conference.
Read the short article for more details.
https://www.autoblog.com/2020/12/18/toyota-ban-internal-combustion-engines/
While Toyota has many hybrids in their lineup, gas engine technology is still underway. He too wants driving to be fun, and is not ready to take the wheel from the driver!
So, the new EVs will have sound effects recordings of flathead V-8s piped through the cabins when the driver floors the Go-button to keep the mush heads from crying in their face masks due to the lack of manly internal combustion propulsion powerplants. And, take a look at the Chinese battery production factories and poisoned wastelands they’ve created in China. Next question, who’s got all the specialized resources and rare earth elements required for the mass manufacture of the battery packs ? The power grid in this country borders on mediocre at best and with this new drain on the system, I don’t see this as a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist except in the minds of the ‘tards whose brains are locked up in total Mary Poppins mode. Of course, all the manufacturers will be on the steps of the White House with their hands out looking for the big payoff. Lookout taxpayers, it’s coming at you hard. Don’t think for one minute that these robber barons are going to spend one dime of their own treasure on this future endeavor. Corporations never pay taxes, they just pass that on to the consumer. Me, I’m headed down to the local auto store and order up a set of the noisiest glass packs I can find for my short. That way I’ll always know what a real car sounds like…….
So, the new EVs will have sound effects recordings of flathead V-8s piped through the cabins when the driver floors the Go-button to keep the mush heads from crying in their face masks due to the lack of manly internal combustion propulsion powerplants. And, take a look at the Chinese battery production factories and poisoned wastelands they\’ve created in China. Next question, who\’s got all the specialized resources and rare earth elements required for the mass manufacture of the battery packs ? The power grid in this country borders on mediocre at best and with this new drain on the system, I don\’t see this as a solution to a problem that doesn\’t exist except in the minds of the \’tards whose brains are locked up in total Mary Poppins mode. Of course, all the manufacturers will be on the steps of the White House with their hands out looking for the big payoff. Lookout taxpayers, it\’s coming at you hard. Don\’t think for one minute that these robber barons are going to spend one dime of their own treasure on this future endeavor. Corporations never pay taxes, they just pass that on to the consumer. Me, I\’m headed down to the local auto store and order up a set of the noisiest glass packs I can find for my short. That way I\’ll always know what a real car sounds like…….