Presenting The Cadillac Dolt

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--It would seem that Tesla has little to fear from the Cadillac ELR as it continues the proud Volt tradition of big on advertising, and small on sales. No problem though, now that the UAW are stock holders, they can always be bailed out again, what's  another 10 billion dollar loss. See below article.

http://nlpc.org/stories/2014/03/06/gm-sells-only-58-cadillac-elrs-february-despite-ad-spending

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov 1920 - 1992

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[tom66]

Cadillac ELR is a slightly more powerful Volt, with the same limited range. And for a lot more.
No wonder it can't compete with Tesla.

[NiHaoMike]

That's tiny compared to the subsidies on oil.
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
Oil subsidies should be abolished for real progress.

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

That's tiny compared to the subsidies on oil.
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
Oil subsidies should be abolished for real progress.

--Oil company tax provisions are not subsidies, no matter how many times the Obama administration and the Media call them that. These provisions are the same types of depletion and amortization allowed for all kinds of business. If you subtract the amount of these tax credits from government income from oil, and then do the same sort of thing for EV tax credits, you will see that one of the numbers is very large and positive. Guess which one. To get a better idea of what is really going on, see below article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2013/01/02/oil-gas-tax-provisions-are-not-subsidies-for-big-oil/

“World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”
James Earl Carter 1924 -

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[tom66]

Tesla's fire issues have been a little worrisome, but in all cases, they aren't really defects with the vehicle.
 - first one was road debris - in most cars this would at the very least cause severe damage and the fires were slow burning (vehicle alerted owner to problem, gave them limited power to leave freeway for about 30 seconds)
 - second was crashing into a tree at 60+mph - occupants survived with minimal injuries and fire occurred after a long time - most likely electrical arcing in 12V system like in ordinary car
 - third one was also road debris, car drove for 5 minutes with no problems and took another 5 minutes before fire occurred indicating it was attempting to manage the battery problem until it decided it could not do so
 - fourth one was due to poorly torqued screws on charging socket where the plug connected due to electrician error, nothing to do with car

24,000 cars shipped, 4 fires, and two arguably not related to vehicle defects, that's about right for the average car.

I think it's probably wrong to assign a probability to EV fire and compare to ICE. Fires are probably, in the long run, going to occur at about the same rate. But when a petrol car has a fire, it can be engulfed in flames within 30 seconds, especially after an accident with fuel leak compared to battery puncture/connector arcing, an EV will generally burn a lot slower.

[nctnico]

Do we really need to repeat this thread? I think we all know the 'regular' car makers are not going to come up with something you could call an EV in the foreseable future.

[tom66]

I'd like to see Mitsubishi put their engineering might behind a 200 mile+ EV. They are a niche manufacturer in the grand scale, so having an affordable, high performance, long range EV in the market could boost their market share greatly.

Leaf has too many battery reliability issues in first gen due to an engineering fail in temperature management.

[nctnico]

I'd like to see Mitsubishi put their engineering might behind a 200 mile+ EV. They are a niche manufacturer in the grand scale, so having an affordable, high performance, long range EV in the market could boost their market share greatly.

EVs are not interesting for the big car manufacturers. People cheer when Tesla sells 21,000 cars and the share value sky rockets. They overlook the fact that over 67,000 Chevrolet Volts where sold world wide (in 12 countries) which they call a total sales dissaster. Go figure...

[free_electron]

Tesla : 22000 cars last year (30K+ in total. My vin is 28045) . average sales price : 100K$ . total expenses on advertisement 0. Net profit per car for Tesla: 10 to 20K$ ...
Volt : 67000 cars last year. average sales price : 34.000. total expenses on advertisement: several you-don't-wanna-know- million. Net profit per car for GM : 0$ (it's actually a loss). They had to drop 7K off the price before they would even sell...

So yeah. The volt IS a sales disaster.

(Prices are BEFORE fed tax credit and state incentives.)

Now the 'powers-that-be' are at it again ....
SAE is proposing a new industry standard for a DC charging connector. An extensions for the J1772.

ChaDeMo and the newly proposed connector 


We'd need this on EV's : 


here is the tesla plug :


The real kick in the pants is that NONE of these current and proposed standards can handle the power that the Tesla Superchargers deliver.
J1771 tops out at roughly 20Kw , ChademO peaks at 62Kw and the new SAE proposed extention of the J1771 tops out at 90Kw.

The superchargers deliver 120Kw in the US and up to 160Kw in Europe (Tesla uses a modified Mennekes plug in europe that retains backward compatibility with the standard , but allows the higher power).

The powers that be should be forced to try out which connector they like best by repeatedly forcing them up their asses.

[Corporate666]

Tesla : 22000 cars last year (30K+ in total. My vin is 28045) . average sales price : 100K$ . total expenses on advertisement 0. Net profit per car for Tesla: 10 to 20K$ ...
Volt : 67000 cars last year. average sales price : 34.000. total expenses on advertisement: several you-don't-wanna-know- million. Net profit per car for GM : 0$ (it's actually a loss). They had to drop 7K off the price before they would even sell...

So yeah. The volt IS a sales disaster.

(Prices are BEFORE fed tax credit and state incentives.)

You are mistaken on some of the above...

-GM is making a net profit per car.  The stated plan, even before production began, was to reduce the price of the car.  Even Whitacre said this before they ever built a single unit.  The costs were going to come down, and first year or two would be sold to early adopters at a higher price. 

People, like SgtRock, have bought into the right wing idiocy against the Volt.  It started when these folks began squealing about the government bailout of GM - these people didn't even take time to give a cursory review of the situation - many of them foolishly blaming Obama for mandating that GM build the Volt. 

My point is - it's counterproductive to compare and contrast between the Volt and Tesla.  Both are great cars - Tesla's success should make ANY American proud.  EV sales were just shy of 100,000 units in 2013, and GM has about 23% market share, which is pretty damn good.  I'm proud, again as an American, that the USA is leading the EV pack... better than BMW/Mercedes/Japan taking the cake. 

[FJV]

Sometimes in company political games someone sets up a project that is designed to fail.

I really hate that, because you can bet your bottom dollar that a lot of engineers have worked damn hard to make that thing a success, only to be undermined behind the scenes by someone playing games.

[echen1024]

I thought that BMW had something going with its sexy i8, but that car is still too expensive for some Tesla buyers.

[NiHaoMike]

The i8 costs as much as a Model S and a Volt together, but can't even manage the EV range of the Volt. I think that's a big fail there.