Am I the only one who noticed GM has $20B in the bank? Between that, and their strong engineering capabilities, they have the ability to withstand some extreme economic punishment, as well as evolve themselves into the future. Like Ford, they desperately need opposed engine technology. They have spoken with Acates Power. I have no idea if they have a contract. If they could produce a gas truck that could get 25~30mpg while producing 1/10 the emissions of present vehicles, they would have some breathing room for a while. I don't own GM but I have looked longingly at this company for the last couple of years.
GM in the news with Trump saying Mary Barra should reopen the Lordstown plant that closed last year. Funny part is he was “involved in the sale of that plant” to some electric truck building company.
I want to give Nikola the benefit of the doubt. Imagine that the plans for their version of an electric car is viable. Engineering basics of power supply, drivetrain, etc actually do work. But they have no experience in building a car, and no way to actually build a car. They can't get airbags. Suspension parts. No subframe parts. No way to fabricate the body. Trees On The Mirror clash with Fuzzy Dice. GM engineering could actually produce a car using Nikola design specification. Mass production. A dealership network. Worldwide sales. Then bamboozle the stupid with a GM badge on 1 version. And a Chevy badge on another. Dumb people actually think GMC 1500 and Chevrolet 1500 are different trucks.
If the spec of 200KWh and 350mi range is true, that is an extremely low efficiency vehicle. Also, GM is going to have to pull a lot of batteries out of a hat. Perhaps the GM/LG partnership will bear enough fruit to produce a reasonable run of these vehicles. I'm not sure what to make of this vehicle. It looks very good. Efficiency seems to be off a bit but this may evolve before production release. Do Hummer drivers want battery electric? Perhaps they do, based on demand for the CyberTruck. I'd like to see the eHummer succeed. I'm pulling for GM to be a viable, long term, vehicle supplier in the next era of transportation but Tesla just released an FSD beta this evening so the widening gap is becoming a concern.
I wonder if a market will develop. All this is fine, until the car hits the showroom. We will have to wait and see if anyone steps up to buy it.
I've long thought GM has the best chance of survival as the world moves to electrify transport. This is based on my respect for GM being an engineering based company. This has triggered some thoughts of picking up GM on the way down but I no longer have those thoughts. I no longer believe they are likely to survive. The GM/LG battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio is an excellent strategic move but let's consider the impact of this plant. The plant has a design output of 30GWh. It is scheduled to come online in 2023. Perhaps they can get it up to speed by the end of 2024. To put that into perspective, Tesla's prototype battery factory at Roadrunner has a design capacity of 10GWh and is scheduled to be online before the end of 2021. 30GWh is enough capacity to allow them to build about 400K annual units of a car like the Bolt. It will produce a whole lot less of the Cadillac LYRIQ or the truck platform. This doesn't take into consideration the scaling of customer range expectations. Assuming GM still outsources half of their battery supply, they have a plan that will allow them to scale to 500~750K units by 2024, depending on the mix of truck/suv/car production they need to support. Meanwhile, the GM lidar/micro-data autonomous driving technology is going to be expensive and not electrically practical in the EV space. On the positive side, their FSD should be sufficient to allow them to compete in the transportation service industry, for a while, where large urban areas will comprise the vast bulk of the service need. It may help them survive but it won't make them competitive. Turning on GM's FSD technology is going to cut range by half or more in most urban situations. Sure, it will use less power than this on the highway but we're talking transportation as a service here, not long haul trucking. GM's FSD is geo-fenced for long distance driving so I don't see their FSD in an EV any time soon and they are going to run into the limits of efficiency requirements on their ICE platforms. At this point, I think GM will do better for longer than Ford or FCA but I don't believe they are viable, on their own, long term. They will need to merge with other companies to survive and Nikola's fuel cell technology isn't going to change that. BTW, creating 20 new EV models with a limited battery supply is moronic. If ever there was a recipe for failure, this is it.
Gm's short term salvation is opposed piston technology. I've been harping on that for two years. The ten tear window of opportunity (based on my speculation) is 20% closed. The first one with opposed piston ice drivetrains will dominate until the others catch up.
GM debuts all-electric van in battle to capture 'last mile' e-commerce deliveries FedEx has already placed "a large order" for the electric trucks, after a test showed they resulted in a 25 percent increase in productivity, GM said. Demand is growing for all-electric models, according to Alf Poor, CEO of Ideanomics. (Nasdaq-IDEX) That adoption is expected to happen rather rapidly, Poor and other experts believe. One reason is the pressure fleet operators are facing under new regulations. California, for example, has laid out a plan for phasing out the use of internal combustion power in all trucking segments over the coming decade. But there’s another motivating factor. Until recently, electric drive technology was considered too expensive or limited in range, but upgrades have made it much more appealing. Despite a higher up-front price tag, operating costs are a fraction of conventional vehicles, said Poor, so electric trucks “just make sense because there’s almost an immediate return on investment.” https://www.nbcnews.com/business/au...ctric-van-battle-capture-last-mile-e-n1253883
