I even thought the Gremlin was cool!
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Posted on 05/06/2022 10:18:16 AM PDT by fireman15
Major U.S. automaker Ford blamed its sizable investment in electric vehicle (EV) company Rivian for its dramatic revenue decline in the first quarter of 2022.
Ford reported revenue of $34.5 billion between January and March, a 5% decline relative to the same period in 2021, and a net loss of $3.1 billion, according to the company’s earnings report released Wednesday. The Detroit automaker said its large investment in Rivian accounted for $5.4 billion in losses during the first quarter.
“A net loss of $3.1 billion was primarily attributable to a mark-to-market loss of $5.4 billion on the company’s investment in Rivian,” Ford said in the earnings report.
Ford maintains a roughly 12% stake in Rivian, CNBC reported in November.
Rivian has posted massive profit losses of its own and its share price has plummeted nearly 70% over the last six months. The value of Ford’s roughly 102 million Rivian shares has fallen from about $17.5 billion to $3.2 billion since November.
In the final three months of 2021, Rivian reported a net loss of $2.5 billion.
Automakers have increasingly turned their attention toward manufacturing electric vehicles as governments push aggressive green energy plans. President Joe Biden has promised to craft policies to ensure 50% of new vehicle sales in the U.S. are emissions-free by 2030 and every addition to the federal government’s 600,000-vehicle fleet is electric by 2035.
However, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe recently suggested that the supply chain for EV batteries is still far behind where it needs to be to achieve many of the goals pushed by Western governments, the WSJ reported.
“Put very simply, all the world’s cell production combined represents well under 10% of what we will need in 10 years,” Scaringe said last week. “Meaning, 90% to 95% of the supply chain does not exist.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thestarnewsnetwork.com ...
I even thought the Gremlin was cool!
As a possible niche market
Performance is there already.
what sort of performance - Burn the tires away from a traffic light - maybe. Go on a long road trip no way in hell
Now imagine if batteries are 1/3 the price, or 2x or more the range.,?I>
Why don't you imagine you have a new car and drive your imaginary car on the expressway and see how far you get? I suspect not even out of your chair Imagination is not reality. Reality is bounded by mundane things like the firs and secon laws of thermodynamics, the capacity of the nation's electrical grid to produce real power not rainbows and unicorn farts from wind and solar.
LEts look at the reality of an EV pickup. pickups are work trucks in spite of some suburbanites getting them for the image so here's reality
EV pickups are doubling down on stupid. Let's say a pickup has a 20 gallon gas tank. Gas weighs 2.567kg per gallon and has 33.7 kWh of energy in that gallon according to the EPA. This means a kilogram of gas has 13.13 kWh per kg. According to Google EV batteries have an energy density of 0.26 kWh per kg. So you need 50.49 times the weight of gas to get a battery with the same capacity. 20 gal of gas would need a 2592 kg battery to replace a 20 gal gas tank or a net increase in assdragging weight of 2541 kg. Or an additional 5609 lb in your pickup to get the same energy storage.
So your 6000 lb Dodge Ram pickup becomes an 11,600 lb pickup and this says nothing about how much space and increased structural weight the pickup would need. So you're hauling around almost double the weight which uses almost double the energy. So the almighty planet saving EV is really using twice the energy as a gas powered vehicle. Now you can make the battery smaller like the equivalent of a 5 gal gas tank, but what use is a work truck with a 5 gallon gas tank that takes 5 hours to fill?
Oh and if you want a refill at a construction site you can use a diesel generator to charge up your truck right?
Yeah the 5.7 was converted from a gasser and had a multitude of problems. Head gaskets, fuel pump system, transmission couldn’t take the torsional vibrations, etc etc.
I did know one old guy at GM who put a gallon of gasoline in every tank of diesel fuel and his ran almost 90,000 miles without failing which was exceptional.
1. The big government guiding hand “mandate” that you buy their product. Example: new refrigerants made 4 different companies billions upon billions, and they will soon do it again.
2. Massive subsidies to make a company that would be marginally or non competitive have a substantial advantage. Example: Tesla received $5 billion in direct subsidies from the federal and state government and that was by 2018.
3. Special tax breaks or subsidies to the consumer which make a product more competitive. This would include a sales tax break on the vehicle, partial funding of a home power system, free charging in some locations...
Can this work for everyone? Can everyone get free money from the government, i.e. a form of welfare for the rich (it's not poor people that buy EVs - they can't afford them)?
Of course not. This only works for a while.
If you really look at the “hundreds of billions” the US government has pumped into green programs over many decades (Carter already did it), may it be solar and wind farms, battery plants, in tax breaks, direct subsidies, research, you realize that the “return on inventsment” has been horrible.
It's an issue where a philosophical idea supersedes sound economic as well as engineering decision making.
AMC did a lot with the meager resources they had.
Go woke, Go broke!
the earlier year gremlins were cool...
stuffed a 383 ci mopar engine in one... 😁...
the bigger bumpers on later model years looked hideous...
I think the carmakers are all reading what way the political wind is blowing. They know governments are itching to ban ICE vehicles and the fuels they run on. The marketers, who hyper-focus on the <40 crowd for future sales, know the Millennials and Gen Z kiddos want “Green” transportation. They have decided the smart thing is to follow the market and let the problems solve themselves.
The pendulum will probably swing the other way in a few years as the reality of these problems rear their ugly head, but lithium battery tech has made electric cars possible and they will be a part of the market from now on.
It must be hell to be a product planner at the vehicle companies.
Because in 2025 Trump is gonna reverse all the current mandates.
Think its all going to Europe like the SPR.
<>Just imagine.<>
Free Beer Tomorrow.
<>Electric is here to stay. Get used to it.<>
In the early 1900s, Mr. Electric himself, Thomas Edison, advised young Henry Ford to develop ICE engines.
The world got used to it.
Modern battery packs are arrays of small batteries. A Tesla battery pack is ~7,000 small batteries. The onboard computer controls charging and discharging across the array, so you can’t overcharge, or discharge completely (it will disable the car before that happens. It makes the battery history somewhat predictable based on overall mileage. It is much more predictable that an ICE, where you have no idea if they previous owner maintained, it, changed the oil, used good quality oil, overheated the car, over revved the engine, etc.
True, but things change.
Well said. Government’s push to EVs isn’t to replace one form of transportation with another; its purpose is to deny freedom of movement and eventually force rural Deplorables into central city high rise housing.
Yeah, there were whole segments of GM at that time (Detroit Diesel and ElectroMotive) that were well versed in building diesel engines.
Sounds excessive, as in 3-4 times what it should cost.
<>things change<>
What won’t change is energy density.
A battery will never approach the energy density of gasoline.
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