Posted on 02/20/2021 3:49:17 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
General Motors Co. GM 0.79% is betting its future on electric cars. By mid-decade it plans to spend $27 billion on manufacturing 30 electric models and developing driverless cars. By 2035, it expects to have phased out gasoline-engine options completely and to be selling only electric vehicles, a technology that currently generates about 2% of sales and no profit for the company.
Planning for this transformation at the factory level is the responsibility of Gerald Johnson, a GM lifer who took over global manufacturing operations in 2019, and who is spearheading a $2.2 billion gut rehab of a factory in Detroit, recently renamed Factory Zero, to serve as GM’s electric-vehicle hub. Two more conversions of North American factories for production of electric vehicles, or EVs, are in the works.
Mr. Johnson, 58 years old, calls it the most far-reaching strategic shift he has seen in his career at GM, which he began 40 years ago as an intern.
“There has always been incremental change,” he says. “This is transformative.”
GM factories around the world employ more than 100,000 workers. Some plants exist solely to assemble gas-powered engines and transmissions that won’t be needed if the company successfully reaches its 2035 target, portending big changes for both workers and GM’s factory footprint.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Carbon fiber body = casket on wheels
The History of the Electric Car per Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle
I would recommend a large Cummins dual-fuel. Better safe than sorry...
China wants EV cars and GM serves China.
I expect that my Duramax is soon going to be a collector’s item. Not that I am going to give it up anytime soon.
And when the hydrogen explodes how many square miles will be destroyed by these mobile hydrogen bombs?
Remember the Alaskan winter festival where an artist made an ice sculpture of the frozen “Al Gore”? He invited Mr. Gore to claim his prize, if only he came in an electric vehicle. The temperatures were sub zero; Al Gore never showed up for his prize.
I believe that it can get very cold in the Nordic countries?
And EV’s are selling well in the region.
Norway, Iceland and Sweden are leading the charge, with plug-in electric vehicles accounting for 74.8%, 45% and 32.2% respectively in 2020.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/electric-vehicles-europe-percentage-sales/
Over SIX MILLION Prius on the road and the batteries are still doing the job even in the cold.
My wife’s Prius has had no issues even at MINUS THIRTY?
Six years and the battery is just fine.
“They would be even smarter to build new power plants to go along with all those electric vehicles.”
Not as bad as most claim, yes they may need some additional capacity in different areas in the near term.
Typically daytime peak electric demand is TWICE NIGHT TIME PEAK.
More than enough juice for now.
The real problem is charging one in the city.
Even if there were a charger on every lampost (where the existing wires are).
MOST CHARGING CABLES WOULD DISAPPEAR OVERNIGHT!
Let all their factories run on renewables only, no backups to fossil generated power.
“Who the hell is going to buy a car in 2025 that will be worthless in 2035.”
A 10-year-old Prius with square corners is still worth about 50% of new?
And seeing how the Prius has the lowest TCO of any car (according to C.U.) the owner has already saved a nice pile of cash along the way.
When my wife gave her five-year-old Accord to the kids and purchased a new Prius the car insurance dropped massively.
And the 50+MPG is nice too.
NICE!!!
I might steal it if I can remember it!!!
Do these cars last 300,000 miles and more? They are not in our buying range until they get to 140,000.
I want a big smoke belching diesel truck that’ll smoke the wheels off’en them.
My buddy with a monster diesel 4x4 Dodge PU gets well into the 30’s MPG highway and loves to brag it up.
That said, he was very disappointed to find out my wife’s Prius has a slightly BETTER quarter-mile time than his beast.
“My wife’s Prius has had no issues even at MINUS THIRTY?”
What was the effect of 30 below on her car’s range?
EV’s are powered by electricity. What is going to make the electricity?
If you search for articles about cold weather testing of electric vehicles, you will see that the tests are generally conducted just below freeezing (in the high twenties). See for example the big Norwegian test that is the most frequently cited. The loss of range at that temperature is only about 10-20%. But what if you live somewhere that is routinely a lot colder than that? A lot of Americans do. I had to do a 150 mile round trip in 25 degrees this evening and sit in the car with the heat on for 90 min at the other end. With present technology, I just could not count on that working out ok in an electric vehicle. If it was 10 or 29 degrees colder, I definitely could not have done that in an electric car. And for all the talk of Scandinavia, their citizens are buying EV because government policies financially incentivize them to do so.
And for some insane reason the UAW will back the move to China 100%
How do they want us to forget that it’s still a GM POS? Does selling them as EVs magically change that?
The loneliest job in the US will be a GM salesman in Teaxs
GM see Texas.
Electric vehicles are not practical. The making of the batteries are far worse then a gasoline engine.
GM:
Step 1- Load Gun.
Step 2- Point At Foot.
Step 3- Beg For Bailout.
CC
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