Spark EV Electric Motor Manufacturing Begins in Baltimore I was under the impression that Tesla built their own motors...is this not true or is GM blowing smoke?
“Today is further proof GM is leading in the development of electric vehicles that will improve America’s energy security.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!
You got to be kidding. The Nissan Leaf builds its motors in Tennessee and Tesla is California. So I guess these states are not part of the USA.
I find it weird that somebody on a Tesla forum would write that. If it's for sale anyone can buy it from a California dealer.
Such SPIN! Yeah. "Mostly" imports, if you count the millions of made in China electric motors in blenders, electric razors, toys, garage doors, etc. the Leaf and Tesla motors are a tiny fraction. OK. So they are the first automaker to make electric motors for their own Spark EV in their own Baltimore plant. Jeez!
But then you have to pick it up in California, pay California taxes, ship it back home, pay Georgia taxes and hope nothing goes wrong with the firs EV GM makes in almost 20 years. I have a Tesla Service Center within 10 miles of my house.
First domestic to build motors and drive units in the USA. Tesla must not be building them here. Or maybe GM's dangling a carrot to Tesla to generate a mutually-promotional war of words. Interesting they're building the motors here since the Spark will be assembled in Korea. - - - Updated - - - You ship it so you don't pay CA's sales tax. Shouldn't cost any more than $1k. Plenty of Volt and PiP owners have had their cars shipped. If I were buying a new car right now it'd be a Volt and I certainly wouldn't be buying it from a Maine dealer since they couldn't get anywhere near the volume pricing the top sellers offer. They have to honor the warranty wherever you live. Otherwise you'd be screwed if you move. If anything serious goes wrong with the car GM would dispatch a tech to deal with it. But, given the nature of cars, it doesn't really matter since it's following instructions to replace parts.
InsideEVs is like an executive summary site recently just condensing other news. Here's the original media gm announcement. I think props to GM for is in order for their commitment to the Spark EV a lot more than most are giving them credit for. Certainly they have to be cautious and limit the states given the LEAF sales of the like comparison product in the past two years. They have stockholders after all. I'm a GM fan because my first GM product was a 2011 Volt but I don't know why Tesla wasn't mentioned. I think Nissan deserves some props for building their plant here too and actually making parts here (ie motor) vs it being only an assembly plant. http://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2013/Apr/0416-spark-electric.html
I thought the below was a cool aspect of all this. Link: GM making electric motors for Chevy Spark EV in Baltimore
In a recent interview Elon said they brought motor designs to a manufacture ans was told it could not be built. So Tesla went back and figured out out it could be built. They were then told there was not machine that could do the work. So Tesla designed the machine and at that point decided to just build the motors themselves.
"Yah, but we all know that's just marketing speak. He said 4.4 0-60 when we all know that it's really 4.2 or less."