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Tesla BEV Competition Developments
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How did that red Model S sneak into the Porsche R&D centre? Quietly?This photo in particular:
How did that red Model S sneak into the Porsche R&D centre? Quietly?
same way as the white Model X behind it
my question is about the other pictures from that article, the ones showing the Mission-E from behind:
why does it have 2 huge exhaust pipes coming out of its back ???!?!?
Ha! How did I miss the T, right there!same way as the white Model X behind it
my question is about the other pictures from that article, the ones showing the Mission-E from behind:
why does it have 2 huge exhaust pipes coming out of its back ???!?!?
The article says the fake pipes were to disguise the car.
I wish someone less lazy than myself would cull all these to be "mass" manufactured BEV announcements in a wiki timeline format so we could keep it up to date and then another much smaller supply chain wiki of where the batteries are going to come from for all these BEVs.
Most of the EVs out there are limited production cars. The Fiat 500e is a very limited production for the CARB market only. Compared to other GM cars, the Bolt has tiny production numbers. GM makes more Corvettes than Bolts.
Any limited production car is going to cost more to produce. It isn't just the R&D and dealership margins, it's also the fixed costs. There are certain costs for facilities, overhead, etc. that are the same if a plant is producing one car or 500,000. Those fixed costs are spread out across all the cars built. Part of the cost saving for the Model 3 is the fact the M3 is going to be built in much larger volumes than the S and X, but the production lines for the 3 will take up pretty much the same floor space as the S and X lines do. They are making significantly more cars in the same space, which makes the fixed facility costs per car lower.
You mentioned R&D costs and that is spread out over the production run too. If they sell millions of a particular car, the R&D costs per car sold is low, but if they only sell a relative few, the cost per car for R&D is much higher. If you look at cars like the Ford GT or the Dodge Viper, those are pretty expensive for what you get too because they are limited production cars (plus the company is jacking up the price to fleece the collectors buying them, but it really does cost them more to produce those cars).
It probably cost GM more in R&D to develop the Bolt than it did to develop the latest version of the Impala because the latest Impala is essentially a derivative design from what they have done before. It uses a variant of an engine that has been around a while, the transmission may or may not be new, but it is based on 100+ years of experience making transmissions.
GM farmed out a fair bit of the drive train development on the Bolt, but that may have cost more because LG could have milked it. In any case, they had to answer some fundamental questions GM had never answered with a car before. The car has an all new management system for the drive system, new charging system, first GM car with the battery under the floor. They had the Tesla example to work from, but there are thousands of little decisions that have to be made. Half of those decisions would be simple with ICE car designs because the answer would be, let's do it the same way we did it on this other car. But the Bolt under the skin is nothing like any other GM car, so they have to pay someone to think through all those decisions and solve those problems.
The next GM EV built with the same kind of EV system will cost a lot less because the answer to a lot of those design questions will be, "let's do it like the Bolt".
That's another reason Tesla is able to make a $35K EV, they learned a lot of lessons making $100K EVs and they didn't have to reinvent things done on the S and X programs.
Related: much of the weird claims made about Tesla selling Model S and X units "at a loss" because of all their R&D cost. I'm in no position to comment on their financials, but suspect that the original S & X R&D are allocated in to the S & X fully burdened costs, as they should be, and that if Tesla says they are making money on those units, then they likely are. All of the Model 3, Semi, and other R&D costs, though, are likely allocated out to those programs, and not to S & X. People have trouble wrapping their heads around the concept that S and/or X can be profitable on a per-unit basis while the company can still be running at a significant loss.
Alan
Tesla has never factored R&D costs into their cost of goods sold, it has always been in operating expenses.
People say they sell at a loss is referring to the negative net profit margin. This is a fact for years. And the main reason is not R&D but Sales, General, & Administration costs. However, there are definitely a lot of people (Bob Lutz for example) try to spin it into negative gross margins, which is totally untrue even if they put all the R&D into COGS.
Yes, the R&D costs of the S and X are rolled into the price, but Tesla has lots and lots of R&D costs that are also being paid for out of S and X income. This includes the semi, the Model 3, battery research, any Tesla Energy R&D, and R&D on anything else we don't know about. When the Model 3 hits higher production numbers, its profits will start paying back its R&D costs. Same thing for the other products they have paid for out of S and X profits (as well as money raised other ways).
A lot of the bears out there actually do know this. They are being intentionally dense to try and hurt Tesla because they don't want to see the status quo in the car market disrupted. The meme perpetuated by anyone from the mainstream car business (in the US at least) and anybody serving as a mouthpiece like Bob Lutz, is that even if the public wants EVs (which most don't according to these people), they are a money loser and always will be a money loser. If Tesla can make a profit, or just break even selling electric cars, their argument is destroyed. So they need to bad mouth Tesla as much as possible to hopefully drive Tesla out of business before Tesla can become successful on their own.
They are fighting a losing battle and anyone who isn't blinded by confirmation bias probably sees that.
Quite a bit of guesswork.
Sales of the C7 are similar to the Bolt, with all versions of the Corvette (Base, Convertibles, Grand Sports, Z06's) selling 1748 in Aug vs 2107 units for the Bolt EV. However, the Corvette is a 2 seat world class road racing car. Not exactly the same. Perhaps more similar would be the Sonic at 2181.
So you categorize the Sonic with the Ford GT? Both are low volume. Not sure why someone would cross shop those.
GM's R&D for electric cars is significant, not just in patents, but they also have the largest battery lab in the US. There are probably more engineers at GM working on electrification than any other US company.
My guess is you know very, very, very little about GM's engineering. Or the Model 3 Tesla.
You misread what I wrote. I'm not suggesting anyone was cross shopping anything. I was talking about the production volumes and spreading out the R&D costs across the production run. Chevrolet sells about 30K Corvettes in the US every year (give or take) and another 10K internationally. That's 10K more than Chevrolet's target for 1st year Bolt production, which is around 30K.
The Sonic is a low volume car in the US market, but it's sold worldwide under several different names. The R&D costs for that platform is spread out over the entire line.
I also made the point that the Bolt, being the first car of it's kind from GM has a lot more new tech in it than most new cars. When they design a new ICE, they usually reuse an existing engine and transmission. Of if something there is new, it's usually a derivative of a part they sell in other cars. Because the entire drive train in the Bolt was brand new, that cost more to develop than other cars in GM's lineup. I also made the point that when GM comes out with it's second long range EV, it will benefit from all the lessons learned on the Bolt which will make R&D cheaper.
I didn't say anything one way or the other about how much effort is going on at GM in EV development. I was talking about the costs incurred for the cars that were currently on the market.
And as far as the Model 3 benefiting from lessons learned at Tesla, Elon Musk has talked about the lessons learned period they went through after the Model X development and how they sat down and determined how to not repeat history on the M3. I admit I do not know anywhere near as much of what's going on in the R&D departments at any car company as those inside the doors know, but I do know what has been said publicly.
I also know the R&D process. I've worked in R&D at a number of companies since the late 80s. I've seen how Boeing, Microsoft, Honeywell, and a number of smaller companies do it. Each company is different, but those that stay in business have some similarities in the way they go about capturing and using ideas and lessons that come out of past projects.
I think GM has been fairly busy in vehicle electrification:
EV-1 & S-10 Pickup 1997-1999:
New battery packs (lead, NiMH)
New motor
New inverter
New charging equipment
Hybrid transit bus 2004-2017:
New battery pack
New RWD hybrid transmission with power split modes
New motors & inverters
Two-Mode trucks and SUVs 2008-2013:
New battery pack
New RWD hybrid transmission with power split & fixed ratio modes derived from bus
New motors & inverters
Saturn Vue SUV ~2010 (never sold):
New FWD hybrid transmission derived and repackaged from RWD SUV/truck
Volt 2011-2015:
New battery pack
New FWD hybrid transmission with series &
power split modes
New motors & inverters
Spark EV 2014:
New battery pack
Modified motor from existing design
New inverters
Spark EV 2015-2016:
New battery pack
ELR 2014:
Reuse 1st gen Volt parts
ELR 2016:
Modified battery pack and hybrid transmission for increased power
2nd gen Volt 2 2016-2017:
Modified battery pack
New FWD hybrid transmission with power split modes
New inverters
Malibu hybrid 2016-2017:
New hybrid battery pack
reuse FWD Volt hybrid transmission
New motor
CT6 plug-in hybrid 2017:
Modified Volt battery pack
New RWD hybrid transmission derived from
Volt
New motor
Bolt EV 2017:
New battery pack
New motor & gear pack
New inverters
That’s many new electrified vehicle designs redone mostly from scratch each time and several modified derivatives.
Except for the ELR borrowing heavily from the 1st gen Volt and the Malibu borrowing heavily from the 2nd gen Volt these are all major “from scatch” engineering projects. Basically 9 major new designs including 6 new hybrid transmission designs each with unique complex control firmware during the timeframe that Tesla did 3 simpler BEV designs with the Roadster through to the Model 3 since the S and X largely share the same tweaked powertrain.
The good news for GM is that they have a fairly solid and mature set of designs now that they can mostly borrow and tweak and drop into many various car models. The newer Volt/Malibu hybrid transmission is designed to be a physically compatible drop-in replacement for GM’s 6-speed conventional automatic transmission used in various car models. The CT6 is an architecturally extended version of that design although repackaged into a RWD layout and is suitable for being dropped into pickup trucks and SUVs. The Bolt’s skateboard-like battery and FWD motor and gear box is suitable for reuse or derived variants in other FWD BEV models.
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The Volt is still probably the most technologically advanced drivetrain put into a mass produced car, an honor it's held for 7 years and counting.
The Bolt is a packaging masterpiece. Ultra strong body and chassis, very light weight, multiple materials with new technology bonding. Small footprint, large interior.
The winner in the tech contest for EV tech is the Volt though.
They put smaller, less powerful electric motors in the latest version, yet ended up with a more powerful, much quicker, much cheaper, much lighter powerplant:
So much engineering effort; so much innovation; and still essentially nothing to show for it. I was really looking forward to hearing how successful the Bolt was going to be, partly due to supposedly being sold on a nationwide basis. But... meh.
I very much appreciate the list you supplied, as it gives me the data to change my opinion from this -- GM hasn't made any real effort -- to this -- GM appears to keep (re-)laying the foundation for a future that it is never willing to embrace.
Thanks,
Alan
I'll stipulate your evaluation of the technological beauty of the Volt and of the Bolt (albeit for different reasons). (I say "stipulate" rather than "agree with" because I lack the capacity to form reasonable consent on this issue.)
But even so stipulating brings me back to this:
My attempt to state my opinion would be this: "another set of forward-looking engineering activities motivated by and in a real sense funded by CARB credits, without any serious corporate commitment beyond that". Decades of effort, decades of delay.
I am thrilled -- seriously! -- that GM has made recent announcements of many EV efforts and goals. But they have zero credibility with me until they deliver.
Thanks,
Alan
Volts and Bolts are both more powerful and safer than the minimum CARB, EPA, or NHTSA requirements. They are sold in regions of the US and world (Buick sells Volts overseas) where CARB and/or EPA is not an issue. GM would have saved billions making 12+ second PiP's or 14mi PHEVs instead of Volts and Bolts, and then sold them only in California where most EV/EREV/PHEV buyers are. The GM doesn't sell a $30k+ car that can't accelerate at normal levels.
As Jeff outlined, no US mfr has put more different electromotive models on the highway or as many at this point so far.
The Volt was the first true Commuter EV with no remote charging requirements. Since the average worker commutes 24 miles, why go for 53 miles (actually, the number often works out 10% higher)?
In 2010, there was no way to drive a commuter EV coast to coast in a normal timeframe until the Volt. In 2010, the pragmatic solution was a medium sized battery, with a backup gas generator for long trips. The generator was unnecessary to yield maximum acceleration, a problem most PHEVs today suffer from.
It is very, very common on various sites to point at GM as a company that refuses to develop EV technology at any level other than the minimum CARB requirement. Is it true? Even though GM has more plug-in cars on the road in the US than any other automaker, it is a persistent belief.
"General Motors believes in an all-electric future," said Mark Reuss, General Motors executive vice president of product development, purchasing and supply chain. "Although that future won't happen overnight, GM is committed to driving increased usage and acceptance of electric vehicles through no-compromise solutions that meet our customers' needs."
General Motors to ramp up electric vehicle plans, 20 new models planned over next 6 years
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