I have been thinking this through a bit, and I am actually getting a bit confused. I go
back and forth a bit, sometimes I think legacy autos companies like GM are absolutely clueless,
other times I feel like I am under estimating them. For starters we can't believe anything they
say, especially Mary Barra, yea I really seem to have it out for her, because I believe she is the
worst out of the legacy CEOs, and lies the most. But probably because her company is in the biggest
trouble. Jim Farley of Ford at least realizes there is a company called Tesla. And then Herbet
Diess is probably the one I believe the most, but VW doesn't exactly have a clean history either.
Anyway, like I said I am a bit confused about GM. It sounded like they had a path to help
them with their alleged transition there, with plug in hybrids. They could simply make plug
in hybrids for now, and give their customers about an $8,500 rebate, enough of a discount to
perhaps make easily cajoled consumers to purchase their pile of wasted steel. But is it me, or do
GM actually have no hybrid cars, let alone plug in hybrids, but actually not even any hybrids at all?
I believe they used to have the hideous Volt, yes Volt, not Bolt. Yea, look at that car,
talk about generic, where is the soul, the passion, the art.
Its a disaster of a car. It was actually a plugin hybrid too. But it has since been discontinued.
So wait, what, is this actually real. GM have no hybrids,
or plug in hybrids? Really if I am wrong, or anyone knows more, then please let me know.
I thought the purpose of all this cronyism was mainly for GM's benefit.
A way they could still sell cars before they built up their electric offering.
But what, no hybrids. Ok then. So what is this bill for,
it's meant to level the playing field as much as possible to give GM an advantage over Tesla. And
yes, they get up to a $5,000 advantage rebate over Teslas. And also a $12,500 advantage over selling
electric over their ICE cars. Which means they can potentially charge that much more their EVs,
so they can then potentially scrape a profit, at least over time.
Except the Hummer is not eligible for this rebate, because it's so expensive,
and most likely loses money still on every sale, supposedly over 200 kWh of batteries in there.
Can you imagine the fires they are going to produce.
We have seen what a 60 kWh Bolt can do, a Hummer with 200 kWh will be some fire. It
would go up in flames as fast as GM's reputation with electric vehicles, or whatever still remains.
Right so we have the Hummer coming out next year,
and this Cadillac Lyriq. Cadillac mainly a brand someone given renewed life by hip hop artists
rapping about the ridiculous Escalade. I was driven around one in Manhattan once, it's not
great, and I rented Cadillac CTS in Hawaii once too, it broke down, it was just about brand new,
and they replaced it with an Infinity. Oh it was also a total dog to drive. Oh but its a bit
luxurious car you might think, well so is a BMW 7 series, and they still handle impressively well.
But the Lyriq, well the cap for SUVs is $80,000,
so I assume the Lyriq will make this, but it's really not clear what you get for the money.
The web site says they start at $59,000. Which is comparable with the Tesla Model Y.
But it also says an 100 kWh battery. There is no way they could be selling these with 100 kWh
battery for that price, that's crazy. If they are they are losing an absolute fortune per vehicle.
And how can that only equate to 340 hp. Tesla gets 430 hp from 75 kWh. Translation 33% more battery,
and 20% less power. In other words Tesla produce 5.7 hp per kWh, Lyriq 3.4 hp per kWh.
Imagine if we compared it with the Plaid or 4680 chemistry. This is a big difference.
Everything I look at compared to Tesla is just shocking. Tesla are still so under rated, and like
I loved to remind people, this is Tesla when they aren't using their own in-house battery, this is
going to be such a huge jump still. Fundamentally this industry comes down to batteries.
And supposedly it can produce 300 miles of range, which is what, according to Mary Barra, GM's
customers say that they want. Tesla is hitting 318 miles with a 75 kWh battery, at least that's
what it's saying on the order page, the model page is saying 330 miles, a slight discrepancy
on the Tesla web site right now for some reason, Model S showing similar discrepancies in range.
Anyway the Lyriq is not hideous, like the Hummer,
which is one of the worst interiors I have ever seen. It's almost as bad as the Hummer H2. Anyway,
I think the Lyriq took the idea of going widescreen a little too far,
with 33 inches. At least they went widescreen unlike the electric Fords.
And GM are still selling their Bolt. Which was the only other car to sell over 200,000 units
in the US, and exhaust the tax credit aside from Tesla. The Bolt starts at $31,000, and will have
$12,500 rebate off the price. Bringing it down to $18,500. And the Bolt is now an EUV. An electric
utility vehicle, as it's clearly not a sports utility vehicle, nothing sporty about this thing.
So is the plan to just make a ton of Bolts and sell them and hope they don't catch fire? This is
not even built on the infamous ultium platform either, in case it couldn't get any funnier.
But 259 miles of range, at under $20,000, 0 to 60 in 6.5 secs. These are practical figures. I don't
know if GM are making any money, they are using a 65 kWh nickel based battery. That can't be cheap.
At a guess they are paying $12 to 15,000 per battery pack. And the car is compact and basic.
Of course any customer may also wonder when and where they will suddenly spontaneously combust.
Not really what you want to be thinking about whenever in a vehicle.
If compare that to the what the Chinese are offering, I think the BYD Dolphin might be
comparable, which is actually over $20,000 if you remove Chinese subsidies. Then the
cost of exporting it to the US, with tariffs might be over $25,000. But this car only has
176 miles of range EPA. Nearly 100 miles less than the Bolt, and dangerously slowly. Likely
dangerously a lot of things. Well granted, much less likely to catch fire due to LFP batteries.
And BYD also likely don't produce a net profit from their Dolphin.
Who knows they may even get to volume production. Oh right, Elon knows,
he says that's really really difficult, speaking from the only one who has actually achieved that.
But people are saying that the Chinese will flood the market with their cheap EVs.
Well their cheap EVs will cost more than a Bolt, with a lot less range and performance,
from a brand that is a lot less known. This is not me trying to say that GM have a chance with
the Bolt. This is me trying to say, that I don't think consumers want to buy an EV
just because it's cheap. They want Teslas. The same applies for the Nissan Leaf,
it's currently under $20,000 already, as it still qualifies for the previous EV credits,
as there have not yet been 200,000 consumers who have purchased a Leaf. They have the Bolt though.
Ok so GM already made terrible ICE cars, despite over a century's experience. But
now they are going to try and make even worse electric cars,
which admittedly they did start earlier than Tesla in the 90s, and then literally crushed
them. GM are not serious, they have to protect their ICE business. It just doesn't add up.
And this EV bill, will only be for the Bolt, which they may sell a reasonable amount of perhaps, but
may not be making much profit at all, and then the Cadillac, which I doubt they will sell many of,
as they probably can't make very many in the first place. And GM
have no more electric vehicles that they have shown us on the way. That's it, that's all they
have. Granted Tesla hasn't shown us many either. But Tesla are selling every vehicle they can make,
as fast as they can make them. Tesla don't need to introduce new models yet.
The Bolt was up to a high of around 12,000 units in Q2, but dropped after the fires.
This is hardly volume production. But if GM can get $12,500 off each Bolt,
then they should have the demand, but remember it's really hard to hit volume production,
and likely even harder for someone like GM. Perhaps they may be able to get up to 100,000
units a year. That does still come to $1.5 billion a year in subsidies for the Bolt alone,
which I guess isn't nothing. But how does it help them progress any further?
GM's Hummer and Cadillac also consume a huge amount of batteries, 200 kWh and 100 kWh, yet
the are battery constrained. But they choose vehicles that will use a huge amount of batteries.
These will also add to the cost significantly. The Cadillac's batteries are likely going to
be well over $20,000 for the battery pack alone. The $12,500 subsidy might only cover half of that.
Surely it will still be making a loss, not to mention how few units they will be producing,
which won't hit economies of scale. This is a marketing car. They will advertise it as the
fact that GM can go electric and be a part of the future, it's just part of Mary Barra's elaborate
dog and pony show, to keep shareholders invested, until she leaves, with her big payout. Yea,
it's probably the shareholders that will suffer the most through all this. But I guess a fool and
their money are quickly parted, as in you have to be pretty foolish to be invested in GM right now.