Tesla’s outspoken Chief Executive Officer, Elon Musk has gone on the record claiming he’s interested in the GM assembly plants that have been recently unallocated from any future product. The affected plants in the United States include the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly, which builds the Buick LaCrosse, Chevrolet Impala, Chevrolet Volt, and Cadillac CT6. The Lordstown Assembly plant in Ohio, which builds the Chevrolet Cruze, is also at risk of being shut down. Two American GM transmission plants in Warren, MI and Baltimore, MD that supply these plants are also on the chopping block.
Earlier this month General Motors announced it planned to idle manufacturing plants in North America, discontinue the several models that are built in them, and shed several thousand jobs. It was a move that sparked political firestorm that spread from the President’s office all the way down through the House and the Senate. GM-UAW labor talks are set to take place in 2019. These unallocations are seen by experts to be a negotiation tactic that’s been taken unnecessary public.
GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, was present in Washington for most of the past week as she meets with members of Congress and defends her plans close five factories and lay off 14,700 workers. She is under enormous political pressure to keep some of those facilities opened. While GM was tied up in meetings with legislators, crosstown rival, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, said it will reopen one of its previously idled Detroit engines plants in order to build a new Jeep, further irking lawmakers.
Elon Musk, ever the opportunist, recently spoke with CBS’s “60 Minutes” and claimed Tesla would consider buying the recently unallocated plants to help the company increase its scale of production.
“It’s possible that we would be interested. If they were going to sell a plant or not use it that we would take it over,” he said.
Tesla’s current facility in Fremont, California, was actually bought from General Motors back in 2010. NUMMI as it was known then, was jointly owned by GM and Toyota and was used to produce the Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix. Fremont is the company’s main vehicle production hub, responsible for Model S, Model X, and Model 3 output for most of the globe. Tesla also owns and operates the Gigafactory in the middle of the Nevada desert, which is responsible for the production of the company’s battery cells, battery packs, and driveline components. While we don’t expect the words of Tesla CEO Elon Musk to carry too much weight at the moment, it certainly a headline-grabbing premise.
Comments
“It’s possible” holds very little weight…An interesting statement is “or not use it that we would take it over”…
Elon Musk is an idiot of the highest degree. He will probably use some rope someday given his erratic tendencies and narcissism.
oh i hope he ties it around his neck and to the back of one of his electric autonomous POS ideas!
At least he and Machete Mary have something in common LOL!
The truly terrible part of all of this is that no one cares enough to stand up to what is happening. No one cares enough to stand up to Elon Musk and stop this onslaught of electric cars and autonomous vehicles. No one cares enough that the aftermarket automotive industry will die when Elon Musk gets his way. No one cares that all cars will now be able to be controlled via satellite (they’ll call it bluetooth or something fancy like that). Pretty soon the government will control when you can use your car, where you go, how fast you go, or even lock you in your car for days with no way to communicate. And they’ll blame it all on “manufacturer defects.” These cars will be almost given away to low income families and can be controlled to ignite and trap people in their cars, blow up in garages, etc. Do you realize the same batteries in these cars are the same lithium ion type batteries in cell phones and lap tops? you know, the ones that once they start burning you can’t put them out. The same ones that have caused airplanes to crash because something bumped them or they dropped and ignited? Yet people will entrust these mobility appliances with their lives, their families lives, etc. You will put your teen drivers in these cars and send them off, never knowing if some secret service will target them and override the car and kidnap your loved ones and you never know where the car went or anything. Terrorist have been gaining access to our systems left and right (thanks to Hilary Clinton and the Obama Administration) and who knows what kind of access they’ll have in the future. With that many remote controlled firebombs running around the country, what devastation could be caused with these things? Think about that the next time you think an electric or autonomous car is a great idea.
All of you environmentalist out there, stop and think for a second. Fuel mileage aside, even our diesel trucks now produce little more than H20 from their tailpipes, meaning that we have reached a very efficient level of emissions control with our larger diesel engines (take that VW scum!) These electric car batteries, where do you think they’ll go when they’re defective? That’s right!!! Landfills, oceans, etc. Polluting our environment even more than gasoline, plus they give off radiation. So you figure, all these electric cars giving off radiation, that’s got to be affecting our environment in a negative way right? Correct you are! Plus the process to make these batteries are a ecological nightmare!!! Not only that, what happens when one of these autonomous vehicles malfunctions while some young kid accidentally slips away from his mother and can’t be stopped. Or even worse, runs into a crowd of people because it’s GPS could attain a signal. Seeing that the cars would have to have a GPS to operate, it means they’re tracked all the time so they’re bugged, meaning they’re a blatant breech in privacy! You couldn’t have a private conversation because the car is always listening to you. Big brother is watching!!!! Also, how much do you think it will cost to replace a battery or an autonomous system in the car. A lot more than parts for a Maybach Mercedes Benz or a Bugatti i’ll bet you. We need to put an end to this electric vehicle and autonomous vehicle nightmare that is coming and we need to do it now!!!!!
Also, another thing i want to point out to you people. With cars like this. It puts an end to stores like Pep Boys, Advance Auto Parts, Rock Auto, Auto Zone, O’Reilly’s, Church’s Napa, or whatever parts store is near you. It also puts aftermarket performance companies out of business along with things like the NHRA, etc. When you do things like that, other things like gas stations, auto garages and other businesses go under, those things bring money to communities. What happens when you don’t have money in a community, you end up with places like Detroit Michigan, or Chester, Pennsylvania and places like that. Elon Musk and Telsa are the Anti-Christ of the Auto industry, a harbinger of death to the american automotive industry. Also, your tech schools will empty and the millions of dollars we’ve spent educating technicians will have gone to waste! Trust me America, you don’t want any of these Electric cars or Autonomous cars as cars that are available to the public. Instead, we need to force the Automakers (Ford, GM and FCA, to focus their electric vehicles to fleet sales and commercial sales. Us electric vehicles for public transportation such as trolleys, buses and trains. Keep Autonomous vehicle capabilities limited to trucking yards where trucks can pull onto autonomous platforms and lined up and loaded autonomously. focus the electric technology on heated roadways via solar energy, having “intelligent” traffic lights that can adjust timing by traffic volume to decrease travel time and increase on road productivity. How about autonomous devices that will spray highways with a brine solution along with the solar heated systems to make travel safer during bad weather. How about sensors that can detect accidents and automatically set up a detour around the accident and call 911 and tow services to the scene to keep the area safe and clear. Maybe even an autonomous sensor in the car to aide with that process. That’s ingenuity. You figure if every street light was solar powered, not only would the world save money but you can take that same solar energy and put grids under the street that would keep the streets and highways at a set let’s say 50-degrees (well above the freezing point). Doing that would reduced at least 50% of winter accidents and would pay for itself within the first year of installation.
You want to really find a way to make cars run better, then use something we have a plethora of that we know works, CORN! Yep, Good old fashioned Corn! fuel is already mixed at a typical E10 (or 10% Ethanol) but anyone who knows anything about high performance knows that an E85 mixture is “manna from heaven” so to speak. As inexpensive as it is to produce corn (seeing that every ear of corn as over 100 kernels (seeds), there is no reason to ever run out of it and as much food as we waste on this planet, no one should ever worry about a shortage of food if we started to use a percentage of the corn that we waste on fuel. Now, I’m not a numbers guy, I never have been or would ever claim to be, but i will say this. I believe that we could run America’s fuel bill for 1 year if the amount of money we wasted in food was put to producing that same amount of corn, specifically engineer for fuel. And not only that, it would put American farmers back to work and it would be a lot safer to the environment than electrification of cars because of reduced battery radiation.
With that being said, I bring up another point, and this comes back down to general motors specifically. Chevrolet has successfully carried the pushrod engine all the way into 2019 and I’d say at least until 2022. The Chevrolet Small block V8 has been with us since 1955, that’s sixty four years that engine has been powering our vehicles, getting our families home reliably, winning races, and doing more than it’s fair share of an honest days work and it’s still going strong. Even in it’s V6 form as the 4.3L or the old GM 3.8L they were reliable 200,000+ mile engines and that still holds true today. They are simple, reliable engines that are always up to the task. Everyone is so hype about small displacement forced induction engines, which I’m not biased against, but let’s look at them for what they are for a second. Any time you add forced induction to a car (this statement comes from experience) you need to reinforce that which is having more pressure added to it. To do that, you add expenses (hence why the Supercharged LT4 costs more than the naturally aspirated LT1 or at least part of the reason anyway) you also need to upgrade other things as well to make that smaller engine do what a larger engine can do with ease. Quite simply, the less energy something uses to produce the same amount of power equals efficiency. A simple analogy would be to take a chihuahua and try and make it pull a sled loaded with 80lbs worth of rocks and then take a draft horse to pull the same sled. Now i’m sure that chihuahua can be genetically enhanced to do it by some form of science, but you serious alter the dog and the side affects would cause the animal not not live as long as it would have if it had been left alone. Now mind you. Chevrolet has a sweetheart of an engine called the 4.3L OHV V6 engine. If Chevrolet were to take that engine, give it an E85 fuel system, a more LT1 style cam, intake manifold and cylinder head setup, exhaust manifold setup, intake setup, a 10-speed tranmission behind it, etc. I’m quite sure the engine could produce nearly 345hp and probably anywhere from 325-350lb-ft of torque. The same thing with the small block V8. I feel as though GM could take the small block V8, produce three different naturally aspirated variants (5.0L 5.7L and 6.6L), give them all E85 fuel systems, a GMPP LT1 “HOT” top end package, mate them all to a 10-speed auto or the upcoming 7-speed manual transmission and produce a 435hp 5.0L pushrod V8, a 495hp 5.7L V8 and a 530hp 6.6L V8 with minimal fuss, good street manners, power, performance and fuel efficiency (for their class of performance). Of course they’d be slightly detuned for truck duty but still you have four, simple, straightforward engines that don’t require a lot of maintenance and produce efficiency. I’m quite sure if GM can squeeze around 30mpg out of a 460hp E10 fueled 6.2L Corvette, I’m quite sure they can squeeze 35mpg out of an E85 fueled 4.3L V6 and still push 325-350hp. Now, with GM moving to the new platforms, using the VSS-R (rear drive) VSS-T (body on frame truck) and VSS-S (unibody SUV i believe), eliminating the FWD platforms altogether would be a huge marketing success and save GM tons of money. You go down to two transmissions, a 10-speed auto and a 7-speed manual that work for all three platforms and call it a day. Offer a lineup of
Camaro (4.3L RS, 5.0L Z/28, 5.7L SS, 6.6L SS-396 & Supercharged LT5 ZL1)
Malibu (4.3L Base, Classic & LTZ all with AWD, 6.6L SS-396)
Impala (4.3L Base & LTZ all with AWD, 5.7L SS and 6.6L SS-396)
Trailblazer (4.3L Base & LTZ, 5.0L High Country, 6.6L SS-396)
S10 (Turbo-4 Diesel, 2.7L Turbo I-4, 4.3L)
S10 Blazer (same as S10)
Tahoe (4.3L, detuned 5.0L @ 400hp, detuned 450hp 5.7L in Tahoe Z71 Blazer and Tahoe Limited)
Suburban (4.3L and Detuned 5.0L)
Silverado (4.3L base engine, detuned 5.0L @400hp, full performance 5.7L in the High Country, 4×4 Scottsdale and LTZ, full performance SS-396, full perfomrance 6.6L ZR2 4×4 off road, full Performance LT5 in Cheyenne)
SIlverado HD (HD 6.6L V8, Duramax Diesel V8)
GMC should bring up the Holden HSV market for the cars (taking the place of Pontiac under the GMC umbrella), Buick would be the Brand to focus all non-performance Hybrid powertrain cars (non-autonomous) while Cadillac would completely be powered by performance Hybrid, and the Blackwing series engines (both twin turbo DOHC V6 & V8 variants)
Lastly, GM Performance should open its doors a little bit more to allow certain aftermarket companies to partner with them for Factory optioned performance parts, Brands such as Driven Performance brands (which includes Holley & its subsidiaries, Flowmaster, Hurst & B&M), Cragar, American Racing, Weld Racing, Forgeline, and a few other names synonymous with GM performance. Not only would it build brand loyalty among enthusiast again but it will also forge partnerships and improve business with the automotive aftermarket and offer more jobs and force companies to expand and it would bring in revenue. Also the side effects of this would spill into the global market as GM would build Holden back up and could use the Holden platform to replace the life sucking Opel merger that GM is currently in. Once that happens, GM can use Holden as it’s face to the world along with Cadillac and a revised and finally desirable Buick to reach out into other markets and be successful.
sorry that’s so long! one thing just led to another
Kudos for thoroughly entertaining me…I won’t mention any politics as it’s clear that you live in a very black and white world where only the right can do good while only the left can do bad yet I’ll still clear up some misinformation all of which can be verified with a simply google search…
You state: “These electric car batteries, where do you think they’ll go when they’re defective? That’s right!!! Landfills, oceans, etc. Polluting our environment even more than gasoline, plus they give off radiation. So you figure, all these electric cars giving off radiation, that’s got to be affecting our environment in a negative way right? Correct you are! Plus the process to make these batteries are a ecological nightmare!!!”
Walk into a best buy, there’s a battery RECYCLING bin…GM themselves has publically stated their EV battery recycling plans…The process to obtain oil from a well to get it to the pump is far more of an “ecological nightmare”…
You state: “Also, another thing i want to point out to you people. With cars like this. It puts an end to stores like Pep Boys, Advance Auto Parts, Rock Auto, Auto Zone, O’Reilly’s, Church’s Napa, or whatever parts store is near you. It also puts aftermarket performance companies out of business along with things like the NHRA, etc. When you do things like that, other things like gas stations, auto garages and other businesses go under, those things bring money to communities”
It’s called evolution…I take it you the miss the good old days where you would rent movies from Blockbuster?
i do. because i miss the days where people had jobs instead of everyone being able to stream things online. takes money away from communities. alot of things about the old days were way better than alot of things we have today.
i also miss the days where america wasn’t trying to copy cat off of Japanese crap cars and euro trash cars. I miss the days of clean television, family, community, people having a moral compass, American pride (when America stood for something), when men were men and women were women and they knew that one was supposed to date the other. I miss when Chevrolet truly was the heartbeat of america and things actually had value. I do miss real cars, that you could actually work on yourself without a whole mess of BS under the hood. But seeing that i’m the only one here that actually misses the good old day, that’s why people like Elon Musk are succeeding and bringing the auto industry to an end.
Agreed! We live in sad times on so many fronts
I have a tinfoil hat to sell you.
And I though Elon was unstable.
this is all because of obamas EPA rules that the manufactures must meet the 54.5 MPG by 2025 and the only way to do that is EVs to get the ZEV credits so they can sell PUs and SUVs that customers want and now they are buying them off of elon. GM has to get any vehicle with a ICE out of the market to meet these rules. maybe the UAW will learn a lesson that the dems are not their friends just like the UMW found out
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