General Motors is banking on electric vehicles to make up a large part of its business going forward, with the automaker outlining plans to release battery-powered products in a variety of vehicle segments between now and the late 2020s.
Speaking to The Detroit Bureau, GM’s vice president of electric and autonomous vehicle programs Rick Spina said a “fairly large chunk of [GM’s] products in the next three to seven years will be electric vehicles.” He’s not just talking about the EVs we already know are in the works, such as the Bolt EUV, electric pickup truck and electric Cadillac crossover, either. GM wants to compete in a variety of vehicle segments with electric vehicles and operate at the low and high ends of the market with regards to price.
“GM is traditionally a full-line company, so we’re going to compete everywhere,” Spina also said.
Spina is confident about the future of EVs – which is perhaps a given considering his job title. Spina and GM have the data to back up those beliefs, however. In market research, the automaker found that those who already own EVs are extremely happy with their purchase, and Spina says that “word of mouth is a very important thing when you’re selling any consumer product.” The automaker believes that as more people buy electric cars in coming years, acceptance and interest will spike dramatically due to word of mouth. Additionally, as the cost comes down, “there won’t be enough downsides to keep people away from EVs,” Spina says, thanks to things like instantaneous torque and lower operating costs.
Battery cell costs will have to continue to fall in order for this widespread adoption to take hold, though. In 2017, WardsAuto reported that battery cell experts were expecting costs to fall to under $100 per kWh by 2020, and then fall further to about $80 per kWh shortly after that. Is is believed that GM currently spends a little less than $150 per kWh on batteries for the Chevrolet Bolt EV. Spina told The Detroit Bureau that is “definitely reasonable in the 2022-2023 timeframe,” for costs to fall under $100 per kWh, which would put the price of EVs very close to that of internal combustion-engine vehicles.
The next electric vehicle GM will release will be the aforementioned Bolt EUV – a crossover version of the Bolt EV hatchback that will go up against offerings like the Hyundai Kona EV and Kia Niro EV. Its next production EV could be the highly anticipated electric pickup truck, which GM CEO Mary Barra confirmed will go on sale in the fall of 2021. It is also expected to debut a physical version of the electric Cadillac crossover sometime soon, which was shown in digital form only at this year’s 2019 Detroit Auto Show.
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Source: The Detroit Bureau/WardsAuto
Comments
GM always competes but never “wins”/
What constitutes a ‘win’ though? Most market share? Best performance in the segment? Most affordable entry in the segment? Highest rated in youtube comparisons? Highest profit margin? Highest stock value return to investors? Lowest environmental impact? Most social media chatter? There’s hundreds of ways to define a ‘win’ and I would guess that GM’s definition is not the same as most people on this site.
Forget about any kind of roadtrip….
Someone put the horse in front of the cart again !!!
Getting ahead of themselves again.
Not enough charging stations across the country. How long for a full change,
Carbon trail just form manufacturing batteries alone can’t be good, let alone disposal when they no longer hold their change…. ???
Why all the Thumbs down, WTF. Did I say something out of subject matter ?
Or not a valid concern, ???
Your statements about battery manufacturing and disposal are derogatory and false.
Modern battery plants are, in so far as practical, solar powered and use batteries to extend their day. Toyota had a battery recycling plan with the Pirus and Tesla has a massive recycling plan. The thing is the batteries out of cars get re-used as stationary batteries so the recycling plants don’t have much business yet.
All the thumbs down because you are an uninformed moron spouting non-sense.
And you know it all ? Lol
I drove my Bolt EV 2500 miles round trip from Ontario, Canada to Orlando, Florida in March of this year with zero issues. The charging network has already exponentially expanded since then. It’s an easy drive in most electric vehicle. The Bolt EV can charge from 10% to 70% in ~40 mins at an Electrify America station. The next generation of EV’s will charge in more than double that speed.
Unlike a gas car you don’t need to sit and watch your vehicle charge. You can do other things like take a meal break when it’s charging.
I would rather watch my vehicle fill up for 3 minutes than eat “meals” for 40 minutes every 2 hours.
Nonsense.
The Bolt EV is now 4+ year old technology. My point was it’s doable today. Most EV’s over the next few years will be able to charge to 80% in ~20mins and have more range. So you will be able to drive farther and longer on that 20 min charge.
I said it before. Instead of an EV truck which will have issues of range more than any other vehicle due to towing and hauling. I would rather see an EREV truck basically with a scaled up Volt powertrain.
Rumors are putting GM’s EV truck at about 400 miles of range EPA unloaded. This should give it close to 200 miles of range under load.
Battery size for a truck with this range will likely be close to ~180KWh. But with peak DC charging speeds will likely reach close to 350KW. This will mean that a truck like this can charge from 10 to 80% in about 30 minutes.
So that’s 2 hours of driving under load between 30 min charging stops. Which to me seems fairly reasonable.
And how many people haul loads cross country? While some might the vast majority do not. We need to be realistic and stop thinking about the exception and start thinking about the norm.
Towing in the winter you get 75-100 miles?
No you would get more than that. Most range in winter is lost due to cabin heat. But the energy to heat a truck with a ~180KWh battery pack isn’t much different than heating a Bolt EV with a 60KWh battery pack. So the relative range loss will be less. On top of the relative energy consumption while towing a trailer.
So in a truck towing a trailer you might drop from 200 miles of range to about 170 miles of range in the winter. As realistically the truck will still only use about an extra 20KWh of energy to cover that distance. There will be a moderate increase due to increased drag in the denser air. But an ICE truck would be subject to the same losses there as well.
You’d probably have even less of a hit to winter range in a vehicle that’s towing than in the Bolt just by itself. If the manufacturer is doing the engineering right, there’s enough waste heat from the batteries and motor to scavenge for the cabin at those consumption numbers.
Tesla Model X can tow up to 5000 lbs. While towing 4500lbs trailer its range went from 325 miles to 120 miles during TFL’s test. Loss of 205 miles from its range! 63% loss. The SUV wasn’t even towing its max rating.
That means it lost about 23 miles per 500 lbs towing. Adding another 500lbs would push the range to fall below 100 miles to about 97 miles! That means charging every 90 minutes…lol.
Adding winter conditions and the range will fall even further. One word. Garbage.
While very true the Model X is hardly optimized for towing. I would hope more thought is put into calibrating and sizing the powertrain in an EV truck for towing capabilities. At the end of the day the laws of physics are the same for combustion vehicles as they are for EV’s.
The laws of physics may be the same, but the efficiency curves vs. load are significantly different for ICE vs EV.
Tesla doesn’t claim tow ratings which comply with SAE J2807 standard. Davis dam at 100 degree F plus and the successive launches on 12% grade are tough on battery and motor cooling. Bullhead City, AZ fire department has been adding equipment and training for lithium ion fires in preparation for expected increase in EV issues due to increased manufacturer testing there.
I tow snowmobiles in the winter and Jeeps/race cars in the summer. Usually 150-200 miles one-way, sometimes into the middle of nowhere, then drive back. It’s sometimes hard to find decent Diesel. Charging station? No way! And just in case, I bring 10 Gallons of fuel with me in my truck bed. EV trucks don’t make sense for me yet. I actually use my truck, and it’s loaded down half the week.
To me though the entire point of a truck is for the exception. That’s why many people own one, you have 1 vehicle that can cover all of the norm and exceptions. If an electric truck can’t handle the exceptions then you have to have a second vehicle for that (or rent), and that’s the big reason they haven’t taken off yet. Without having the ability to handle the exception it’s relegated to a commuter/runabout vehicle. Where I live (Minneapolis), most people that have a separate commuter car are running a beat to hell $600 Saturn, with a late model Tahoe or Silverado in the garage for trips, hauling, etc. $600 to $50k is a big jump.
Until electric progresses enough to handle the exceptions (which it will, just not there yet) it will be a small market (early adopters that like to have the newest tech and high income households that can afford a second $50k vehicle).
Well that is why a wide variety of trucks exist on the market. Combustion powered trucks, especially HD trucks are going to be around for a while yet to cover those exceptions until the technology further improves.
But to get EV’s into the mainstream the technology already exists to do 98% of what is needed to fill that market space.
what will be the range when the temp is 0 degrees ?? never see what % of the range goes away below freezing.
Our Bolt EV gets about 170 miles of range in 0F temperatures.
A 400 mile range EV pickup will get about 330 miles of range in 0F temperatures.
An EV truck will not see the same % loss in range due to the relative change in battery size and relative cabin heating overhead.
GM needs to make a really compelling EV for Chevy, Buick, and Cadillac.
Ford just leapfrogged GM by miles. That makes me so angry and sick. GM started so much sooner too.
What has been revealed doesn’t necessarily indicate where a company stands technologically. There is a whole lot of things happening in the background right now.
I can assure you that a company like GM hasn’t been standing still since they launched the Bolt EV three years ago. GM has had thousands of engineers working on EV’s since then.
How has Ford “leapfrogged GM by miles”? Ford doesn’t sell any electric cars. That is zero…0…zero.
Well for one, Ford has Already Sold out of the First Year run of Mach-E so let me know the next Highly coveted Chevrolet EV vehicle. Thanks.
Agreed Ford sold out many years ago.
Now back to the Mach-e truly how many orders did they take?
So no one wants to talk about the Elephant I the room…..TAXES. Currently most road taxes are from gasoline. So you know its coming that EV vehicles are going to get hit with a yearly tax. Most EV weight more than current cars and they will put more damage on the roads. So who going to pay for this. You can’t keep raising the gas tax if we have more EV’s on the road. Eventually your going to have to tax the EV cars a lot to offset the difference. Its going to be a shocker to all these people eventually but no one is talking about it.
Michigan currently pays 26.3 cents per gallon in gas tax.
A vehicle that gets 25mpg uses 600 gallons of gas to do 15K miles (average yearly). That’s an average of $158 in gas tax a year per vehicle.
One could convert this to a mileage tax with different levels based on curb weight or GVWR.
Then convert the gas tax into a carbon tax.
Joe,
Currently quite a few states impose surcharges on EVs, many in excess of the cost that the average driver of a gasoline vehicle would pay. If they’re smart, legislatures will get ahead of it and pass something soon rather than waiting and surprising people during a crisis. And hopefully it will also be fair rather than imposing a penalty for not supporting the oil industry as in Texas.
Regarding road damage from EVs, that’s been proven to be nonsense. Nearly all the issue comes from large trucks in excess of 10,000 lbs. https://www.consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/more-states-hitting-electric-vehicle-owners-with-high-fees/
I pay more in registration fees for my Bolt than my Cruze cost me in gas taxes + registration for the same mileage. Absolutely a non-issue in any state that’s implemented additional fees for EVs.
Plot Twist: GM Releases the new Tahoe,Suburban,Yukon,Escalade to be an all electric or Hybrid model for 2021
Having worked on Voltec before, I can confirm this is true. GM has always planned to release a BEV Escalade for 2022 using a modified T1 platform. It will start off as a limited edition model available in CARB states & Michigan. Eventually, it will expand to other states.
If you don’t want a EV, then don’t buy one. However as i live in a city, i can’t wait for the majority of cars to be a EV so the air quality and noise pollution is reduced. I find it nearly criminal that we allow so many pollution emitting vehicles into a tightly quartered area every day. Imagine how much they negatively affect the air quality and how much asthma and other lung diseases they cause every year, especially with little children. The noise pollution is also bad. And to the folks who say well i can’t tow my trailer for 400 miles with an EV, well sorry for the inconvenience. Albeit your kids just might breathe better and you live longer.
Air pollution is a lot less nowadays compared to 30-40 years ago, EPA / AQMD has made sure of that, this in not China……. people had asthma and lung disease long before cars…… emissions are in remission… ck the numbers, I grew up in Los Angeles area we would have smog days for a week sometimes, couldn’t see the mountains a few miles away, smog day mean no outdoor activities at all. That’s not my opinion that’s the fact jack……. ??? I lived it…..
https://www.popsci.com/car-exhaust-asthma-children/
I don’t disagree that things are better today than 30yrs ago but, research says that 240k childhood asthma cases in USA from car pollution. As someone who had asthma as a kid, it sucks.
There are still health effects at the lower levels of pollution,” said Beate Ritz, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies the public health impacts of air pollution.
As to air quality today versus 39/40 yrs ago
“It’s the difference between having very acute, very bad effects where you might be hospitalized versus potentially having a lower IQ in your child,” she said. Scientists are only beginning to understand the broad health impacts of breathing polluted air, she added.”
short of nuke power generation most all electric power is generated by coal or natural gas and these plants will have to run more to charge the EVs and these generate pollution. you are just moving the pollution from the tail pipe to the smokestack. the same people who want EVs but don’t want fracking, coal mining or nuke power.
EV’s use 1/3rd the energy to move the same distance as a combustion vehicle due to being far more efficient. So even running 100% coal EV’s are cleaner. Thankfully coal is quickly dying as a power generation source. Where I live our electrical grid is 96% emissions free (55% Nuclear, 25% hydro electric, 10% wind, 4% Natural Gas and the balance is solar, biomass etc..).
Also most EV charging will be done overnight where there is excess generation on the grid. EV’s will allow for larger more efficient generating stations to run more effectively (as they won’t need to shed load as they do now at night) and will reduce the need for peaker plants. The biggest challenge is in what utilities call the last mile. Many utilities may need to upgrade local transformers over time when mass EV adoption happens. But this would be done gradually and isn’t a major issue in the grand scheme of things.
Don’t disagree. But it’s generated outside the city and the pollution isnt generated at ground level like a tail pipe. Also they scrub the output better than a individual car I have been told. In all honesty, do people really think burning oil in millions of cars doesn’t have negative side effects on people in cities? Go turn one on in your garage and hang out there for 15 minutes, not gonna go well.