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Ford Mustang Mach-E Sales Soar After Discounts, Proving Cheap EVs Are the Way Forward
(www.thedrive.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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[Dormant] Electric Vehicles
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With the caveat that for those years it's been basically unobtainium. I looked into buying one at the start of last year and five dealers all had none in stock + a 6 month wait. (Their websites listed several in stock but we'll ignore that other thorn)
They killed production of it to focus on building luxury SUVs (Cadillac Lyriq) and the Blazer EV (starts $42k), so the stock that exists today is all there is. Used ones exist but the problem is they never actually made them in sufficient quantities to meet demand, and instead of ramping up production decided it'd be better to sell $40k-60k vehicles instead.
Bearing in mind they had them in the early 90s. Then killed them. Twice. Now they’re all “ooohhhh somebody’s doing it better” well of course they are, you quit doing it at all until five minutes ago!
The late 90s EVs, like the EV1, were absolute dogshit. They had the styling of a Beluga Whale, a maximum speed of 80MPH, maximum range of as little as 50 miles and a recharge time of 8 hours!
The EV1 was an Alpha release prototype, there was barely 1,000 of them ever made. It was never a serious car, nor could it have been. The technology wasn't available.
Any "early 90s" EVs were one off custom built toys and would have been even worse than the EV1.
And yet people loved those EV-1’s, even if it’s just nostalgia, and they were capable of handling most peoples commutes.
I never learned what was so “unavailable” about them. Weren’t the batteries lead acid or no and or something in common use? While they suck compared to today and could never have been a primary car, they would have sold in modest numbers as a commuter car, and GM could have evolved it.
Look at the history of Prius: the originals were horrible, expensive and lost tons of money, but Toyota stuck with them and evolved them into a huge, reliable, affordable moneymaker. Todays Prius is a huge leap over the crude original. That could have been EV-1 history
No. The first run of EV1s had a literal maximum range of 50 miles so absolute best case your commute could be 25 miles each way and that's assuming a fully charged battery, no traffic congestion, no use of the heater, and no cold weather. That would also see you barely rolling your car into the driveway as you got home where it would then spend a full 8 hours charging up again.
Again no. People won't buy an EV that will go 200+ miles because of range anxiety. There's absolutely no way a car with only 50 would have been bought by anyone, ESPECIALLY when the damn things cost nearly $100,000. And that was in 1996/1999 money! Any discussion of the EV1 in a thread about "affordable EVs" is just silly.
GM never stopped working on EV, they just stopped selling it to the public while the technology evolved. If everyone would just stop shitting out about the EV1 and take five minutes to look into it's clear.
In 2002, one year after the EV1 went away, GM started working on the Hybrid Tahoe and it was eventually released in 2008. It was expensive as all hell, again pushing up against $100,000 but it was in fact a parallel drivetrain SUV with a pile of Lithium Ion batteries under the passenger bench. It could only go a few miles on pure Electric Power but it's existence showed that GM was continuing to evolve the tech. They were also a great full sized SUV and I loved the one we had.
In 2010 came the Chevy Volt, a hybrid sedan. The first generation of the Volt used the same parallel EV drive that the Tahoe had. It would go about 35ish miles on electric. The 2nd Generation of it was a serial drive EV where the gas engine did nothing but provide electricity. It was made up until 2016.
Then in 2017, literally right as the Volt was discontinued, came the Chevy Bolt which is an actual pure EV with 220ish miles of range.
The Bolt is out of production for 2024 while GM swaps its drivetrain for the new Ultium stuff with a better battery, management system, and more range. It will be back, in upgraded form, in 2025.
So where in that timeline did GM abandon EV tech? They've literally been working on it non-stop since they started designing the EV1 around 1992!
The Volt was a direct competitor to the 3rd Gen Prius and they were released within a year of each other. The Toyota got popular while the Chevy didn't, but that doesn't mean Chevy didn't have a car that competed with it.
BTW, where's Toyota's affordable EV? You know, the one to compete with the Bolt? Oh...right...
Basically everyone pretends that GM crushed all those EV1s back in '01 and then stuck it's head in the sand for the next twenty years but it's just not true at all and in fact GM is the only Domestic US Auto Manufacturer that sells an inexpensive EV.
Go pick on Ford or Dodge, your criticisms might be valid for them but not GM.
Subjective but yea, I don't like the look of them either. Leaf either, for a more modern example
Who cares?
Real problem
I charge my 2022 EV on level 1 so I take up ~3mi/hr and it's not a problem. Given how much larger my modern EV battery is, it would take far longer to fully charge at home than the EV1 but it doesn't really matter as my day-to-day driving isn't that far, which describes the case for most people.
The Bolt had battery problems that led GM to pause production until they could get it sorted out. Production restarted in April of 2022. On top of THAT they had the same COVID induced supply chain issues that every other vehicle manufacturer did, which also limited their production efforts.
Temporarily. They sold down their MY2023 / MY2024 stock but the Bolt will be back in 2025 with their new Ultrium drive train.
Battery problems + COVID meant that they couldn't make as many of them as they wanted too and they will be ramping up production of them in 2025...using the same powertrain that the more expensive vehicles now have.
At the end of all this my point remains. Used Bolts are out there and while there is a wait for new ones there's a good reason for it. GM invested a shit ton of money into the Bolt and they do care about it. They didn't ignore EVs while waiting around for their business to collapse so they could get a Government handout.