
GM plans electric van for business users - hhs
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-electric-vans-exclusive/exclusive-gm-plans-electric-van-for-business-users-in-bid-to-pre-empt-tesla-idUSKBN23B1G1
======
caiobegotti
Big auto companies plan a lot and send away press releases about electric
concepts a lot too. It's been like that for the past decade, at least. They
should start building and selling, then I will believe them again.

~~~
fortran77
GM has a lot of experience with electric cars. We have had GM Bolts and Volts
and have been very satisfied with them. I wouldn't discount their ability so
fast.

~~~
Shivetya
A lot of experience has not translated well to their consumer offerings which
have not really changed since the rushed the Bolt as a 2017 model. The EUV
variant instead of advancing the technology of the Bolt is little more than a
stretched variant with the same limited charging.

Yes they have experience but GM is operating from the concept of earning
sufficient ZEV credits only. The dropped PHEV (Volt) right prior to the rest
of the industry going that direction all because it wasn't worth the cost to
ZEV points.

What I am interested in is seeing how invested Ford is, if the Mach E sales
take off will they make enough to meet the need to artificially constrain
production to just what they need to sale.

The real danger to EV transportation is the big manufacturers trying to keep
maximum ranges below three hundred miles. Even luxury makers are barely going
there with future products. By keeping ranges in that lower two hundred mile
area they can continue to exploit range anxiety issues and consign EVs to
local transportation only thereby not threatening their cash cows.

~~~
WorldMaker
> The dropped PHEV (Volt) right prior to the rest of the industry going that
> direction all because it wasn't worth the cost to ZEV points.

GM also stated that PHEV was a compromise/transition technology and BEVs have
hit certain benchmarks (and so too have charging infrastructure) that the
focus should be on BEVs now.

(As a 2012 Volt owner, I'm inclined to agree as one anecdotal owner. PHEV made
a lot of sense in 2012, but the compromises needed in PHEV increasingly make
less sense in 2020 and I doubt my next car will be anything but a full BEV.)

> What I am interested in is seeing how invested Ford is, if the Mach E sales
> take off will they make enough to meet the need to artificially constrain
> production to just what they need to sale.

Ford is playing catch up no matter what. The only hope the Mach E has to
working well is how much Ford is paying to external collaborators for outside
tech.

GM has pre-announced something like a half-dozen to a dozen new BEV models
will be announced in the next year or so and heavily invested in BEV only
facilities. Ford is still in the dipping the toes in the water stage of BEV
production.

> The real danger to EV transportation is the big manufacturers trying to keep
> maximum ranges below three hundred miles.

The real danger to EV transportation is thinking ~250 miles on a charge is
"local transportation only". I understand Americans have a bloated sense of
the miles they need to travel regularly, but range anxiety is overblown and
300 miles/charge is no more useful a magic number than 200 miles/charge in
assuaging range anxiety. (Some Europeans were already happy with ~100
mile/charge Nissan Leafs for long distance continental travel half a decade
ago.)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
The problem with BEV vehicles is we can’t make enough batteries. Right now we
could probably make four or five times as many PHEVs which would have a bigger
impact.

~~~
kjksf
That's not how markets work and it's only a factor because car makers (other
than Tesla) made it so.

If people wanted PHEV in great numbers, the car makers would make 5x more
PHEVs. What the market is telling us is that people would rather buy a fully
EV from Tesla (and a few others) than a PHEV. That's why sales of Tesla
reached 370k last year when sales of Volt peaked at 24k in 2016. Volt won't
sell 100k a year even if GM made that many.

If Ford and GM started building battery gigafactories in 2016, like Tesla,
then they too would have 35+ GWh battery capacity today, enough for 300k+ cars
per year.

Today's battery shortages are a direct result of lack of investment 5 years
ago.

And Ford and GM will resolve them 5 years from now, if they start investing
today. If they don't start investing today, Tesla and Volkswagen will be more
than happy to take that marketshare.

------
lebuffon
Electric commercial vans are such an obvious use case with real benefits. I am
amazed it took so long. Spoke to a UPS driver who complained about his truck
having a ~150 mile range on propane. That's a crime. With regen braking in a
stop and start job it's electric for the win. There might even be the
possibility to extend the range a percent or two with solar on that big van
roof. It's not much, but try extracting gasoline from the sky.

~~~
londons_explore
Regen braking isn't yet good enough for most "stop-start" applications. It
turns out that unless you make big adapations to your driving style, typical
braking generates too much energy too quickly to be able to charge the
batteries.

We'd need a breakthrough in battery technology, or some improved
supercapacitors, or productionization of flywheels, to be able to take
advantage of that energy.

~~~
JeffL
I believe that if people drove exactly the samemas before, they wouldn't get
full benefit of regen, but I don't believe people will drive the same as
before. I know I don't. Driving without ever using the brakes in my Model 3 is
smoother and a bit of a fun mini game. One quickly learns not to accelerate
quite as much when there's a visible red light ahead and how much the Regen
brakes will slow the car down.

~~~
andrewmunsell
I find my experience to be exactly the same with the couple EVs I've owned.
You very quickly adapt to learning exactly when you need to let off the
accelerator, and even going from EV-to-EV where the regen curve is different,
it only takes a couple tries to adapt to the new vehicle again.

~~~
jdofaz
The e-Pedal in the Nissan Leaf is wonderful, if you lift your foot off of the
accelerator completely the car will apply optimal regen until the car stops.

Its really freeing not to have to look at the regen gauge at all, I just keep
my foot over the brake pedal just in case I need to stop quicker than the
regen braking.

~~~
mrfusion
What if you’re going down a slight decline where you could normally coast and
maintain your speed. Do you have to leave your foot on the pedal and waste
battery?

~~~
CarVac
It's not wasting battery if you have your pedal in the position where it's
coasting, neither regenerating nor accelerating.

------
martythemaniak
I've been wondering how far away Tesla is from a commercial van. The
CyberTruck gets a lot of attention and it's been noted that it makes no sense
outside of North America.

Except, vehicles with those dimensions and cargo capacity _are_ very widely
used outside of NA, they're just covered and called vans. I don't think the
CyberTruck could be converted to a van (the glass seems too sloped and the
first row too far back), but it seems that when they complete the truck a van
program could borrow very heavily.

Imagine they keep the battery capacity, stainless steel exoskeleton design,
hauling and carrying capacity, but have a design that has the glass much more
vertical, one row closer to the front and a very tall, boxy back. It would
sell very well.

~~~
sremani
Batteries are really HEAVY, Model 3 is heavier than your average Sedan. The
trick is to perfect battery weight and its effect on range, in a certain use
case.

Commercial vehicles would need 150+ kw batteries, with huge batteries comes
huge weight and long charge times. Having said that TSLA is probably best
positioned to do well and solve these trade-offs.

~~~
omgwtfbyobbq
It is, but only by ~10-15%. The Camry for instance weighs ~3200-3500lbs, while
the 3 weighs ~3500-4000lbs. That includes the dual motor 3 too, whereas Toyota
doesn't have the equivalent Camry. The RWD versions of the 3 weigh
~3500-3800lbs.

edit - for using AWD instead of dual motor

------
knorker
Less talking and more building, please.

Even if Tesla doesn't win the EV war, its legacy will always be getting us
into it. Future generations will thank them.

~~~
csours
Disclaimer: I work for GM, anything stated here is solely my own opinion.

I think competition is a great thing. There would be no Tesla without the EV1
(at least not as we know Tesla today). Likewise there would be no Volt PHEV
without Tesla, no Bolt EV (My own opinion only).

My point is, the market reacts to what is put out there. There is almost no
case where you can find a car without parallel from another company. You can
certainly find better and worse, cheaper and more expensive, greater or fewer
features, etc; but rarely does the market leave the field open for one player
to run wild.

~~~
gkfasdfasdf
> There would be no Tesla without the EV1 (at least not as we know Tesla
> today).

Can you elaborate on that? How did the EV1 influence Tesla?

~~~
clouddrover
The EV1 had a few industry leading features:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t22D4aUs0iw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t22D4aUs0iw)

[https://www.motortrend.com/news/general-motors-
ev1/](https://www.motortrend.com/news/general-motors-ev1/)

For example, the EV1 had a heat-pump. Tesla only got around to that with the
Model Y.

~~~
cptskippy
Using a heat-pump in a vehicle isn't a revolutionary idea, it was just
unnecessary as most ICEV can scavenge waste heat from the ICE.

Limited adoption in EVs and PHEVs has largely been due to limited availability
as there weren't any commercial adaptations for vehicles. Toyota and Nissan
have been using heat-pumps for a while now though.

~~~
clouddrover
> _Using a heat-pump in a vehicle isn 't a revolutionary idea_

Ah, so it's even worse that Tesla didn't implement it earlier.

~~~
cptskippy
I'm not sure I would consider it worse. Consider some things:

1) GM chose to put resistive heating in the Spark, Volt, and Bolt.

2) Nissan put a heat-pump in the Leaf.

2) Tesla manages to make the most efficient EVs without using heat-pumps.

So perhaps the choice between a heat-pump or resistive heating goes beyond
efficiency? Or maybe in terms of biggest bang for the buck, heat-pumps are low
on the list.

Instead of trying to find fault in Tesla for what must surely be the biggest
blunder in automotive history and will go down in the annuls of time as the
defining moment where Tesla brought utter ruination upon us all, why not
consider alternative theories?

Maybe there aren't any commercially available ODM heat-pumps? That would
explain why GM didn't use one and why one is absent from the S and Y that are
closer to traditional vehicles.

As for the Model 3, it's likely Tesla wanted to minimize space and maximize
efficiency by integrating a custom thermal solution and a heat-pump just
didn't make sense at the time.

Heat-pumps are more complex than resistive heating and the Model 3's
revolutionary SuperBottle integrates all of the vehicles thermal management
systems. Perhaps they were playing it safe, or didn't have the time/budget to
do a heat-pump. Regardless, the Model Y comes with a heat-pump to feed the
Octovalve, the evolution of the SuperBottle.

~~~
clouddrover
> _Tesla manages to make the most efficient EVs without using heat-pumps_

Not in lower temperatures without a heat-pump, which is when a heat-pump is at
its most useful. Look how a heat-pump affects the range of the ID.3. There's
worthwhile benefit even at 15 degrees Celsius:

[https://i.redd.it/mjcgffzui0c41.png](https://i.redd.it/mjcgffzui0c41.png)

[https://www.volkswagen.co.uk/electric/id/faq/electric-car-
te...](https://www.volkswagen.co.uk/electric/id/faq/electric-car-technology-
development/heat-pump)

> _why not consider alternative theories?_

There's no need for theories. The engineering is well understood. The EV1 got
there first.

~~~
cptskippy
> Not in lower temperatures without a heat-pump, which is when a heat-pump is
> at its most useful. Look how a heat-pump affects the range of the ID.3.
> There's worthwhile benefit even at 15 degrees Celsius

I'm not sure what you're saying. You're disputing the overall efficiency of a
Tesla based on the heat-pump performance of a car that has not yet shipped?

> There's no need for theories. The engineering is well understood. The EV1
> got there first.

No one is disputing that the EV1 had a heat-pump first or that heat-pumps are
more efficient than resistive heaters.

You slighted Tesla for not having a heat-pump as if it were a serious fault. I
am stating that the heating system isn't the most critical system in terms of
overall vehicle efficiency.

~~~
clouddrover
> _I 'm not sure what you're saying._

Heat-pumps make the car more efficient. Look:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7wxGl7m2sw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7wxGl7m2sw)

Look at this road test:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH7V2tU3iFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH7V2tU3iFc)

The two smallest cars in that test are the 64 kWh Kona and the Model 3 Long
Range. The Kona has the smaller battery and worse aerodynamics. The Kona
achieves 90% of its claimed WLTP range. The Tesla Model 3 Long Range only
achieves 78% of its claimed WLTP range. The difference in those conditions is
the heat pump. The Kona has one, the Model 3 doesn't.

> _You slighted Tesla_

Oh noes. Does Elon know? Please don't tell him.

~~~
cptskippy
Again... no one is disputing that heat pumps are more efficient.

Your "road test" video proves nothing. Not only is it not a cold weather
driving test, but they test the Kia e-Niro and not the Hyundai Kona. The
e-Niro and Kona share the same battery and motor but are not the same car.

The heat pump is optional equipment in the e-Niro and the "road test" video
doesn't specify equipment configuration and more importantly isn't testing the
climate control system.

If you really want an Apples-To-Apples comparison, why don't you find a
comparison of a Canadian Kona to a US one since the US version doesn't come
with a heat pump?

~~~
clouddrover
> _Not only is it not a cold weather driving test_

Heat pumps provide benefit even at 15c as I have shown you. They were at 7c.

> _The e-Niro and Kona share the same battery and motor but are not the same
> car_

Same difference. New Soul EV too.

> _The heat pump is optional equipment in the e-Niro_

It's standard equipment in Europe. All trim levels have it.

> _If you really want an Apples-To-Apples comparison_

I don't want this boring brand loyalty from you. It's tedious. Remember where
this started: the GM EV1 pioneered automotive use of heat pumps. As you say,
"no one is disputing that heat pumps are more efficient". Teslas are less
efficient without it. Accept it instead of making excuses for it.

~~~
cptskippy
> I don't want this boring brand loyalty from you.

You're just looking for any excuse to hate on Tesla. What's the opposite of a
fanboi? You're a hatergurl?

~~~
clouddrover
No, I'm just realistic. Your brand loyalty makes it seem like hate to you.

~~~
cptskippy
You're going to great lengths to find fault in the only company fully
committed to EVs and champion the companies brought kicking and screaming into
the market.

------
gpm
So this is an example of "Anxiety Driven Development", the current post on the
top of the front page, right?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23415922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23415922)

------
zwirbl
The Deutsche Post founded a company which develops and also sells electric
vans
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter)

~~~
_Microft
Unfortunately they stopped producing StreetScooters this year and will only
service the existing fleet in the future. What a pity.

~~~
rsynnott
I think they just shifted to using third-party electric vans. I see electric
DHL vans around in Ireland, but they're made by Peugeot or someone.

------
pengaru
It'd be neat if GM rebooted the Motorhome [0] as an EV, or maybe a plug-in
hybrid.

Hell even if they just took the original FWD ICE platform adding a skateboard
full of batteries with RWD electric, cover the roof with solar panels, it'd
make an interesting plug-in electric hybrid.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMC_motorhome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMC_motorhome)

~~~
Gibbon1
Motorhomes are kind of interesting. If you look at the price of a new one it
wouldn't be hard to hide the cost of a 150kwhr battery in the price tag. And
likely you could run everything off solar panels on the roof.

------
danans
Would be awesome to see one of these converted into a camper-van/RV, with
solar array on roof to charge while parked for days. EV delivery trucks would
be a great platform for this because of the space reclaimed from ICE. The same
camper EV idea is behind VW's awesome looking "ID Buzz" concept, which alas,
has been stuck in concept mode forever.

------
partingshots
Seems like Tesla is in for a whole host of trouble with this loss of the
enterprise / business market.

------
speedgoose
Should we tell them about the electric vans that we have in Europe for years?
Like the Nissan e-ev200 and the Renault Kangoo ZE. Or the PSA vans planned for
this year?

~~~
dahfizz
Nobody in America is going to buy an electric van with only ~100 miles of
range that accelerates slower than a comparable gas van.

~~~
speedgoose
These vans don't sell to people doing road trips while sleeping inside. They
are for municipalities, local companies, and post deliveries. I don't think
it's a lot different in America but I may be wrong.

~~~
hedora
It’s the same in the US. We’ve had custom low volume hybrid electric busses
and delivery vehicles for at least a decade.

Many municipalities buy electric golf cart things for road and part
maintenance, electric traffic enforcement trikes, and electric police
motorcycles.

------
sgt
GM should just attempt a merger with Tesla. Not possible now, but in a year or
two it might.

~~~
jp555
The question required to justify a merger instead of partnership: Why would
merging make things greater than the sum of the parts? If it doesn't, partner.

I dont see any reason why a GM-Tesla merger makes any sense. But would be
happy to hear some.

~~~
marvin
I thing sgt is alluding to the fact that if Tesla hits an internal economic
crisis, its stock price could fall far enough that one of the established
automakers could acquire it or merge. And that this would be in their best
interest, as Tesla now obviously has a significant lead in EV development and
deployment.

But this is contingent on Tesla losing its current trajectory. There would be
no incentive for Tesla shareholders to do such a merger the way things look
today.

