
‘Not a compliance car:’ GM says it can produce Chevy Bolts annually - jseliger
http://www.hybridcars.com/not-a-compliance-car-gm-says-2017-chevy-bolt-production-capacity-exceeds-50000-per-year/
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cmsmith
>In response to the charger network concern, Kelly said GM is one of around a
dozen automakers committed to the SAE combo connector. Tesla is the maverick
with its own standard, and GM has not said it would collaborate on a shared
standard, and neither has Tesla in reverse.

I get that Tesla thinks they can out-connector everyone else, but it seems
like a shared connector standard would be a huge bonus for all EV companies.

~~~
revelation
They don't _think_ that, they have already done that. They have supercharger
coverage in all of North America and western Europe. The "dozen committed
automakers" have nothing.

~~~
dangrossman
> The "dozen committed automakers" have nothing.

They have installed way more charging stations than Tesla, by several orders
of magnitude. Almost every Nissan, GM, BMW, etc dealership has at least one or
two charging stations and they're open to the public. I can see 15 stations
within 10 miles of my home, most at dealerships, then a few at malls and
stores. Tesla has 3 Superchargers in the entire state, only near highways. The
highway already has chargers installed at its rest stops, too (including DC
quick chargers), and they're not Tesla chargers, they're the standard
connector _every other_ EV uses. PlugShare shows over 50,000 public chargers
in the US. Tesla's only built 590 stations.

I drive a Nissan Leaf. They're ridiculously cheap (we're talking $10-12K fully
loaded for a recent, low mileage certified preowned). I've charged it at
public stations. I also look forward to upgrading to a longer range EV as soon
as there's one that doesn't cost as much as a house. There are way more than
enough non-Tesla charging stations out there to make me comfortable only
owning an EV, by any make.

~~~
revelation
These are not useful chargers for long-distance travel. They are barely above
a 230V/15A outlet, and pretty much only useful for top-up charging at
destinations. And guess what, Tesla has adapters for all of these. As I said,
they have won this already.

~~~
dangrossman
No, looking around me, the Nissan dealers and the highway rest stops have DC
quick chargers (480V L3), which are the equivalent of Tesla's superchargers.

~~~
greglindahl
You're comparing 80% of 80 miles and 80% of 260 miles, and saying that they're
equivalent? One is more than 3X faster than the other. One makes it somewhat
reasonable to drive long distances, the other does not.

BTW, Tesla sells an adapter for Chademo.

~~~
dangrossman
The Chademo standard supports up to 100 kW of output, while Tesla
Superchargers are up to 120 kW. Most of the L3 chargers out there are hooked
up to 125A and put out 62.5 kW, but they can be upgraded with no change to
cars, and provide comparable recharge times to Tesla's chargers. There are
relatively few EVs on the road, and none that have the range of a Tesla, so no
customer base to necessitate those upgrades just yet. It's awesome what Tesla
has done, but there's really nothing wrong with how the infrastructure is
growing for all the other EVs and the standards they've all chosen to support.
If the Chevy Bolt flops, it won't be because it takes early adopters 45
minutes at the rest stop instead of 30 to make an occasional long-distance
road trip.

~~~
mikeash
Yeah, it'll be because the Bolt's fast chargers are in inconvenient locations
and are hard to count on since they're installed in single units.

The way the infrastructure is growing for other EVs sucks. If you had a Tesla
equivalent car today that couldn't use Tesla superchargers, it would be
terrible for long distance travel. It would be slow, painful, and run a
substantial risk of stranding when it turns out the one charger you were
really counting on has been broken for weeks and the dealer is too busy
selling house-sized SUVs to care about repairing it.

This could change quickly if the big car makers cared to. So far there's no
indication that they do, though.

------
Bud
Is there some secret law forcing GM to only hire the absolute worst designers
for their cars' aesthetics? Body shape, interior, and especially GM's user
interfaces and industrial design are just god-awful. Compare _any_ dashboard
GM produces to a BMW dashboard or other tasteful European makes.

I get that GM's cars are cheaper, but for instance, it's not that expensive to
just stop using that fucking plastic-orange design for _all_ gauges. If you
can't figure it out, just copy someone else who knows how to do it.

And for God's sake, hire someone who knows how to display numbers and data
intelligently.

~~~
bane
I present to you, possibly one of the ugliest cars to go into production since
the Aztec, the BMW i3 [1]

They're pretty common around where I live (as are Teslas, Leafs and other
electric cars) and the nicest thing I've ever heard about them is "at least
the interior is pretty nice".

1 - [http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/201...](http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2011/11/i3-corner-view-537x357.jpg)

~~~
stuaxo
The one pictured has "concept" written on it, did this ever go into production
?

~~~
qbrass
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BMW_i3_01.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BMW_i3_01.jpg)
is the production version.

------
tzs
OT: I'm curious about something with electric cars.

In a gasoline car, if you run out of gas at night on a country road in an area
with no cell coverage and so need to wait a few hours for someone to come
across you, you can at least listen to the radio and use the interior lights
and still use the emergency blinkers, because those are powered by the
battery.

Suppose you run out of power in a similar situation in an electric. Do the
interior accessories and emergency blinkers and the motors run off the same
power pool, so everything dies together, or do they have a separate power pool
for the interior accessories and emergency blinkers so they keep working after
the car can no longer move?

~~~
erikpukinskis
The Tesla has a 12V battery just like regular ICE cars that is used to power
blinkers, etc.

[http://insideevs.com/a-peek-under-the-hood-of-a-tesla-
model-...](http://insideevs.com/a-peek-under-the-hood-of-a-tesla-model-
s-p85d/)

------
ck2
Meanwhile in certain parts of the USA, SUV and F150 sales are starting to
spike because of $1.80 gas since 15mpg "doesn't matter"

EV sales are going to be difficult in some parts of the country until gas is
back at $3+

------
Theodores
It might not be a 'compliance car' but why is it that all of the 'hard work'
is being done by LG? The whole drive-train plus the batteries and ancillaries
are entirely LG, albeit to GM's spec.

What happens if LG decide they don't need GM any more?

~~~
bonestamp2
They said they have a contract with GM, so I suspect LG needs to meet
production for the entire duration of this generation Bolt plus a certain
number of years afterwards for service parts. I've worked in Automotive supply
and this is how it typically works.

