“GM is currently assessing potential future investment,” GM spokesperson George Svigos said in a statement, adding: “No final decision has been made. GM is committed to an all-EV future globally. On that pathway, we continue to study consumer preferences and powertrain options, to ensure we best respond to customer demand and comply with an uncertain, complex and increasingly stringent regulatory landscape for 2027 and beyond.”
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Why in the world did they stop?
The Voltec system was another GM great which they axed very prematurely for no real good reason.
Now their all EV ambitions are falling, no wonder GM is back pedaling like this.
And once again, shouting to the heavens: We are not ready for a full transition to EV. The hybrid phase was supposed to be an intermediate measure to help reduce emissions and fuel usages WHILE we build an EV infrastructure.
Its not that “we are not ready”, its that the US companies, apart from Tesla and maybe Hyundai/Kia, are completely uncompetitive at building EVs. Tesla, H/K and BYD are not going to take their feet off the gas just because these bozo companies are struggling to build EVs.
I mean, we aren’t ready lol. I don’t live in some podunk little hole in the earth and there are only enough charging units in my area for a gaggle of township board members.
Anyone remember in the 2000s when GM had hybrid versions of full-size body-on-frame SUVs and trucks - such as the Escalade and Silverado - that were barely any more fuel efficient than their pure ICE counterparts? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
EPA or real world? Based on EPA, it looks like the Tahoe hybrid would save $600 a year over the regular Tahoe. RAV4 hybrid vs RAV4 is around $500.
2013 Tahoe hybrid was 20/23 city/highway. The gas equivalent 15/21.
Better? Yes.
The issue was the starting price. The hybrid was $53,620 - the ICE $40,405.
$13,000 buys a lot of gas.
Even assuming all-city, you’re buying ~5,000 gallons of gas to go 100k miles with the hybrid. ~6,666 in the ICE.
1,600 gallons of gas would cost ~$5200 at today’s national average price. At ATHs it’s still only an $8,000 fuel difference over 100k miles.
You’d had to have to run the hybrid - napkin math here, for a quarter million miles to break even. That’s assuming maintenance, repairs, and insurance costs are equal or lesser for the hybrid - which is unlikely.
Hybrid transmissions are amazing things because the gears are always meshed. Hybrids use regenerative braking like EVs. You definitely have a maintenance edge with hybrids, through 12k buys a lot of brake pads too.
Yeah, GM can get a little ambitious with hybrid pricing. Curious what dealers actually sold them for. (Also, the ELR for $75k was a joke.) But my point was just that it wasn’t an insignificant difference in fuel economy. Had they gone hybrid only, they probably could have sold enough volume to price it competitively.
A 30K Volt with the 7.5k fed tax credit would sell out instantly.
Why? I thought their EVs were the future? Or did they realize that their ridiculous investment in Cruise was a loser move from the get go, and now they’re trying to backtrack? lol. This is what happens when a company is run by incompetent idealists who push ESG nonsense on their employees and don’t actually focus on creating good products that work.
Pay us millions/billions to fix our own fuck ups
That would be wise.
Definitely wish there were more hybrid options. A full on EV isn’t practical since I live in an apartment in a rural town, but with gas prices staying high, I’d definitely be open to a hybrid for my next car. Especially if they make them fun to drive.
The last thing GM needs to do is build hybrids. They’re twice as complex as BEV and ICE, both of which they can’t build for shit right now. What makes anyone think combining them would somehow make a better product?
Either GM relegates itself to a forever-inferior station within the automotive world, or they develop a great aptitude at Hybrids. GM did a very good job with the Volt. BEVs shouldn’t be. Hybrids enhance the performance and efficiency of IC powertrains. It’s like a critical feature. It makes internal combustion get ~30-50% more efficiency to the gallon, and better performance, too.
Embarrassing. Having none of the right fuel-efficient cars when gas prices spiked is exactly why GM needed to be bailed out in 2008.
Now gas prices are again high. GM has no hybrids and is discontinuing both the Bolt and Malibu. It’s malpractice how badly they’ve run the business.
And yet no one is saying how Toyota pulled a genius move by basically integrating hybrid tech into their entire lineup. Ahead of the game. The grid can’t handle everyone having an EV at the same time.
Considering the Billions in fines that they’re expected to receive for not meeting fuel economy standards, hybrid propulsion may benefit them while also catering to those who’d like a hybrid powertrain in their products.
I’d march over to the nearest Buick dealership if they offered a hybrid Envista.
they shouldnt have stopped. basically everything should probably move to hybridization. A Colorado with a Volt style hybrid system would be amazing.
I am literally begging for a plug-in hybrid midsize pickup.
Atleast Ram understood this and is coming out with the Ramcharger.
Imagine how much better everything would be if governments weren’t cowards and mandated hybrid systems in everything back in the early 2000s after they were proven to be viable.
More peppy economy cars, maybe 1/3rd less fuel consumption globally, less smog and shit in our cities. And unlike with EVs, where I can see how there’s large groups of people with concerns or issues, realistically how many people would stake out there and say “yes, I would like a less fuel efficient car”
Sure, cars would be a bit larger and more expensive; but realistically they’ve gotten larger and more expensive anyway
The government didn’t allow it to happen when the corrupt courts favored Bush over Gore
And yet people want to cry about how 2020 was stolen from them.
You’re joking right
realistically how many people would stake out there and say “yes, I would like a less fuel efficient car”
A lot! This is why CAFE regulations are a thing. The general pattern is “fuel cheap, car expensive”, so efforts to save on fuel with expensive car components is met with resistance from consumers.
Imagine how much better and less expensive vehicles would be if the government didn’t interfere at all and allowed the natural organic pace of technological change to handle the transition? Imagine giving consumers the power to choose what they want to spend their money on instead of a handful of wealthy people in seats of power taking that from them.
I imagined it and it came out with LA smog
And what city in the world to this day has the worst smog? LA… almost as if the geography and climate has something to do with it, and it was a stupid place to live with no water and people should just move.
The smog is a lot better now get over yourself.
and people should just move.
Because it’s just that simple!
The United States has a plethora of abandoned ghost towns, but LA doesn’t even have to go that far just cut its population to 7 million or so and most of the problems would disappear. *thanos snap* Just don’t move to TX please, we dun full up!
In that case you would probably have less gas cars and maybe more public transit. Or are you forgetting gasoline is heavily subsidized by the government? Or how domestic automakers lobbying led to the death of the street car in the early 1900s? Nearly every piece of technology we have developed has some sort of regulation or interference with it, whether you like the tech or not
Or are you forgetting gasoline is heavily subsidized by the government?
Oof, again with this nonsense. Fossil fuel industry is heavily net taxed, and gasoline would be MUCH cheaper if the government completely abandoned interference in the energy sector. And if you actually believed this, then you would advocate for smaller government staying hands-off the energy sector since you’re claiming corruption in propping up what you think is an obsolete technology.
Nearly every piece of technology we have developed has some sort of regulation or interference with it, whether you like the tech or not
With the exception of the space race (which was not remotely useful to the average man considering the massive expenditure compared to the direct return on investment), this is completely divorced from reality. We transitioned from oars to the age of sail because it was more efficient and we traded those sails for steam when it became more efficient and those steam engines turned to oil when the economics again made sense.
When fossil fuels become a more scarce resource or underperform in some way compared to an alternative, that alternative will be adopted organically just as it has time and time again throughout history.
So now governments should mandate what product a car company makes? What else should a government mandate? Experimental mRNA injections?
Imagine how much better everything would be if governments weren’t cowards and pushed everyone towards better public transit and cars would only be driven by people who drive them for fun.
The Colorado is very close to perfect for me but lacks the hybrid system that the new Tacoma will have.
New Tacoma is going to have so much low-end torque. I think it’s going to be really hard to compete with.
I question how much fuel economy benefit the new Tacoma hybrid will have. If they go the same direction with it as the Tundra, which seems likely, I bet it’s main benefit will be performance rather than economy.
Volt PHEV is one of the better PHEVs that’s ever been offered. They were way ahead of the curve on that. PHEVs with a 50mi all electric range without an atrocious power dropoff are the sweet spot right now. They’re watching Toyota sell every Prius Prime they can make and feeling some regret right now.
It seems that all the major manufacturers underestimated the challenges of making battery packs at scale. Bolt EV Chevy had to replace a ton of batteries, so they felt those growing pains there. Ultium has been slow to scale and IMO may be a fundamentally flawed platform if they can’t make low cost models on it. Toyota can’t even make enough batteries to support its hybrids much less make a real push into BEVs.
And honestly why should they? A 50mi range BEV with an efficient onboard generator makes a lot of sense for many people. Maybe they’re right to make this move.
It’s a misconception that Toyota was a laggard or a dummy or otherwise incompetent when it comes to BEVs. Toyota chose the HEV path due to the inherent unbetterness of BEVs. Toyota is very conscientious. Toyota is very disciplined.
Many more (90x) Hybrid battery systems can be manufactured with the same quantities of battery material required to make a battery for one single BEV. Doing so reduces ~38x the carbon that would be saved from building a single EV. HEV is much more economical _and_ much more environmentally friendly. The multiplier is only 6x for the PHEV:BEV difference in battery materials required. BEVs are resource hogs.
Humanity is awakening from an episodic lunacy for BEVs.
Humanity is rapidly coming to embrace HEVs whole-heartedly.
Great, now face the reality that we have a battery glut and battery prices keep crashing.
Is anyone selling stock in portable “personal massager” companies?
heh heh heh
I think having average round trip commute range on battery alone is kinda the sweet spot. So 5 PHEVs producing near zero emissions over lifetime versus one BEV.
That’s not very realistic. I’ve heard others who expressed similar thinking about PHEVs and commute range, and that’s the thinking that was being proposed by the PHEV-makers, but that’s not how people naturally are inclined to behave. People are inclined to do what they want and not feel the need to worry so much. That’s not unconscientiousness, it’s simply non-neurosis.
Committing at time of purchase to incur the extra weight and expense of PHEV in order to adopt a whole lot of ritualistic charging practices for very little benefit (which people tire of), along with the significant drop in efficiency relative to HEV for the life of the vehicle… PHEV just isn’t rational. Paying more to get a less good vehicle is what it is. Paying more to get a compromised hassle. Fortunately, with PHEVs, the option always remains to drive as if you had bought a HEV in the first place, albeit with the significantly inferior (to HEV) MPG and extra weight. See?
PHEVs with a 50mi all electric range without an atrocious power dropoff are the sweet spot right now.
Are they? Battery costs keep falling. When you go from a Model 3 to a Volt, you save on batteries but you gotta pay for an engine, transmission, fuel tank, and a bunch of other things.
At current prices ($120 per kwh), a Model 3 battery is maybe $6000-7000. A Volt battery is probably at least $1000-$2000, since you need the full power from it, if not the full capacity. And then you gotta pay for the engine, transmission, catalytic converter, and all of that stuff. It is a painful way to save $4-5k.
You can kinda tell that Toyota is having regrets about the way that they do things, because all of the primes are being made in collectible quantities despite ample demand.
At current prices ($120 per kwh), a Model 3 battery is maybe $6000-7000.
$9840 for the 82 kWh Model 3 battery using your price figure, versus $2160 for an 18 kWh PHEV battery. Which gives the Model 3 ~250 miles of highway range in mild weather, compared to more than double that for an efficient PHEV like the Rav4 Prime. So you’d need a $20k battery to match the range of the R4P, if a battery like that was small enough to be practical.
But, you say, you don’t need 500+ miles of range most days. That’s right, most days most people only need 40-50 miles of driving range…like a decent PHEV.
82kwh is 350+ miles of range, not 250. Your math is off by a shit ton. 250 is the 57kwh battery.
Real world highway speed range, not EPA range:
But even if we disregard the range issue, a Model 3 LR battery is almost $8k more than a decent PHEV battery, using the earlier poster’s $120/kWh figure.
Real world (for me), is about 10% shy of EPA. I don’t own a Tesla (yet) but have used them for multiple road trips now and have no issues getting reasonably close to EPA range.
PHEVs batteries are way more expensive than they look, because they still need to deliver power. You might only need 1/5th of the range of a Model 3, but you still need all of the power of a Model 3 (or you can cheap out, I guess, but nobody wants anemic cars with a 0-60 time of “well, eventually, maybe, in favorable conditions”).
So we are generally talking more expensive chemistries and more expensive designs.
you still need all of the power of a Model 3 or you can cheap out, I guess, but nobody wants anemic cars with a 0-60 time of “well, eventually, maybe, in favorable conditions”.
I have a PHEV with a weak 0-60 time in electric mode, but that turns out to rarely be an issue. In city traffic it’s fine, because the instant torque is better than many gas cars. And on the rare occasions when I need to get on the freeway on a short on-ramp, the gas engine can kick in to take care of that. Not the same as driving a fully electric vehicle, but it fits my driving style. Most people don’t need supercar acceleration for their daily driving needs.
The old school PHEV designs like the Volt with their 150 hp electric motors are just too underpowered in 2023
A problem with the Volt is that it maxed out at 149 hp, because it wasn’t designed to combine gas and electric power sources to drive the wheels. The Rav4 Prime PHEV has 302 combined hp, and the Audi PHEV I’m driving has 362 hp.
In terms of overall production cost, PHEVs are in an odd spot between traditional hybrids and fully electric vehicles. They’ll probably fade away soon because of this, but for some use cases they still have a place for now.
The pack level prices are much higher than $120/kWh. No one is offering replacements that cheap. Certainly not Tesla.
You also don’t need a traditional transmission in many PHEVs. The Volt included. You’re dramatically overestimating the cost of the ICE specific components, and underestimating the cost of batteries. BEVs are the more expensive option for a reason.
Same! If they can make a black wing, we should also get a hybrid smaller RWD car. I’ll even take it in CUV form ( only if RWD is an option)