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Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L), Mar 2, 2012.

  1. goalmouth

    goalmouth Well-Known Member

    Anyone notice the incorrect usage in the thread title?
     
  2. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    Yes. But the OP has long since departed.
     
  3. TigerVols

    TigerVols Well-Known Member

  4. TigerVols

    TigerVols Well-Known Member

  5. da man

    da man Well-Known Member

    BOOOOOOO-RING!
     
  6. goalmouth

    goalmouth Well-Known Member

    I'll give Musk kudos -- at least he got a prototype built. However, it doesn't strike me as new -- carnival rides have been using alignment wheels for decades. And Montreal has been running a rubber-tired subway for years. But he does have a contract with Chicago to dig twin 17-mile tunnels from downtown (where there's an unfinished large station underground) to O'Hare. But not the govt or reg approvals to start it...
     
  7. bigpern23

    bigpern23 Well-Known Member

    I mean, that seems inevitable, doesn't it? There was a time that dealers couldn't keep Hummers on the showroom floor and two years later the brand was extinct. Hell, the average price of a gallon of gas in summer of 2008 was $4.11. I don't think there's any question it will eventually go higher than that.

    I also don't think there's any question that battery technology is improving and will continue to improve with investment in R&D. I acknowledge we haven't reached the tipping point where EVs are more commercially viable than gas-powered vehicles (I, myself, traded in my hybrid a few years ago and opted for a fully gas-powered car in its stead). But it seems inevitable it will eventually happen, unless the physics of an internal combustion engine radically change. The performance possibilities alone can drive the desire to go electric.

    As a side note, EVs don't really compete against gas-powered vehicles, since most of the automakers produce models with both engines. The proliferation of EVs in the marketplace will eventually affect the cost of oil, as oil producers are forced to compete. Automakers' (and the government's) investment in EVs is a win-win.
     
  8. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    I don't really understand this part of your post. People don't shop for engines. They shop for cars; for transportation. Not for the engine that runs the thing. There is a niche market for electric vehicles because owning one gives some sort of pyschic benefit, in and of itself, to a small number of people. But that isn't the majority of people who mostly make decisions based on price and convenience. And in that regard, cars with batteries and electric engines aren't competitive. It shouldn't even be a debate -- empirically you just have to look at their sales, even as they have been given subsidization to try to create a preference for them. They are way more expensive still, and they have logistical drawbacks for how a lot of people use their cars.

    UNLESS that changes, they will continue to occupy a niche market.

    I don't know if you are familiar with Say's Law. ... A formulation of it is what you seem to be saying in what I quoted, that supply creates its own demand. It's bunk. I won't go long post on you, but empirically the world doesn't work that way. That is true when it comes to any form of supply side economics. It's just nonsense in practice. What the government did with subsidies to electric car maker wasn't "investment." It was malinvestment, at best. If there is a viable technology there, capital would/will find its way there on its own. If there isn't, anything people have been forced to fork over to others, or as it really has played out, the debt we have incurred funding an arbitrarily-chosen technology (and in the case of government largesse, it has largely been graft, corruption, crony capitalism driving who that money has been given to) has really had the effect of steering capital away from more potentially viable technologies. We'll actually never know what was more viable as a technology, and saw its development retarded.

    Also, let's say what I just said was wrong. That all you have to do is force electric cars on people as you are suggesting and it will "affect the price of oil." What exactly does that mean, because if the demand for oil is decreased, all other things being equal, the price of oil should COME DOWN. That would make electric cars a worse value proposition, not a better one.
     
  9. Scout

    Scout Well-Known Member

    I had a conversation about electric and self driving vehicles with my local auto shop. The owner said at the national conference for auto repair people, they were told to be ready in 20 years for manual driving vehicles to be legislated off the roads. Once 40% of the roads are filled with self driving vehicles, the government will ban manual driving cars from the roads. That’s what their industry is telling them.

    Traffic, drunk driving, not having a vehicle to take Timmy to soccer, not being able to evacuate a city, standing outside at a gas station, falling asleep at the wheel, 23,000 killed every year and 1.3 million injuries and many other things will be like explaining the horse and buggy or the time before cable TV and only having a land line to people.

    It’s going to happen. It’s just a question of when.
     
  10. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    Some people absolutely do put the engine atop the list when shopping for transportation. There are folks who won't buy anything that isn't powered by a Hemi. Others are all-in on diesels.

    (Hell, having Dana 44 axles was a requirement when I was shopping for my Jeep - right behind having a 4.0L engine. Everything else, from transmission to color to trim level, was negotiable except for those two things.)
     
    Scout likes this.
  11. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Right. But that is why I have suggested that the market for electric vehicles is a niche market. Unless something changes in terms of price and functionality, it is going to remain a niche market. Just as the markets for cars powered by hemi engines or diesel occupy small niche within the larger market for vehicles. There is a small group of people who are so evangelical about driving something with a battery and an electric motor that they have created demand for a tiny market. But when you talk about the broader market for vehicles? Most people care simply about transportation, and beyond that, they are price sensitive. That is the case when it comes to most consumer products. Functionality and price matter most to the vast majority of people (forget the outliers). At the moment, electric vehicles fail on those two things. Less so on functionality than they did even just a few years ago, because the batteries are mostly higher capacity now, and even as we speak some of the German automakers are working hard to bring charging times down. But those advances came at a cost, namely that the high-capacity batteries make the cars much more expensive. That may change. Although I'll believe it when I see it. Unless, and until, it changes, what I was responding to was the comment about how EVs don't compete with gas-powered vehicles. Of course they do. The fact that they are way more costly and still come with functionality drawbacks is why EVs remain a niche market.
     
  12. Scout

    Scout Well-Known Member

    Everything starts as a niche market, and then once it reaches cost effectiveness, it’s no longer a niche market.

    Cell phones started as a niche market.

    TVs started as a niche market.
     
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