Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

Just to get things back ongoing again.

The latest announcement from GM is they are going "all electric" and they are closing down GM Powertrain !!

How about that for some earth shattering talk!

The thread is actually started in the EV section but I thought I would mention it here as many may not have heard or seen this.

Read the Automotive Industry News in the December Issue -titled "GM reposition"

Who says so? I haven't heard or seen anything like that from GM. Not that I claim to know what's going on there. Just sayin. I haven't seen anything in the news and nothing turns up when searching "GM powertrain closing" or anything similar.

I saw something about them moving people from Pontiac to the Warren Tech Center and a mention that GM Performance and Racing center will stay at the Pontiac location and that Pontiac Powertrain Engineering Research & Development Center has zero plans of closing. Their powertrain division is too invested into other-than-gas-powered vehicles to close, I would think. AFAIK, the intended purpose of that place from the beginning was to fast track the introduction of advanced engines and alternatively powered systems to the market.


Unless you mean somewhere else?

I don't think these changes are coming tomorrow as the timeline I am reading about are timed for 2023, but that's not that far in the recent future.

Read the December issues of Automotive Industry News and the article on" GM repositioning with Reuss "

The writing is being inked on the wall!

Makes perfect sense. The biggest failure GM has had in the last 50 years, is the Volt.

How about the EV1 electric 20 or so years back? The engineering alone was a billion dollars; they built ~ 1,000 cars (do the math) and for a couple of years, leased them for ~ $500/month (which customers thought was too much), then crushed them all.

Well that's not necessarily true in my mind. The GM Volt wasn't a great offering, but it taught GM what they don't want to build as an EV.

Tesla and some others now have shown GM what a successful EV vehicle should be. They scoffed initially then watched and observed what an EV could and should be. Now the "light went Off" and now they know what they should bring to market. The Volt was a half hearted offering and it could not compete with what the car buying public really wants from a total EV vehicle.

Just one big question Mike, Have you driven a Tesla?? Not driven in one but actually driven one. For those who have not the best thing you can do for an education is to go drive a Tesla. I think your thoughts might change a bit.

In my opinion, electric motor vehicles will never fully be successful until they can match or beat internal combustion all around performance...Being able to be driven at high power levels that can be maintained until the fuel is exhausted.Or driven at moderate power for 400 miles and have full power available at the end if necessary..Then be able to be refueled (recharged) in minutes at a million convenient locations and be ready to go again ...No electric vehicle meets that now and maybe in 20 years it'll be possible...In the meanwhile, internal combustion engine refinement continues making it more difficult to match...

Truckedup wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 6:26 pm In my opinion, electric motor vehicles will never fully be successful until they can match or beat internal combustion all around performance...Being able to be driven at high power levels that can be maintained until the fuel is exhausted.Or driven at moderate power for 400 miles and have full power available at the end if necessary..Then be able to be refueled (recharged) in minutes at a million convenient locations and be ready to go again ...No electric vehicle meets that now and maybe in 20 years it'll be possible...In the meanwhile, internal combustion engine refinement continues making it more difficult to match...

You, Mike and I agree on most things mechanical, but not on BEVs. I've built engines for more than fifty years and once I drove a real BEV, I felt like the blacksmith at his forge hammering a red-hot horseshoe when he saw his first car drive by. "Well, that changes everything."

The reality is today's best BEVs can handle 99% of USA day-to-day needs. That they're not there yet for the last 1%, the very uncommon long road trip, doesn't mean they are impractical. On rare occasions, I need a truck with a box van body. I rent one for that rather than keep one on standby. If we didn't have a paid-for ICE in the garage, I'd rent one for road trips.

Yes, I've driven a Tesla S on Ludicrous - 2.28-second 0-60 mph and 10.5-sec 1/4 mile in a totally silent sedan is a mind-altering experience.

Yes, we own a Chevrolet Bolt and it is a mind-altering experience of just how much better an everyday urban vehicle can be when it's a BEV.

jack vines

Jack, does any current mass production electric vehicle have a range of 400 miles? I believe that is no? Can any be fully charged for maximum range, well less than 400 miles, in five minutes? I believe that is no....Zero to 60 in 2.3 second isn't important on a road trip... I believe thise things are important to far more than one percent of driving needs...

I

Truckedup wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 7:46 pm I believe thise things are important to far more than one percent of driving needs...

Just do your homework. Less than 1% of the daily driving is greater than the range of current BEVs.
jack vines

CamKing wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 2:14 pm Makes perfect sense. The biggest failure GM has had in the last 50 years, is the Volt.

Chevrolet was great, General Motors was good... Government Motors... not so much!

Corporations and Politicians will tell you anything to get their hands on your tax dollars... Just ask Foxconn!

Foxconn had agreed to build a high-tech manufacturing hub on 3,000 acres of farmland south of Milwaukee and create as many as 13,000 good-paying jobs for “amazing Wisconsin workers” as early as 2022.

On Jan. 18, Foxconn announced that at the end of 2018 it had 178 full-time employees in Wisconsin, missing its maximum first-year hiring target by 82 percent and costing it that year’s tax credits. Less than two weeks later came the Reuters interview in which Woo said Foxconn was reconsidering building an LCD factory there because (brace for surprise) its costs in the U.S. were higher than in China and Mexico. “In terms of TV, we have no place in the U.S.,” Woo said. “We can’t compete.” On Feb. 1, after Trump called Gou, Foxconn flip-flopped again and said its LCD factory plans were back on and that it also planned to build a series of other production and R&D facilities in the next 18 months.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compani ... ar-BBTlVuV

Jack, I'll accept your view point ...I was thinking something else...

PackardV8 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 10, 2019 12:50 am

Truckedup wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 7:46 pm I believe thise things are important to far more than one percent of driving needs...

Just do your homework. Less than 1% of the daily driving is greater than the range of current BEVs.
jack vines

Here's the issue with your stat.
95% of my daily driving is under the range of the current EV vehicles.
Problem is the other 5%. That's 18 days a year, I will need another vehicle for.
That would require me to own another vehicle for those 18 days a year, or drastically change my life.
So, even at your 1% estimate, the average person will need to find another form of transportation 3-4 days a year. This would kill a lot of the tourism industry. Who's going to drive to the Outer Banks, if they have to stop 3 times to charge their batteries?

Now let's look at the issue with everyone switching to EV.
The first thing that would need to be done, would be to quadruple our power grid capacity($10 trillion? $40 trillion? ), Now how do we produce 4 times the electricity, we are currently producing ? Right now 20% is produced from nuclear power, but building new reactors is not an option anymore, so when we quadruple production, Nuclear will only be responsible for 5%. 62% of our current production comes from fossil fuels. Generating power from fossil fuels, is what the environmentalists are trying to get us away from, so at best, production from fossil fuels will stay the same, so when we quadruple production, fossil fuels will only be responsible for 15.5% of production. The last 18% of current production, comes from renewable resources. When we quadruple production, without increasing nuclear or fossil fuel production, renewables will need to be responsible for 79.5% of production. That means to quadruple electrical production, production from renewables would need to increase by 1,767%. That's just not feasible.