Chevy Bolt Spied !

Boot looks tiny !

cros13

Not inspired by the i3 in the slightest.

IMo just another one person commuter and not a practical car in order to prevent as many people as possible from buying it.

GM just created it so they can boast about it's range but don't intend mass production.

cros13

Deleted User wrote: »

IMo just another one person commuter and not a practical car in order to prevent as many people as possible from buying it.

GM just created it so they can boast about it's range but don't intend mass production.

The absolute max they can produce is 30k a year. Even including production from their factories under construction, LG Chem can't produce enough battery packs to do more than 30k.

GM didn't do much to create this car... 70% of major components and 100% of the drivetrain is designed and built by LG.

cros13

cros13 wrote: »

The absolute max they can produce is 30k a year. Even including production from their factories under construction, LG Chem can't produce enough battery packs to do more than 30k.

That's astonishingly low compared to nissan ?

cros13

Deleted User wrote: »

That's astonishingly low compared to nissan ?

Yup LG Chem's production capacity is behind:

Panasonic (Tesla)
AESC (Nissan/Renault)
Samsung SDI (BMW) - while not a leader in automotive cell production they are the 2nd largest small cell Li producer in the world, with more flexible production facilities.

LG Chem is building a 1.2GWHr/year production facility (their largest) which will provide most of the cells for the Bolt (meanwhile Tesla/Panasonic build 35GWHr/year of pack production at the gigafactory for 500,000 model 3s per annum)
There is a 2nd LG Chem facility planned for europe as part of a supply agreement with Daimler, but it's going to be even smaller and they have only just decided on a site.

This is the reason I think 2nd hand EV prices will be strong when 300km+ EVs hit the market. You won't be able to buy a model 3 or Bolt or whatever without a wait that will make buying a car in east germany in the 1980s look rapid. The demand will be sky-high as awareness grows and battery production simply won't be able to catch up for decades.

bk

cros13 wrote: »

GM didn't do much to create this car... 70% of major components and 100% of the drivetrain is designed and built by LG.

This is a very interesting point and partly the reason I think why most of the traditional car manufacturers are so slow getting into EV's

Basically much of the traditional car manufacturers control of the market and their ability to keep other companies out has been their expertise in engineering the ICE drive train.

But that goes away with EV's and instead most of the most complicated parts, the batteries, the electric motor and most of the electronics are built by Japanese/Korean/Chinese companies.

Really the Bolt is an LG car with a Chevy badge on it. I can see the likes of LG/Panasonic/Samsung saying, why do we need GM/Ford and just making the EV cars directly themselves, under their own brand.

It also allows the likes of Google, Apple, Uber, etc. to follow the OEM model they perfected with Smartphones and have the likes of Foxcon, etc. build EV cars for them, that they design and put their own software in and badge as their own.

I think EV's are going to represent a massive upheaval in the motor industry and I think many of the brands we know today will end up going the way of the dodo, being replaced by the likes of Apple, Google, Samsung, LG, Tesla cars.

This is why I think some of the traditional car companies are so slow to get into BEV's, because they are basically digging their own graves.

cros13

In fact Samsung already sell EVs.

They manufacturer several EVs in South Korea including a descendant of the Fluence ZE acquired through partnership with Renault/Nissan.

I'd be very surprised if they didn't happen to have a bunch of their own drivetrains in development.


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samih

Yeah, the low margin on volume cars have resulted in manufacturers outsourcing development of suspension, electrics to the 3rd parties. Those component manufactures don't really care who the customer is but sell the bits to anybody with the cash. With the right components anybody can build a pretty decent car these days.

Bit like what Apple did with the mobile market back in 2006.

I can see in the future where you can buy a car on Amazon and it's shipped to your door and there will be no dealers, a bit like Tesla are trying to achieve in the U.S.

The big car makers are dragging their heals because there is no financial reason to produce electrics because ICE tech makes them billions.

The 20 Billion of so VW have to pay to correct the emissions of their Diesels would have gone a long way to make a decent EV, it just boggles the mind the way these companies think.

It's highly likely now VW will have to buy back the U.S diesels because the cost of treating the exhaust with Urea systems will be too costly and probably too unreliable. This will just show how bad our emissions regulations are compared to the U.S and how we continue to support Diesel , it's just plain wrong !

BoatMad

I wouldn't be so slow to write off traditional automakers , despite apple etc, IBM is still a major IT company for example

The car industry has being using subcontractors to design and build cars for years , Graz in Austria is a major case in point.

All the major automakers have BEV in design , dont forget Nissan is primarily a ICE maker, yet it has a BEV, so has Audi, VW, Renault

Apple may dabble in EV, like Google is dabbling in autonomous cars, but these tech companies are just keen to seen as thought leaders, they may never actually ever build a BEV

as for VW, in europe , it seems the fix is a €10 mesh in front of the air mass sensor and a software upgrade, and sure buying the 10,000 3-4 year old TDis in the US back is a pimple on VWs balance sheet,

The big cars makers are not dragging their heels at all, as I said Nissan, VW, Renault, Audi, etc are all in the game, The main reason you are not seeing more is that EV technology is too limiting for mass market at this point , and ICE meets 99% of people needs. As BEV technology improves you will see BEVs becoming a greater part of conventional auto makers product lines.

I very much doubt , people will buy a 20-30K purchase over the internet. Even tesla had to build a whole series of expensive showrooms, ICE companies already have that network in place. ( advantage ICE)


Its simple market economics, if BEV suit increasing numbers of car purchasers , then auto makers will respond with more BEV models, AT the end of the day , the battery is a commodity , building a BEV is trivial for an established auto maker ( in so much that any car design is trivial )