https://www.jalopnik.com/chevy-and-motorola-teamed-up-on-a-c...
https://carnewschina.com/2022/03/06/the-big-read-saic-6-6-th...
https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3308575...
It drives like a mid engine Lotus.. low and perfectly balanced center of gravity.
I regrettably had to use a rental GMC of theirs, it seems car rental companies have quite a stock of them, to say nothing of their quality, felt like driving a wheeled takeout container.
Coworker loves loves loves the corvette even though its one of the worst vehicles electrics wise. Two people he convinced to buy vettes traded them back in within a year of purchase for electrical issues.
Brand loyalty is a big part of the American mindset and I think GM rested on those laurels to the point where even after the bailout they still have the same mindset.
Why on earth would you take a bath on a trade-in instead of using the lemon law if there were unfixable electrical issues?
Also - this sounds pretty anecdotal to be honest, long-time corvette owner who follows the forums and I've not seen any widespread complaints of electrical issues with the c8 besides a battery drain issue caused by OTA updates that was resolved.
That being said, the C7 also had no known electrical issues. A certified pre-owned would still be covered under lemon law. "driving through a puddle" sounds like more than a bit of an understatment if it took out the entire electrical system. I have driven my car through many, many rainstorms and had exactly 0 issues. I'm also not clear how he traded in a car with a non-functioning electrical system, no dealer would touch that with a 30 foot pole.
>the other kept killing the battery at random.
That could literally be anything, and again wasn't a widespread issue with the C7 platform or there would've been a recall, just like with the C8.
Corvette can't admit to aspirations of a Pure EV this decade (thanks, politics), but in my opinion, that's the only way to absolve a lot of the GM executive sins on being wishy washy about EV futures.
I wouldn't attribute it to politics, but rather, the fact that the Venn Diagram of performance car enthusiasts and people willing to buy an EV are basically two entirely separate circles. When you consider cars that have a very big loyalty to the brand, like Corvette does, it gets even worse.
I personally would LOVE to buy a Corvette EV convertible. But I don't have my hopes up of it ever happening. The demand just isn't there.
Brand loyalty I'll give you in that I have heard a lot of "the day Corvette makes an EV is the day Corvette is dead to me" hyper-masculine statements, but hyper-masculinity is political. (So is hyper-partisanship in many cases.)
(I say that as someone who still owns a 2012 Volt as my only car, but mostly not because I still think I need a hybrid but because I want an full electric, reasonably sized sedan or hatchback, and all the car companies decided Americans only want EV crossovers/SUVs/assault tanks/land yachts this decade.)
All hybrids (Prius included, and especially noted) are just sub-par Full EVs with extra weight albatrossed around their necks when gas gets hard to buy and it does seem like past time to stop sinking good money after multiple decades of sunk costs in ICE car engines.
I think it would be more obvious if the US had more of the cheap EVs that China and Europe are producing, but we all know the US right now isn't politically aligned to have nice things.
There are many EVs out there roughly the same size as the Volt. Its not like all EVs are about the size of the Hummer EV.
(Also, and this is a silly complaint/wishlist item, but I had friends describe an old Volvo buying experience where you could pay a premium on top of the car purchase to include a factory tour and week's stay in the Swedish Alps; they said it was one of the best vacations they ever had. If Polestar offered that I'd be very much more inclined towards Polestar.)
The Mach E strikes me as way too big for just me. Those inches add up, it seems way bigger than Volt I have. More than half a foot taller is a huge difference. Maybe I'm just a bad American because I use my car so rarely and mostly alone, and everything about the SUV form factor seems absolutely ridiculous to me for a solo driver mostly out to get groceries or visit family for a few hours. I'm not just making fun of the Hummer-sized monstrosities, I'm absolutely confused by the American love affair with the SUV entirely. It's way too much.
(Not to mention I have almost been wishing I could downsize to a nice coupe or compact and that is entirely off the US market to even consider getting my hopes up. I've had love affairs from a distance with the Honda e and BYD Dolphin. Those are cute looking cars. Not really possible to put on a US road, and one company wouldn't sell me one even if I tried because their US arm is a Truck company now, and the other isn't allowed to sell cars in the US at all through trade tariffs and embargoes.)
But I also think it's disingenuous to lump a car like the Mach E and Ioniq 5 in the same size class as a Chevy Suburban and Honda Pilot and Ford Expedition. They're far closer to the hatchback of yesterday than they are to any of those monsters, and yet they're both called "SUVs".
And I do wish there were more smaller cars on the market. You're absolutely right, if it's pretty much only you or maybe you + 1 with a small bit of cargo even something like a Mach E (or even the Volt) is pretty much oversized. I do think people should have more choice in right-sizing their vehicles.
There's an inflation factor here. The Mach E is about the size of the 1990s Ford Expedition or Chevy Suburban (and the Honda Pilot didn't yet exist). Everything has gotten bigger. Everything keeps getting bigger "just a couple inches" at a time.
The ("hot") hatchback of the 1970s, which defined the class, was closer to the size of a Geo Prism than a Chevy Volt, much less a Mach E.
In my view the lower end of the SUV class has been relatively consistent, it's just gotten so much wider as class (just like the cars) and shifted huger with all sorts of inflation.
I don't think I'm disingenuous here: I feel consistent. I was dismissive of the class as too large when it broke out in the 1990s. I'm dismissive of the class today. The fact that the class has become so dominant and inflated so largely hasn't changed my baseline of when a car seems "too big" even if it seems to have raised the floors of so many other people. I drove a Geo Prism for a decade and change. I've now driven a Chevy Volt for another decade and change. I've been here the whole time, it seems to me SUVs as a class that's gotten worse.
This is untrue. The Mach E is 186" long, 64" high, and 74" wide. The 1997 Ford Expedition is 205" long, 75" high, and 79" wide. More than half a foot is a huge difference but nearly a foot is about the same size, and the Expedition is a foot and a half longer. 2" is way too much to add to the width but 5" is about the same size.
A Geo Prizm is 173" long and 53" high, and was considered a very small car for the time in the US market. So the difference in length of a Prizm to a Mach E is 13". The difference in length of the '97 Expedition to the Mach E is 19". The height differences are both 11" So yes, the Mach E is closer in size to the Prizm than it is to the first-generation Expedition. And its laughable to compare it to a modern Expedition, its far closer to the Prizm.
Even if you were to say "well, what about the early SUVs like the Bronco", and yeah sure they actually aren't as long as a Mach E was, but they were only 7" longer in length than that Prizm and yet were once again about 10" taller than the Mach E while your standard of 6" is a huge difference in height. And obviously the Bronco was going to have a short wheelbase, it only had a single row of seating.
That you seem to think the Mach E is about the same size as the 90's SUVs once again really points me to the failure of both kinds of cars having the same category. They're very different sizes. And I'm not trying to argue the Mach E is any kind of compact car or anything, but its downright tiny compared to "real" SUVs like Suburbans and what not.
As someone who daily drove a large SUV and a Ford Focus Hatch, the Mach E I drive today is considerably closer in size to the Focus than it is the older SUV. Definitely a bit bigger than the Focus, but it's not even close.
The advantage is not only cost but also longevity. LFP and sodium ion batteries might have decades of useful life. With thousands of charge cycles, you could be charging them on a daily basis and it would be fine. NMC only has about 1000-1500 cycles. Some LFP batteries do 3-4x better than that. Sodium ion even better.
For the average cheap clunker that you drive around town you neither need a big nor a fast battery. Chinese cheap cars (the type the US consumer can't even imagine is feasible) come with cheap batteries. Which means LFP or sodium ion in China. Cheap here means 5-10K$. For the car. With the battery. Not just the difference between the cheap and the more expensive battery upgrade (as is common in the US). Making a car cost effectively at those price levels means compromises. It's not going to have seat warmers. And you might have to open the window manually. And it won't drive to the moon and back on a single charge. But it will get you to work just fine.
Something like the Slate truck doesn't need top spec batteries. It just needs a decently sized battery. The cheapest one will have a 52kwh battery, apparently. LFP would be a good default. But it would still be a decent truck with a cheaper, lower capacity sodium ion battery. And since there is a 84.3 kwh option, there is some wiggle room for variations in size, weight, and energy density.
At 52kwh, it's not going to break distance records. If you need that, get the bigger battery. But otherwise lots of people get by with cars with ranges below 100 miles. Anybody that has an old Nissan Leaf falls into this bucket. They shipped with something like 60-70 miles of range. If you replace the battery you'll double the range because batteries have improved over time. Loads of them still drive with their original batteries. Nice car to buy second hand for next to nothing. Useful range. Dirt cheap to own and drive. Really affordable at this point.
The notion of buying the battery you need at a reasonable price vs. the range monster you think you need because you are a nervous and range anxious wreck is distorting this discussion.
People: I absolutely must have >500 miles range because I never stop and have a bladder of steel and easily can go without breaks for eight hours. The notion of stopping for 30-40 minutes freaks me out. The horror! I absolutely must have this and I'm going to sell my kidney to get it.
Reality, mr. Joe Average is middle aged, needs to go to the bath room regularly (especially after drinking coffee) because middle aged people just are like that. He isn't super wealthy and he lives 25 miles from work. Which is where he goes every day. He might go on a weekend trip. 50-60 miles is the bare minimum of what he needs. With a safety margin and some convenience, 150 would be fine and also accommodate for cold weather and unplanned excursions. 200 would be comfortable. 300 miles would mean the car lasts the whole week and only needs to be charged on the weekend. He drives his average 12K miles per year (230/week).
Some people genuinely need more. Most people (the average ones) really don't. They just think they do.
> NMC only has about 1000-1500 cycles.
200 miles per cycle and you’re at 200,000 miles, which is decades for a lot of people.
The Ultium announcement isn't Li-S related but but number of battery plant announcements over the past 5 years in the US (as well as Japan) have been plants that can support both LFP and Li-S battery manufacturing.
Japanese, Korean, and American automotive and battery vendors have been aligned on this from a capital and IP perspective for a LONG time.