Featured Hybrid sales picking up in 2023

i'm up 50 bucks, it's like vegas!

 

It is exactly like Vegas and in Vegas the House always wins in the end. That is why there is a Las Vegas.

 

Walk away when you’re ahead

 

Then everyone would win.

Vegas is designed to whet your appetite for more and the whole setup is to entice you to spend your money and keep you at the table.

Why do you think they give away free lodging and in some cases travel cost to get there?

Stay in Las Vegas For Free or Cheap (Here's How) - FeelingVegas

They got you to the craps table and to toss the dice - that was the hardest part for them.

 

GM is supposedly bringing back Voltec

https://gmauthority.com/blog/2024/01/gm-to-reintroduce-phevs-in-north-america/

 

I think the Buick Velite 6 is still available in China.

 

they must have awakened to toyota enlightenment, make a lot of ev promises, but make a lot of hybrids

 

Their BEV expansion isn't going as quickly as hoped, and dealers are asking for hybrids. So they'll bring out PHEVs to give the dealers something and to help meet emission and fuel economy regulations.

 

I suspect that the bev retraction is due to market pressure more than failed hopes.
I doubt dealers are screaming for hybrids

 

Dealers want the service $ that come with hybrids and PHEV's (based on a small sample size of friends, they perceive that they lose service revenue for every EV that is sold). They are also seeing Mavericks and RAV4 hybrids flying off the lots. They are certainly screaming for hybrids.

 

They’re selling plenty of straight gassers, it’s just a distraction from the ev’s that I agree they don’t want to sell

 

The overall auto market is retracting,
who knew people don’t actually want to only buy 6 figure cars?

Despite notes to the contrary hybrid systems are commoditized, so long as you keep the battery small it’s still cheaper to have a small ice and small battery over a massive battery and massive vehicle.

my only hope is that they do not use a turbo engine or “traditional automatic transmission “ in their PHEV offerings .

Gen 2 Voltec with exhaust heat recovery (Malibu+Volt) is hopefully still on a shelf somewhere and they don’t pull a Ford and GM up something that was already reliable with anything stupid, Gen 2 was said to be scalable for any of GMs lineup so it should be good to go.

It was definitely in error not keeping Voltec + Bolt on life support a couple years as that plant basically became a monetary sink with nothing to build. 1 year after they stopped Volt demand increased dramatically and they had no mature product to fill the void ever since.

 

A Voltec is still being sold in China. That's the Velite 6 I mentioned here the other discussion on the topic. Doesn't sound like GM is planning hybrids, just PHEVs.

Power-split systems do work well, even as plug ins, but they do have limits. Ford went with a parallel hybrid in their trucks because a power-split is 'weak' when it comes to large loads and towing. A system Toyota had in a couple Lexus may have worked for that, but it essentially had a 4 speed automatic off the back end. They too went with a parallel system for their trucks.

That plant stopped being a sinkhole cause they closed it. They did that because people weren't buying the sedan models made there that were paying for the factory. The Volt being cancelled was collateral damage. GM didn't move models to that plant for the same reason they didn't move Volt production; cost.

 

What’s closed is open again?

Fire shuts production at GM's Factory Zero Detroit-Hamtramck plant

 

Proving once again:

He said that you can depend on Americans to do the right thing when they have exhausted every other possibility.​

Bob Wilson

 

Guess so. Because of union contracts, the plant wasn't officially closed. It was down to 28% output before GM unallocated it. Lordstown that was also 'closed' is now being used by Workhorse.
https://www.autonews.com/article/20181126/BLOG06/181129782/parsing-what-gm-means-by-unallocated
Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly - Wikipedia

 

On the same plot of land that Lordstown resides on is the so called Warren plant , seems sort of silly, close down on one side of the road stay open on the other.

 

Define "right thing to do".

The way I see it, if I had to own an EV right now, I'd end up with one that would not meet my needs, as there's no way I could afford one with the range I'd need. The closest town, let alone charging station, is 70 miles away East or West, and well over 100 miles going South (and North is a dead end) and all of those paths take me over steep mountain passes with thousands of feet to climb. I don't see taking a BMW i3 to the city 200 miles away, much less to my in-laws over 600 miles away.

Maybe we should look at it the other way. If owning an ICEV is the wrong thing to do, then maybe I should stop owning a car.

My only other option would be to do something about the full time job I've been working at for the past 17 years, maybe even moving to a completely different part of the country, just so I could have the funds for buying a useable EV.

 

That’s because you haven’t yet exhausted every other possibility

 

Pleading a 'special case' will always exist. There are times and places where horse drawn carriages make most sense. Regardless, if you can provide either GPS coordinates or a nearby town or post office zip code, I'll share a map showing charging options out to at least 100 miles to the West, South, and East.

Charging opportunities continue to rapidly grow and without an EV, it is easy to miss the new ones. For example, I added a CCS-1 charging option to my Model 3 in September 2023. This allows shorter, direct routes to Tunica using CCS-1 chargers: Tuscumbia AL 60 kW ChargePoint, and; Byhalia MS 60 kW ChargePoint with first hour free. Once I reach Tunica, there are casino/hotels with free charging. Vicksburg MS has free chargers at a casino/hotel and SuperChargers.

Bob Wilson