No Love From Wall Street

IDoMyOwnStunts wrote:

John & Angela wrote:
It will be interesting to see the amount of R and D money going to electric vehicles from the big three over the next decade. Its one of those technological areas where it is hard to play catchup if they get too far behind. The market for gas cars (not so much trucks or vans etc) will continue to shrink over the next two decades so they want to be sure they have something to offer. One country holland has already moved on not allowing sales of gas or diesel vehicles past 2025 and at least three others are close to setting their own dates. I'm not sure how many vehicles the big three sell in europe but I would suspect within two decades they will need to have a viable line of electrics to compete. It would be interesting to see their long range strategy.

With GM, they are already onto Gen 2 of their Voltec drivetrain and are going to introduce the 200 mile capable Bolt at the end of the year. They've also using that same drivetrain in a Malibu hybrid. They don't need to play catch up. They're already ahead of the game. I wouldn't be surprised to see GM license the platform to other manufacturers who do need to catch up eventually.

Full disclosure: I own a Volt and absolutely love it. It has its share of detractors and there's a lot of misinformation out there, but taken on its own merits as a straight up car, I can honestly say it's the best car I've ever owned.

The volt is a great car. We really enjoyed our test drives when we were in the selection process for an EV. If we needed a long range option we would have gone that route. But for us the vehicle we were replacing had never been more than 100 KM from home. We also wanted a two seat convertible as we live in a sunny climate almost all year. So we got the little smart ED. Very fun car and was just over 20 grand. We only seem to go about 50 KM per day so we tend to charge it up every second day although we have forgotten a few times and gone pretty close to the 150 KM max. That's the nice thing about the volt I guess, no worries. :) I don't know about you but since we have had an EV we hardly drive the other car anymore. I still take it to work but for anything outside of work we always take the EV. We occasionally do a costco run at a neighbouring city and it is way fun with top down and tunes cranked on the highway. From the performance and driving experience it's hard to go back to anything with a tail pipe after you have driven an EV.

We are a couple years from replacing our last oil burner but have our eye on the 2018 gen 2 leaf with 300 KM and fast charge. Can't really see needing that kind of range but it might be handy. If we ever needed to do that long intercity commute like we used to we would be looking seriously at the volt. Very classy car.