Honda says making cheap electric vehicles is too hard, ends deal with GM::The platform was to use GM’s Ultium batteries.
As trade with North America and China degraded that was one of the worst casualties.
China has a booming market for small EVs. It is not an understatement to say they are years ahead of us in that regard.
What is it North America? Because you said I’m not allowed to have public transit and now I’m not even allowed to have the type of car I want.
Oh boy do I love freedom.
Oil companies invented a psyop in North America centered around male insecurity with their masculinity. That’s why the best selling vehicle in North America is a massive gas guzzling pickup truck that the average person can’t come close to affording but drives anyway.
They’ve also targeted maternal instincts. You can’t get a mother to look at a car unless the hood is taller than someone else’s child.
Also car seats are enormous and don’t fit well into compact cars unless the passenger side seat is all the way up and maybe not even then. Good luck if you have more than one kid that needs a car seat too.
Who said anything about compacts? A modern station wagon would work great inplace of an SUV.
I’m just explaining why parents might opt for a larger car especially if they have multiple children. It used to be mini vans, now it’s SUVs or crossovers which are probably not much bigger than station wagons.
They’re needlessly taller. That’s why I mentioned the hood height. You lose fuel economy and you make it more dangerous for kids crossing at cross walks.
I like when people drive lifted pickups without a speck of dirt in the bed. I call those vehicles the Pedestrian Killer 9000
Emotional Support Vehicle
Small dick emotional support
Pavement princess
I call them small dick compensators
The male safe space? :-)
Emissions regulations apply differently to vehicles of different sizes.
Remember Hummers? I swear it was mostly moms who’d buy it
I remember hummers, but then I got married
Is this innuendo? XD
I forget which gen we were in, but once I was a passenger with a driver who worked sales a Hummer dealership. We were driving back to a summer camp, and as we’re passing the top of what in the winter is the tobogganing hill, he goes “guys hold on, check this out.” He goes offroad down a significant incline, mowing down saplings and dodging trees, rocks, etc, with all of us kids just trying to hold on in the back because the seats lack bolstering. We get to the bottom and he’s just like “cool right?” It was kind of cool, and it’s also what made it the perfect karenmobile.
It also makes up for their obviously small penis as well. Use to be muscle cars.
And here you are, furthering the psyop
You don’t sound like you’re from NA, but here in the US we have trucks that are colloquially known as “Child Killers” because when you’re driving them, you literally can’t see what’s in front of you. They are all over the roads, and make for an extremely bad experience for people in smaller vehicles, people on bikes, and pedestrians. Not to mention, they’re often driven by people that lean heavily into road rage.
Avoid Dodge Ram drivers, especially.
That whole culture is cancer. A lot of Koreans here think country music is typical American music, and i have to explain to them how that whole culture is super, super fucked and how they need to turn off that fucking music
they need to turn off that fucking music
Can I keep Bluegrass music and older country artists like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash?
(Modern Country sucks.)
Yes and you can also enjoy anyone modern who plays in that style. So many nights me, whiskey, and Johnny Cash. Somehow that multimillionaire loved by all gets me.
Good point. That stuff is chill. I dig me some Johnny Cash now and then, too
My brother drive a 2500, guess it checks out. Huh.
Imho, the problem is that North American roads are not safe for small vehicles. If you’re a suburbanite who spends an hour in your car every day on expressways full of trucks and SUVs, you don’t generally want to be in a slow, tiny, short, vulnerable vehicle where you’re beneath the consideration and sightline and possibly wheels of traffic.
Seriously, in Texas even a full size 4-door sedan feels small compared to all he lifted oversized pickups all over.
Am in Texas (Dallas area) I commute 33 miles each way in an electric Fiat 500. I actually do feel plenty safe (car is insanely stable but also far safer than my other commuter which is a klr650 motorcycle) but do have issues with road rage. I legitly don’t care if someone hits me in this car as it wouldn’t be the first time and I have full confidence I’ll be safe…on the other hand I don’t appreciate how unsafe large vehicles tend to be nor how difficult they can make visibility.
I used to drive semi trucks for a living and I’d personally pick the Fiat over the Freightliner every time.
Right? And sane laws about safe vehicles that would clamp down on these land-tanks would never pass because muh freedoms.
If your vehicle represents a higher risk to other people around you, then there should be firmer laws about driving it safely. Give Miatas a higher speed limit, and F-350s firmer penalties for dangerous driving and speeding.
Ever seen a honey badger?
There’s also the matter of snow in a large part of the country. Any car with less than 6" of ground clearance is going to get stuck all the time. AWD or 4wd saves a you a lot of grief too.
I drive a Prius and I live in Canada, a vehicle with like 3 mm of ground clearance. The trick is to live in a place with actual civilized government that plows and salts.
I live in Chicago. They are good at clearing the main streets, but they don’t do the alleys. They also can’t help burying cars parked on side streets. On top of that the wind causes huge drifts.
Wisconsin here. I drove a dodge shadow, a grand am and then a civic. Only the grand am sucked in snow and that was due to garbage tires.
Where is this winter hellscape you speak of
Chicago. The wind off the lake blows huge snow drifts and the city doesn’t have the manpower to clear the side streets or alleys. If you park off the alley, you will get stuck. If you park on the street, you will get buried by the snow plow and you will get stuck.
No
I’ve been kinda looking at purchasing an EU made EV. Even with the Import Tariffs it’s about 20-30K cheaper than US equivalents due to lack of dealer fees.
A lot of people were laughing at the eBussy(XBUS) on here a few months ago but I just kinda though it looked cool and was surprisingly affordable.
Making a cheap car isn’t rocket science, but Americans unfortunately get all this cheap credit and blow it on luxury SUVs/crossovers
Because Americans spend WAY more time in their cars than most other countries and I’ll be fucked if Im spending an hour+ each day in a cheap econo-car.
look, if your car is the backup house wouldn’t you spend more on it?
With the way the economy is going, it may well be many people’s primary house.
they make them in Vietnam too but nobody cares because they’re still expensive and they suck ass
Having spent a lot of time in China, I have not seen a huge uptake on electric vehicles because they don’t have the infrastructure or charging stations for it. That said, I haven’t been there in the last three years or so but I don’t expect that to be changed radically.
I know that the Chinese government has spent a lot of money trying to entice people to buy electric cars by allowing civilians to use the coveted green parking pass that is good anywhere if their vehicle is electric.
This led to some major expansion of their electric vehicle brands. I don’t know what kind of percentage change it is but it’s big enough to shake up their automotive industry.
Although it seems a bit of a weird move to me considering how good their public transport is.
The bus and train in China can be pretty wildin so I get why a lot of people hate using it. That said Guangzhou subway is pretty nice and Japanese like.
I expect with the amount they’re investing in FCEVs that EVs will only last another decade-ish.
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Crazy to see how far behind Japanese car manufacturers are getting these days. Japan disrupted the auto market and made small, fuel efficient, cars popular. Now Honda and Toyota are starting to feel like 70’s Detroit.
Meanwhile Hyundai and Kia are absolutely smashing it (in Europe and Asia) with their cheap, reliable cars
can’t really agree with the “reliable” part but yea, they are affordable.
2013 Hyundai Elantra here. Despite full synthetic oil changes every 5k miles and new filters every year, my engine has now failed for a second time in 100k miles. The mechanic is telling me it needs a new engine, which is going to basically exceed the value of the car.
But at least it was cheap!
Former 2012 Forte owner here - first engine made it to 90k, second one was knocking already about 2k in. Basically walked from a freshly paid off vehicle and bought a Toyota.
Meanwhile Hyundai and Kia are absolutely smashing it (in Europe and Asia) with their cheap, reliable cars
And easy to steal
Edit: Downvote me all you want, I got mine stolen this year in Bulgaria, and if you check the news there’s a lot of Tucsons stolen like every week. Along with the recent callback of models that risk getting on fire, Hyundai has a pretty shit reputation lately and I wouldn’t buy one again even it was free.
I thought only the American models were easy to steal because they left out some critical antitheft features on the lowest cost models? Didn’t think it impacted other countries.
Pretty sure their refering to the fact that certain Kia(?) models could be jacked using a screwdriver and USB. Basically the engines power button was shit. This is also why I dont fucking trust cars that use startup buttons, atleast if someone hotwires the car they had to work for it.
It only affected key start cars, if it was push button start, it was immune to the attack you describe.
I was going off of something I vaguely remembered. But now my question is why the actual fuck was the key start system setup so badly.
My understanding is it doesn’t actually verify the chip on some models and the mechanism to start happens to be roughly the same size and shape as a USB plug. They took a risk and now they’re paying for it with a full recall
That’s a damn good question, when chip-keys were fairly common in the 90’s already.
Not in Europe. That fiasco only happened in the US.
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Because the US doesn’t make engine immobilisers mandatory like the rest of the world does
Hyundai knowingly left an easy exploit to hotwire their cars in for several years. The redesigned a few cars to try to rebrand after fixing it, but they cut corners there too, and now they’re in the middle of recalling the Tuscan for exploding batteries.
Sorry, Hyundai isn’t a role model here.
He is referring to the EV cars as in the topic.
He’s also shifted from NA to Europe. So…
But a Hyundai isn’t going to easily go 200k miles with easy to source parts (have Hyundai cars in my family).
Hyundai and Kia are disposable cars. Not a model I can get behind.
Tradeoffs, it’s always tradeoffs.
They are only disposable to those that don’t take average care of their cars. My parents Sonata is at 235k and it will soon become my kid’s car. Runs fine with no issues because my parents take care and of their cars.
I mean my mom had a Hyundai that got it’s regular maintenance, still died when it had costly transmission issues
Kia and Hyundai are the most stolen cars in North America due to missing basic security measures like steering wheel locks and the ability to spoof the key fob with a cell phone. You could also take a Hyundai or Kia that is near it’s fob and just drive off in it. There was no proximity shut off until a recent OTA update, and it didn’t work on every model
They’re cheap in NA and they’re likely to stay that way until they add proper security measures. In response, both State Farm and Allstate have raised insurance rates on Hyundai and Kia made after 2015. They’re cheaper because they cut corners, and the end customer foots the bill on the insurance side
Prius anyone? Still a better approach than a full electric.
Debatable in today’s world. At least in Europe and north America
PHEV’s are getting reclassified/re-regulated by the EU, because:
-
The stated average emissions are based on actually plugging in to charge, which most owners don’t bother with, considering electric propulsion only accounts for like 1/15 of the cars total range
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It has been regulated in a way that gave the manufacturer only small emissions penalty for increasing the motor size & weight of the car - because it was still considered to be electrically powered.
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The design itself leads to a heavier car (having 2 propulsion systems)
Meanwhile, the full EV market has been more self-regulating in the sense that they have kept the weight/energy requirements down in order be competitive on range.
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I would not say a better approach, but it is a workable one. We have one already and will be getting a second one in the next few months. Our next new car will be an all electric, but that is a few years down the road.
No it’s not.
Last I looked into it, Toyota was still supposed to have some of the most efficient combustion engines out there, with something crazy like 40%(?) thermal efficiency.
As far as I know Mazda are the highest with their gas engines that have diesel compression ratio.
Wow, 56%, impressive, although they seem to be roughly in-line with the competition for MPG anyway.
I know, that’s what I find weird about it, in the end fuel economy isn’t that much better… I haven’t checked peak power vs competition though, but I think they have more torque than most? 🤔
It’s because fuel economy is heavily driven by vehicle weight, since start from a stop kills efficiency. Cruise effeciency is more about aerodynamics than weight (ask anyone who’s ever towed anything - you can really feel the drag above 45mph).
And oddly enough, today’s cars aren’t really significantly lighter than 30 or 40 years ago. We’ve just moved the weight from the frame/body setup to unitized body/frame (lighter but safer… And cheaper to manufacture), more safety systems (airbags/computers) and things like heated seats, etc.
Today’s 4+ seat SUV often weighs as much as a 1970’s 4+ seat station wagon…but with less space inside.
Yes it’s about aerodynamics and rolling resistance and weight and you need X torque to overcome all of that at Y speed, but if you are able to generate that amount of torque from less fuel because your engine manages to extract more energy from the same amount of fuel, you would expect the car to have better fuel economy than its competitor with an engine that has worse thermal efficiency… So unless Mazda is doing something really wrong or the return diminishes greatly past a certain point, I don’t understand why they don’t have much better fuel economy numbers with an engine that has 56% efficiency (compared to as low as 20% for gas engines just 20 years ago!)
How do they pull that off?
16:1 with the latest generation of engines, direct injection does miracles!
How efficient was the Flying Scotsman? That must have had a pretty efficient engine.
At a quick google steam locomotives generally top out at 10%, due to discarding the steam without recovering any of the heat.
I mean I drive a Prius Prime and I love it. I’m surprised they’re not pushing harder on PHEVs. I just put 900km onto the darn thing on a road trip - a few evening charging sessions (the motel had a charging station across the street) for like $3 total plus $35CAD of gas for the whole trip.
We did nothing and tried everything!
So let’s build an unaffordable EV?
They’re saying they don’t care about the cheaper segments and are just going to sell expensive vehicles. I don’t know what those of us who can’t afford 60k vehicles are expected to do for transit though… I suspect this is a ploy to get the American government to subsidize an affordable car range.
We can buy Chinese cars. They are starting to kill it on EV’s, with an already expansive supply chain. It is only a matter of time before they start showing up in the US.
If they get approved by the DOT, which is unlikely both due to government sentiment towards Chinese businesses and the fact of they probably don’t actually meet our safety guidelines
Some of BYD’s models just got 5 star saftey ratings in the EU.
Those super cheap, tiny, death trap looking cars, are mostly just that, but these newer EV companies are making better vehicles. They’ll be in the US soon enough. Safety won’t be an issue.
I see you don’t understand how lobbying works in this country.
There are already cars being built in China being brought into the USA.
All that’s going to happen is these newer companies will need to meet our standards (BYD has proven they can now), deal with some politics bullshit, and end up having to deal with some hefty tariffs that will put them at a disadvantage.
They won’t be completely stopped.
Edit: BYD already has busses running in the USA even.
Cars built in China is not the same thing as cars designed and manufactured entirely in China. And “some politics bullshit” is a hell of a way to describe overcoming the auto and union lobbies in the US.
They just need to get them to stop bursting into flames and they’ll be fine.
Chinese cars like Great Wall have been a thing in New Zealand for a long time but they’re quite terrible. Chinese built Teslas seem to be reasonably built, but I would steer clear of any cars built by a Chinese brand until there are long term reliability studies.
They’re also heavily subsidized by the Chinese government.
Unless something magic happens and evs get super cheap thats eventually going to end and they’ll just be almost expensive death traps.
Amount of time before ban citing vague security risks like car technology could somehow be used by the military…3, 2, 1…
If you’ve ever seen how Chinese manufacturing continually lowers quality despite your contract requiring certain specs, you’d understand the problem.
Not that they’re particularly cheap at all, but Polestars are already made in China.
The EX30 is supposed to be sold for ~35k, assuming they’re not just straight up lying about it like GM and others.
Lolol and I’m sure the quality will match any day now 🙄
You buy a used car?
Have you seen used car prices?
Meh. That has mostly corrected. Probably 15% up from pre COVID. Down 10% yoy for the last 2 years.
I think as the infrastructure expands, those cheap cars will come. The batteries drive the cost and everyone is putting huge batteries in luxury cars to get 300+ miles of range. But imagine a decade or so from now when charging stations are as ubiquitous as gas stations. Range anxiety won’t be about breaking down on the side of the road. It’ll be about how often you have to stop and wait 10 minutes to charge. At that point, car companies will be able to make affordable new cars just by halving the battery size.
Buy a used car. At some point people started thinking new cars was something for people without money.
But if the base price is 60k and a replacement battery costs something like 30 even used cars are going to be too expensive. You’re thinking like they’re ICE cars where you might be able to buy an old shitbox for 5k and maybe rebuild the engine for the same amount.
I hardly see that happening with these smartphone cars. Lithium battery s would need to get really cheap and a lot of consumer protection laws would have to be passed to keep manufacturers from charging whatever they want for replacing them like they do now.
Don’t buy a 60k vehicle. Batteries are more like 15k installed. Those reports of 30k batteries are edge cases.
Also EV batteries have a life expectancy of 200k miles. Most people consider 100k to be a cars retirement age, so I think the battery problem isn’t as big of an issue as we think. Your car is statistically likely to be worn down or wrecked by that amount of mileage.
Same thing they did to housing. Incoming 10 to 15 year car loans.
…you buy ICE until affordable EV is a thing? Is that so bad?
The brands are saying they aren’t/won’t be making affordable EVs because the luxury market is too lucrative. And ICE is done in just a few years, by the time my current hybrid dies ICE won’t be sold
ICE is done in just a few years, by the time my current hybrid dies ICE won’t be sold
You’re delusional if you actually believe this.
And I absolutely guarantee you by the time ICE is not sold anymore, there will be affordable EVs on the market.
Well, they already have that down pat.
I’m a little sad about this - the planned Honda looked nice, the range would have been fine for us (we usually take our pickup on longer road trips anyway), and I was hoping to replace our Mazda 3 with one if it drove nicely and all that. I admit that I had some concerns about the GM underpinnings, though - my experience with American brands is rough, and our experience with GM is the roughest.
We plan to hit the auto shows next year to get an idea of what we want to look at more closely.
I dunno, my Chevy bolt has been a solid
GM had their chances with us. My wife and I each brought a GM into the relationship; they both developed serious transmission problems - among other random issues…and both had much less than 100k miles. They need to show years of reliability before I’d buy another one.
The previously announced cars are still releasing.
Oh thanks. I missed that. Still have the GM influence concern though!
That’s a bummer. Was interested to see what a Honda EV with ultium cells would be like. A sub-$30k EV is what a lot of people are looking for, judging from my experience buying a Bolt. Hope they can figure out the unit-economics
I somehow lucked into finding a 2023 Bolt EV at MSRP last year, and got a really good trade-in offer on top of that. It’s been such a great car.
The one dealership that didn’t have a markup near us sold out immediately and we ended paying a slight markup at another place, but after all the incentives and trade-in it was a steal.
We love our EUV, I don’t think I’ll go back to an ICE car after seeing how convenient home charging is and one-pedal driving is great.
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07’ Civic here. You distracted drivers better not run into me. Please I can’t afford another car.
08 civic and still going strong.
My Chevy bolt still runs. Shoot, it’s cheaper to drive than my 1986 Honda Civic!
GM has blamed the Ultium bottleneck on an unspecified “automation equipment supplier.”
Rockwell Automation has entered the chat.
Rockwell is like Comcast. You have no opinion on them or a blind raging hostile opinion of them.
Edit: on a serious note the systems engineering folks have been telling this before my parents were born. This should not have been a shock to anyone. Diversity in components means greater ability to withstanding changes, the tradeoff is you are going to run less efficiently even in good times.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“After studying this for a year, we decided that this would be difficult as a business, so at the moment we are ending development of an affordable EV,” said Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe in an interview with Bloomberg.
In July, GM had to idle BrightDrop’s production line in Canada due to a shortage of battery cells, and Kelly Blue Book’s sales data for the first three quarters of 2023 show that just 6,920 Ultium-based EVs (which include the Chevrolet Blazer and Silverado EV, as well as the Hummer, Lyriq, and BrightDrop van) were delivered to customers.
GM had said it was ending Bolt production this year at its plant in Orion Township, Michigan, so that it could retool and start building electric trucks beginning in 2024.
The Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX are a pair of electric crossovers that use the same platform as the Cadillac Lyriq and Chevrolet Blazer, and both are still happening.
They’ll even feature Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which GM has controversially chosen to eliminate from its cars from model year 2024 onward.
And Honda even announced another collaboration with GM earlier today—in 2026, it wants to start operating a robotaxi service in Japan using the Cruise Origin, an autonomous electric vehicle developed by the GM-backed AV company.
The original article contains 606 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I want to talk about trains.
How about trains but we only use electricity to power them, and let’s say put overhead electric fuel lines over them. Trams. I wanna see more trams. Solves most of the issues EV’s have with batteries.
Conclusion: my next car will be an affordable Chinese car.
Can you import and legally drive those on US roads? I really don’t want to buy a fucking SUV for my next car, but that’s basically the entire electric car market in this country.
The US will probably ban it for geopolitical reasons.
I’m in Europe, BYD already is in this market.
Fossil fuel mafia dumped a large bribe into Honda’s bank account?
Idk, even if you made almost everything out of aluminum , thats like $2000 for the raw metal for the frame and body, 8k for a 80kwh battery, about 5.5k for a 166HP emrax 228 motor off the shelf… with no transmission, the most expensive components combined are less than 20k. I dont see how even a 35k EV would not be profitable with some sensible off the shelf components.
That’s parts don’t forget labor and transportation.
China does it lol
Honda is probably right. Unless you’re Tesla and every dollar you spend is dedicated to developing, manufacturing and selling EVs. But thus far they’ve been able to continue selling cars at high prices with massive profit margins.
Most “cheap” EVs like the Bolt are sold at a loss.
I love everyone in this thread who is talking about how expensive EVs are while ignoring they can buy a cheap 15 year old ice car and save thousands 🤣🤣🤣
Isn’t the whole point of an EV that they don’t have ICEs?
If I’ve got my heart set on a steak for dinner tonight, the fact that sausages are much cheaper isn’t really relevant information.
Isn’t the whole point of an EV that they don’t have ICEs?
Honestly this is the first time on Lemmy I’ve felt like I was on reddit with such stupid argument logic.
You can want what you want. Doesn’t mean it’s a smart or only choice. You are going to spend more money in most cases and you won’t make up the money for at least 6 or 7 years (at least in the states) unless you drive a ton.
Will you tho? With the cost of a new battery and how they’re wear items?
Its not like ICE cars with good engines that can go 300k km in the original engine if you take good care of it. Batteries just degrade no matter what and these days they’re charging almost the price of a new ICE car to replace them
I agree. Most people will not save money on EVs with their usage. But on the flip side most people don’t own a car that long even with an ice drivetrain. It’s very dependent on what car you buy, electric vs gas rate, and how often you drive.
That’s because people choose to not own cars that long, not because they can’t. Batteries simply cannot today last as long as ICE.
Then don’t complain that the steak is too expensive and eat your damn sausage.
i drive a 1st gen Yaris that is literally older than me. not the best for climate change, but it was 1500€ and uses less than 6L/100km. super cheap to drive. if an electric car was available at that price, and had a possibility of driving 10-20 more years, i would’ve bought it on the spot.
Lol a used car is far more environmentally conscience than a new EV.
True, but they did have to be new at some point. Presumably you might like to buy a used EV one day.
But how would people cope with shitty lives without buying something new every couple of weeks?
