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Multiple choice - What could GM do to increase EREV sales? Ideas? (2nd try)

  • Business - Increase and improve advertising/marketing

    Votes: 28 54.9%

  • Business - Highlight that used GM EREVs are holding their value nicely

    Votes: 4 7.8%

  • Business/Tech- Decrease the MSRP of GM EREVs, if possible

    Votes: 12 23.5%

  • Business - Make GM EREV vehicles widely available for conventional rental (work with conventional ag

    Votes: 5 9.8%

  • Business - Partner more strongly with residential and business solar and energy storage installers

    Votes: 1 2.0%

  • Increase battery size / EV-only range

    Votes: 15 29.4%

  • Improve engine options, maybe focus on some performance and "vroom-vroom" fun performance aspects

    Votes: 3 5.9%

  • Offer quick charging capability

    Votes: 14 27.5%

  • improve home and public opportunity charging including possibly offering options of higher kW and wi

    Votes: 9 17.6%

  • Simplify - decrease complexity of operating the vehicle

    Votes: 4 7.8%

  • Offer EREV powertrain in a large sedan, SUV, crossover or other vehicles with enough rear legroom fo

    Votes: 36 70.6%

  • Offer EREV powertrain in a pickup

    Votes: 19 37.3%

  • Offer and stand behind renewable liquid fuel (flex-fuel with E85, renewable diesel, etc.) capability

    Votes: 3 5.9%

  • Offer a hydrogen fuel cell instead of an internal combustion engine, combined with battery EREV powe

    Votes: 2 3.9%

  • If possible, offer a fuel cell powered by some renewable fuel other than hydrogen

    Votes: 3 5.9%

  • Do more to take advantage of the lower NVH and smooth wonderful ride of the EREV architecture, both

    Votes: 8 15.7%

  • Offer some form of manumatic/stick shift or paddles to increase driver involvement and fun level for

    Votes: 1 2.0%

  • Other things not presented in this poll (please if possible specify below in the discussion area)

    Votes: 4 7.8%

  • (don't try to prolong EREV sales. It's no big deal... the technology has served its purpose as a br

    Votes: 3 5.9%

  • (don't bother, EREV technology just simply will never sell well and allow for a good profit)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    51

Multiple choice - What could GM do to increase EREV sales? Ideas? (2nd try)

7310 Views 62 Replies 21 Participants Last post by  jlsoaz, 
J
[Disclaimer - opinions and poll setup here entirely my own - not speaking for anyone else].
[Also - sorry to a few who already voted - the original setup I had was missing at least one key option, so it seemed best to delete and repost.]

There have been stories recently that GM is considering ending Volt sales. As well there is some indication it is headed in a strong BEV direction. This poll is to brainstorm a bit as to ways that GM could improve sales of vehicles equipped with its impressive EREV technology.
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randl
GM and others are pretty good at marketing. Having them spend more and do a better job explaining these wonderful vehicles isn't likely to lead to big changes in the proportion of EREV or BEV vehicles on the road.

People vote with their wallets, and they'll vote for ease and convenience. The easiest, most convenient and cheapest vehicles to this point are ICs.

I love my Volt and, now living in CA, I'm not alone. But even there, the market seems saturated as sales have stalled.

BEVs and EREVs can be promoted best by government (think regulations that eliminate or discourage ICs). But who wants that?
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randl
Of note, the Bolt is fairly heavily marketed in SoCal. Full page ads in the L.A. Times are fairly common and there are some TV ads But SoCal is a receptive market as there is a distinct environmental bent and regular gas averages at least $3.50/gal due to taxes and low pollution formulations.

Volt commercials were common in the beginning but the marketing folks had to do ad cost/benefit calculations. SoCal would seem to be the place where marketing would work best. You do see a lot of Volts and Bolts but they're niche vehicles.
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randl
llninja said:
But is SoCal getting bombarded with ads because they are a receptive market, or are they a receptive market because of these ads?
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It is a reasonable guess that it's the former. For each dollar I spend advertising a truck, I will sell more trucks than a dollar spent advertising a Bolt. Marketing folks have to earn their keep. They have to be precise in estimating the sales response of their spending. Some folks seem to be saying car companies should take a stand on electric vehicles and push them hard even they don't sell well.

Question: Is there any car company properly marketing their EREVs or BEVs?
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randl
hellsop said:
The trick is that battery charge rates are kind of limited by chemistry. Lithium Ion batteries should never be charged faster than in 30 minutes, from "empty" to "full" (actual capacity, not including state of charge buffers at the top and bottom end). That's a "2C charge rate" -- twice the capacity of the battery per hour. Going faster is very hard on their eventual useful number of charge cycles, even with good thermal management. Keeping the charge rate below 1C (an hour from "empty" to "full") gains about 30% MORE charge cycles to end-of-life. And limiting to 0.5C charge rates add another 15% to the expected cycle count or so. Plus, you can actually get more electrons in before "full" at slower rates. A battery that takes 100kwh at some small fractional C might reach "full" by voltage after only accepting 85-90kwh at 2C, and there's nothing you can do at that point. There's only 85 in there so you've lost 15% of your range being in a hurry for that charge. Slow charges, slow discharge, avoiding deep charge/discharges and good thermal management is how Volts take batteries that usually only last for 1000 cycles and push them to 5000-6000 cycles and warranty the batteries for eight years. (Twice a day charging for eight years is 4380 cycles.)
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Good info. The proposed large vehicle EREVs will need big chargers that have physical limitations to very quick charging.
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