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Hummer Copies Rivian: No Wonder GM & Rivian Couldn't Reach a Deal

JeremyMKE

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GM has realized they are so far behind they have no choice but to slap an electric motor in a Hummer while they work on the really cool features to be delivered in 3 years. The features of Edition 1 are very boring - its a Hummer with a battery. Yawn. Its not a new vehicle, new experience. Will it be successful? Probably because they are marketing to the masses that dont really understand EVs. They will settle for an ICE body with an electric motor becuse they dont (yet) realize what an EV experience can be. Its a shame really, GM could have kept the Hummer name and done a clean-sheet design that would have been great if they threw out 100 years of vehicle dogma. But, this Hummer is over-priced and under-featured.
In general I agree with most of your post. Where I disagree is that being first as a marketing gimmick is a bad thing. They are leveraging what they are good at and getting into the fight. While it may be a copycat effort, it gets them in the game. They have a dealer network and ability to service these vehicles if they do have first production run issues. Rivian struggling with initial quality like Tesla did scares me considering how much $$$ I will have to drop for my R1T.

Its slowly changing but electric vehicle buyers are still early adopters. Most Americans still aren't willing to put up with the tradeoffs. If GM can appeal to those people and get them interested it could be an over all win toward building a better infrastructure.

I would argue that while possibly not technologically leading initially they are attempting to lead as a major automotive manufacturer can.

To be clear I am not a fan of automotive dealer networks, in general. They are ripe for disruption. There are economics at play there but change is inevitable and if that network slows down the MFG's too much it could kill them entirely. That being said we are good at innovation here in the USA and we can do it.
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azbill

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They are rushing to market to say they were "first" with an electric truck. It is a truism that "First is best, second is good and best is okay." BUT - How much testing has been done? What is the reliability like? What technology is used in the battery pack? Tesla and Rivian have spent a DECADE on these systems. GM can only have spent a few months (at best).
This part is totally untrue. GM has been working with LGChem on the new Ultium battery for many years and is currently building a brand new plant in Lordstown to manufacture them. The Bolt, Volt and Spark also have used older generation LGChem batteries, the original model Spark used A123, which were not very good batteries. You can even find articles about how the new Ultium batteries are low-cobalt technology.

https://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm...es/news/us/en/2020/jul/0729-ultium-cells.html

GM is also going to be manufacturing new EVs in three different plants. GM has delivered the EV1, S10 EV pickup (both long ago), and they have also made Spark, Volt and Bolt, so they are not new to this game, nor are they new to EV battery development.

The difference with the older car makers is that for competitive reasons they have always tended to keep the R&D under wraps. Now days we see the startups like Rivian and Lucid who want to show everyone what they are doing, even when it is not in production yet. They have to market themselves because there is no name brand recognition.

FYI, I own a Chevy Bolt with 80K miles and absolutely no reliability issues. Prior to that I owned a Volt and put 80K miles on it with no issues. Hopefully that answers the question about what their reliability is like.
 
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Mjhirsch78

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Is there a technical reason any EV, like the Rivian, couldn’t do a crab walk-like feature? It seems to the layman like a matter of motors and coding. Rivian has four motors and a few coders who could make that happen as evidenced by the tank turn. Is there some technical limitation us non-engineers don’t know about?
 

RobBot

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I think it'd be possible for AWD/4WD ICE cars too. The Hummer EV's rear wheels turn, and that's what allows it to crab walk. Rivian would either have to totally redesign the rear, or implement some weird vectoring thing that probably wouldn't work as well. The tank turn works because it's just the wheels spinning in opposite directions.
 

Mjhirsch78

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I think it'd be possible for AWD/4WD ICE cars too. The Hummer EV's rear wheels turn, and that's what allows it to crab walk. Rivian would either have to totally redesign the rear, or implement some weird vectoring thing that probably wouldn't work as well. The tank turn works because it's just the wheels spinning in opposite directions.
That makes sense. Didn’t even think about the rear wheels physically turning left and right. Heh
 

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R1Simon

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I wonder where Hummer got the idea to use the headlights as a charge indicator?
 

ja_kub_sz

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I just was reading that the Hummer EV's bed isn't made from the same carbon composite material that's in the basic GMC Sierra with its CarbonPro box technology .

So again... 112k and you get the hand-me-down bed that a 50k pickup has in the GM line, not impressed.

https://gmauthority.com/blog/2020/10/gmc-hummer-ev-bed-material-revealed/

Wonder what the R1T bed will be made out of?
 

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Per Rivian, the 69k does not include the federal tax credit (and it's a credit, not a rebate).
As with most credits it’s non refundable, meaning one has to have tax liability to offset it so not everyone qualifies, just like most solar panel clients found out the hard way when the company sold them on the overpriced units at such a deal... ?
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