The Electrify America charging network operates with all the rigor, quality and user-friendliness you’d expect from a product that a car company was forced to build after getting aggressively sued by the U.S. government for cheating on diesel emissions. So if you’re wondering why so many automakers have announced a switch to Tesla’s electric vehicle charging standard, rage at Volkswagen may be a good place to start.
That leads off our morning roundup today. Also on today’s menu: Porsche has a new fast hybrid, Alfa Romeo has a new supercar and it’s workers vs. C-suite executives in America’s auto union fight. Let’s have at it.
Electrify This, Why Don’t Ya
I don’t know how many folks here have taken a road trip in an EV yet, but when you do, an Electrify America station is a welcome sight on the roads. You then get the exact opposite feeling when you realize how many of those EA fast chargers are down, working too slowly or have a huge line of cars waiting for the few ones that might be functional.
Thus, every time an automaker has joyously announced “Three years of free Electrify America charging!” with the purchase of some hot new EV, rooms full of journalists in my line of work would erupt in audible groans. Or expletives. Sometimes both. I hear the same complaints from owners, too; EA’s persistent quality issues, recently knocked again by J.D. Power, make it not up to the task of powering some EV revolution in this country.
I’ll say for the record that I blame the automakers here, too. They’re too used to a century of making cars and engines and letting the ecosystem around them handle everything else, including fueling. They’ve never wanted to be in the charging game. Except for Tesla, of course, and not only building out their Supercharger network but making it functionally the best one, period, is possibly the smartest thing that company’s ever done.
A new report in ChargedEVs from Autopian contributor, longtime EV expert and known Isuzu Impulse enthusiast John Voelcker dives into the drama behind the other automakers’ Tesla turn. JV spoke to more than a dozen executives, engineers and analysts from the car business and around it, and while none would go on the record, they all had plenty to say:
Overall, this year’s developments reflect deep dissatisfaction among automakers other than Tesla with the state of US fast charging—accompanied by fear that Tesla’s ultra-reliable and deeply integrated Supercharger network has given it a permanent competitive advantage.
It’s hard to overstate the disgust and anger at Electrify America among virtually every person we interviewed. The network has come to be viewed, fairly or not, as the most minimal effort VW Group could have exerted to comply with the 10-year, $2-billion settlement it jointly negotiated with the EPA and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
Five years after its first fast charging station went live in May 2018, Electrify America continues to have sites down for weeks or months and other locations where only one or two cables (out of four, six or eight) actually deliver a charge. While a majority of its stations will recharge an EV, the widely touted standard uptime figure of 97 percent still translates to 11 days a year of downtime for every location. Would you have confidence in your local gas station if you knew it might be dark almost two weeks a year—at random?
Now, very few of these (non-Supercharger) EV charging stations are great, honestly. Even the ones that start well inevitably suffer from downtime or speed issues. So is EA really that bad? Turns out maybe:
While EVgo, Shell Recharge (née Greenlots), ChargePoint and others were included in reliability complaints, those networks are seen—rightly or wrongly—as less unreliable than EA. “EA is by far the most difficult network for us to work with,” said one automaker employee. “It’s just not clear they believe in it, or that they’re in it for the long haul.”
In other words, non-Tesla automakers have had it with EA. Initial hopes that EA would provide a new, large-scale, nationwide network of fast charging stations have now curdled into a desire to see EA out of the game altogether—with “lots of bad blood” directed at the VW Group as a whole. One engineer and one executive even suggested that Volkswagen deliberately did a subpar job. “Remember Dieselgate?” said one. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…”
Basically, they all just hoped EA and a few other companies would handle the “charging” thing while they just focused on making cars. And it’s not going well.
For Part 2 of this series today, JV dives into the future of Tesla’s NACS plug standard, which may not be as simple as every Ford and Chevy and Rivian on the road magically getting access to all those Supercharger stations.
Here’s the important part: Engineers are still figuring all that stuff out. And many modern EVs are built to handle faster charging speeds than the current max Superchargers can provide:
It’s clear that the decision to ally with Tesla was one made at CEO level, then foisted on the engineers who must integrate it into future EVs within a 3-year deadline. Indeed, three days after the press release, the lead vehicle engineer on one highly publicized future EV from a large maker said, “The announcement caught us off guard and we still don’t know exactly what was in the agreement they signed.”
Tesla is said to have a document with roughly 40 non-negotiable technology requirements—or what the engineers would have to do to incorporate NACS into their largely complete vehicle design.
You Could Do A Lot Worse
Nowadays many of us are thinking more about our carbon footprints. One way to do that is to consider a hybrid for your next car purchase. And here’s a very good hybrid: the new 2024 Porsche Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid, which has a combined 729 horsepower and 700 pound-feet of torque and is now the most powerful version of Porsche’s big SUV.
Here are the specs from Car and Driver:
The previous Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid was a rocket ship for the road, and Porsche appears to have fine-tuned that road-going missile with the updated plug-in-hybrid powertrain. It starts with the twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V-8 that has been extensively revised to make 591 horsepower. The hybrid system has been upgraded too, as the electric motor now makes 174 horsepower—up from 134 in the outgoing Turbo S E-Hybrid. Combined, the new system produces 729 horsepower and 700 pound-feet of torque.
Compared to its predecessor, the new Turbo E-Hybrid has nearly double the battery capacity, increasing from 14.1 kWh to 25.9 kWh. Porsche claims the increased battery capacity provides more pure-electric range. It didn’t give specifics, but the last generation was capable of 20 EV-only miles, so we expect the new car to be closer to 30 miles. Along with the bigger battery, a new 11.0-kW onboard charger brings charging times down to a claimed two-and-a-half hours for the new version.
Unfortunately, saving the planet at such a tire-destroying level will set you back at least $148,550, or $153,050 for the “coupe” version. Sounds fun, though. [Editor’s Note: To be clear, this large V8-powered hybrid car with probably under 50 miles of EV range isn’t actually going to save any planets. But if you can make your commute fully electric everyday, and do that for many years so you can offset emissions from building this thing, that’s a step in the right direction. -DT].
Alfa Romeo To Debut A New Supercar Tomorrow
Speaking of hybrids, Alfa Romeo has one debuting tomorrow and it’s an electrified car of the exotic variety. Our friends at Motor1 say it’s expected to be called 33 or 6C, both historic race car names, and its debut will be livestreamed from the Alfa Romeo Museum in Italy:
Alfa Romeo has done an excellent job of keeping its supercar under wraps. The rumors suggest that the model might share underpinnings with the Maserati MC20. The powertrain allegedly consists of the twin-turbo 3.0-liter Nettuno V6 with an electric motor. This would result in a total output of around 800 horsepower versus 621 hp from the MC20, which is not a hybrid.
Alfa Romeo CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato said the supercar looked “iconic, super-sexy, and recognizable,” and described it as “something that I could put aside the 8C in the museum of Arese.”
Not bad. But as the story notes, this one could be rather limited-production and nearly all are spoken for at the moment.
In The UAW’s Fight, It’s C-Suite Execs VS. Workers
Executive pay has become a real sticking point in the United Auto Workers’ ongoing contract negotiations with the Big Three, which could lead to an unprecedented strike on the entire American auto industry. As Bloomberg reports, workers are seeking a 46% pay increase, a 32-hour work week and a restoration of benefits they had before the Great Recession.
Naturally, the auto execs (current and former) say that’s insane:
In fact, higher labor costs contributed to Chrysler, Ford and GM’s lack of price competitiveness against foreign brands in the 1990s and 2000s. But pressure is on [UAW President Shawn Fain] to deliver a good deal, since his margin of victory was so slim.
“The car companies cannot possibly agree to his demands and even if he succeeds, his members still lose because the car companies will go bankrupt,” Johan de Nysschen, a consultant and former GM and Volkswagen executive, said in an interview. Fain, he added, is “promising the sun, the moon, the Earth and the stars to people who are, frankly, easily impressed.”
But as the UAW points out, those same claims are coming from executives who are literally admonishing workers from their beachside vacation homes:
Fain bristles at the notion that his blue-collar members are asking for too much. He sees the companies’ arguments about being competitive as code for “a race back to slave labor.” He points to Stellantis North American Chief Operating Officer Mark Stewart, who recently lectured workers on economic realism from his vacation home in Acapulco, Mexico. Stellantis declined to comment on Stewart’s whereabouts.
“When your CEOs are making 300 to 400 times more than the average worker, and they want to talk to you about economic realism, that’s pretty pathetic,” Fain said.
Finally, this:
Fain displays particular contempt for the company he worked for and its CEO, Carlos Tavares, who’s been outspoken on the need to cut overhead and people. Their only meeting, Fain said, came before official bargaining began where the executive used the word “brutality” about 40 times to describe government mandates on the transition to EVs.
“I came back and said, our workers have had a brutality imposed upon them,” Fain said. “You close plants and they have to uproot their lives.”
As contract talks come down to the wire, Fain’s ambitions go well beyond the meat and potatoes issues. He is out to change the way people think about — and treat — factory labor.
“Workers are fed up,” Fain said. “If Covid taught anybody anything, it taught people what’s important in life. And it sure as hell isn’t living in your workplace seven days a week so you can scrape to get by and barely survive.”
Hard to disagree on that part.
Your Turn
Who is ultimately responsible for making EV charging work? I don’t think this is something the auto industry can just outsource anymore. Not if they truly want this technology to catch on.
Why is the automaker now responsible for providing the fuel for the vehicle? The government really truly fucked the EV roll out and now all us poors are going to pay the price.
Tax incentives are carrots used to positively incentivise desired behaviors. In this case transitioning from a highly mature old technology (ice) to a different technology (ev).
The charging infrastructure opportunities currently being experienced here in the US are to be expected.
Roughly 120 years ago when ice powered cars were starting to be a thing, the idea of having personal transportation that could cost less & tale less time than a train was still rare & ice powered cars, horses & steam powered cars were really the only options. I mean sure about 1/3rd of the market was ev then too, however the only ev batteries were lead acid limiting them realistically to local traffic only.
If you wanted personal travel that ment either you took a horse (w or w/o a wagon) which ment you were going to definitely take longer to travel than catching a train, a steam powered car, which could leverage some of the same infrastructure as locomotives which would get you to your destination faster than a horse & was a more established technology or an ice car which was a pretty damn new technology. Guess where you were likely to find gasoline? At the local town chemist, because ice as a tech. was still quite new the infrastructure to support it was likewise quite immature.
Today we fins ourselves at another technology inflection point as ev tech (batteries especially) have advanced far enough that they can replace ice vehicles for personal travel & likewise the infrastructure to support ev’s is likewise still immature
The problem with EA claiming 97% uptime is their definition sucks. A lot of the chargers will be up but derated from 350kw to 50kw. They consider that up whereas no BEV owner would consider that a working unit. Even Tesla plays some uptime games to bloat their number by stating it up if a number of units up per location. It’s like 60% of them working at a site.
Tesla revealed how they monitor superchargers and it seemed impressive, from someone that managed and monitored large data networks. It seems that EA waits until it’s reported as a problem before taking action.
With respect to charging, the problem is that buying hardware from the lowest bidder while neglecting maintenance and staffing is still profitable for a charging network. EA doesn’t lose (much) money by being unreliable. The ones who get hit the hardest are the automakers. Right now it seems like the automakers are taking matters into their own hands.
I think in an ideal world, the charging networks would be run by utilities. Not all utilities are great, but in general they have the best price on electricity, regulations preventing price gouging, and a maintenance force of electricians and technicians accustomed to high voltage hardware. XCEL Energy is currently trying to make a charging network in Colorado, but I’m tempering my expectations on that one.
That makes a lot of sense- gas stations used to be mostly owned by oil companies, as it was seen as just the final link in their whole business chain (and the gas stations themselves tended to be a lot cleaner and better maintained back then), until they all decided to divest them onto mom and pop owners (sometimes retaining the underlying property on a ground lease arrangement).
If electricity is the new gasoline, than you would think electric companies would want to get in on it – they could probably charge a higher price than for normal residential service, as there’d be overhead to cover at a charging station and they’d be offering the fast charge convenience, get a slightly better margin instead of letting someone else (EA) mark up their electricity
It also makes sense from the perspective of scaling the charging network. Utilities can roll out electric distribution upgrades more confidently if they know where all the chargers will be.
Their margin is set by regulators, and almost completely separated from how much electricity they sell. They’re weird pseudo-businesess and the few states that decided to let their utilities eat the space have had very slow, poor, rollouts.
I was going to say the same thing regarding utilities, but then I thought of the mess PG&E has made in California over the last several years with their downed lines. I don’t think EVs need any further association with fire in the public’s mind.
> chargers at Stabucks along the 1350-mile corridor between Denver and Seattle
That’s like 750,000 chargers!
Perhaps the other automakers and/or the government could sue VW/Electrify America for retaliation, as maybe VW/EA’s harging network is poor as an act of retaliation for being required to set up the chargers in the first place.
Industry consultants, executives, and other unqualified talking heads are describing Fain as contentious, bellicose, and generally overaggressive…to which I say, “Good.” There are far, far too many people in positions of power who could help foster change but are too amenable, tractable, and weak to get anything done. Love him or hate him, Fain is a leader that not only the UAW, but American labor as a sector, needs to remain firm against everyone who wants him to shrink down and acquiesce. It is too rare a thing these days to see someone who is, at a minimum, resolute in their beliefs in the first case, and willing to stand up when everyone else is shouting “Get down! You’ll get what you get and won’t complain.”
I hope to see, in my lifetime, a transition away from labor relations in the US as a caricature from The Jungle towards something more humanitarian; something that values quality of life, like the European work culture.
My hope is that, if he can deliver, Fain inspires workers at non-UAW plants to join up. If all/most of the plants transition to UAW, then the big three’s lack of price competitiveness against foreign brands goes out the window.
Side note; why is IG Metall okay with AMG, BMW, and VAG running non-unionized plants in the US? Wouldn’t it make sense for UAW to form a partnership with IG Metall?
I am curious what happened to management at Chattanooga. I had read that management was supportive of unionizing when they stood up the plant but the first vote failed. Then when they tried again a few years later management was no longer supportive but the vote came closer to passing
Good question. I’m guessing the answer is somewhere close in proximity to Jimmy Hoffa’s body.
The old VW “Westmoreland” plant had UAW representation for the workers – which was (slightly) problematic. VW actually wants to have a works council in all of their factories, but their lawyers have convinced management that in the U.S. there needs to be a union if there is a works council. Thus VW wants to have unions in their U.S. factories. In Tennessee VW worked with the UAW to try to sign up the factory, but politicians caused unrest and the union was voted down (after management and labor had agreed to the UAW with sign-up cards). The workers voted down apparently due to both fake news and because the proposed union was the UAW – maybe with the UAW’s current management – which seems less likely to be indicted than any previous UAW management in recent history – the next attempt will succeed, or maybe a different union can come in and win the day.
Imagine if the Alfa Romeo super car is a crazy, big swing and a miss.
What if it’s, say… called the 158/159 Alfetta, but it’s a turbocharged 1.5L 3-cylinder hybrid compact crossover with plastic cladding everywhere, a floating roof, a giant LED-lit Alfa Romeo badge, 23-inch wheels, dual-lever tank controls for steering, and the entire dashboard is a touchscreen.
Yet the touchscreen has SUPER APPS for a super car.
Such an abomination would not at all be a surprise. It’s to be expected at this point.
Thermonuclear take:
I don’t hate the Tonale
*drops match into puddle of kerosene, laughs maniacally*
I don’t hate it any more than any other crossovers, and a lot less than most, but I struggle to see the value proposition vs the Hornet
> *drops match into puddle of kerosene, laughs maniacally*
Erm, I have to point out that like diesel, liquid kerosene cannot be ignited by a match under normal conditions. You have to aerosolize it first.
And the Oscar for shitting on a point goes to…. Wuffles Cookie!!!!!!!
It and the hornet are both pretty good looking for wagons on stilts
Nice to see Johan de Nysschen using his expertise in losing.
He was a crap executive and now he’s a crap consultant. He’s nothing if not consistent.
I wish I could suck ass at my job and get paid tens of millions for it
Right? I can’t wrap my mind around hiring a failed executive as a consultant. Why? So you can…fail better?
I worked for a company that forcibly retired an executive for being a dolt and then hired him back as a consultant “coach”. We viewed each of his “lessons” as 90% meaningless, self-aggrandizing fluff and the remaining 10% lessons in what NOT to do. Viewed in that way, he wasn’t useless, though he was overpriced.
Interesting. So essentially he was retained as a cautionary tale?
Sort of? To the other execs he had decades of good experience that they didn’t want to lose (they just wanted him out of the food chain), but to us non-execs he was a prime example of failing upwards.
Right? I suck at my job and only get paid tens of thousands.
“It’s hard to overstate the disgust and anger at Electrify America among virtually every person we interviewed.”
““EA is by far the most difficult network for us to work with,” said one automaker employee. “It’s just not clear they believe in it, or that they’re in it for the long haul.”
I find this to be really funny given that for years, the execs at these same automotive OEMS used to make fun of Tesla and often talked about how once they made their own BEVs, Tesla would be out of business.
It reminds me about how the US automakers used to talk about ‘sending imports back to their shores’ in the 1960s and 1970s.
The VAG-owned Electrify America embodies the typical attitude legacy automakers had toward BEVs… in that they STILL don’t take them that seriously and when they make their own BEVs and BEV-related stuff, they half-ass it in some way because they don’t truly believe the masses want BEVs… in spite of the upcoming government CO2 regs and the growing sales data that is screaming at them.
It’s just like in the 2000s how most OEMs that weren’t Toyota or Ford, had this idea that people wouldn’t hybrids.
Really the natural place for charging infrastructure to be installed is at gas stations… particularly ones near stores, shops and cafes.
And that’s actually happening in the EU and I’ve even seen some BEV chargers at gas stations here in Canada.
It should happen in the USA too… but given the oil industry politics down there, I’m not surprised if it isn’t happening.
But if the oil industry and gas station owners are smart, they should be installing their own fast BEV charging stations right now if they want to stay relevant in the long run.
“Who is ultimately responsible for making EV charging work? “
In theory for North America, it should be engineering-standards organizations like SAE. But in reality, SAE majorly dropped the ball on BEV charging.
Back in the late 2000s, Tesla tried to work with them and the rest of the industry… and the charging standards they came up with was absolute garbage… a complete waste of time. To this day, I have no idea why they bothered with Level 1 and Level 2 charging… which are both just glorified versions of the standard 120V and 220V/50A outlets.
That’s why Tesla developed their own standard on their own.
And now SAE is playing catch-up to maintain their relevance by giving NACS their own J-code (J3400)
https://electrek.co/2023/07/12/sae-wants-to-certify-nacs-by-end-of-year-and-fix-plug-charge-too/
So in REALITY for North America, I predict it will be a combo of Tesla and the SAE that will take care of this in North America.
In the EU, they already legislated their superior variant of CCS (which is a better version of the North American CCS, but still big and clunky compared to Tesla’s standard).
And in China, the government there already set their standard as well.
The only places in question for the future are Japan and the rest of Asia, South America (which will hopefully adopt NACS), Africa and Russia.
You need a level one and two spec, as that works great for home and work and it’s cheap. Fast charging wears your battery out faster, you should only use it when you need it. We need level 2 charging everywhere a car parks for a while, every overnight and employee parking space.
Even level 1 is suitable for the vast majority of use cases.
At this point I have driven my EV ~60,000 miles, with >99% of charging using a standard 120 volt outlet. Level 2 charging is nice, but I presume it is cheaper to install 120 volt outlets (I could be wrong?). Also, 120 volt outlets are reliable and easy to repair or replace. Maybe adding 120 volt outlets to parking lots might be an adequate and cost effective way to make EVs easier to use?
Probably – if the expected dwell time is 8+ hours then L1, if it’s ~4 hours then L2 and if it’s less than 1 then some level of DC is useful.
Grocery stores are going to have a high dwell time relative to highway rest stops for example, so a grocery store should prioritize the number of stalls and uptime over absolute charging speed.
Speaking of dwell times, they should put level 1 chargers outside all of the emergency rooms here in Ontario. At least you could charge up while paying $25 an hour to park.
On the bright side you’re not paying $79 for one finger splint and $25,000 for a night’s observation
I was thinking mostly of places like apartment parking lots, on the side of streets where cars park overnight, and parking lots at places of employment. It probably isn’t useful to have 120 volt outlets available at places people will be at for less than an hour or two. If 120 volt outlets were widely available for charging, it would be easy to keep your EV charged to the point where level 3 chargers wouldn’t be necessary for in-town driving. Obviously, there would still be a need for level 3 chargers for road trips, but this would allow people without an accessible outlet at their residence to drive an EV.
“You need a level one and two spec, as that works great for home and work”
No you don’t. You just need an adaptor plug like what Tesla uses with their travel charger.
“Fast charging wears your battery out faster, “
Irrelevant to the point I was making.
On locations: The place where I see the majority of chargers where I live are at the Federated Co-op locations – in the parking lots of their grocery stores, though they have gas stations too. It’s a brilliant move. It’s a place you have to go, it’s a place where you’re going to spend a fair bit of time, it’s a place where it makes some sense to stop on a road trip – basically, everyone needs snacks and a toilet. They have also been doing a mix of Superchargers and other providers.
It’s a smart move, and partnering with grocery chains and malls is really the play here – places where they want people to stop and spend time.
Imagine an alternate reality where the leader in EV charging is not Tesla, but Buc-ee’s.
Buc-ee’s has multiple locations with 100+ fuel pumps, and several of them are double the size of an average supermarket. Them going big on EV charging is inevitable as EV market share increases. Everyone walking inside to have some barbecue, roasted nuts, and to buy a goofy-grinned stuffed beaver toy to stick to their rear windshield with suction cups.
“Imagine an alternate reality where the leader in EV charging is not Tesla, but Buc-ee’s”
Well there aren’t any Bucee’s in Canada so that reality SUCKS! LOL… kidding. I know what you mean… that the biggest charging networks are paired with large store chains.
Personally I think Walmart would be a great charging partner as well.
There aren’t even any Buc-ee’s in most of the US. They were exclusively a Texas thing for a while, but are expanding into the southeast US.
What would be funny is if some way, somehow, that goofy beaver mascot became forever associated with EVs, to where the mental imagery would be inseparable. As if someone told you they just bought an F-150 Lightning, and the first mental image you can think of is that beaver and not the vehicle itself.
Buckees IS at least starting to work on it. They have Tesla superchargers in at least 27 locations across 6 states
Is Electrify the one who recently outlawed 3rd party charging adapters? Statement was only auto manufacturer original adapters are allowed. Adapters have been talked about, going to come with those switching to NACS before its integrated in the car. Could these cheap adapters be breaking the chargers?
More often the cars but they’re fairly rare out in the wild.
The Free Market always acts rationally and infallible. That’s why whoever wins the Nobel Prize in Economics gets to be Pope that year. In the case where free market doesn’t respond, logical the Government should step in. But that would require a rational government, so we’re probably screwed.
Which goes to the bases of the problem. Global warming is a social problem that we are trying to free market are way out of. Maybe it’s just me, but the collapse of our ecosystem shouldn’t be profitable for the lucky few. Who frankly doesn’t really give a shit if Boca Raton returns to the sea. They can move a lot easier than you can. Plus their duty is to the stock holder. You can commute to work via boat. We need to stop asking people who have no interest in saving us, to consider it. And demand that the thing we give a portion of paycheck to, actually do something for social benefit.
The free market makes a lot of useless junk available, but lets be honest here, most of us buy too much useless junk. I’m not defending the cynicism of big business, just saying we’re all very culpable for the mess our planet is in.
The issue is we don’t exist in a vacuum. Cooperations are allowed and actively promote consumption though all of our media, government and public space. Realistic our issues with consumption are not a personal moral failing, but dogma at the alter of The Economy.
I do not want to suggest any personal moral failing. Most people are by nature pretty conscientious, but when offered crap, we have to admit we don’t always make the most thoughtful decisions and end up rewarding the hawkers of that crap.
Hey, now that Autopian is a media empire, they also seem to be shilling swag, like we really need it!
Econ 101
Uh No. the Free Market does NOT always act rationally and infallibly.
Many examples of this not working well…
1) monopolies 2) illicit drug industry 3) extreme disasters
Don’t know which one relates to EA problem exactly though.
If they joined forces with 2 their customer satisfaction scores might rise, at least. 😉
They are just to in The Game. Can’t stop.
I’d have said the illicit drug industry was a perfect example of the Free Market (along with the sex trade and illegal gambling), and (if you’re willing to take the risks) rational. Only an idiot would claim the Free Market is necessarily socially desirable.
Pretty sure that was sarcasm
EVs are a join effort.
A team decides the standard (pic make up of team)
Automakers follow the standard.
Charging should be third party for the most part. If the makes want to install some at their dealerships/service centers, go for it.
Once people know it make money, the gas stations will adapt to no lose a sale they have the real estate to do so (inner city, highway/rest stops, country areas…
“EVs are a join effort.”
No they’re not. They are merely vehicles with a more modern and more efficient powertrain.
When Tesla developed the Model S, the only outside help they got was for peripheral things like switchgear and seats.
And even then, some of the legacy OEM suppliers half-assed it for Tesla. In the case of seats, Tesla took that in-house.
And when it came to the Model X falcon wing doors, they had to fire their first supplier and find someone else.
And for the supercharger network, Tesla did that completely on their own.
It was up to the automakers to come up with a GREAT standard… and one automaker did… Tesla.
And now it’s up to the SAE (for North America) to codify the standard (as J3400) for everyone to follow.
“If the makes want to install some at their dealerships/service centers, go for it.”
If they are going to sell BEVs, then it should be required that dealers have them so they can properly charge the vehicles they sell as well charging as part of routine service if needed.
But that’s just so the dealers can properly conduct business. The average consumer, outside of a service event, doesn’t need chargers at the dealer. They need fast chargers where Tesla has been installing them… along major highways… which is also where many gas stations are located.
It should also be said that installing chargers is a relatively low cost thing compared to building a gas station from scratch.
I was thinking part of service work, let me top that off for you. Also for selling them.
There are gas stations that still do service work?
I know of a couple I was thinking of dealerships
One problem is, most gas stations don’t have the real estate to just switch. A 2-island gas station has room for 8-12 cars to refuel at a time, at intervals of maybe 5 minutes. Recharge takes, say, 20 minutes, so for the same throughput they’ll need 4X the bays, probably more. The big truck stops can handle that, the city stations not so much.
And under the real estate is NOT somewhere you want to dig up and thereby own forever.
Install vending machines and automated coffee dispensers on the charging device itself to make up for some of that.
YOU gonna drink coffee out of an automated dispenser on a charging device? Ick!
How bad can it be?
You’d think there might be interest from the big gas station chains. I know I see Sheetz with Tesla chargers, but you’d think the mega gas stations/truck stops out there would be adding chargers of all kinds to be a destination for road trippers. After all, don’t they make their money off the coffee and bag of Funyons you buy, not necessarily the “fuel”?
The interstate ones should be all over this but the smaller footprint ones in urban areas have a real problem. They’d generally need to rip out gas pumps to put in EV chargers for one.
Beyond that, the type of crap sold in gas station convenience stores are geared towards people who are going to be there 5 minutes or less. If half the people in the store are going to have a dwell time of 20+ minutes, then the stores need to modify their inventory and business plan.
Yeah, if anything, restaurants along interstates adding them to their parking lots seems like the easy win-win.
See recent Pilot Flying J announcement; nearly all locations fast charging within about a year….project well underway ..
What’s with companies named EA? They are always shit. Electronic Arts, Electrify America…
I feel like the gas stations should be working to fill the charging void. They already have the land, though maybe not the room without giving up existing pumps.
Tesla’s decision to build the supercharger network was the right one. They were driving adoption of electric vehicles and needed infrastructure to support it. No company was going to build charging stations on the prospect that Tesla would be successful or that the market would begin a seismic shift to electric vehicles.
I personally would rather have a PHEV. No range anxiety or charging woes. For the 90% of the time I’m commuting, I can run on electric. The other 10% it’s just a regular hybrid.
Boy, I sure wish I could ask for a 46% raise or even 8% to keep up with inflation.
I’ve thought Gas Station model too. But alas there are 2 HUGE insurmountable problems for most of them.
1) they get fuel delivered to them in trucks and stored in underground tanks not a pipe line.
Electric Stations need many high voltage lines in or some huge battery system to store it and cannot just bury it under the parking lot.
2) Space to hold cars as Gas currently only need a handful of pumps that turn over ever 5-10 minutes.
Electric need WAY more spaces to park cars if staying 30-60+ minutes for a charge.
I couldn’t image the lines at Costco electric charging stations…measured in miles, if that was a thing.
Ideally, the auto manufacturers would not also be the ones controlling the charging networks. The best situation would be companies that get into charging maintaining their networks, but the subsidies have been focused on build-out, and that has been their focus. And that combines especially poorly with some of them putting the stations on some business’s property and then putting the onus of maintenance on the business that has no idea what to do about maintenance.
Standardization and regulation, combined with a requirement of proper maintenance for any subsidies, are needed. A thing superchargers have going for them is that most are only available to specifically compatible vehicles. Charging port location, communication standard, etc are controlled. While we may not get to that level, charging stations designed for the vehicles on the road and vehicles designed for the charging stations will reduce some of the issues. Physically putting less stress on cables and having consistent communication standards would be great first steps.
The pay disparity between average works and the C-suite absolutely disgusts me. Fain could demand every line worker be gifted a unicorn and I wouldn’t think he is out of line at this point.
CEOs make 3-400 times the average pay of one of their employees. And what do they do? Dick around. They post on social media. They call in from their vacation properties to say NO. They go on cute little road trips in their products and wave at people along the way.
And they can’t even be fired. Worst case scenario for an American CEO right now is they get shown the door, pat on the back, and handed 8 figures for their trouble. It’s disgusting.
I can always tell when someone has never worked with or been adjacent to a C suite member when I see posts like this. The amount of travel, stress in managing, and crushing consequences of saying something wrong make it a job I’m not even interested in at that inflated pay. It’s not a job you do, it’s a job you live. I’m not saying that being labor is a cakewalk either, but it’s nowhere as demanding. The money you’re not getting on a line is balanced by the fact you can have a life.
Well you assumed incorrectly. I’m in upper management at my company, I have multiple extended family members who are big deal C suite folks on Wall Street, and my dad worked his way up from employee, to partner, to primary owner at a company that now bears his name.
I’ve brushed arms with many of these types and I’m a promotion or two away from having the opportunity to be there myself. And guess what? They don’t handle 3-400 times the stress or work that their employees do.
Am I jealous of their jobs? Not really, and I enjoy my current niche of being in management at the associate director level because I don’t personally think I’m cut out for being the main person. I also don’t think they should make the same salaries as their employees, because I do understand that management and big time decision making come with their own unique challenges.
But what they have to put up with is simply not worth making hundreds of times what their employees make…and who cares if you’re never off the clock when you get to spend so much of your time bouncing around assorted vacation properties, on golf courses, eating at Michelin Star restaurants, etc.
I never quite get where this “you’ll never understand and you’re just jealous!” type of wealth-defending energy comes from. I come from wealth and my wife and I are already making more money in our early 30s than most people can ever hope for. I’m not some bitter basement dweller behind a keyboard….I’ve actually experienced a lot of this shit firsthand, I know from that experience that it’s utter bullshit, and rather than developing a psychotic urge to do whatever it takes to have MORE I’d rather spend my energy building a ladder behind me so others can climb up too….it’s better to punch up than punch down.
It comes from the fact that it’s not as easy as folks make it out to be, and working with really good C suite folks engenders respect. I’ve been union/hourly and I’m now mid level salary as I worked my way up too. I wasn’t born into wealth as you were, I had to work every moment to get to where I am. No diss on you as we don’t get to chose where we get put at birth either. Do our line level workers need more comp? Sure. But I’ve also directly seen how unions squash the best workers and protect those that can get you killed, because I was almost killed by one. Are C suite salaries out of line? Maybe, but not for the good ones. It’s all about perspective.
No disrespect taken, and I’m open about my privilege because I know I’ve benefitted from it along the way. But I will add that I (stubbornly) chose an entirely different career path from any of the financially successful people in my family in an effort to make a name for myself on my own merits/have an opportunity to do work that helps people.
I’ll never deny that my privilege has afforded me more opportunities than most get, especially when I was a dipshit teenager/in my early 20s and getting away with plenty of less than wholesome behavior, but I also worked my ass of to forge my own path and I do take some pride in it, if that makes sense.
HAHAHA, buddy. No. I’m corporate legal. I’ve been working with F500 C-suites for over a decade. Just .. . no.
Please tell me the “consequences” a suffers when a company does poorly? Their stock options are worth less? They “have” to lay off their workers to keep the stock price up? Oh wait then those options get more valuable!
I guess it depends on if you’re in a highly valued business or if your CEO is worth a damn. The ones I’ve worked with are — but I can see your point too. When your market valuation is your life and you don’t have a legacy pipeline to sit on CEO quality will make or break you, and I have seen CEO’s get the boot at companies I’ve been with. CSO/CRO’s? Almost a revolving door at times. It’s not an easy job.
I can mostly agree with this. They still don’t deserve anywhere near HUNDREDS of times what their workers are making.
Also, sorry my last comment was pissy. I get worked up about this stuff (if you didn’t notice!).
No, it’s okay. It’s a contentious topic and we’re all guided by our experiences. I had a terrible experience with a union and think the UAW has a bad reputation — and what value will they provide if they get what they want? I’ve been hourly so I know the value of being able to walk away from the job and not think about it. Likewise, I’m salary/exempt in this role and have literally had a holiday weekend nuked when they needed me to help with a sale that was 20 hours of flight away. Line workers *never* deal with that. So what is the proper compensation for someone that is hard to replace and can be shoved into a situation at any time? Whatever they can negotiate.
I am in awe of the civility and respect in this thread.
The entire country should be waging war against the collective C Suite right now and not just the UAW. We are at wealth inequality levels similar to those of the gilded age right now. Without labor the C Suite doesn’t have shit. I have no idea why so many Americans are bought into the lie that they should lick the boots of the 1% so they can have a .000001% chance of being welcomed into their club one day.
Both sides of the aisle lament income inequality and the death of the working class. The enemy is sitting right there. They’re hiding in plain sight. Stop arguing with each other and start uniting against the real enemy. There are 99 of us for every one of them. And maybe an economic system that concentrates all wealth in the hands of a few people and relies on the hope that they will choose to do the right thing of their own volition needs a few tweaks? Seems reasonable, but what do I know.
When it comes to EV charging I’m afraid it’s probably time for the gubment to step up and take action. We’ve let the FrEe MaRkEt do its thing and as usual it’s given us a shit sandwich and lined the pockets of a small handful of people. At this stage if the government wants to ban ICE vehicles and force everyone into EVs they’re going to have to do some of the groundwork to make it less of a headache. The free market is also speaking loudly and clearly about BEVs right now…they’re too damn expensive for the compromises they require.
Our infrastructure needs a huge upgrade to support EVs. Get on it already. Standardize one form of charging across the board and create minimum standards for it. Build more nuclear plants. Oversee some steps so we don’t wind up with grifts like Electrify America. Guess what? We asked corporations politely if they can do the right thing and they’re doing what corporations always do…making the most money they can off the least good product they can get away with selling.
Gee, where have we seen this before?! Okay I feel better now that I got all that out of my system.
Not only that, but the Electrify America crap was a punishment for other profitable wrongdoing, and we didn’t even ensure they did it right.
It was a reward disguised as a punishment and they were too stupid to realize it. I don’t think any of the auto manufacturers wanted to get into bed with Elmo, but at least he has a minimum viable product.
If anyone had made a reliable CCS charging network as the major manufacturers started into EVs, they could have both cleaned up and gotten CCS as the standard, forcing Tesla to switch. Instead, everyone chased the immediate money and let the big money slip away. Now, the big players are adopting NACS and the Superchargers will make big money, at least until charging stations get built out at places people actually want to stop.
That’s how it works. To most corporate business, anything further than the next quarterly earnings report is irrelevant. Wall Street doesn’t reward the long haul. The Japanese used to be good at long haul stuff, don’t know if that’s true anymore but in any case a US power distribution network is kind of outside of their experience. Maybe China could do it, but that would mean turning the keys over to them and that’s not gonna happen.
When is the last time VW has done something right? I’m being semi serious here. Their incompetence is breathtaking. Of course there’s Dieselgate…but they also unapologetically, openly sell some of the least reliable cars on the road today. They’ve ruined their entire goddamn lineup with infotainment systems that are so terrible their CEO has had to come out and say “hi everyone, we had a whoopsie lol, our bad”. Their EVs are widely considered some of the worst in the industry.
My question is when is all of this shit finally going to catch up with them? Are they just too big to fail at this point? To me it seems like they’re ridiculously lucky they have super talented people behind companies like Porsche and Audi keeping the lights on while they continue to fuck up time and time again…but the company seems well past due for their 500th reckoning.
…and yet their cars still sell and there’s a sizable chunk of people that still buy them religiously. I don’t get it, and I say this as someone whose first new car purchase was a GTI.
VW manages to sell image still. People who can’t afford a luxury import, but still want German cars. People who don’t want domestics or Asian cars for whatever reason.
And people still think a GTI or even just a Jetta are more fun than a Corolla or an Elantra (I notice that a number of people I know don’t even register the sporty versions of those, for whatever reason).
German cars certainly do have a cult-like following. My parents literally will not consider a car unless it’s German…despite the fact that they’ve had multiple Audis and now a BMW mechanically total themselves before even reaching 75,000 miles.
Which is insane to me. The German manufacturers other than Porsche have seemingly all collectively decided that 100k miles is the maximum lifespan for their cars and catastrophic mechanical failure after leases/factory warranties run out is acceptable.
And it seems like their customers have just decided this is fine and normal. In 2023 no less, where even the shitboxiest of shitboxes can exceed 100k with nothing but preventative maintenance. It’s absurd to me. I remember my GTI having serious problems with misfiring and cutting power in the first 5,000 miles, and every time I took it in the VW techs essentially said it was totally normal for the EA888 and to just hope for the best. I was then given a list of “VW recommended gas stations” and told I should only be using them moving forward.
…I beg your pardon? In what world is an engine misfiring repeatedly and cutting half the cylinders off at highway speeds in the first few thousand miles “normal”?!
Drivers Wanted
As a GTI owner staring down the end of my factory warranty and who is unlikely to buy another VW and can’t think of a model I’d recommend before something else in its respective class, I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have anxieties. But I’ve had 1 CEL, think it was also misfire related and not something I’d have preferred happen but also didn’t affect drivability at the time the way your issue had. My repeat-used-VW-buyer friend hasn’t had any issues with two Mk6 Jettas including a GLI, but then my friend with an Elantra since new has also had misfire issues that have popped up twice in under 50k miles. My own family’s experience with 3 new and 1 used H/K haven’t had any mechanical repairs (although my Optima almost certainly would have eventually) but seem liable to nickel and dime the way domestic brands did for us, just without the electrical issues the newer domestics also had and have. Not picking on H/K because you have a Kona, just that I don’t think there’s any winning with any one brand now, even Honda and Toyota have not been infallible.
I think most people buying VWs now probably did not have personal experiences with the really bad ones like the turn of the century, or they think of older high-mileage diesel models. I don’t think you can look at the sales success of something like the Atlas and say they didn’t nail it though. On enthusiast sites people look at the Atlas and wonder why someone would buy it, but IMO part of the appeal is that it’s different from the same old Toyotas or Hondas or Fords they grew up with. Subaru, to name a brand that has a better rep for reliability (however deserved as they’ve had their issues), has the same thing going with the Ascent – however stale they are now, before the Palluride twins they were the latest new and different entries.
I hate VW’s. Literally everyone I’ve known with a VW over the years has had some sort of major issue with it. I was horrified when my sister bought a Tiguan a few years ago.
My brother has a ’10 Jetta wagon that’s been a huge pile since he’s owned it. My 07 Volvo wagon has 100k more miles on it and has held up so much better. For instance, he just spent 1400 bucks to have the AC repaired. I bought my Volvo in 2012 and have not touched the AC in that time, it still works. The sunroof got stuck open shortly after he bought it, luckily that was still under warranty. Maybe a year later it was the fuel pump, also under warranty. 6 months before the AC repair, he had 1200 worth of engine work done. There’s a leak somewhere and the spare tire well will fill with water in a heavy rain, and there’s some bubbling around the wheel arches.
He was trying to replace it last winter but couldn’t find s decent hybrid in his budget. He was in a pinch so he got the engine work done, so at that point he decided to commit and fix the AC too and hope it lasts another 2 or 3 years.
My Volvo has some issues too, but it’s still happily chugging along at 233k. and looks in MUCH better overall shape than the Dub.
My sister and her husband bought a certified Tiguan around the time I bought my new GTI…and they’ve already moved on from VW as well. It turns out, somehow, their dingbat techs missed a recall during the certification process…aka the sort of headache you specifically buy certified to avoid.
Anyway, the sunroof had a series of issues. The first was when it was somehow shattered by an acorn. That was a $1,000+ repair for them but they chalked it up to bad luck. Then the car flooded. They paid a sizable sum of money to have the sunroof repaired AGAIN because VW refused to cover it.
Then a few weeks later they got in it before their commute and there was a full inch of water on the floor. It had somehow gotten worse. The service department told my sister it wasn’t warranty-able and would be a $5,000 fix, because the VW frat bro techs were like “hurrrr woman don’t know cars durrrrr”
She wound up doing research and realized the sunroof was having issues because her car was recalled before she owned for…you guessed it! A sunroof fix. So their friendly local VW dealership sold them a CERTIFIED car with an open recall for a potentially catastrophic issue. How kind of them.
Naturally when confronted with this the dealership tucked their tail between their legs and did a THIRD sunroof repair on the house, but the damage was done at that point. They sold the Tiguan for a certified Lexus NX a few days later. Unsurprisingly, it has had 0 issues.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! My mom’s Audi Allroad powered by the LeGeNdArY EA888 grenaded itself literal days after her Audi extended warranty had expired. She literally got her last service that was on her maintenance/extended warranty plan, parked the car, and a few days later the engine was seized. The car had all of 65,000 miles on the clock and was religiously maintained.
This was also, conveniently, right when she was looking to trade it in. Naturally the dealerships were like AWWW THAT’S TOO BAD, we can give you a few grand for it for your trouble! We wound up having the car looked over by an independent mechanic/filed an insurance claim and State Farm totaled the car out because it would need 5 figures worth of work to get it on the road again.
At 65,000 miles. Fuck Volkswagen. I know we have some folks here who love them and swear they’re not that bad, and that’s fine…y’all can keep loving them, and despite the pain my GTI put me through I do miss it sometimes. But for me personally? Outside of Porsche I’m never touching VAG again. Fool me once, etc.
I hope they got the money back for the first two repairs. If it wasn’t too long ago stick it to the dealer.
Living in the past? 1970s-1980s German cars (not vw or Audi obvs) were objectively well built and lasted a long time. My ’88 will outlive me.
That might be exaggerating a bit. VW’s MEB platform is not fun and they don’t make fart noises, but experienced EV reviewers frequently recommend them because they’re effective and (most importantly) cheap.
As for the rest of what VW’s been up to… yeah, I don’t get it either.
I found the ID.4 to be quite chintzy in quality and various system controls horrible compared to my Niro EV.
The Niro is also cheaper than the ID.4, particularly in the low end trims (availability of the ID.4 Standard is basically nil). Yeah, it’s a tiny bit smaller, but that can be good for a commuter.
And if I needed AWD? Well, I’d rather spend a few more bucks and go with something on the E-GMP platform than MEB.
The Niro is deeply underappreciated (though the charge speed’s maybe not the best). I’m not trying to argue that the ID.4 is the best, just that it’s not the worst.
I think it might be overstating it to say all VWs are crap. Yeah, the MK4 GTI I had was hugely expensive to keep on the road due to shitty engineering decisions. But I have had two Golfs since (Stockholm Syndrome, I guess), and for what they cost, they have been excellent cars (better than the other category options) and have been completely trouble free and inexpensive to maintain.
The ‘infotainment’ in these have also been just fine and whatever is missing is quickly backfilled with Carplay. I also like that the screen is in the dash like a head unit and not a tack on.
I think the complaint you are referring to is more about what they did in their EVs and some other newer models by directing everything to the screen. This is where VW often missteps. They either think they can reinvent a perfectly working and proven concept with some overtly complex other path or they look for cost cutting that ends up biting them in the ass. In the case of the EVs, it appears they did both and it’s a small matter of time before their reputation of “all VWs suck”, gets reinforced again.
I couldn’t agree more about the 1%. They keep the other 99% fighting amongst ourselves in the hope we don’t realize who the real enemy is. The number of people I see simp for the 1% in IG comments is disgusting, as well as the number of blue-collar people thinking the Red party somehow represents their interests. Yes, the party that wants to bust unions and cut your social security DEFINITELY has worker’s interests at heart. I hate to break it to them but the person on welfare eating a fudge round is NOT in fact the enemy. And all this “free market” talk. BULL SHEET. Not exactly a free market when as soon as a company takes a financial hit they have their hand out to the govt. for some of that sweet, taxpayer funder bailout money. How about this? You get bailed out, you’re now a govt owned entity. If the risks are socialized, the profit should be too.
All the price gauging and wage suppression, and meanwhile fucking housing is fast becoming a luxury, I make 60K and I’d be skimping by paycheck to paycheck if my landlord charged me market rate. Forget buying a house, I might as well get a van, the cheapest house in the town I work in would be about 90% of my take home IF I somehow managed to save 20%. Moving further out it gets even MORE expensive. I just saw an article about there are likely to be more rate hikes, and another saying home prices and unaffordability are likely to rise even further in 2024. I can’t help but think we’d have been better if if the fed had done nothing at all.
I hope the UAW has success, and the movement spreads like wildfire. I’m non-union, but a rising tide lifts all boats (hopefully). I’m super happy for people at UPS, and I hope FedEx and AMZ are paying attention. And if things continue to get worse, we’ll all be homeless anyway, so like fuck it, why even bother working. I have plenty of other better things to do.
Burn baby, burn.
/rant off/
I’m sure NIST will codify a charging standard that’s different from ISO and will be ready in 2028
I wonder how much Tesla makes from their charging network? Other OEMs (if Tesla makes money) should be building out charging networks as a new revenue stream.
I see the Biden administration stepping in if the UAW goes on strike.
I don’t own an EV but if public charging really sucks that much then there’s a business opportunity there. But then again if no one is stepping into that market then maybe they know something I don’t. Honestly I have no idea why chargers cost so much.
It takes a huge amount of initial capital investment – chargers, land, etc. There is a business opportunity, sure, but the cash outlay at the beginning of the project is going to be significant, and you’re now going to run into “okay but how are we going to get a return on our investment when EA and Tesla are in this space?”
VW should sell EA to another company that can raise the money to replace the bad chargers, operate the network effectively, and expand its reach.
I doubt charging overall is profitable at this time when considering margins on electricity, maintenance, and real estate leases. With the unexpected costs of a bad charger design, VW Management doesn’t want to commit more money to the chargers when they are already spending so much on the vehicles.
A new entity focused solely on charging will see that as EV adoption increases, it will be profitable. That seems like a great basis for raising capital.
EV charging technology is really good, even if the infrastructure itself isn’t. Even Aerovironment in the 1990s was demonstrating 0-80% recharge times in 20 minutes, albeit with much smaller battery packs. Imagine if we had more efficient EVs that had battery packs roughly one-third to one-half the size of current ones for the same range. The charge time would correspondingly be about 1/3-1/2, and the traffic problems at charging stations would be much less of an issue. These massive road hippos with 100+ kWh battery packs are part of the problem regarding clogging up the charging stations. The idea is to get everyone in and out quickly, and having to spend 30-45 minutes to charge up your massive pack instead of 10-15 minutes works against that. Once I get my Triumph GT6 EV ready for long trips, I won’t even be using these stations because they don’t even accept cash. At the very least, they should have a vending machine that accepts dollar bills and change. I like to pay with cash, and prefer not to leave an electronic data trail of everything I do.
I’m curious to see what this new Alfa Romeo is going to weigh. If it’s another two-ton pig of a “supercar”, I will immediately lose interest. There’s already enough of those out there. The described specs already seem to indicate that it is what it will be but I’ll retain a “wait and see” approach.
The UAW demands are not at all unreasonable. What they’re asking for is not even up to the standard of the rest of the first world, because they’re not even demanding 2 months paid vacation a year to go with their 32-hour workweek and the restoration of pre-2009 benefits, and there’s still enough fat in these large companies to make a nice profit margin in the rest of the first world with these things notwithstanding. Productivity per US worker has doubled from 50 years ago, but if you trust the government’s numbers, wages are about stagnant(and if you price everything in hours of labor to afford it and get rid of the CPI’s hedonic adjustments, the long term trend has actually been a wage decline).
Word of the Day: Road Hippo
I love it. In the dictionary there’s a picture of a gray GMC Hummer EV.
Agreed that Tesla making the Supercharger network was a brilliant stroke. A lot of folks poo-poohed the idea in the early 2010’s, saying a “car” company shouldn’t be involved in the nitty gritty of buying land and developing infrastructure. The joke is on those people since the infrastructure made Tesla EV adoption possible.
Also, after having had a Model 3 for an Uber recently for a longer ride involving a representative mix of city and highway, it’s genuinely a good car. Well, if one gets a decently built car.
The magic of vision and virtually unlimited capital. This happened because Elon demanded a seamless solution with his vehicles and had lots of other people’s money to make it happen. Legacy carmakers and energy companies are capital constrained, making it much harder.
And they are not known for their vision.
If there were a way for both sides to somehow lose the contract negotiation, it would be wonderful. Or at least a way for them to both shut up.
A 32 hour week and a 46% raise are what’s required to avoid slave labor? Maybe you’re just salty that the foreign auto plants can pay good wages without your union’s “assistance”?
On the other hand:
Has this guy ever been right about anything, ever? He ruined Infiniti and almost did the same with Cadillac. Whatever he’s making as a consultant should be immediately distributed to all employees.
And:
Come the fuck on man.
Even union teachers don’t have a 32 hour contracted week. That’s just nuts.
So maybe they should go on strike until they get it… Why are you arguing against the side of labor? Do you like working more hours for less pay? Do you like the owner/leech class vacationing in the Bahamas while you toil away in a hot and dangerous factory? I don’t.
I’m arguing from the perspective of a union teacher with a contracted 35 hour work week including paid lunch (go AFL-CIO!). So 32.5 actual work hours. To actually get mandated stuff done requires time outside of contracted hours. Unfortunately not eligible for overtime because being classed as a “professional” despite being crapped on by everyone.
32 hours also falls below the threshold for what constitutes “full time” work in many states so the company will have no legal obligation to offer benefits. If they get it, they can kiss benefits (especially health insurance!!!) goodbye. That’s a giant expense and always a hard discussion at negotiation time since it’s always pay or health insurance. I’m not on the negotiating team but our union is good about communicating.
That’s where my comment came from. Good luck to my union colleagues in getting a fair contract!
M4A solves the benefits problem. The money is there.
A more strategic ask would be that the lowest paid autoworker should make at least 1/200th of the highest paid. You can raise salaries or cut your CEOs pay. Your choice.
That’s a neat idea, but I don’t think executives will ever agree to reasonably manage their compensation at this point.
Cool story: several years ago the company I worked for announced a huge round of lay offs. I asked the CEO in a town hall if executive compensation would be impacted. He laughed at me in front of a room of 400 employees.
I understand the tactic of asking for much more than you’re really willing to settle for, but both sides are tone deaf IMO.
*Every day we lament how much cars cost in this comment section*. And the workers are proposing to do 80% of the work for 146% of the pay, and expect me to believe this won’t make the price of cars skyrocket even more?
And the idea that executive pay, while certainly obscene in some cases, could solve this is frankly naive, like the people who think we can balance the federal budget by taxing billionaires a bit more. Mary Barra makes $30 million. Wow, that really is a lot. GM employs more than 42,000 hourly workers. Lets cut her salary in half and give it to the workers. Oh wait, you mean that’s only $12 more per paycheck?
The people implying I’m a bootlicker here are hardly better. All the automakers are laying off salaried white collar workers almost yearly and nary a tear is shed, but the instant I question whether it makes sense to give out 50% raises for a 4 day week, I’m the bad guy. Save it please. I’ve worked in union factories, and the workers are no better or worse than they are anywhere else.
Your attempt to discredit that notion actually makes it sound like a stupendous idea. You’re telling me that with ONE simple action, they could immediately realize a $12 raise per employee? Fantastic! Who knows, maybe with two simple actions, they could get everything they’re asking for.
By all means ask for it.
But the workers are currently demanding something like $1200 per paycheck, not $12. As well as a 20% reduction in working hours. So it’s not as if there’s a giant pot of money just waiting in executive salaries that is keeping the companies from handing out these giant raises.
Shitting on organized labor is really puzzling to me. The UAW’s starting wages are outpaced by half of the fast food restaurants in my area these days.
Johan is hot garbage and hasn’t done anything right since he left VW with his inflated ego from being at the right place at the right time for Audi. He’s just mad that someone’s trying to bankrupt a company and it isnt him.
Yeah I don’t understand how he keeps getting work, but it’s maddening.
I’d insist on his firing in any union contract I was negotiating.
I’m surprised they were able to interview him without him insisting they move the interview to a city he’d rather be in.
I did a road trip from Florida to Illinois when I bought my Bolt, and I definitely had an atypical experience…everything went perfectly smoothly, and while I did encounter a broken charger (an EA, of course), there were other working units so it was simple to move to another one. I did find pricing to vary wildly, with an EVGo in Georgia being the most expensive, and a ChargePoint station at a truck tire dealer in Nashville being free (and they had water and popcorn!)
Since I had L2 at home, I haven’t used public charging since then…
I’ve always thought that gas station (or at least travel center) operators have the most to lose from an electric transition, and should be motivated to hedge their bets by installing more charging.
EA’s network is pitiful; I’ve had chargers cut out, look like they’re working but don’t deliver electricity, and the ever-popular random crash. I’m fortunate I only have to use them occasionally.
The UAW negotiations will be interesting if Shawn Fain can hold the company’s feet to the fire. He sounds like someone who will go to the wall with them.