Why GM’s Move To Kill Its Standalone Electric Van Brand Makes Perfect Sense

Neighborhood delivery vans should be electric. This makes an extreme amount of sense. They travel short, often prescribed routes in relatively compact areas. They also idle a lot. GM’s decision to make a van offshoot of its electric Ultium platform also made a ton of sense. They called it BrightDrop and now BrightDrop is gone. Does this make sense?

This Friday’s installment of The Morning Dump is going to ask a lot of questions. For instance: Does the new Lexus design language make sense? For as conservative as Toyota has been lately, Lexus has been far more willing to experiment with its aesthetic. The luxury brand is on the verge of a new revolution in its design and Lexus is asking itself if they’ve gone too far.

Has Uber gone too far? The brand thinks it’s figured out a way to further penetrate the South Korean market in spite of being an underdog. And speaking of underdogs, is the International Scout the underdog of vintage SUVs?

Enough questions. Let’s get some answers.

BrightDrops Will Just Be Chevys, Which Is What They Should Have Been All Along

In the initial mania over electrification, there was a sense that this was something new and therefore everything needed to feel different. In retrospect, this was a fundamental misunderstanding of what had made Tesla so successful. Yes, the cars were new, but every Tesla still felt recognizably like a car.

As I mentioned earlier this week, this zeal for novelty led automakers like Mercedes to invent whole subbrands they’re quickly trying to unwind. For the most part, GM has been one of the better automakers when it comes to naming electrified vehicles. The one exception might be BrightDrop, the Ultium-based open-door delivery vans.

When Rivian made its vans for Amazon, they just called them the Rivian Commercial Van. The Ford electric van is the Ford E-Transit. The Mercedes electrified van is just the eSprinter. The benefit of having your electric cargo van underneath your main brand is that you can sell it alongside your other fleet vehicles to your existing fleet customers.

BrightDrop was its own separate thing, making vans we found to be quite good when we reviewed them. There was some logic behind the initial BrightDrop project being separate as GM has a bad habit of squashing things that are too innovative. This was alluded to in a press release when BrightDrop was transitioned into GM last year:

BrightDrop was born in GM’s Innovation Lab and spent the last three years as a wholly owned subsidiary. That structure allowed BrightDrop to operate with the agility and innovation of a tech startup and benefit from GM’s deep manufacturing expertise.

Once GM absorbed BrightDrop it became less clear why it needed to be its own brand given that GM already has a robust fleet business. This is the same conclusion that GM has also finally come to, as announced this morning:

Adding BrightDrop’s electric vans to the expanding Chevrolet EV portfolio will give BrightDrop customers access to one of the industry’s largest and most extensive commercial sales and service networks and enhances brand growth opportunities.

All Chevrolet dealers will have the opportunity to sell BrightDrop vans if they meet certain commercial EV requirements. Once certified, participating Chevrolet dealerships can service BrightDrop products, helping to optimize uptime for commercial fleet operators.

“With the addition of BrightDrop to the Chevrolet lineup, we are combining advanced EV technology with the dependability and widespread accessibility that only Chevrolet can offer,” said Scott Bell, vice president, Chevrolet. “This move strengthens our EV offerings and reaffirms our role as a leading commercial brand that enables businesses large and small to get work done.”

I also think the van looks dope with a Chevy badge. I just wish we had a passenger version.

Toyota Designer: Are We ‘Going To Be Ok’?

Business is tricky. One of the biggest challenges is somehow being confident enough in what you’re doing to keep moving forward while, also, being humble enough to ask the difficult questions about where you’re going.

Sometimes being successful means having the right product, but just as often I think it’s seeing the problem and having the right team and right mindset to address it. Lexus shocked everyone a few years ago when it moved away from its staid Japanese design and embraced a more radical aesthetic, defined by increasingly protruding spindle grilles.

Lexus has been extremely successful since doing so, which means perhaps it was the right decision.

Now Lexus is looking to take on Tesla and everyone else with an electric Lexus, but is the design going to be too much?

Hasn Griemel sat down with Toyota design chief Simon Humphries to talk about this specific question and it’s a good interview. Here are a couple of highlights:

“It’s important to think, ‘Is that going to be OK? Is that too far?’ ” said Humphries, who also serves as Toyota Motor Corp.’s chief branding officer. “Challenging is the right thing to do.”

And:

Humphries, a 2023 Automotive News All-Star honoree for his achievements in design, said the departure is as dramatic as the 2011 introduction of the spindle grille. Though initially panned by some as an ugly mug, the grille became a successful, defining brand feature, he said.

“We wanted to give Lexus character,” Humphries said. “Even on some of the vehicles where we put that on a minor change, the sales almost doubled. So there are a lot of people out there who actually were very like-minded about that sort of thing. They wanted a more expressive car.”

If breaking things works, keep breaking things I guess.

Uber Is Growing In South Korea

In many places in the United States, Uber drivers can only operate if they have a taxi license. In New York, for instance, this is the case. However, if you’re getting a ride from a county outside of the city you might not need a livery license to operate.

South Korea requires all drivers to have some form of taxi license, which is why Uber left the country a few years ago, leaving local ride-app Kakao to suck up a lot of the business.

Uber didn’t give up and is now back again, this time joining up with Korean conglomerate SK Group to create Uber Taxi.

Per Reuters:

Khosrowshahi said about 20% of South Korean taxi drivers were on the Uber Taxi platform, and that the number of passengers grew nearly 80% year-on-year during the first half of 2024, including a more than doubling of the usage by international travellers to South Korea since the rebranding.

If at first you don’t succeed…

The Autopian In The Los Angeles Times (And Also Tim Walz)

Our pal Daniel Miller over at the LA Times has a new article out on Tim Walz and his International Scout II and it quotes a familiar source:

Walz appears to have a genuine passion for cars, but he also seems to possess a finely calibrated understanding of how his actions may play with voters, said Matt Hardigree, publisher of the Autopian, which has written about the politician.

Just take the governor’s social media posts featuring his Scout and another Scout — his dog. That, Hardigree said, “is an unhateable image.”

“It is Norman Rockwell transported 50 years into the future,” he said.

As my buddy pointed out, there’s a real Betteridge’s Law at play in the LAT headline. Would any reasonable person change their vote because the VP candidate likes cool cars? I’m guessing the answer is: No.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

The song “Beetlebum” by Blur is, quite famously, about singer Damon Albarn doing heroin with his then-girlfriend and Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann. Heroin sounds terrible and I’m generally against it, though Albarn does have a way of making it sound just a little sexy amid all the awfulness.

The Big Question

What are your Labor Day plans?