I’d be curious to learn what Rivian’s maintenance manual says.
If the crunch bent anything that holds batteries, you might need to take those batteries out for testing. Which might necessitate taking half the truck apart to get to them buried in the core.
A battery that got bunged might work fine. For another 10K miles then burn the car to a cinder. I know I don’t know the details on how they ensure batteries haven’t been damaged in a collision. But they sort of need to be sure, not just replace the fender & let it go. For ICEs, similar considerations apply to bent driveshafts, tweaked suspension torqueing the differential, etc.
A no-kidding make it good as new repair is often not what the insurance company wants to fund. They want a cosmetic repair and don’t ask don’t tell about everything else.
This probably has a lot to do with interest rates and slowing consumer spending. Also, there may be more resistance to electric cars than we knew because of the hype. Also, Tesla dropped their prices and a lot of electric cars seem to be overpriced in comparison now. Volkswagen says their electeic cars just aren’t selling.
And as reviews of the Lightning, Rivian stc come in, some ofmthe gloss is coming off of electric trucks, which turn out to be more limited than they let on.
As you say, it’s all about the prices. Unfortunately, while non-Tesla makes have largely figured out how to build functionally decent EVs, they’re still bad at producing them for a low cost. Tesla was still quite profitable last quarter, despite the price cuts.
Dealerships are also still bad at selling EVs, to the point of sabotaging their own sales. Another downside for most automakers.
When interest rates go up, the price of the car must decrease to maintain the same level of demand, even with constant consumer sentiment (which itself is questionable given the current macroeconomic situation). Other makes obviously know this, but have less freedom to cut prices.
Yeah, I’ve read that even after the price cuts Tesla’s cars still have a higher profit margin than any other EV maker, by a large margin.
According to the site below, Tesla made $9,574 for each Model 3 they sold in Q3 last year, while GM was second at $2,150, while Ford lost -$762 on each electric vehicle sold.
The other car makers can’t compete with the price cuts, which would make all of them lose money on every car. There’s a reason why Tesla has such crazy high valuation.
The average price of an EV is about $20,000 higher than the average price of an IC car. Now that consumer spending is slowing and interest rates still rising, that’s going to really hurt EV sales.
Those are across their whole lineup, including gas cars. Ford’s EV EBIT margin is about negative 100%. I.e., every EV sold cost twice as much to produce as it made in revenue. GM is likely almost as bad. So the situation is far worse for them than it seems–they aren’t competitive even with the gas cars subsidizing their EV lineup.
Government subsidies will not help unless they only apply to Ford/GM/etc. and not Tesla. Which they lobbied for, but largely failed at.
I want the other makes to succeed as it’s unhealthy to have one make so dominant in both sales and profits, but that’s where we’re at. It’s very similar to Apple vs. Android right now.
The DC government owns more than 100 Chevrolet Bolt EVs as part of its fleet, some of which are used for duties like parking enforcement. It has fitted 40 Bolts with EMM devices at a staggering cost of $14,000 per vehicle, plus an additional $3,000 per EV for “data monitoring.”
Incredible. The most charitable spin I can put on that is that someone in the government was getting kickbacks for the contract. The alternative is that they’re dumb as a box of hair.
WUSA9 found reason to be skeptical of Hardge’s claims … thanks to a fraud conviction in 2001.
How is it that people keep getting taken for a ride, not just from the same scammy-ass bullshit, but from exactly the same scammers?
From a different site:
Court documents show Hardge was sentenced to 26 years in prison for a felony conviction in 2001. He was found guilty of selling unregistered securities from his home state of Mississippi. Hardge served five years in prison and tried to expunge, or wipe, his criminal record in 2021. A Mississippi judge rescinded Hardge’s temporary felony expungement in March 2022, after a judge’s order shows allegations surfaced that Hardge used business investor’s money to repay the people he defrauded in 2001.
Someone else is benefiting from the scam. It’s amazing that such a program can make it throug the procurement process without someone in the mix calling out shenanigans. But then I said that about Hyperloop and the Playpump as well.
The company was able to beat the estimates despite the fact that its losses before interest and taxes (EBIT) grew to $1.1 billion from its EV business, which the company calls its Model e division, up from the $722 million EBIT losses in the first quarter. And those losses are going to rise, at least in the short term. Ford said it expects a Model e EBIT loss of $4.5 billion for the full year, up from its earlier forecast of a $3 billion loss for all of 2023.
Ford’s numbers work out to a loss of about $32,000 per EV that it sold in the second quarter, compared to a profit of $3,200 per vehicle sold by the Ford Blue division.
I really wonder how much of the EV losses at all the traditional car companies are artifacts of their accounting methods.
Not that it’s shenanigans, but that they e.g. allocate a pro-rata share of company-wide overhead into the EV division that’s not actually doing anything special for EVs and doesn’t represent actual incremental overhead spending. The effect is to flatter the ICE divisions and throw shade on the EV division. etc. There are lots of natural artificialities in how one accounts for capital expenditure and tooling a new factory is certainly a capital-intensive process. Etc.
OTOH, if they are angling for some sort of subsidy to transition to EVs, then making the EVs look as unprofitable as possible might be a deliberate plan coming from the C-suite. Might.
When adding new oil to an engine after draining out the old oil (and replacing the oil filter), it is best practice to add the precise volume specified for that engine. If the engine calls for 4.2 quarts of oil, for example, you should add 4.2 quarts of oil. (Note: some specs provide oil capacity with filter change and without filter change. Make sure you use the right number.)
After the proper quantity of oil is added, run the engine for a couple minutes, shut if off, and then check the oil level on the dipstick. Whatever level it’s at corresponds to “full,” regardless of the dots or marks on the dipstick. Those marks are nominal indicators.
With the advent of 8 speed automatics in trucks, does the rear axle ratio really matter anymore? Since the driver can select a limit on the highest gear the transmission selects, wouldn’t this have a similar effect as a higher differential ratio?
Ultimately, all that matters is that you have enough low-end torque to get your load moving on e.g. an uphill boat ramp, and you have enough high-end torque to overcome non-trivial air drag at speed, and that your top-speed at max sustainable RPM is sufficient for cruising.
If you as driver can do those three things, how they as engineers achieve it is unimportant.
A transmission designed for towing could have enough total range between 1 and 8 that a different differential is unnecessary. Unlike on a 3- or 4-speed 1970s tranny where you had to select by diff which of those 3 things your truck failed at.
OTOH, the manufacturer may find it cheaper to use a higher diff (more torque / less speed) while keeping most of the tranny stock except for e.g. the very top-end gear to stretch the total system to cover all 3 goals well.
So I’ll suggest that in the modern era, buying the factory towing package and leaving the noodling to the pros is probably as good as it gets.
If one had to retrofit serious towing onto an existing non-tow-equipped truck, changing a diff ratio might be cheaper / easier than changing a tranny. But that’s what a lot of the 1950s-1980s backyard engineering was: doing cheap mods to offset owning the wrong vehicle for the actual mission.
You’re correct of course, and that’s what we did for our (unplanned) truck replacement early this year. But due to limited supply, substantial price increases, and the ridiculous waits for orders, we took a “good enough” truck from the lot. It’s more than adequate for our current trailer, but came with less than the max towing ability due to the rear axle ratio.
We have been considering a replacement camper for some time, as ours is almost 10 years old. I would have preferred the higher ratio which allows a heavier camper, and even discussed this with the service folk at the dealer. They can swap it out for me, but at a hefty price. I was wondering why I couldn’t just limit the tranny from the highest 2 or 3 gears, and effect a similar ratio (engine → wheels). That’s why I’m curious if there’s something I’m missing about this.
For the detail oriented, here’s a table of the truck’s gearing, with the resultant MPH at 2400 RPM. The final two columns compare the two rear axle ratio’s resulting speed.
Note that limiting it to 7th gear at 2400 rpm results in 68 mph with the 4.10 ratio, while limiting it to 6th gear at 2400 with the 3.73 results in a very similar 63 mph. I figure these are so close that the axle ratio change is meaningless. Note also that we’d still be within all the limitations, just closer to the top of the towing range with the new trailer.
