Guest Post by Eric Peters
Cadillac has been losing sales and market position for the past three years straight, but thinks it has The Answer.
Want to guess?
If you said electrification, go to the head of the class. It’s the obvious answer, though. As the Lemmings rush toward the cliff, GM wants to be in the lead.
Cadillac head Mark Reuss thinks people will buy Cadillacs if they don’t have engines. Or at least, if they also have batteries (i.e., are hybrids). Because as everyone knows, luxury car buyers are absolutely frantic about the gas mileage delivered by their vehicles and also clamoring for a car that goes half as far and takes five times as long to get going again, the speciality de la Maison of electric cars.
“We’ve got one chance. This is it,” Reuss told Automotive News last week. “We will leave nothing on the table, but we’ve got to get there. … We’re going to get there.”
But where is that, exactly?
EVs constitute about 1 percent of total car sales. Let’s say that rises to 10 percent – via production quotas. GM will need to capture pretty much all of it to even begin to make up for the losses it has already suffered.
And every sale will still be a loss – because no one has figured out how to make money on electric cars.
Money is transferred – from the taxpayer, via the government – to the manufacturer and the buyer. But that is not economically sustainable. If it is economically sustainable, then Huey Long was right and it’s time for an electrified chicken in every pot, paid for by everyone sticking his paw (via the government) into his neighbor’s pockets. It brings to mind that scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the movie starring Chevy Chase and Randy Quaid, where Quad’s character goes shopping with Chase’s character’s wallet and urges him to “pick something real nice” for himself.
In the inbred, insular world of the upper echelons of GM – which moved its Cadillac headquarters to New York City, where most people don’t need to drive and therefore generally don’t own cars, let alone Cadillac cars – this is considered rational thinking.
It is so considered because the upper tiers of GM management (and it’s not just GM) swim among the like-minded, who no longer have a clue what the real world is like nor seem very interested in learning about it.
They are like the peddlers of Toxic Masculinity and Diversity (which GM is, too) and take it as a given thing that everyone out there agrees with their views and if not, well they’ll be dragged along.
The difference here is that GM (like Gillette, which is no longer the “best a man can get”) hasn’t got the power to force those people to buy its products – and many have decided not to.
More will.
Attempting to peddle electric cars isn’t going to work for the same reason that Nancy Pelosi isn’t going to take down the wall around her house or remove the armed security detail which protects her.
Electric cars are a loser.
They are a Potemkin Village on wheels, a facade that will come down once the rickety framework of government mandates and subsidies which supports them disappears and even if not for the simple reason that they are not economically sustainable. You cannot make money selling things at a loss – and if you insist on trying, after awhile, you will no longer be in business.
And because people (most of them) cannot afford to spend 30-40 percent more for a new car, even if they want to virtue signal – and don’t mind going half as far and waiting six times as long to get going again.
Reality eventually bites.
So what will happen is GM will build a fleet of EVs that don’t sell – like previous GM EVs, which all failed and had to be pulled.
And Cadillac will be the first lemming to leap – joyously, perhaps – over the edge of the cliff.
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Christmas Vacation was the best of all those movies. Don’t care if another American car goes out of business . Fuck their cheap shit made with over paid clowns. The Japanese cars are much better all the way down and around. Same with the trucks.
The Koreans make some very fine and not expensive, gas-sipping autos too.
This is why there is such a rush to have electric vehicles. Its not a business or market driven decision. It is entirely the result of government mandates. The US is not yet there but it will be as soon as the next Democrat is in the White House.
List of countries banning fossil fuel vehicles
Country Ban announced Ban commences Scope
Norway 2016 2025 Gasoline or diesel
Germany 2017 2030 Gasoline or diesel
Britain 2017 2040 Gasoline or diesel
India 2017 2030 Gasoline or diesel
Holland 2017 2030 all vehicles emission free
France 2017 2040 Gasoline or diesel
Ireland 2018 2030 Gasoline or diesel
China 2018 Undetermined Gasoline or diesel
Notice none of these nations produce much oil and the European ones think Climate Change is imminent though the two big nations, China and India, intend to burn coal to power their EV fleets. The idea is the air will still suck but it will suck everywhere not just in the big cities.
“Coal dependence in Asia and the developing world can make a mockery of electric vehicles, especially in China where half of all green energy cars are built.
“If you have to choose between a 1990 diesel and a 2019 electric vehicle, you are better with a 1990 diesel if the energy generation comes from coal,” he told the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Electric vehicles would cut just 1pc of total CO2 emissions even if there were 300 million of them on the road under the current structure of world energy production.
Westerners are whistling in the wind if they think the rising nations of Asia are going to write off sunk costs and shut down coal plants with an average life of just 11 years. “How can we ask them to pay back so much investment?” he said. They will dig in their heels unless the world comes up with real money and compensates them for shutting down plants. “We can decide whatever we want in Davos, or Brussels, or wherever: they won’t do it,” he said.”
From Ambrose Evans Pritchards column today in the Telegraph quoting the head of IEA.
With new Chevrolets as expensive as they are, who needs or can afford a fancy Chevy (Cadillac)? GM’s old marketing strategy was to get you started in a Chevy, move up to Pontiac, then Oldsmobile, then Buick, and when you really made it big, Cadillac. A brand new Impala at over $30k isn’t exactly an entry-level car.
Long ago Cadillacs morphed into Pimp-mobiles and Ghetto-cruisers. Once all the WWII vets are dead, they won’t have a market.
I liked Cadillacs when they were big and looked like Cadillacs. That Northstar engine was a winner though.
“That Northstar engine was a winner though.”
Not for me it wasn’t!
I owned one Cadillac in my life, a 1996 Cadillac Brougham. It was 10 years old when I bought it. As usual, I found a great deal on the internet …. under 30,000 miles, and just $4,000. Mint condition. It belonged to a retired pastor … his church bought it for him as a retirement gift. I even took a bus to Illinois to pick it up!!
So, I get back to NJ and show it off … it really was beautiful and in mint condition. My boss said this; “Sell it before it gets to 100,000 miles cuz that’s when it will fall apart.”
Sure enough, didn’t have a damned problem with it for 70,000 miles. Then I hit 107,000 and I had my first $1,500 repair (electrical problems). And it never stopped. Every other month some other bullshit part broke. Dumb fuck that I am I kept sinking money into it until the repairs cost as much as the purchase price.
Caddy fooled me once. But, NEVER again. They can stuff their Caddies up their asses before I even look at another one.
A small diesel engine would make too much sense.
Never never ever buy a New Platform car from an American auto maker. It WILL be a fucked up piece of shit for at least three years before they get the “kinks” out.
I remember when Oldmobile decided to build a diesel engine. They built it because of increasingly stringent federal emissions and fuel-economy regulations. Sound familiar?
Diesel engines must have more and stronger head bolts to compensate for the diesel’s higher cylinder pressure. Well, the Olds diesel kept the SAME 10-bolt pattern and head bolts as their gas engines!!
The results SHOULD have been predictable …… head bolts stretched or broke, then head-gasket failures, then coolant leaked into the cylinders, which invariably lead to hydrolock and severe engine damage. Road and Track and a host of other auto publications called it one of the worst engineering clusterfuks of all time, all to save a dime.
To repeat … you do NOT want to buy an electric car from these morans for at least three years after introduction.