Ten years ago, Elon Musk set an ambitious form of electric car company Tesla Motors, when Musk was a little-known technology entrepreneur.
According to Musk, revolutionary technology should be born with subversive design and expensive prices. Therefore, Tesla's first car was a two-seater, priced at $110,000. Mask promised that Tesla would use the profit of the first car to further research and eventually achieve a near-mythical goal: to develop an electric car with a single charge mileage of up to 200 miles and a cost of less than $40,000.
Musk will soon fulfill his promise - this year's electric whale (white whale) has a single charge of 238 miles and a federal tax rebate of only $30,000. Musk is only a step away from the grand plan of ten years ago, but there is still a small problem.
Someone wants to get ahead of the game!In Detroit, the city of cars that are no longer brilliant, Chevrolet, owned by General Motors, has also launched its own electric car. Its design is enough to impress people, and the most important thing is that it is still very cheap.
According to GM product manager Darin Gesse, the Chevrolet electric car is more than just a commuter car, it is more focused on improving people's lifestyles.
This is the Chevrolet Bolt EV, a wedge-shaped compact car. It is important for GM and even for the traditional automotive industry. The strategic significance of Bolt EV is that in the face of the impact of new car companies on the automotive industry, traditional car manufacturers began to fight back. Not only is the Bolt EV the first low-cost remote electric vehicle, it will also be the test platform for GM's shared driving and autonomous driving.
At the same time, Bolt EV also showed that the scale of the automotive industry is the most important. Although the auto giant is slow to respond to new technologies, it can reverse Tesla's technological advantages with its massive body and transform the automotive business more fundamentally.
As the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk has become accustomed to using his actions to shut up his opponents. But there are indications that the development of Tesla, a car company, is nearing its limits. This spring, Tesla launched the new Model 3, which has a mileage of 215 miles and a tax rebate of only $30,000. About 400,000 people paid a deposit of $1,000 to Tesla, and Tesla promised to deliver the car to customers at the end of 2017.
Few people in the industry think that Tesla can achieve its production goals, and Tesla's financial difficulties are even more stretched. Although Tesla makes pure electric cars popular, Model 3 is still at least a concept model. Bolt will be available for sale this year, and it will not be available.
Some people sarcastically say that arrogant billionaires have announced their grand plans on their blogs, and in ten years they have achieved their goals in an unbearable way.
Many low-cost pure electric vehicles, such as the Nissan Leaf, the BMW i3 or the Volkswagen e-Golf, are not perfect. These electric cars usually reach a mileage of about 100 miles. Although it is enough to go to and from work, it is always insecure.
Tesla is the other extreme. Both Model S and Model X can reach 200 miles, but cost is a problem. After the federal tax rebate, the Model S starts at $66,000 and the Model X starts at $74,000.
Bolt can't call a luxury car. Although Bolt looks like a compact car, it has plenty of interior space and a good Touch screen design. The most revolutionary of Bolt is its milestone in luxury cars at a price that is affordable. The low-priced Tesla mileage is not as good as Bolt.
“Usually, driving an electric car can only be from A to B, returning to A,†GM product manager Darin Gesse said. “But Bolt can go from A to B to C to D, then Go back to A. So, Bolt is not only a commuter car, it is more suitable for people's lifestyle."
How did GM take the lead in completing Tesla's dream? There are many reasons. GM began building the world's most advanced battery test equipment in 2008, and this period coincided with the company's life and death after the financial crisis. The study created the hybrid Chevrolet Volt, which ultimately saved the company. The reason why politicians helped Detroit was to see GM's creativity from Volt. Successfully leading the rescue President Obama said in 2012 that he would buy a Volt after he left office.
Part of the Bolt battery shown in a lab at the General Motors Technology CenterThe advantages of GM can be attributed to company size and operational efficiency. Tesla had to build a super factory for mass production of Model 3 batteries, and GM outsourced its battery business to electronics giant LG Chem. In order to achieve its unique performance, Tesla had to reshape automotive manufacturing equipment, and GM could fully use existing production systems. At the company's assembly plant, Bolt is on the same production line as the pneumatic car Chevrolet Sonics and Buick Veranos. Robots and workers work across Bolt and traditional cars, as if there was no difference between the two.
In the end, GM is benefiting from management advantages. Because the high-mile, zero-emission Bolt puts GM under government fuel economy standards, it can continue to sell the Tahoe SUV, a profitable, fuel-efficient car. As a result, even if GM loses money on Bolt, it can still maintain a profit bottom line across the entire project.
Can Tesla compete with these advantages of GM? Tesla fans may think that Model 3 has high-end features that Bolt does not have, including upgrading Tesla semi-automatic driving system services and fast charging network permissions. Tesla also has authority on the brand. When the Tesla battery factory is large, it can produce lower-priced batteries and increase the company's profitability.
But many analysts are skeptical about Tesla's plans. One of the questions is whether Tesla can achieve its production goals. Tesla produced 50,000 cars in 2015, and this year's target is 82,000, and it has recently suffered setbacks.
Although Tesla has many goals that were not met as expected, Musk promised to increase production in the next few years. Tesla plans to produce between 100,000 and 200,000 vehicles in 2017 and 500,000 vehicles in 2018. But Tesla's cash was quickly exhausted, and Musk's acquisition of SolarCity caused some investor dissatisfaction.
Layout under the Bolt hoodAnother concern is whether Tesla will ignore the quality of the car in order to complete the production task. Thousands of years ago, Toyota launched a production method to reduce car defects, and eventually promoted among global automakers, that is, workers can slow down the production line after finding errors. Edward Niedermeye, editor of the daily Kanban car, said Tesla abandoned these methods in order to speed up the production process.
The result is that the reliability of the Tesla car will be reduced. Last year, consumers reported that the Model S survey found that the car was squeaky and other issues, causing consumers to suffer.
“If you don’t pay attention to quality issues, the car production rate will increase. But if there are defects, hundreds of cars will have problems,†Nedmeier said.
Of course, GM also has drawbacks. But its experience in mass production of cars is a rapid rise that startups can't match.
“We have 108 years of manufacturing technology,†said Pam Fletcher, GM's chief electric vehicle engineer. “This is unparalleled.â€
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