We have a big move from Corvette, some interesting news from Honda, an unsurprising achievement for BYD, and President Biden using the word “folks.” Hold on to your hats!
Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
Corvette Will Possibly Become Its Own Sub-Brand
The big news that has the car world all atwitter is that GM is apparently going to launch two new vehicles under a Corvette badge that becomes its own standalone brand. Those vehicles are said to be a four-door electric sedan (they call a “coupe”) and an electric crossover. Our best source for this is an extremely detailed rreport from Car And Driver:
A source who has seen the first proposals describes them as “copies of nothing” and as “encapsulated emotional purity.” Waxing lyrical may do justice to the styling themes, but what about the bespoke content? The mechanical package apparently includes battery packs with high energy density, superfast software, a patented cooling concept, staggered Lego-like topographic packaging, miniaturized componentry, ultra-efficient inverters, high-revving electric motors, an 800-volt electrical system that provides up to 350 kW of charging power, a two-speed transmission, brake-by-wire, multi-mode four-wheel steering, and torque vectoring.
Technical details aside, this feels awfully like a very intentional leak of information to try to test the waters for this move, which is classic GM. I only say that because the source talks in complete marketing nonsense dynamicspeak:
“Corvette is not just a brand. It’s a constantly evolving system paired with a dramatically different user experience.”
And
“The aim is not to beat Taycan and Cayenne at their own game but to create three American legends capable of breaking new ground by making the essence of Corvette scalable. To do so, that essence must at all times be in a state of progressive flux.
Who talks like that?
This isn’t to denigrate the good reporting/scoop from C/D as I’d have given one of David’s rusty nuts to have this info first. It’s entirely possible that this is just a leak and somewhere Mary Barra is ordering her stealthy assassins to bury this person’s body underneath Belle Isle.
Buuut… “the essence must at all times be in a state of progressive flux” is quite the random sentence to just come up with when talking to a reporter.
[Editor’s Note: I realize that the “source” mentions Porsche, but it’s hard for me to see this as something not aimed at Tesla. When Ford launched its Mustang Mach-E electric crossover, it freely admitted that it needed to borrow its strongest brand to compete with the herculean Tesla brand. I wouldn’t be surprised if GM is thinking along the same lines. Cadillac ain’t what it used to be. -DT]
Honda To Build Hydrogen Fuel Cell CR-V In Ohio
The brands love hydrogen! The people… unclear. Nevertheless, Honda is trying to get in again on the Hydrogen game with a CR-V-based Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) build in the same Ohio plant that’s been responsible for the very mid Acura NSX. The difference is that this is a Plug-In FCEV or, I guess, a PIFCEV?
Here’s the press release and the key point:
The new CR-V-based FCEV also will mark North America’s first production vehicle to combine a plug-in feature with FCEV technology in one model, which enables the driver to charge the onboard battery to deliver EV driving around town with the flexibility of fast hydrogen refueling for longer trips.
I don’t hate this idea. You’ve got an EV for around town that gets 150-200 miles of range you can charge at home. If you want to drive 300-400 miles you can go to a hydrogen fueling station (probably on the highway) and top off.
Above is a map of natural gas transmission lines within the United States. The most popular way to make hydrogen in the United States is through a process called “natural gas reforming” you can read about here. Placing hydrogen filling stations around interstate hubs with access to compressed natural gas isn’t the worst idea.
Of course, you run into the problem of carrying around all this excess capacity and weight for this hybrid system, but perhaps Honda has found a way to make it smaller? The outgoing Honda Clarity was an EV, a PHEV, and an FCEV but never a PIFCEV. Right? Honda is so confusing. Please don’t name this the CR-V Clarity.
Also, please enjoy that Honda called a car “Clarity” and it’s the single most confusing product launched in the last decade.
President Biden Is Serious About This Chip Thing
As weird as this is to write, the future of the Democratic Party is the industrial Midwest. Both Michigan and Pennsylvania went strongly blue this cycle, defying conventional wisdom. It’s no surprise, then, that President Joe Biden has spent a lot of time in Michigan touting the car industry.
I think this Detroit News headline pretty much sums it up: “Biden in Michigan: US won’t be ‘held hostage’ in chips supply.”
Here are some highlights from that speech:
I come from the corporate capital of the world. There are more corporations incorporated in Delaware than every other state in the union combined. And guess what? A lot of businesses got greedy, go to the cheap labor overseas.
Well, now we’re sending good products overseas made by first-class labor. (Applause.)
Folks, as a result, today we’re down to producing only around 10 percent of the world’s chips despite leading the world in research and design of new chip technology.
Why does this matter? I had a long meeting with Xi Jinping at the G20. We have met for over 80 hours over the last 10 years. We know each other well. And he’s a little upset that we’re deciding we’re going to, once again, be — you know, and so are our European friends. They’re talking about the supply chain. We’re going to be the supply chain. And the difference is going to be we’re going to make that supply chain available to the rest of the world, but we’re not going to be held hostage anymore. (Applause.) I mean it.
One of the key tells that something important is about to happen in a Biden speech is that he uses the word “folks.” It’s like when Astros pitcher Luis Garcia rocks the baby. You know the heat is coming!
This isn’t entirely empty rhetoric, of course, because both the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS And Science Act were both passed and they:
- Encourage automakers to shift their EV supply chain to the Unites States.
- Provide about $50 billion to shift chipmaking here.
BYD Was China’s Biggest Brand In November
I’ve tried to prep you all for this moment. Please go back and read everything under the BYD tag on this website. And then read this report from Automotive News Europe, which lays out how Chinese automaker BYD has taken the Chinese sales crown.
Technically, when you add Audi to VW’s score it still has VW Group as the largest automaker in China, but that’s cold comfort. The country is dealing with COVID protests and great economic insecurity and not reacting well to it.
Chaos is a ladder, of course, and who loves chaos more than Elon Musk? Tesla also doubled its sales compared to October when the company was allegedly dealing with supply issues. It’s important to note that BYD has raised prices while Tesla has increased incentives and cut prices.
The Flush
No one, it turns out, actually cares that the Mustang Mach E is called a Mustang. Will anyone care about Corvette being a sedan?
Photos: Jason Torchinsky, GM, The White House, BYD, Honda
I get why companies keep trying Fuel Cell… but I don’t get why they’re only going in half way. This is the one thing Tesla did really well: the infrastructure has to be part of the product if you want adoption. Well…I get why they’re only going in half way…they’re car companies that are thinking like car companies. “We build the cars, someone else builds the gas stations. Why should that change?”
If Honda/Toyota want any adoption, they need to think differently.
Who is the Corvette customer base? Old boomers like me? They’re the only ones I see driving them. The monied younger dudes are going for Lambos and such. Can the Corvette in any form survive if GM needs to not outrage customers who will be dead or too old to be trusted behind the wheel in a decade or so?
In other words, Corvette has a Harley problem.
Something, something economic recession: GM has too many brands…
First off, the photoshop of the Corvette sedan is the funniest thing I’ve seen all week – nice work!
Secondly, it’s unfortunately impossible to pump hydrogen through the natural gas pipeline system. Even if the system was leak free (it definitely isn’t), hydrogen is such a small molecule that it would seep through the pipes anyway and you’d lose a tremendous amount of hydrogen along the way. Pumping it as a liquid would save some of those losses, but at -250 C (-420 F), it would probably destroy the pipes. Storage and transportation is the single biggest problem for the hydrogen economy to solve, apart from the relatively high energy cost of extracting it from water or natural gas.
I believe that the plan is to have natural gas reforming stations that produce the hydrogen. I don’t think the plan was to pump hydrogen around, but use the natural gas at the stations which is still a very expensive plan (creating the stations, upkeep, then moving that hydrogen to the filling areas).
Ah, yes, that makes more sense. I should have thought about it more deeply.
“Secondly, it’s unfortunately impossible to pump hydrogen through the natural gas pipeline system. Even if the system was leak free (it definitely isn’t), hydrogen is such a small molecule that it would seep through the pipes anyway and you’d lose a tremendous amount of hydrogen along the way.”
Depends on how much of the total gas content is hydrogen:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-pipelines
Those pipelines are still need to be used to pump NG for the foreseeable future so any hydrogen would be a fraction of the total.
Still as Andrew has already pointed out the pipelines would most likely be bringing NG to reformation stations, presumably to generate H2 to be distributed locally.
TRANSLATION: “Nobody’s gonna drop $200k at a Chevy dealer, so…”
This is the real reason.
a two-speed transmission
Bring back three-on-the-tree you cowards!
They really should brand it as a Powerglide
How about ammonia (nitrogen plus 3 hydrogen atoms) as a storage precursor to H supplied to a fuel cell to produce electricity?
You go to a station and fill up with stable (safe) ammonia and the car cracks it to nitrogen (harmless/odorless) and hydrogen, for use in a fuel cell ( which produces electricity, water and heat.)
There’s some merit to that idea, especially since ammonia can be kept as a liquid at a relatively balmy -33 C, but it is neither stable nor safe in a pure liquified state. OK, it’s thermodynamically stable, but it’s gonna flash off to ammonia vapor if any of it leaks from the hose or tank and that will definitely kill the person pumping it at the time. Concentrated ammonia is deadly, deadly, deadly. Check out this video of a Trooper attempting to help the victim of an ammonia tanker wreck. It does not end well for either of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znQwAcOQffQ
Word. Ammonia is actually a better refrigerant than CFCs and is ozone layer friendly yet we use CFCs in automotive air conditioners for the same reason.
And leaks can be flammable. From ~15% to ~28% by volume in our air according to google. I was rather surprised to learn this while taking a safety course in order to install controls for an ammonia plant at a refrigerated warehouse.
How is the car going to crack it into nitrogen and hydrogen? I presume that’s going to take energy, and requiring the car to use energy to get energy seems like a losing proposition.
I feel I’m counter to most, but I think this makes sense. I think the Corvette isn’t even sold as a Chevy in Europe (I could be wrong). I feel like they have been planning this for a while with the naming they’ve been using. Would allow for a lighter, smaller front-engined Corvette as well! A lot of people will whine about this but I feel Corvette is a stronger brand to go it alone than anything Ford had.
Putting a Mustang tag on the Mach-E did exactly as Ford intended: it got a huge amount of free publicity from internet warriors and social media and raised the awareness of the first Ford EV way beyond what advertising could accomplish.
GM says, “Hey Ford, hold my beer!”
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain…and I think I’ve arrived at the end of the arc because even as a freakin 32 year old I’m becoming an old man yelling at the car clouds. I’ve given in. I can’t fight it anymore. The idea of Corvette becoming a sub brand with a crossover makes me irrationally angry.
I’m just tired of how much manufacturers have been willing to dilute meaningful names for the sake of profit. The Mach E didn’t get to me as much as it did to lots of people, but now that it’s happening again I’m upset. I don’t like it, just like I don’t like BMW and Mercedes M/AMGing all the things, or the Blazer coming back as an appliance crossover, et cetera.
Love it or hate it, the Corvette name means something. It’s an omnipresent cultural force. Even non car people can recognize a Corvette. There are Corvettes in countless shows, movies, and songs. If Prince was willing to put Corvette in his lyrics you know it’s cool.
So naturally GM will sell every single Corvette crossover they make before they even hit the lot. Business wise this would be like putting the ball on a tee and asking Bryce Harper to hit it a minimum of 20 yards. It’ll work. The Mustang Mach E worked. Selling a pearlescent white CUV with an “M” performance package with a few logos works. Et cetera.
But damn it…I don’t have to like it. And I won’t. A Corvette is supposed to be the working man’s aspirational sports car. That ethos is what’s made it so iconic in the first place…and it’s a damn shame to move on from that to sell crossovers, because it’s not like it came out in the last 10 years. The Corvette has existed as the institution it is for 70 years at this point. Is nothing in the car world sacred anymore?
It’ll work, yes, but at what cost? Once you spend that brand recognition capital it’s gone. After you’ve diluted a brand you end up having to build a new one to replace whatever the old pinnacle of performance was. The way things are going, in 10 or 15 years Mustang and Corvette won’t mean anything more than Lincoln and Cadillac do today. I suppose the current execs don’t care since they’ll have long since golden parachuted out of the company by the time that happens, but I’m still not convinced this is actually the right thing to do even if everyone is doing it.
The mid-life crisis mobile is becoming more mid-life crisis-y.
Make good SUV’s that properly move and feel the part, and nobody will care. Or what will more likely happen is boomer goes in for a Tahoe to cart around the grands, sees a Corvette SUV and gets that to go along with their C7 in the garage.
Those expanded Corvettes should be sold as Buick Electras
I imagine GM wants to compete more with Lambo and Porsche. with Cadillac doing it’s thing but not really ever making a lot of V sales (Corvette caddies), I suppose i see where they are going with this, but it will result in a lot of backlash.
Trying to bring the Corvette upmarket would be a huge mistake. No matter how good the product is it’s not like the types of people who buy 911s, Ferraris, etc are going to suddenly be swayed by a nameplate that’s always been associated with attainable performance.
To me it would be like VW trying to ritz up the Golf R to sell to M3 buyers. It just won’t work because the name doesn’t have the same weight to it…and the sorts of people who can afford to drop six figures on sports cars are usually the sorts of people who care as much about being seen in their car as they do driving it.
And for them, a Corvette just isn’t going to do it because it doesn’t have the same type of brand cache that Porsche et al do. Do we really think Big Deal John Business is going to want to park a Corvette SUV next to his partner’s Urus at Big Money Merger$? I definitely don’t.
I’m not sure about this. Supposedly the C8 is selling to a crowd that doesn’t normally consider Corvettes. Younger, wealthier, and less “New Balance”. If there was ever a time for GM to strike and build off brand equity, this is it.
The Golf comparison isn’t the best one IMO. For better or worse, the Corvette is and has been GM’s flagship vehicle for a while (since Cadillac forfeited the position with the Cimarron, maybe?). It may be cheaper and seen as more attainable than a 911, but it’s not explicitly built out of an economy car like the Golf R is. The name is aspirational to a lot of people in a way few others are. Especially away from the coasts and cities, a Corvette stands for performance and success period. I don’t think your hypothetical lawyer or businessman is going to be ashamed to park a Corvette SUV next to the Yukon Denalis and Grand Wagoneers that actually populate the school pickup lines or upscale office parks in those areas where no one has seen a Urus outside a magazine or Youtube review.
Note: all this is coming from someone who stans for Cadillac, who wished the Corvette had stayed front engine and the C8 had been sold as a Caddy, and who thinks a Corvette SUV is pretty silly.
“Do we really think Big Deal John Business is going to want to park a Corvette SUV next to his partner’s Urus at Big Money Merger$? I definitely don’t.”
I gotta agree w/V10 on this one. If it’s done properly, which I have way more faith in the Mary Berra era than of any leadership in the past 50 years to get it right, I think a Vette SUV wouldn’t be the black-eye you think it’d be.
Aside from the Tech/Crypto/Instagram knuckleheads, I can easily imagine a scenario where John CEO would get a chuckle out of parking next to a “Super SUV.” It’d almost be a bragging point and a badge of honor (and possibly a smart insight into the person they are doing business with), and kinda a “fuck you” to the ostentatiousness of it all. They will sell like hotcakes in a large swath of the country (again, if done right) where there are obviously many large companies and people that run them.
Even if it kicks ass, would it sell in Miami, NYC, SoCal/Silicon? Probably not. But that’s a pretty small “market” of people in the larger scheme of things, and even some of those people drive Escalades. Who knows, but, I don’t think it’d ruin the Corvette name in any marked amount.
Tracy’s hypothesis is an interesting one, and increases credulity when combined with Mark Reuss’ on-the-record revelation that GM dealers have repaired about 11,000 Teslas in the last year. As for anyone “caring” about a Corvette four-door or SUV: if it’s good, the early grumbling will die off.
To me making a Corvette brand with a crossover tarnishes the model name. I like what ford did with the styling of the MACH E but it also put mustang on it, Mustangs for the most part have always been a sporty car.
Now GM wants to try this. If its upscale SUVs it might work, if its lower level SUVs bring the Pontiac Brand back.
Do people care about the Corvette name? I damn sure don’t. However I’m not a middle-aged, balding white man rocking jean shorts and a pair of white New Balance sneakers, so I don’t know that I’m in the appropriate demographic for that particular focus group.
If this is GM’s typical attempt at badge engineering, this will utterly fail. The Corvette name will become nothing and with no flagship that means anything GM will probably fall.
If they actually put some effort into this? If they make it something somewhat interesting and special? It could be a winner.
I still think it would have been easier for them to find some other existing nameplate and use it, though.
I think you’re right and most buyers under a certain age don’t care about the name, they like it for the performance or the looks, if they like it at all.
In the days of social media, it’s all pics and bragging rights. Aside from our esteemed commentariat, I suspect very few people in society at large are interested in the Vette’s history, provenance, etc.
(and I’m not trying to be mean to any specific age group. The immediate success of Lexus when it debuted showed that while many luxury carbuyers claimed for years they cared about heritage and other intangibles, it just wasn’t true.)
I care about it and I’m a dude in his early 30s who mainly drives sporty compact cars. The Corvette name means something to a lot of people. It’s always been the quintessential aspirational sports car for working class Muricans and it’s always had a cultural relevance that goes beyond just enthusiasts.
Will I ever own one personally? Probably not unless I get to a point that I could afford to own the new Z06 as a weekend/track toy. But I respect it, and honestly I think all enthusiasts should. Just because something isn’t your cup of tea doesn’t make it bad necessarily. The Corvette name has done a lot for cars in general and a lot of Corvettes have advanced performance cars in general with technology and design…although there are plenty of duds in there too.
Let’s see they could have the Corvette: The Corvette models (stingray, Z06, ZR1, grand sport) as you know, The Corvette Corvair: The “sporty” electric sedan, the Corvette Corvair Greenbrier: The “sporty” electric crossover SUV with practicality and personality, the Corvette Nomad: The electric 2+2 sporty hatchback coup-like sedan, /begins uncontrollable vomiting/ the Corvette Cameo: The compact electric sporty truck to lock horns with the Maverick, the Corvette ChEVelle: the larger sporty electric coupe and sedan, /blood and bile replace the vomit/ the Corvette Monza: the electric compact based on the Bolt
‘ A source who has seen the first proposals describes them as “copies of nothing” and as “encapsulated emotional purity.”’
My brain tried to autocorrect that to “emasculated emotional purity”. Since that’s how many Corvette traditionalists will view this move, I suppose that fits. I personally don’t care what GM does with the brand though. An electric CorvetteCross or whatever they decide to call it will sell, and in the end that’s all GM is concerned about.
That guy can talk about flux all he wants, but it’s not gonna fly without a working capacitor.
I just assume 90% of product leaks are deliberate these days, about cars or iphones or whatever. Free advertising.
I care. I care a solid moderate amount about the Mustang. Therefore, I will never call the current Mustang Mach E a Mustang. I call that electric sedan’ish SUV the “Mach E”. Pronounced “Mah-Kee” with a slight Boston accent.
I’m positive the Mustang branding came late for the Mach E. Up until a few months before the launch, Ford kept referring to it as a “Mustang inspired” SUV before changing the language to “Mustang SUV”. The Mach E name was probably already in place (after they wanted to use the name Mach 1 and fans rightfully grumbled), but I bet it had blue ovals instead of ponies.
Biggest problem for Ford is the awkwardness that’s going to come in a few years when it unveils an actual electric Mustang of the classic type (two doors, long hood/short deck, cheap power for people who can’t control it, etc.)
I still think Galaxie would have been a better moniker, but I do like The Bishop’s Torino now.
If Ford comes up with a range of Mach and/or E vehicles, they could brand them Mach E Mach and the Funk E Bunch
That’s just terrible. I love it.
Just what the world needs, for Corvette to become a brand. Never mind producing an iconic american sports car, let’s dilute it down to try and milk more money from it with more generic products.
Nothing can just be what it is anymore, it has to be brand, an experience, a marketing strategy.
General Motors can promise future product better than anyone in the industry.
I dunno, this is an area where Tesla actually performs. GM releases most things eventually.
Cybertruck? Roadster? Semi? Supposedly the latter is on its way to Pepsi, but still…
I don’t think a majority of Corvette enthusiasts will care about 4-door sedans and crossovers being called Corvette, UNLESS the 2-door sports car variants are axed. THEN there wil be an uproar, and rightfully so.
Personally, I’d like to see Corvette go back to its roots as a lightweight 2-seat streamliner. The original Corvette was around 2,600 lbs, and with today’s material technology, even with a masive V8, we should be able to have something significantly lighter, in-spite of modern “safety” regulations. Make it a slippery bastard with a Cd in the 0.1X range and keep the frontal area close to the 1st generation model, and you might be able to have a 700+ horsepower V8 that gets 45+ mpg highway, or have an EV version with even more power that uses less than 0.20 kWh/mile.