Could we have fit more acronyms in that headline? Doubtful.
Now safely ensconced in a four-year labour deal with the workers who left its assembly lines in the dark for six weeks, General Motors is blaming this fall’s strike for a product delay. Well, a delay of a debut, really.
As a result, next month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will have to do without a new GM electric vehicle.
A high point of the year for tech nerds (and increasingly, automakers eager to show off their latest electronic wizardry), CES 2020 was to feature a GM electric car; now, its big reveal is being pushed back to a later date.
Speaking to MotorTrend, GM spokesman Tony Cervone said, “We had a plan to go to CES and frankly we can’t go to CES without putting our best foot forward and we could not get the models done that we wanted to get done with the strike, frankly,” adding, “We had a plan, we worked like hell,” but things didn’t come together.
The strike restricted access to GM facilities, complicating things further.
The exact nature of the model is still a mystery, though there are two strong candidates: a self-driving Chevy Bolt-based vehicle created by GM’s Cruise division, or the unnamed Cadillac EV crossover teased last January. Given that there’s already invites floating around for a January Cruise event, it’s likely the Caddy.
GM is expected to foist new capabilities on its Super Cruise driver-assist feature, and a place like CES would be just the place to reveal it. Having such technology appear on a production-bound electric model would be an ideal setup for the trade show.
Whatever name Cadillac decides to bestow upon it, and it will be a real name, Caddy’s EV crossover is expected to land in 2021.
[Image: General Motors]
GM: We make excuses.
OH NO!
>>Could we have fit more acronyms in that headline? Doubtful.<<
Yes, easily.
"GM Blames UAW for EV-MIA CES"
The big three have had three universal scapegoats for all their failures: the union, the government, and the Japanese. They have been using those excuses for at least 50 years.
“GM blames Donald Trump for missing EV at CES…Internet nods in approval”
At last year’s CES, Samsung showed a 292-inch MicroLED TV with 1,600 nits of brightness.
Wait until Cadillac bowls them over this year with a 35-inch OLED.
“GM – Dragging Our Feet Like Always™”
try to have that 292 inch TV survive automotive durability requirements. it’ll be dead in seconds.
I would be interested in hearing more about the specifics of those requirements. Have heard this kind of general statement many times, but have never found any specifics. (Personal observation/anecdote says the results don’t necessarily match the hype.)
Exhibit A: 2000 Cadillac DeVille LED taillamps
Things I can think of that are ‘unique’ about an automotive environment:
– Temperature: 180F maybe if interior?
– Vibration/shock
– UV exposure (but behind glass if interior parts)
I kind of run out at that point.
“Dead in seconds” – seconds not minutes? That’s impressive. Are we applying localized heat with a 1000F heat gun? Or is this scary ‘Me Engineer – You Idiot – Don’t Go There – Ooga Booga’ talk?
I need to run – the neighbor kid is cracking open my passenger-side airbag and ingesting sodium azide again.
I can buy good old 555 timers which meet “Military” or even “Space” specifications. Space… now there is a tough environment. (SE555-SP operating temperature range is -55C to 125C, or -67F to 257F.)
They could show up with an EV1.
GM – Bringing You Yesterday’s Technology, Tomorrow… Maybe™
Suggested media plan:
a) Outfit a vintage EV1 with current-tech lithium ion batteries
b) Give this vehicle to Ed Begley, Jr. for a month as a ‘demonstrator’
c) On-stage at CES, show Mary Barra attempting to wrestle the keys back from Ed
[Still waiting to hear back from Alexandra Paul’s agent regarding her availability.]
I’m sure there is still an ELR laying around, just repaint, and voila!
The only people disappointed by this news are GM’s marketing department, and journalists.
GM’s mistake is thinking that CES is actually helpful to them.
“…we could not get the models done that we wanted to get done with the strike, ***frankly***…” (emphasis mine)
I have a damn-near-foolproof method to determine if someone’s bulls**tting me: the words “frankly” or “honestly” escape the speaker’s lips.
Can’t be too hard on GM, though – after all, it’s notoriously hard to construct and transport vapor.
Submitted for your consideration: “We simply must” followed by a biased personal agenda.
“We simply must ride bicycles instead of using cars” (say that to an arthritic old woman)
“We simply must live and work in the same place” (say that to an OTR trucker or a salesman with a regional route)
“We simply must eat seaweed snot-burgers and never eat meat ever again” (say that to me…..and prepare to die)
Somewhere in the RenCen C-suite someone said “we simply must blame the sleep-deprived worker bees for the unacceptable delays on an under-resourced project with absurd milestones run by d!ckhead managers”
But I’m sure they were leveraging their core-competencies and maximizing their synergies. By being laser-focused on their strategic objectives, don’t you know.
Seems to me that an electronics show would be THE place you’d want to hawk EV’s. Tech nerds are exactly the demographic that wants them, car enthusiasts aren’t interested.
I know they’re not for you, but plenty of car enthusiasts like EVs.
Driving an electric car in stop-and-go gridlock was an eye-opener. One-pedal driving and instant torque sells itself.
My tech-nerdiness liked it as much as the 11 second bike I used to ride.
I used to drive in stop and go gridlock. I kept my manual trans and got a new hometown. My tech nerdiness is satisfied by the IBM model F connected to the AMD Threadripper powered machine this post is being compiled on.
Yeah, auto enthusiasts don’t like cars with sub 3 second 0 – 60 times. That kind of acceleration is only for virtue signallers.
All GM seems to do today is either sue or make excuses. They are now suing Hyundai because they are afraid a former employee is sharing autonomous technology with them.
So, I follow the CES to see what new graphics card Nvidia has coming out, how fast AMD’s new processors are, how Motorola is fitting a smartphone display into a flip phone form factor…things like that.
I really don’t care about cars there unless it is one of those deals were someone has put a Tesla like screen in a Third gen Camaro or something. I won’t lose any sleep over this.