How do you get people to do stuff they don’t want to do?
Offer them enough money to do it. Do I wish I would have bought a lot of Tesla Stock? No doubt. Do I think subsidies are a good idea? No.
I’m sure people are aware that GM is currently pushing Buick dealers to either invest about ~$300K to service their new electric vehicles or lose their franchise. No one knows the local market better than the Dealers, and many are folding their tents instead of going along with GM’s plan. I think the Dealers would love to sell Buick EVs, but they know their customers and the sales are not there.
I’m not sure anyone is worried about who will pick up the pieces, those in government who are convinced they need to push EVs on the public won’t pay. And as we know GM is too big to fail, so they won’t pay.
The public may not understand that it will be them who pays, just add it to the tab.
George B.
Not sure the dealers are all that happy.
I bought a Bolt in October, love it. But the dealer was not that thrilled. I mean, they got the car model I wanted, despite GM making it difficult as well, but they were not jumping up and down about the sell. Totally different experience from other GM purchases long ago.
Why you may ask? Look at the service interval! First service, other than alignments and tire rotatios/replacements, is 100Kmiles. Their service departments will rust out.
Which brings up another topic that caused me to check if UP had been brought back online — does anyone know of any 3-phase (or even single-phase) tapered shaft permanent magnet generat0r heads? I’d like to get something like that wound for 375 volts, or so (240x 2^.5*1.1) for 10% headroom for a inverter to produce purse sign 240V.
My alternative is to run a large DC motor from a single phase generator head, and turn a nice single phase head with the DC motor, to get some truly clean sinewave AC out.
Mostly it is an idea I am kicking around…
I heard that Tesla first shopped the idea of a dealer network, they didn’t find much interest. If you look at the overhead a dealer has, you’d need one hell of a markup to keep the lights on.
As for your search for a PMG head, they are rare enough without tossing in a tapered shaft requirement. I’d start the conversation by sharing your possible inputs, commercial AC? Diesel prime mover? Sorry, not clear to me if you are building an MG set or wanting to drive a gen head with internal combustion prime mover.
I used to get updates when folks replied, sorry, didn’t know you did!
I would like to generate as much raw power as possible off of a 3600RPM Yamaha motor (already configured for generator), and dump that power through big rectifiers into a 380VDC bus.
Relatively simple to then invert that to pure sine wave out… or charge a spicey LIFEPO4 battery bank.
Can do this with existing single phase head, but the issue is the waste of keeping a single phase head running, and single phase is not as smooth when converted to DC.
I figure my ask is out there — just thought maybe a regular would have a place to point. All these higher powered inverter generators have what I want, but its built into the flywheel, I think (not taken my Hondas apart 🙂 ).
I think there was the assumption that Tesla’s success could be transplanted anywhere they imagined.
I read people being critical of Toyota for taking reluctant tiny steps into electrification. I suppose they know exactly what they’re doing.
Toyota spent a lot of money and time with focus groups and developed an understanding of what the Prius needed to be, and exactly who would buy it and why. I think it was brilliant work.