Cadillac ELR Pricing Is Announced

Cadillac vs Tesla . . . LOL! | Page 4 | PriusChat

 

don't they want to sell any?

 

Hmmm.........

Twice the price of the Volt......with half the # of doors.

Slightly heavier......but faster 0-60

Only loses 3 miles of EV range though.......due to weight, higher Cd and more power

It is definitely a good-looking car, but overpriced, even for a Caddy

IMHO, GM will try to sell as much as they can to Caddy loyalists at this price.......
basically milking it for all its worth, and no doubt selling at a profit right out of the gate, unlike the Volt

The luxury premium allows them to mask the price and get more profit out of the Voltec system

If they can't move #'s, I expect them to drop the price........probably $5k to $10k

Still having a hard time seeing how this competes against a 60 kwh Model S

Demographics will be different only in the early adopter crowd......

 

Indeed. At that price, I predict it will be a total sales fail for GM.

At least from the poll at 2014 Cadillac ELR priced from $75,000* [w/poll], it seems I'm not alone about my opinion on the price.

 

Nope, its' just a feeble attempt of Government Motors of trying to compete with Tesla.

Tesla will keep moving forward right pass the ELR. Givened a short period of time. The ELR, like the Malibu hybrid will get dropped.

Akerson, don't forget, is still skeptical on EV tech.

DBCassidy

 

Indeed!

It is why I'm more than a little amused by those who 'set their hair on fire' because Toyota not sounding sufficiently committed to battery powered cars . . . and complaining in PriusChat. After all, Toyota has more installed battery capacity in cars than anyone else . . . by orders of magnitude:

• ~20Kilowatt hr - traction battery in every Prius since 2001
• +2 million hybrids sold
• 2,000,000 * 20 Kilowatt hr ~= 40 Megawatt hr battery capacity sold

Who comes close?

For grins, take the most recent Dashboard data and using the kilowatt hour rating of each car times the numbers sold . . . the Toyota hybrids dwarf everyone else. Ford is coming on strong but the others are closer to 'rounding errors.'

Bob Wilson

 

Ummmmm.............

Each Prius has a 1.3 kwh battery, of which .65 kwh is usable

Toyota has sold more than 5 million hybrids so far.
Green Car Congress: Toyota cumulative global hybrid sales pass 5M, nearly 2M in US
I noticed you interchanged 'hybrid' with 'Prius'.

The other hybrids tend to be larger (Camry, Highlander, etc.) and so have larger batteries.

Nonetheless:

Using 1.3 kwh x 5 million hybrids = 6.5 GIGAwatt hours of battery capacity sold

This is 162.5x higher than the figure you quoted

BTW, 2,000,000 * 20 kwh is 40 GIGAwatt hours of battery capacity (using your numbers), not 40 MEGAwatt-hours

 

So Cadillac currently only sells two cars that hit this price point: the Escalade and maybe a CTS-V.

A Volt wearing the Caddy wreath isn't going to work with Caddy's buyers.

Tesla is stealing sales from potential S-Class and 7-series buyers. It looks cool. It performs well. It has a massive screen in the dash. Arguably the brand is cooler than Cadillac.

This car needed to be something real special at 75k. If you have 75k to spend on a car, you probably have another car for a road trip. Again, why Tesla is doing well. Leaf buyers may not be able to say that, hence the middle ground of a Volt or PiP.

 

Huh? Toyota has hardly sold any cars with 20 Killowatt hr battery packs (just a few hundred Rav4 EVs).

The 2nd and 3rd gen Prius that make up the vast majority of cumulative Prius sales have 1.3-1.4 kWh packs. I don't remember how many Priuses have been built but if we use your 2 million figure then Toyota has built and sold about 3 Gigawatt hrs of Prius packs.

Nissan has built around 83,000 LEAFs worldwide (according to Wikipedia) with 24 Killowatt hr packs so they come in at around 2.0 Gigawatt hrs.

Chevrolet seems to have sold close to 65,000 Volts by now (Wikipedia-based guesstimate) with 16 and 16.5 Killowatt he packs so that's about 1.1 Gigawatt hrs.

Tesla has probably sold about 16,000 Model S cars with average 70+ Killowatt hr packs plus about 2,000 Roadsters with 53 Killowatt hr packs so they have sold around 1.2 Gigawatt hrs.

In any case, this is not an "orders of magnitude" difference and Toyota will probably be overtaken in total battery capacity sold in a few years unless they start bringing out their own high capacity plugins and EVs for sale in major markets.

 

Exactly.

See:
When will Tesla Motors reach 1 million total cumulative worldwide sales of Tesla EV's

2008-2011 2500
2012 2700 (cumulative 5200)
2013 23,800 (cumulative 29000)
2014 36,000 Model S (cumulative 65000)
2015 60,000 Model S/X (cumulative 125000)
2016 80,000 Model S/X (cumulative 205000)
2017 90k Model S/X, 80,000 Gen III (cumulative (375000)2018 90k Model S/X, 180,000 Gen III (cumulative 645000)
2019 90k Model S/X, 270,000 Gen III (cumulative 1005000)
2020 90k Model S/X, 350,000 Gen III (cumulative 1445000)

So my guess is they'll hit 1m cars cumulative in 2019.​

​

Speculative, sure. But the numbers are clear: ​

Toyota will very soon be surpassed in total battery capacity put on the road........by Tesla. ​

Every 85kwh Model S = 65 Prii ​

 

And there is one major point of difference to be made.
Those Prii, and other Toyota hybrids, can not be plugged in. So regardless of how much battery capacity they have put on the road, those vehicles are still limited to one fuel source: gasoline.
The others allow their gasoline use to be substituted with electricity, or have forgone gasoline completely.

 

I would disagree here. The ELR is nothing like the Volt at all, except for the underlying technology which is not immediately obvious to the owner (and indeed would be one of the reasons to actually buy the car). The interior and suspension are orders of magnitude more sophisticated than a Volt.....and that is what Caddy buyers will care about.
After all, isn't an Escalade just a re-badged Tahoe?

Yes, true. But Caddy's rarely compete with these cars. We are talking luxury here, not performance. I would say Caddy's prime competitors are Lincoln and Lexus. Given that their has never been a Lexus (or a Lincoln) with a plug, this means GM is getting a leg up on the competition.
Also, Caddy buyers are likely older and more conservative, so they would axiomatically be opposed to (or skeptical of) massive touch screens, wireless, green technology, etc. Converting them over with the ELR would be a big step forward for this demographic...........much more so than an Escalade 2-mode.

It is special. Caddy buyers will love the instant torque and silence of the EV motor. Yes, price is high. GM is trying to milk it for what it can, but eventually I expect a price drop.
Having a 2nd car is not necessarily ideal. Twice the # of insurance premiums, parking spots, registration, maintenance.

Tesla is great for a road trip based on 4-doors. However if you are an older retiree.......a main Caddy demographic.....you don't need the back seats so much w/o a family. And the ELR can fill up in 5 minutes at any of 150,000 gasoline stations and be back on the road. At this point it is slightly more practical for long road trips than the Tesla. Despite smaller size, suspension should offer a comfortable ride. GM knows their audience well.

Tesla---> Younger, tech-savvy, green/eco-minded buyers stolen from German makes
Cadillac----> Older, conservative, reduce-foreign-oil-minded buyers, stolen from Lincoln, Lexus, Jaguar

 

And your point is?

 

I am not making a point.
I am responding to one, made by Bob Wilson above.
Try to follow along.

 

Not necessarily true. Every watt-hour of battery capacity put into a car - even a mild hybrid like the Malibu - displaces gasoline as opposed to a standard version of the same car. The plug-in cars simply displace more.

The more Giga-watt hours we put on the road, the less gasoline we use.......up to a point.
I agree with you that beyond a certain amount you have to go to plug-in to keep reducing gasoline.
Basically non-plugs will reduce gasoline by about 1/3.......to reduce the remaining 2/3, you need progressively more plug-in power.

 

Yes, I predict that the ELR will be dropped within 2 years.

It's a limited run model. This is Caddy playing with Voltec before the platform shift.

 

Most of Toyota's hybrids are also NiMH, which means that most of Toyota hybrid sales are not helping their new technology volume.

 

If you "have forgone gasoline completely", you are then limited to one fuel source again, this time: electricity!

 

Hmm....sounds like a tough one

Electricity = Cheap, clean and domestic

Oil = Expensive, dirty, and foreign