General Motors has the fullest line of full-size electric trucks of anyone in the world, I think. Chinese automakers do have EV trucks and SUVs, but the breadth of what GM has done is impressive. What hasn’t been impressive are sales, so GM is now reportedly slow-rolling the development of a replacement.
The Morning Dump has been hybrid-heavy lately, but that’s just the way of the world. Big expectations crashing into reality. That’s happening with Amazon Autos, too, which is seeing some original dealers defect as the results have been underwhelming so far. You mean people don’t want to buy new cars at the same place they buy underwear? I’m shocked!
Tesla is one of the most highly-valued stocks when you look at its share price versus forward earnings, meaning investors see the company making a lot of money in the future off AI or Robotaxis. Will this quarter’s positive earnings impact that one way or another? Also, BYD has been suddenly taken off the list of companies allegedly involved in what the government referred to as “slavery-like” labor conditions in Brazil, and the person who put them on the list has been fired. What’s going on there?
Pivot! Pivot! PIVOT!
I’m serious. GM’s full-size electric platform supports the Hummer SUV, Hummer pickup, Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV, and Cadillac Escalade IQ. Depending on how you look at it, that’s five different full-size electric trucks. Most of the Chinese EV platforms are for what we’d think of as midsize trucks. I mean, there’s the Yangwang U8, but that doesn’t seem to share a platform with anything else.
While GM is the leader in this space, it’s not a space that’s particularly popular. As with most things EV, the appetite for electric full-size trucks has not materialized. RAM scrapped plans for its EV pickup, Ford isn’t making a new generation of the Lightning, and even Tesla is selling a large chunk of its inventory to other Elon Musk-owned companies.
GM has continued selling its various EV trucks, but it has intermittently slowed down or stopped production at its Factory Zero plant that makes these vehicles. Now, according to reporting from Crain’s Detroit Business, GM has been telling suppliers that development on the next generation replacement has been halted.
Suppliers were recently informed that the next-gen program was halted with no new timetable specified. Supplier executives and analysts told Crain’s Detroit Business that they do not expect to see a new generation of the electric vehicle line until 2030 or beyond.
The current line of electric trucks will continue to be produced at Factory Zero in Detroit-Hamtramck. But the automaker is further diverting resources and capital from electrification to other programs including its new T1-2 gas engine platform, set to launch 30 miles north at Orion Assembly Plant next year.
A plug-in hybrid variant of the Silverado and Sierra is expected to be in the mix at Orion, the sources said.
A GM spokesperson did the usual “we’re not going to engage in speculation,” which is not a “no.”
There might be more of an appetite for this kind of vehicle in the future, so there’s nothing to stop GM from just making them indefinitely. It’s not like there’s going to be a ton of competition, and light refreshes might be a better course. I mean, look at the Durango. You can sell a vehicle for extended periods these days and seemingly get away with it.
EREVs and plug-in hybrid solutions seem to be the most logical for large trucks, so GM headed that way makes a lot of sense.
Amazon Autos Isn’t Changing The World Yet
There was a lot of buzz initially for Amazon Autos, which gives automakers a way to find leads via the expansive Amazon platform. The first foray was with Hyundai dealers and has since expanded, with Ford recently partnering to sell certified pre-owned cars.
The results have been rather muted, though, according to data provided to Automotive News:
Amazon Autos launched in December 2024 with Hyundai in 48 cities. It now operates in more than 130 cities and includes new, used and certified pre-owned vehicles from Chevrolet, Jeep, Kia, Mazda and Subaru.
Some early participants report selling just one or two vehicles monthly through Amazon, far short of what they’d hoped from a partnership with one of the world’s largest retailers.
“I think it’s way too early to tell because of the low volume of transactions,” said Andrew Wright, a Vinart Dealerships managing partner who helped craft Amazon’s early pilot with Hyundai dealerships but chose not to participate in the program.
Another Hyundai dealership owner from the Southeast who requested anonymity said, “The results have not met my expectations.”
It’s strange, because Carvana seems to be doing a healthy business selling cars online and delivering them to customers. This in-between step seems to just be a fancy version of lead generation, and maybe that’s not good enough.
What’s Going To Happen With Tesla Earnings?
The confounding thing about Tesla is that its stock trades something like 160-190 times its forward earnings depending on its price, which is to say that the amount being paid by investors to own the shares isn’t a reflection of what’s expected as a return in the near future (by comparison, Apple is the next-closest at roughly 30x forward earnings). What investors are choosing to believe is that what CEO Elon Musk is doing will make the company so necessary that it’ll unlock huge value in the distant future.
From that perspective, the quarter-to-quarter earnings or losses are less important than the story Musk and Tesla can tell about the future. Last quarter’s earnings weren’t great, this quarter’s earnings will probably be strongly positive, but what investors are looking for is that story.
As a result, investing pros say strong quarterly numbers that beat already lowered expectations aren’t likely to move the richly valued stock. Rather, Tesla needs one of two things to drag its shares out of their rut: Concrete signs of progress on its robotaxi plans or a shiny new object from Musk’s playbook that moves the goalposts for the company and resets the timer to show results.
“When a stock trades on a long-term story, patience doesn’t disappear overnight,” said Haris Khurshid, chief investment officer at Karobaar Capital, which owns Tesla shares mostly through derivatives. “The existing base is still holding on, but it’s getting harder to attract new buyers without clearer results.”
When Musk talks to investors, look for a big show, a shiny announcement, or something else.
BYD No Longer On The Naughty List In Brazil
Late in 2024, a big report came out from Reuters alleging that Chinese nationals were found to be working in “slavery-like conditions” at a Brazilian BYD plant that was under construction, which BYD wasn’t too fond of:
Brazilian labor authorities had on Wednesday said they found 163 Chinese nationals working in “slavery-like conditions” at a construction site for a BYD-owned factory in Brazil’s Bahia state. BYD said then that it had cut ties with the firm that hired the workers and was working with authorities.
“Being unjustly labeled as ‘enslaved’ has made our employees feel that their dignity has been insulted and their human rights violated, seriously hurting the dignity of the Chinese people. We have signed a joint letter to express our true feelings,” Jinjiang said on its official Weibo account.
This issue was seemingly resolved when the contractors for BYD and BYD itself settled with the state prosecutors office to the tune of $8 million, half of which was distributed to the workers.
Settled it was not, as then Labor Secretary Luiz Felipe Brandao de Mello last week put BYD on the list of companies that have been found to utilize such egregious labor conditions. BYD, as you might imagine, wasn’t too keen to be on this list. BYD is now off the list and the Labor Secretary has been sacked. What’s going on?
Nikkei Asia says some within the labor community think it was a retaliation:
Some leveled accusations that Mello was fired over BYD’s inclusion on the list.
“Regarding the dismissal of the labor inspection secretary, there is obviously a retaliatory element,” Mario Diniz, vice president of Safiteba, the labor inspectors’ union in the state of Bahia, told Nikkei in an interview. “Because it happened shortly after the inclusion of the BYD on the ‘dirty list’ of employers of slave labor.”
[…]
Mauricio Santoro, a professor of international relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said, “It is possible that there was political interference,” as BYD’s Bahia factory received “strong support from important Brazilian leaders.”
It’s not really knowable what happened as an outsider, but Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has made connections to China an important part of his government.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
One of the surprises of Coachella this year was Nine Inch Noize, which is a collab between Nine Inch Nails and German electronic group Boys Noize. That sounds super weird, and is, but it also works. Please enjoy “Hersey.” Well, enjoy the song, maybe not the concept.
The Big Question
What would a full-size EV truck need to be able to do in order to make sense?
Top photo: Chevrolet
I tow a camper with my truck. I want an electrified truck for the towing torque and efficiency, but it has to have a gas generator in it for long trips and for places that don’t have EV charging. I have 0 interest in a full EV truck. And this is coming from a person who owned a 1st gen Volt and currently has both a PHEV and an EV. I hope by the time I am ready to replace my 2021 RAM (hopefully not for at least 5 more years) that there are options for me.
An EV truck makes sense for me right now. However the problem is the charging.
For my use case (towing the camper) I would definitely want more pull through charging spots.
I could always unhitch, but with the WD/AS that would be very annoying to do every 200 miles towing.
I know the list price may be 100k on these EV trucks, but I see a lot of good deals out there for way less.
Good news is that a truck has a lot of space for the batteries. Towing engine with plug-in batteries would be optimal, as it allows for better mileage when not towing, which is most of the time.
GM is just listening to the market. I think slowing down the development of their next-gen EV trucks makes sense, but I do hope they continue to sell their existing EV trucks. After all, in most segments, they are in a class of one, but I hope they don’t do what Ford did and actually stop selling the Lightning (or at least that is what it seems has happened).
They should have listened to the market before development.
It’s possible they will be trying to sell what they have built for a while. Hopefully take some off-the-lot depreciation before the sale.
I think the EV truck already makes sense for specific use cases. Towing or long distance travel no, but for everything else, yes. I think for something like local construction work they’d be preferable to gas, since they have the capability of running all kinds of different tool and can keep the AC running. Same thing as like an auto parts delivery truck. I believe those tend to make a lot of short trips in town, perfect for EV use.
If I had a place to plug it in, an EV truck would work well for me right now. A Rivian is one of my dream vehicles.
I’m still a believer in hybrids though, I think the Ford Powerboost is cool, and I’d LOVE if Ram came out with a Hurricane with a hybrid that could work as an EV to say 30mph or so. I feel like I heard something about that a while back, but not sure if that’s a thing anymore.
TBQ: Well-equipped for under $50k, cost-competitve on insurance rates, and probably megawatt charging enabled via a network extensive enough to have no more than one car ahead of you in line on Thanksgiving weekend.
The whole thing reminds me of Auto Traders new(ish) platform shift where they want to broker the whole deal through their platform, for a fee of course. I already paid them to list my vehicle. Back when I sold my Wrangler in 24 they were pushing me to handle payment and everything through them, I instead just told the buyer to meet me at my house, give me cash, I handed over the title and everything was done. The whole going through their escrow and title transfer thing seemed completely unnecessary and I told them so when I pulled the ad.
This Amazon listing seems like just another version of Marketplace, Craigslist, Auto Trader and Cars.com, I’m already looking at those places, why would I add Amazon to my list?
I actually bought a car through that autotrader service a year ago and am divided on it. It added costs that made a difference, even on a sub-$20k car, and didn’t save me any time because I bought across state lines, but I can’t imagine bringing a suitcase full of cash to pay for something new enough to be under warranty. Some kind of escrow is starting to become necessary.
There is a gaping hole in the ecosystem for low transaction cost cheap used car advertising that used to be filled by Craigslist before Facebook marketplace nuked them from orbit and filled the void with slop.
Yeah, full transparency, the Jeep wasn’t that much money, when I’ve sold cars at that price, we’ve met at my bank and I’ve deposited a cashiers check directly with the buyer present, as I still owed money on the car so the payoff could be handled and the title provided lien free on the spot.
I agree, I miss the old car forum classifieds for just this reason, hyper-targeted enthusiast cars with people I already had some for of rapport with, or at least enough of the community did for me to feel confident in what I might be buying.
My thinking on this is that Amazon is not trying to serve anyone in the market not currently being served through service or product. They are just adding a way to find a car. The problem is, they’re not replacing anything, just adding to it.
I want to be able to buy a new or CPO car without involving a dealer. I don’t need more middlemen I need less.
Last mile delivery is the optimum application for an EV truck, but it’s concentrated in the hands of too few, too large customers which is why with Amazon partnering with Rivian and USPS doing their own thing, GM canned the Brightdrop after neither UPS nor FedEx made a deal to buy them by the thousands.
Wild idea, There are a LOT of people who do not actually tow with their trucks. Lets try to admit that, build and sell EV trucks that are not for towing. Thinking you may tow someday but you will actually never will but want to think you will, is part of the problem.
How many fleet trucks never tow or carry very heavy loads in the beds. How many suburban posers would not even know how to hook up a trailer. Sell EV trucks to them.
There are plenty of people who have accepted that they don’t tow or don’t tow enough for it to matter. We call them “car buyers”.
Trucks are expensive to buy and own and people pay it because they want what they get for that price. They get it. They don’t have to use it, but they get it. Electric trucks have asked them to pay even more for capabilities they can get from a cheaper vehicle. Cut the prices in half and they’ll buy, but as always, dollars sell briskly at $0.50.
Pretty sure this is one of the points of the Slate, right? It’s not being marketed as a workhorse, just cheap, honest, adaptable transportation.
I mean—why couldn’t you sell a range extender that fits in the bed and integrates with the electrical system? That has to be the easiest possible packaging job in the world.
You could even rent the thing.
I imagine that has a variety of regulatory issues, with emissions and safety near the top of the list.
Are modern truck beds even big enough for that. We are approaching the 2-3ft bed lengths any year now. (snark)
TBQ: the ability to rattle all the windows in the neighborhood while leaving for work at 6:30 in the morning. Also to get real close to whoever happens to be in front of you. And it needs space in the back window to express your politics and love of hunting and fishing, often in the most crude way possible. And it better be easy to lift and put low-profile “off road” tires that stick out past the fenders on it.
And the batteries can’t be so low that it makes it too hard to Carolina Squat your suspension.
Ugh, upvoted for how much I hate how right this is.
Also it needs to have an antenna aerial that can be replaced with a 7.62 round so people know you’d shoot them with a radio antenna if you could.
Back in my wrenching for a living days, nothing brought a bigger smile to my face than failing vehicles for the annual safety inspection due to the tires sticking out past the fenders.
Also needs a smoke screen function to tell those “anti-American” protestors what your little boy words are incapable of conveying.
-It has to be able to tow a reasonable distance.
-It has to be available in multiple bed and cab configurations.
-It needs to not look too weird. Ford understood this with the Lightning. GM didn’t really with the awkwardly proportioned SilEVrado. The less said about Tesla here the better.
-It has to be cost-competitive with gas and diesel powered trucks. All the more so for fleet sales that might be willing to compromise on range and towing.
That is a tough nut to crack, so it doesn’t surprise me that EV trucks aren’t quite ready yet.
The cost competitive part for comparable usage is big. I see TONs of Lightnings in my area, but the majority are for businesses. They have a set use case which is easy to plan for, and the Gov’t incentives for businesses to go EV were good.
Businesses deal in dollars and cents, not emotions like Joe Public. This is why I spent my whole wrenching career in commercial trucks/buses. Businesses don’t blink about repair costs cause the equipment needs to move.
Yeah, my employer has a fleet of Lightnings (as an electric utility it’s a bit on the nose) but unsubsidized the cost still seems a little too high for mass adoption.
The cost has been the poison pill for me, Truck or otherwise. I’m already playing in the bottom of the market, and am not willing to increase my monthly vehicle costs to go EV. I’m still waiting for my unicorn(s) and if the industry spent more time optimizing for cost instead of profit we might be closer to this. Regardless, I’m certainly not going to pay MORE for the same class of vehicle, to have less capability; be that range or utility.
EREVs and PHEVs in the truck world. If you can bop back & forth to work and around town while simply plugging in at night, and have the gas pick up the slack on long journeys, you’re set.
As DT has said repeatedly, vehicles are an emotional purchase, we buy the POTENTIAL of adventures. Hence all the half tons that have never seen a trailer or anywhere near payload capacity. Cause they might need it ONE DAY.
So you can kick and scream all you want about actual use. That doesn’t matter.
The truck needs to be comparable capability to current gas offerings, while saving money at the pump. Without spending an extra 30k or more over the MSRP of their ICE competition.
Why do I drive an Excursion that gets low double digit fuel economy? Cause that $900-1500/month truck payment buys a LOT of gas, even at $1.80/L. And I can always drive less.
I’ll add that I’m closely watching Edison Motors’ rolling chassis hybrid kit. Cause I’d gladly pay $50k to slide that under my Excursion body.
You and me both, I wonder if it would actually increase the payload/towing capacity of what it replaces, all while allowing city ev driving and dyno juice when needed
That sounds dirtier than it should.
Good.
For a true work pickup, I imagine range wouldn’t be as much of an issue as it would be for the folks using their truck as their daily driver. Towing might remain a major disadvantage for a long time, though.
Having said that, the perceptions of both a shorter range and a longer “fill-up” time compared to an ICE vehicle are probably two of an EV truck’s bigger hurdles.
(I intentionally say perceptions. Until recently I just assumed range, charging times, and charging availability were still bigger issues than they are these days, until some fine folks here in the comments pointed out massive improvements in the tech and infrastructure in recent years. I’m sure a lot of skeptics still think that way.)
We tried with full size EV pickups for retail customers. Perception clashed with reality and perception won. People think they need to be able to tow with these things when they don’t actually tow anything. But the perception of not being able to tow a giant camper across the Rockies at 75 mph killed sales. Never mind that a lot of gas pickups can’t either. That fact was conveniently omitted.
Fast charging infrastructure currently being optimized for passenger vehicles didn’t help. I tow with a Model Y and on trips greater than 120 miles one way dropping the camper is necessary to charge. It’s 15 feet long so it’s not a big deal. But wrangling a large camper on and off isn’t fun. Give it 2-3 years and this will change.
Are GM execs living in an alternative bubble? Are they not paying attention to the demand destruction issue of oil about to be foisted upon much of the developed world, an event that will effect the global economy? And yet they double down on the past and more misery.
So, I am assuming everyone will stand around and wait for the other guy to come out with an EREV pickup, then when it’s a huge hit (160 miles EV and sub 50k) everyone will play catch up. Where is my Colorado EREV? And , why is GM so far behind in hybrid offerings?
“Heresy” was an absolute monster on Downward Spiral. This is not that. Luckily we’re all used to super weird NIN remixes, and I’m glad ol’ Trent is still working.
What would a full-size EV truck need to be able to do in order to make sense?
Not be a rolling statement
Not be the size of a building
Not cost $100K
Drive 500 miles on a charge, 300 when towing.
Without having a battery pack that weighs as much as a small car.
So you’re basically asking for 3x the energy density compared to current tech, really 6x if you also want the price to come down to a reasonable number, not be a massive statement piece, and actually bought in decent volumes.
Massively profitable companies should be able to fund pioneering research and development with those profits, right guys?
Nope. That’s for the C-suite execs and their top shareholders to pocket.
No need to waste capital on what isn’t (in their minds) broken, after all.
In large part they are, but we’re still not there yet. Whoever cracks the energy density problem first will have a massive advantage, and every automaker wants that edge.
Njd isn’t asking for anything. The question was what would it take for an EV truck to be successful.
What success would be and how it would be achieved are two very different questions.
Who knows – maybe some sort of micro nuclear reactor will come along and make battery tech a moot point (though I’d imagine there would need to be some battery capacity in play, to accommodate ramp up/ramp down of the reactor). And if this sort of thing came to be, range would start to be measured in hundreds of thousands of miles or kilometers – which would probably make it a very successful (though expensive) truck.
What would a full-size EV truck need to be able to do in order to make sense?
This is what I was addressing. To get that, you’d need significantly increased energy density. Hence the 3x, or more likely 6x improvement needed. You’d need 10x+ the current to remove the need for battery regen/power smoothing.
My day job is working on EVs, so I’m just outlining what it would take.
Gotcha. Makes sense, given your expertise with the current technology.
I do like your “not be a rolling statement” condition. I live in a smallish farming community of about 4,500 people, and somehow the local dealership convinced somebody around here to buy one of the new Hummer EVs. I shake my head every time I see it, as it just seems so out of place around here. It certainly makes a statement though.
The dealership convinced them by offering hilariously cheap leases after the HEVs sat for months on the lot. GM paid out a ton of incentives as well.
A friend of a friend has a 3x that costs him $800/mo including insurance through GM. He charges for free at work, and all maintenance is covered by the lease.
The 4 points above were from /u/4jim and /u/Njd. I personally think EV trucks are hideous, not as rolling statements, but because I can’t use them as a real truck. I’ll keep my GMT400 forever at this rate.
What truck gets 500 miles on a tank?
Mine, easily.
Ford and Ram HDs have 48 and 50 gallon fuel tanks as an option, respectively.
Ok.
Is your truck stock? Gas or Diesel? Do most stock trucks do this?
I ask because I find most people I talk to have unreal expectations of EVs compared to internal combustion vehicles. They seem to think EVs are supposed to go farther than the equivalent gas/diesel vehicle.
The large tanks are factory stock options, available for either gas or diesel.
Additionally, range is less important as an ICE vehicle metric because of the ease and speed of refueling compared to recharging an EV. If fast chargers allowed for adding 300+ miles of range in 5 minutes at every highway exit in the country, I suspect you’d see a lot less stress over electric range.
Not to mention fast refueling an ICE vehicle has 0 negative effects, unlike fast charging with current cell chemistries.
They don’t. And that is why they aren’t successful.
Like you said – unrealistic expectations. Said another way, the tech ain’t there yet.
There’s a reason for the excessive mileage people want.
A battery constantly degrades, so people want it to last as long as possible. Because of this, they want to be able to make a couple trips without having to fast charge.
They also want to avoid going below 20% because of pack wear and range anxiety.
Compound that with a majority of the US population living in the north, where range can drop by up to 50% in below freezing temperatures.
Obviously the concerns are overstated, but car buying has not been a purely logical decision for decades. For many people an EV would be fine if they’re already buying a new car, but that calculus changes significantly if you buy used/out of warranty.
Our Grand Cherokee diesel gets almost 700 miles to a tank unladen, about 350 when pulling our 22’ Airstream. I’d love to get an ev to replace it but the very high upfront cost plus tremendous compromise on towing make it not feasible for now.
We’re driving 1,006 miles tomorrow (unladen) and that’s about the limit for us in one long day. The range of that Jeep is a complete joy. Of course we stop to pee more often than that but we stop where we want and for how long, and with that range also using the route we want. I hope there will be a time when an ev can be the answer.
v
Yes – Being the size of a 1970’s/80’s full-sized pickup is just fine for most people.
Which I guess makes it the size of a Maverick, but without the back doors/seat.