[HN Gopher] The Chevy Blazer EV Launch Has Gone from Rough to Wo...
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The Chevy Blazer EV Launch Has Gone from Rough to Worse as GM
Issues Stop-Sale
Author : bastard_op
Score : 47 points
Date : 2023-12-25 21:58 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| mlinhares wrote:
| Sometimes it's hard to believe this is just incompetence.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| N'ah. Big auto execs are really _that_ incompetent, they don 't
| need to go out if their way to intentionally fuck up something.
|
| They should dogfood their own products more often instead of
| being chauffered in Porsches or Aston Martins (I imagine).
| superduty wrote:
| You imagine wrong, at least in the case of Ford's execs.
|
| The burden of corrupt and useless unions and the ancient
| dealership model are direct contributors to the garbage the
| big 3 put out. Stifled product and manufacturing innovation,
| build costs out of control, quality disincentivized, and the
| ever present spectre of easy Democrat $$bailouts work against
| designing or building or delivering anything good at a
| reasonable cost.
| philwelch wrote:
| [delayed]
| havaloc wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rPDA7dMOT4
| orenlindsey wrote:
| This is why nobody likes American car brands. The brands that
| make them cut corners and things like this happen. Teslas are the
| only American-made cars that are somewhat high-quality.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| >Tesla >High quality
|
| Pick one.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| Their software quality is best in class, rivaled only by
| other EV-only brands like Polestar and Rivian. The
| traditional manufacturers cannot compare at all.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Sure but you can't remotely OTA update chassis cracks or
| badly fitting body panels. For better or worse, bad SW can
| always be fixed later. Bad manufacturing can not, and
| software won't get you from A to B on its own.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I'd rather have bad software and wheels that don't fall off
| than the other way 'round.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Totally. Every so often the Bluetooth connection on my
| Scuon FR-S disconnects. I just turn the car off and back
| on, because its a stick it's easy and I can even do it
| while driving. No biggie.
|
| Other than that it's been super reliable. The perfect
| car.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| This may be true. But it's a car company.
| EthicalSimilar wrote:
| I think many people would disagree that Tesla are high-quality,
| even "somewhat".
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| > Teslas are the only American-made cars that are somewhat
| high-quality.
|
| As the owner of one, this is absolutely not the case.
|
| But I don't even think this is the biggest problem. It wouldn't
| matter so much if they'd just fix them when they break, but
| they don't. They go out of their way, and do everything
| possible to avoid fixing them, to the point of being rude. I
| hate it.
| tw04 wrote:
| The mustang mach-e is infinitely higher build quality than
| anything Tesla makes. From body panel alignment to interior
| squeaks and rattles.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Was gonna say the same. I'm not a Ford fan but out of all the
| American brands they have the best image of quality here in
| Europe. GM seems to just be trash everywhere.
| icelancer wrote:
| Did you see the software update brick a Mach-E?
|
| https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1739387245034139692
|
| That said, I've rented a Mach-E and its "self-driving" module
| is far, far superior to the Tesla. Hands-free, no wheel
| nudging, and a bar that watches your face/vision. Reminds me
| of comma.ai type work.
| vel0city wrote:
| Did you see the software update brick a Tesla Model 3?
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/112oqln/new_t
| e...
|
| https://www.topspeed.com/real-story-behind-teslas-failed-
| ota...
| jonathankoren wrote:
| The fact that body panel alignment is something to tout is
| really damning about Tesla. That's just table stakes.
|
| Still my all time favorite defect.
| https://www.thedrive.com/news/22951/new-tesla-
| model-3-with-m...
| Etheryte wrote:
| "Breakdown of faults by car brand: Tesla has replaced Dacia at
| the bottom" [0]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38760933
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It's actually the exact opposite.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Depends on the era and brand. The 1980's was defined by
| corner cutting low quality and "buy American" marketing to
| compensate by playing on nationalism. In 2023 I think most
| brands have reversed that, but not all.
|
| They all, though, have rushed a higher margin EV product out
| hoping that magic happens over night and being surprised it
| actually takes time to build a new vehicle platform. Teslas
| advantage is many years of development without meaningful
| competition.
|
| The result is pretty crummy EVs, articles lamenting EVs are
| unreliable (rather than car makers are making unreliable
| EVs), etc. Except for Tesla, which are middle of the pack for
| reliability.
| cyberax wrote:
| It's especially hilarious because their official reason for their
| shitty infotaiment system was "safety".
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Wow, the Edmunds article has a list of the 23 issues the
| dealership flagged when they brought the car in:
| https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/2024-chevy-blazer-ev-long-t...
| (at bottom of article)
|
| It sounds like one or more hardware manufacturing defects and/or
| full software crashes triggered under normal vehicle operation.
|
| Which sounds like QA was compressed / skipped to hit a launch
| date.
|
| Cars: The new "release the game and we'll patch it later"
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Works when you're an engineering first org. Doesn't work when
| you're a legacy dumpster fire bolting together from OEM bins
| while doing $10B in share buybacks.
|
| "You did, Mary!" Hilarious. GM execs will be long gone by the
| time Tesla and BYD crush the company.
|
| Edit: fnordpiglet nails it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38767047 ("The politics of
| established ICE execs vs the EV execs and Tesla margin envy.")
|
| https://electrek.co/2021/11/18/president-biden-gm-ceo-marry-...
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/29/gm-buyback-dividend-guidance...
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Cars: The new "release the game and we'll patch it later"
|
| I knew someone who worked at GM in OTA (over the air updates)
| and I said not to let them use that capability to slip
| schedules and fix it later. She said there were definitely
| teams wanting to use it that way, but she was pushing back.
| That was several years ago. Maybe they lost that battle.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Should've just kept selling the Bolt. You know, the immensely
| popular, cheap, established vehicle brand they've been making for
| years? Oh well.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Yeah right? What was the reason?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Almost certainly: profit margins on different models.
| - Bolt: -$4k to -$9k per vehicle [0] - Suburban: +$10k
| per vehicle [1]
|
| [0] https://www.hotcars.com/gm-admits-bolt-not-profitable/
|
| [1] https://gmauthority.com/blog/2023/06/heres-how-much-
| profit-g...
| ivraatiems wrote:
| This is correct, I believe: Chevy never made the kind of
| money they wanted to on the Bolt, despite its popularity.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| The politics of established ICE execs vs the EV execs and
| Tesla margin envy.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Or the Volt.
|
| That's the one I really wanted.
|
| 50 miles electric, extended range gas at over 40mpg.
| a_vanderbilt wrote:
| No CarPlay and reliability issues have doomed this car out of the
| gate. Incompetent management will throw their hands up and say
| "We tried!", ignoring all of the reasons why it failed. It's an
| electric vehicle, provide reliable electronics (you already
| figured this out in your gas-powered vehicles) and a decent
| infotainment system and people will love it. Tesla managed to
| dominate the market doing little else besides making it fast.
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| It's cool, we'll just bail them out again when they tank the
| company with shit products.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _GM halts sales of its new Chevy Blazer EV amid reports of
| software issues_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38748943
| - Dec 2023 (85 comments)
|
| _Our Chevy Blazer EV Has 23 Problems After Only 2 Months_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749417 - Dec 2023 (48
| comments)
| to11mtm wrote:
| Ouch.
|
| Kinda follows the trend I'm hearing with carmakers of late
| however.
|
| Just yesterday my BIL was opining that his dad was 'thinking
| about a Chevy' after being a F150 driver for decades (home
| improvement type industry.) I warned him that a colleague had a
| Blazer in the shop for 3 months waiting on a part... i.e. every
| manufacturer seems to be strugglebussing with meeting ship dates
| while keeping quality and proper service supply chains in place.
|
| I do think a big challenge is 'overplanning'; Ford did some
| things right with the Maverick and F150 Lightning (i.e. using as
| much as what they had on hand in a way to minimize overall risk)
| but did make some missteps along the way (General supply
| allocation for the Maverick, poor handling of parts supply chain
| for known CSPs and other warranty repairs, build quality of some
| early models being bad enough to somehow lead to wet floormats.)
|
| If you're gonna go out knowing things may have issues, you _must_
| have a plan to make it right for the consumer in an orderly
| fashion. The increasing levels of abstraction /bureaucracy in
| warranty and defect handling in products over the last 20 years
| is frankly sad.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| If I'm in the place where I still need a truck, and there's a
| decent used extended warranty option, the Lightning extended-
| range battery is my current next vehicle to beat.
|
| Backfeeding home power in the event of an outage or running
| essentially everything in an off-grid scenario is too game
| changing to ignore.
| scrapcode wrote:
| A common reply to "how is it working at X?" is that it is only
| as good as your immediate supervisor. I think this is the same
| with vehicle brands, except that your experience owning them is
| only as good as your nearest dealership/maintenance garage. I
| have had a terrible experience with almost all brands at some
| point. Most recently, Ford completely refusing to acknowledge
| widespread issues with their 10-speed transmission- to the
| point many Ford dealerships in the area quit taking
| transmission service work completely. I quit fighting them and
| switched to a Chevy, and I'll just have to wait until it
| malfunctions to see how bad the nearest service department is.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Shame - it's quite a sharp looking design.
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(page generated 2023-12-25 23:02 UTC)