I live in Michigan, and was dishearten when I read about this story the other day. But not really that surprised.
A few observations:
- Tesla isn't a name brand here like Ford or GM. In fact, if you asked a lot of people if we should help the Big Three with this sort of legislation, you might be surprised by the answer. Remember, they generate a LOT of jobs in this state: not just the Big Three, but the tier 2 and tier 3 manufactors. While I think logic would win out in the day, I wouldn't assume that everybody in Michigan _wants_ Tesla. It isn't in their best interest.
- I haven't seen one media story about this yet, outside of social media.
- We're in the middle of an election cycle year, including a gubernatorial race. So, the special interests picked a good time to insert this language: there are a lot of problems the state is still dealing with, including Detroit going through bankruptcy. And people want the money to win races.
Personally, I'd love to see Telsa in the state, both the cars and charging stations. But, honestly, Telsa isn't going to get much traction here until they improve cold weather battery performance.
My retired father-in-law who lives in a suburb of Detroit got a car that was not manufactured by the by the Big Three a couple years ago. He felt so much social pressure that he quickly returned it and got one that was. He told me that some "foreign" cars would be egged in his neighborhood. I put foreign in quotes, as big three cars are not always manufactured in the US and sometimes other cars are manufactured here. But if you are from Detroit, where the headquarters is and the profits go back to matters most, and tangibly matters.
and friend of mine's father drives around Flint, MI in a Honda Civic with the license plate "GMLEFT." Needless to say, he has frequently had to deal with vandalism. The truth hurts.
I live in a Detroit suburb, a large number of the residents here are engineers, many for GM, Ford and Chrysler, but quite a few for Toyota, Hyundai and other foreign suppliers (like Bosch and Yazaki). I see many domestic, but almost as many imports here.
I think a lot of the stigma is gone, certainly there is considerable pressure for people to drive their employers vehicle to work, but at least in my (relatively upscale) neighborhood, I would feel no social pressure against, and I bet I would have a bunch of engineers come visit, if I dug up a 100k and put a Tesla in my driveway.
Agree. I worked for one of these three companies for a span. While I was there, they did have a rule that if you're not driving their car, you can't park it in the covered parking lot. That was the extent of the backlash, and I've lived in this area most of my life. I think a lot of these stories and anecdotes about tires getting slashed, and people being harassed for driving foreign are not accurate today.
I think part of that might be the crowds you hang with. I would expect petty vandalism more from blue collar types than I would engineers and other professional types.
I've been a contractor for one of the Big 3 at one point in the early 2000's. I was given a Kia at Enterprise to drive, and when I came out on my first day, it was encased with no less than 300 pallets and shrinkwrap.
Apparently, they forgot to tell me that you shouldn't drive a non-UAW vehicle onto the parking lot.
Enterprise's Roadside Assistance guy was not happy with me when he had to help me pull the pallets away so I could get my vehicle out.
I agree that there's not a stigma for driving a foreign car around Detroit anymore.
Interestingly, my father worked for Chrysler outside of Detroit from the late 1950s into the 1970s.
And oddly enough, he drove a VW Beetle in the 1960s. As you can imagine, when things were good, he was just viewed as the eccentric guy who drove a puny foreign car (why would anybody in their right mind do that?).
In the 1970s (and 1980s) doing something similar was probably a moderately dangerous move.
I've been back many times during my life and in the 1990s and onward, I see plenty of foreign cars.
I live in a very cold place with weather comparable to Norway. There are lots of problems when it comes to dealing with cars in the winter. I have no doubt that Tesla could be a decent choice for a car, but it makes perfect sense to be a bit wary about electric vehicles manufactured in California sunshine, especially if you don't have a garage to store the car in.
In addition to battery life and cabin heating issues, there can be lots of small problems. I'm a bit worried about the fancy electric door handles, for example. I've been locked out of my car because the locks were frozen and sometimes even the doors themselves frozen solid.
I have no doubt that Tesla can overcome these issues but they will have to do extensive testing as well as make it known to the public that their car is a reliable vehicle even in wintertime.
People up here in the north tend to favor simple and solid cars and marketing Teslas and other electric vehicles is going to be difficult. The issue is half technical and half marketing.
> "it makes perfect sense to be a bit wary about electric vehicles manufactured in California sunshine"
It makes no more sense than a Florida driver being wary of overheating a car made in Detroit. There may actually be some winter weather technical problems that Tesla has yet to resolve, I honestly don't know. But everything in your post is either speculation or a fallacy called argumentum ad populum [1].
If I were to speculate, I'd assume that an electric vehicle would be more reliable than a gas powered one in the winter, not less. Ignition is simpler, there are less moving parts, etc. But it's still speculation, and you can't make an argument from a point of ignorance.
Detroit manufacturers have desert proving grounds for hot weather. Tesla doesn't seem to have the same for the cold, having just done 'days' of pre-launch testing in the cold: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/cold-weather-climate-testing.... Even my parents' Prius, from a long-established manufacturer, runs far less efficiently in Wisconsin winter.
At no point did I intend to imply that Tesla is a bad car in the Winter. I've never owned one yet, I don't really know. But as this thread shows, many people do assume so.
Had I really speculated that it really is, you'd be right.
Tesla's challenge in the North is convincing people that it is a car that is reliable even in the winter. This is going to be a harder task than actually making the car reliable in the cold.
Even still, it's probably much less controversial to say that most drivers in cold-weather climates will have less certainty of how the car will perform and hold-up. Maybe it will be a better cold-weather car, maybe worse, maybe the same. I'm of the mindset that I were buying a car in a cold weather climate, I'd prefer to let everyone else learn those lessons first while I stick with something more predictable.
This was on Reddit a couple of days ago, it seems that the Tesla door handles are able to break through ice so you can still get into the car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYXKY7fpHWA
> "Electric cars have been especially popular in Norway because of generous subsidies, free parking, government-provided re-charging stations, the right to use express lanes on highways and exemptions from tolls."
Yeah, Michigan has (almost) none of that.
Cold weather battery performance could be ignored here if there were charging stations all over. Sure, there are a handful of charging stations scattered around if you live in Ann Arbor or something, but it's not like I can drive from there to Traverse City and reliably find charging stations. Especially in cold weather where I couldn't make it on one charge without freezing in the cabin. And good luck in the Upper Peninsula.
I'd love to own a Tesla / other electric vehicle. But between the cost, the winter performance, and the current lack of infrastructure, it's just not smart IMHO.
Tromsø got 95 inches of snow from a single month in 1997. All 95 inches were during the month of December IIRC. On the average, Tromsø gets a ton more snow than that across its year.
Tromsø is one of the snowiest locations in the world.
No, I think I understood your point, and the point of the second article. (Thanks for that, by the way, I wasn't aware that Tesla had improved battery performance by keeping them warm. A neat idea.) I just didn't write my response very well, and for that I apologize.
What I was referring to was mostly the amount of energy the climate control system uses. Heating the cabin is going to suck some juice. I've talked to Chevy Volt owners about their winter performance and they say heating is their biggest problem in the winter. Even with the gasoline engine running to provide some waste heat for the cabin, they still get 50% of their normal range if they turn the heat on. If they're OK with driving to work wearing thick gloves and a winter parka while scraping the ice from the inside of their windshield, they only lose about 20% of their range which I presume is purely due to cold-weather battery performance at that point. Elon claims in the second article only 10% loss due to heating the cabin which frankly I don't believe and am chalking up to "MPG benchmarking nonsense." I admit I could be wrong, but I'd have to see some compelling numbers.
I believe my main point still stands though, which is that the government of Norway has built up the infrastructure and given people incentive to drive these cars. This doesn't exist in Michigan. Chargemap.com says that there are 1,416 charging stations in Norway. According to energy.gov, Michigan has 700. Meanwhile, according to the population density map on Wikipedia (1994 was the newest I could find, sadly) almost all the population in Norway is condensed into very small areas along the edges. Michigan is all over the place (except for the UP, which is noticeably lower). Assuming they only installed charging stations where there are people, this means that while in Norway, you likely have access to a charging station wherever you drive, unlike Michigan. So basically, we're comparing apples to kumquats here and you can't just point to the popularity of Tesla as proof of anything other than Norway's government was forward thinking.
Exactly this. I'm about to graduate with a BS in Computer Science from Oakland University. We're less than a mile away from Chrysler World HQ. I'd say about 90% of my classmates already are, or are going to, work for one of the Big 3 or Big 3 suppliers. If you explained this situation to most people you met on the street, they would probably be in favor of fucking over Tesla.
Cars are pretty much the backbone of the entire economy here in MI. It's getting better, but not fast enough. Apparently what happened to Flint and Detroit wasn't enough of a wakeup call for everyone.
- I haven't seen one media story about this yet, outside of social media.
I also live in michigan and both of the major detroit newspapers had this on the front page early this morning [0][1].
- Tesla isn't a name brand here like Ford or GM. In fact, if you asked a lot of people if we should help the Big Three with this sort of legislation, you might be surprised by the answer. Remember, they generate a LOT of jobs in this state: not just the Big Three, but the tier 2 and tier 3 manufactors. While I think logic would win out in the day, I wouldn't assume that everybody in Michigan _wants_ Tesla. It isn't in their best interest.
This is about helping dealerships, not manufacturers so you'd think that any support for the Big Three manufactures wouldn't correlate with support for this bill.
A few observations:
- Tesla isn't a name brand here like Ford or GM. In fact, if you asked a lot of people if we should help the Big Three with this sort of legislation, you might be surprised by the answer. Remember, they generate a LOT of jobs in this state: not just the Big Three, but the tier 2 and tier 3 manufactors. While I think logic would win out in the day, I wouldn't assume that everybody in Michigan _wants_ Tesla. It isn't in their best interest.
- I haven't seen one media story about this yet, outside of social media.
- We're in the middle of an election cycle year, including a gubernatorial race. So, the special interests picked a good time to insert this language: there are a lot of problems the state is still dealing with, including Detroit going through bankruptcy. And people want the money to win races.
Personally, I'd love to see Telsa in the state, both the cars and charging stations. But, honestly, Telsa isn't going to get much traction here until they improve cold weather battery performance.