Are battery packs from Lordstown being used in builds yet?
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Brownstown only assembled the final Battery modules and packs that are used in the Truck. The cells will now flow to Factory Zero and be assembled into modules and packs there.
I read an article yesterday that stated Lordstown has not shipped any cells yet, but it seems they just now announced they started shipping, likely yesterday. They have started producing cells, in August, see the other thread about this. There is no way any trucks built at this point had those cells.
businessjournaldaily.com
All the cells so far on the ED1 were produced by a pilot line at LG in Korea, not in the US. Modules are assembled here but the cells have been from Korea.
Ultium’s Lordstown Plant Begins Battery Cell Production
LORDSTOWN, Ohio -- Ultium Cells LLC has begun shipping its first products from its sprawling manufacturing plant here.
businessjournaldaily.com
All the cells so far on the ED1 were produced by a pilot line at LG in Korea, not in the US. Modules are assembled here but the cells have been from Korea.
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Has the automated battery assembly at Factory Zero opened up now? That is a game changer once it gets rolling. I suspect it will be a slow ramp over the next 3 months, as assembling modules using automation is not a no brainer, and has to be done carefully.
I do not think we will see a significant uptick in production until the second half of Q4, I expect to see November/December deliveries show significant uptick.
I'm also VERY curious if they're going take a "break" from customer cars after ED1 builds are complete to build dealer demos or if they'll build them simultaneously with customer 3X orders. I hope the latter because without a 3-4 fold increase in production, that would mean no customer builds or deliveries for months. Hearing that some dealer demo builds got pushed into next year would seem to indicate they'll be mixing it all up.
But for deliveries to increase by then, they have to start taking orders for the EV3x vehicles now. Those will include color choices, wheel choices, options choices, etc. It is taking a long time to even get them shipped to dealers, let alone having actual deliveries.
Yep, but nothing is really stopping them from starting to take 3X orders, they could start tomorrow if they wanted. Just one of the mysteries with the way they're handling the process. I've chosen a color, wheels, options, etc. on a vehicle a year in advance. Even just taking orders without promising a build for months would at least feel like progress or that the process is moving along.
But today we know that the 6-12 week windows are not being met, especially for EVs. It has been more like 6-12 month lead times. Hopefully with Covid over and battery factory running they can get closer to the old days.
In the auto industry I dont think they'd say Covid is over. Still lots of parts shortages and constraints.
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Covid over? HAHA! Turn off Faux News, Covid just went through our family a couple weeks ago, and talking to executives at the local aerospace giant they are still struggling with employee attendance in manufacturing, and even in the engineering and executive ranks. Covid is still a serious problem for business. In China cities are being shut down to control Covid currently.
COVID is over for companies that didn't sell their souls out to China
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Agree, we have both types of clients. For our ones that don't use China for supply chain, its inflation right now and workforce. I.e. very expensive to coordinate and ship from Mexico right now, having a hard time, having to delay or raise prices every 3 months. That and distributors can't hire enough, no one really wants to work in jobs with their history or lesiban dance study degrees (at least their debt will be paid for by those working though).COVID is over for companies that didn't sell their souls out to China
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No workers.... Hmmm, That's a common problem across the entire country and multiple industries, could it be workers are sick? lazy? died?
Most corporate executives I talk to in Fortune 100 companies say shortage of workers is their number 1 inflation fear at the moment.
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We've lost a good million people from COVID but it wasn't much of the working age population overall. I think it is mainly work ethic and too many are capable of living off social services/programs. Agree on inflation for sure.
My company is gang-buster growing globally, we have about 1000+ open positions right now, even while we've grown from 15,000 - 17,000 people in the last 3-4 months.
It's because he's not hiring the people with degrees in lesbian dance studies apparently.
...
COVID lead to a lot of older people retiring.
Amid the pandemic, a rising share of older U.S. adults are now retired
As of the third quarter of 2021, 50.3% of U.S. adults 55 and older said they were out of the labor force due to retirement.
www.pewresearch.org
Those higher paying jobs they were doing were opened up and people moved up the ladder. Gen X/Y waited longer to have kids than historically, and fewer, so there are less young people entering the workforce at the lowest levels.
If you were in a situation where you could afford to have the mother stay at home to take care of the children, you did. (My wife quit her job in April of 2020 and has not reentered the workforce)
Women put careers on hold during COVID to care for kids. They may never recover.
The retreat by mothers with outside employment is a setback for women's advances, both in corporate America and in narrowing the pay gap with men.
www.latimes.com
The lowest income jobs are sub-poverty level and not worth even doing if you are trying to raise a family. Wage stagnation against inflation right now is really killing "us". It's not going to get better any time soon.
Probably not the place for politics but I also think a lot of people re-evaluated where they were in their life and what they were doing thanks to Covid. Service industries especially where putting up with awful people just wasn't worth the compensation. Who wants to get yelled at daily, in a high stress environment, in a high exposure environment, for sub-minimum wage + tips where it was heavily takeout for a while and now you're covering more tables because there's fewer employees per customer, it's a losing scenario. Conversely, I'm in private practice and I've never had so many applications for mid-levels, support staff, clerical, etc. From my perspective if feels like there's just a dearth of workers in public facing positions like retail and service because people are tired of getting paid the least for the most unrewarding jobs, which makes the situation look worse than it is. We're also still in an adaptation/correction stage of recovery. It also doesn't help that we're still using a vaccine for a variant that hasn't been dominant in 18+ months, Omicron BA.5 boosters next month, which should help since we won't just be using a 50% effective shot. Anyway, here's hoping more batteries faster means more Hummers faster.
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Ya, that was me, I decided it was the right time to shut down my excavating and trucking company in mid 2020, had been thinking about it for years, but used equipment prices were so high in 2020, that I decided to pull the trigger and get out while it would be most financially beneficial. I sold the business and a few older machines to my top employees, and sold everything else at auction. The guys have struggled along, but surviving through COVID, and insane fuel prices, but I hear over and over from them that it's not as easy as they thought it would be. After 30 years in that business I agree, it's not easy.
Restaurants, Travel and Leisure, industries that have a lot of low paid help have really struggled. People have no idea how hard the work in in a restaurant, unless you have done it. It's incredibly hard work, and thankless for the most part , all for low pay, and no benefits.
Construction is not a lot better, a lot of low paid helpers that do most of the work, while a few "bosses" make all the money.
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I am in construction management, and I guess that I would fall sort of in the "bosses making the money" , but I have 2 or 3 levels of "area and regional" management above me that make more $$ and I get little to no benefit from them at all other than making their checks larger... It is HARD to find labor to do our work... Our subcontractors are mostly Hispanic and of them most of their labor is undocumented... But, we could never get US born citizens to do that type of work anymore... Even most of the builders that we do work for will hardly even get out of their trucks to walk into the houses they are "building".....
My wife was in the corporate world and president of her company (50-60 million in revenue)... But she was the same multiple levels of needless management above her and she got fed up and left in 2021....
My wife was in the corporate world and president of her company (50-60 million in revenue)... But she was the same multiple levels of needless management above her and she got fed up and left in 2021....
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