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Re:GM says it will put fleets of self-driving cars in cities... by trhway on Friday December 01, 2017 @03:13PM (#15826932)
>designed for people who want to be seen driving an electric car

it may have been the case 15 years ago. Not today. EV/plugins/hybrid appeal to very specific perceived sense of practicality, to which hatchback (single volume) design appeals too (speaking from my mind as i have Pruis Plugin, and in the past among others i did own a high end BMW, and our tastes/preferences do change with time). Notice that all popular and/or good sellers EV/plugins/hybrids are hatchbacks, be it Model S or Bolt or Prius. And in my opinion GM did very good job with Bolt styling. It fits exactly the target segment, where is Model 3 looks like cheapened Model S, not a good start. I mean it is a high skill to sell cheaper, yet not cheapened, models by a high end manufacturer, and for example Mercedes(especially) and BMW do it masterfully. GM, not being high-end one, with Bolt needed to do something what is really far from "bad" GM, yet still GM. For me it seems like they hit the target.

Re:GM says it will put fleets of self-driving cars in cities... by ajmurmann on Friday December 01, 2017 @04:19PM (#15827596)
Referencing the '"bad" GM': I'm really surprised they didn't start a new brand. Anecdotally traditional, American car companies have such a bad reputation that I'm surprised they didn't use EVs for a brand reset.
Re:GM says it will put fleets of self-driving cars in cities... by stevenwoo on Friday December 01, 2017 @04:50PM (#15827899)
Probably wanted to take advantage of fleet clean/mpg averages when that was enforced.