General Motors’ Ultium is dead, long live the Ultium battery

The world of electric vehicles has a naming problem. Toyota is selling something that rhymes with “bee forks,” Volkswagen may not have left enough room between ID.3 and ID.4, and Audi’s even-numbered program should cause a little showroom confusion. However, if you have successful branding for EV technology, stick with it. Unless you’re a GM, what do you do? That’s right, you will get rid of it completely. The Ultium branding is dead, but the cells themselves will live on.

At the same time, bankrupt EV startup Fisker continues to shoot itself in the foot, Dacia has a new crossover with a somewhat amusing name, and Volkswagen wants to make it clear that what you’re about to see isn’t the new American one. Market Tiguan. Understood.

Yes, it’s all on the agenda in today’s edition of The Morning Dump. Matt put me in charge this morning and, oh man, here we go. So make yourself a cup of tea, coffee or even a cappuccino, sit in a chair and pretend you’re working. Here’s a rundown of all the important car news you need to know this morning.

GM is killing the Ultium name

Why do so few automakers seem to know how to market electric vehicles? From meaningless alphabet soup names to shifting branding, brands like Toyota and Mercedes-Benz seem to have set themselves up for a dead end future. The latest example of an automaker playing with EV branding? General Motors. After years of threatening to use the Ultium trade name for electric vehicle batteries, GM announced at an investor day that the company had called it quits. As Reuters Reports:

A focus of GM’s event is Ultium Cells’ battery technology, which investors viewed during tours of the battery and electric vehicle assembly operations at the company’s Tennessee plant.

The automaker will no longer use the Ultium name on its batteries, said Kurt Kelty, head of battery cells. Going forward, GM will be more flexible with battery chemistry and configuration, he said. The move away from the Ultium name is significant for GM’s branding of electric vehicles, especially after the company highlighted it in its Super Bowl advertising.

Wow, imagine having the means to spend Super Bowl money to promote a carefully crafted brand name, only to throw it in the trash a few years later. The subtext here, of course, is that GM may use non-Ultium cells in some future electric vehicles, but that raises several questions, not least because GM would forego pumping its moonshot to supposedly level the playing field with other cells . However, a singular name like this may need to be phased out anyway before future generation cells result in Ultium “Like A Rock” Solid-State Cells or something like that jumping the shark. Anyway, I think if you’re a major automaker looking to push the next generation of electric vehicles, you should keep it simple and avoid spending a whole lot of money on branding that will soon be thrown away anyway.

Fisker ultimately has to pay for recalls

Last month we reported that a bankrupt electric vehicle startup required owners to pay for labor costs associated with recalls. Well, this bold move has made its way through the legal system, and to the surprise of absolutely no one, the Justice Department has effectively ordered Fisker to bow down and that any recall costs are solely the responsibility of the manufacturer. As Reuters Reports:

Under Fisker’s bankruptcy plan, the manufacturer is required to repair defective and nonconforming vehicles “at no charge when the vehicle … is presented for repair,” the filing says.

Fisker did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The Justice Department also said the portion of the plan that allows vehicle owners to be reimbursed for out-of-pocket repairs also violates the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act.

At this point, it’s amazing that Fisker thought it could get away with burdening owners with labor bills for recall work. Who would have thought that was a good idea? Just when we thought we knew what the bedrock looked like, someone digs a tunnel through the bedrock. Whatever the case, from now on, Fisker Ocean owners who are left behind with recall work should be entitled to have it done free of charge, and owners who paid out of pocket will likely be compensated.

This is not the new Volkswagen Tiguan

This is the new Volkswagen Taryon, and for a while everyone thought it would be the same as the next Volkswagen Tiguan in the US market. It turned out that this wasn’t entirely the case, and Volkswagen even launched a pre-emptive strike against press releases, saying:

While this model is widely considered to be the next version of the Tiguan for the U.S. market, it is important to note that while the U.S. Tiguan will retain the long-wheelbase specification of this model, the sheetmetal, powertrain options and equipment set will be significantly different. Further details on the US Tiguan offering will be announced later this year.

So this seven-seat compact crossover isn’t the next Tiguan for America, but it could be reasonably close. At least the underlying platform will be the same, and it wouldn’t be surprising if some of the interior techniques are carried over, but the resulting vehicle will look different than the long-wheelbase Taryon. Actually, maybe it’s a good thing that the styling is getting a makeover. Hold on to this thought.

Does what it promises

Good news! Dacia has introduced a new car. It is a two-row family crossover that is slightly longer than a Volkswagen Tiguan in the European market, door handles on the C-pillars like a Nissan is significantly larger than that of the existing Dacia crossover. The best? Prices are said to start at less than 25,000 euros including VAT, and if you deduct VAT and convert to US dollars, that’s less than 23,000 US dollars for a spacious family crossover.

The best part of this whole affair, however, is the name. See, instead of taking something from the heritage books, Dacia called it Bigster. Like a Duster, but a little bigger, the Bigster. There’s something delightful about that. Imagine if the Toyota Grand Highlander was called the “Big Highlander” or the GMC Yukon XL was called the “Yukon Big.” There’s just something inherently entertaining about it that I can’t quite put my finger on.

What I listen to while writing TMD

Sometimes you just want to listen to some wonderfully trashy EDM, and this track from Ninajirachi and MGNA Crrrta hits the spot. The vocal cuts, masonry saw-style synths and absolutely bombastic kicks sound straight out of 2011, but the ultra-fast tempo and sheer intensity of the DAW layering are products of an extremely online generation. Yes, “Angel Music” was released just last month and has quickly become a favorite. Long live excess, long live maximalism, long live the party.

It’s your turn

What EV-specific branding do you think will be next after Ultium? I suppose it might be in line with the Toyota convention that the bZ4X fits into, but there are also some continuity issues with the naming of Mercedes-Benz’s EQ range in relation to its combustion models.

(Image credit: GMC, Fisker, Volkswagen, Dacia)