The Chevrolet Bolt EV

While GM has been boasting about the Chevy Bolt EV being the first long-range affordable electric car, supplies have been fairly limited. It’s still not clear if the constraints are coming from production or demand since there are decent inventories in ZEV states in the US.

The vehicle is supposed to be coming to Europe this month with the first deliveries in Norway, but despite strong demand, deliveries are reportedly being limited to only a few hundred units by the end of the year.
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Automakers have been using the fact that they have been having difficulties making money off of electric vehicles as an excuse not to make them. GM has been a good example of that. First with the EV1, then with the Chevy Spark EV, and now with the Chevy Bolt EV.

We have reported that insiders said that GM was anticipating losing up to $9,000 per Bolt EV before incentive programs, like CARB’s ZEV mandate.

Now a GM executive admitted that they are not making money on the vehicle, but they say that they are making it a priority for the next generation of electric vehicles.
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GM has been struggling to ramp production and deliveries of the Chevy Bolt EV since its launch in December. While it’s still a long way from the rate it needs be in order to reach its first year goal of 30,000 units, deliveries increased slightly in April with 1,292 units in the US.

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GM’s production or delivery ramp up for the Chevy Bolt EV, its only all-electric vehicle built from the ground up, has been surprisingly slow since the launch in December.

But for the few owners who received the vehicle, they have been getting a lot of use out of it. GM announced today that the 3,492 Bolt EV owners in the United States have driven 4,570,300 miles cumulatively.
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Cruise Automation, GM’s startup working on self-driving technology, has been releasing videos of its Bolt EV prototypes driving autonomously around San Francisco in order to show its progress.

The latest one released today shows the vehicle at night, which can create different driving conditions – like encounters with nocturnal creatures.
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As we often like to highlight when talking about self-driving development programs, data can make all the difference. And the best way to accumulate a lot of data is through large test fleets. While Tesla went the way of adding sensors to all its production vehicles to gather data, most other automakers and tech companies are doing it through captive test fleets, which all vary in sizes.

GM could be about to get the largest of those fleets by increasing their number of test vehicles, Chevy Bolt EVs with Cruise Automation’s sensor suite, from just 50 to 300.
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GM’s Chevy Bolt EV has been receiving great reviews as the “first affordable long-range electric vehicle” since its launch in December 2016, but the problem with the vehicle is its availability. Since before its introduction, we have warned that GM was showing signs of using the Bolt as a low-volume compliance car and everything since the launch solidifies that belief.

It has reportedly been difficult for consumers to get their hands on the vehicle outside of California – despite having officially expanded to other states.

Now GM launches a “national lease” for the Bolt EV, which means that you can technically drive electric for $329 per month – if you can find a Bolt EV near you.
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GM’s Chevy Bolt EV sales went down in February in the middle of its production ramp up and now we learn that they have stayed at the same level, 978 units, in March, according to GM’s delivery report today.

While it’s not uncommon to see delays during a production ramp up, we are now 4 months into the start of production and GM has been expanding the Chevy Bolt EV’s market without more inventory.
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The state of New York has finally released all the details of its new electric vehicle incentive plan, which has been formally announced earlier this month and will start officially on April 1st.

They decided to go with tranches that take into account both range and price. Only a few vehicles, like the Tesla Model 3 and the Chevy Bolt EV, will take advantage of the full $2,000 incentive.
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In this week’s top stories: New Tesla Model 3 details and the first release candidate video, Chevy Bolt EV, a hybrid Ford F-150, BMW’s electric vehicle plans, Gigafactory 1 aerial shots and much more.

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It has long been suspected that car dealerships are part of the problem when it comes to electric vehicle adoption. Most of their business comes from servicing gas-powered cars and therefore, low-maintenance electric vehicles are not attractive to sell for them. It was demonstrated in several studies that they are not very good at it.

It was demonstrated this week in a new advert from a Chevy dealership in Rockville, Maryland trying to sell the all-electric Bolt EV as if it needs gas.
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There’s a good news-bad news situation going on with GM’s Chevy Bolt EV right now. As we recently reported, deliveries surprisingly went down to 952 units in the US last month – only 3 months in GM’s production ramp up for the all-electric vehicle.

Now it seems that dealerships are getting more inventory, which is a good news, but they are discounting – sometimes quite heavily – in order to move them.
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After a few weeks of talks, GM and the PSA Group, Peugeot-Citroën, have confirmed that the latter will purchase GM’s European business, including Opel/Vauxhall subsidiary and GM Financial’s European operations.

As part of the €2.2 billion ($2.3 billion) transaction, GM will get warrants to purchase shares of PSA and the two automakers will collaborate on “the further deployment of electrification technologies”.
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In its first full year of production, which is this year, GM is expected to produce about 30,000 Chevy Bolt EVs. While deliveries don’t reflect that so far, the company is currently expanding to more markets.

The automaker confirmed its February deliveries in the US today and with only 952 units, Bolt EVs deliveries are actually down month-to-month after 1,162 deliveries in January.
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GM has been fleshing out its plans for autonomous driving over the past year and it is becoming clear that they are serious about the technology since their $1 billion acquisition of Cruise Automation.

Now a new report suggests that they plan on deploying a fleet of “thousands of autonomous Chevy Bolt EV with Lyft” as soon as next year.
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Even we were surprised when we heard the news that the Chevy Bolt EV would get 238 miles on a charge according to the EPA on a 60kWh battery. The “SubCompact Crossover”, as Chevy likes to call it, gets about 30 more miles of EPA range than Tesla’s huge, 7 seat Model S on the same battery capacity but without the low drag coefficient that the Tesla enjoys.

Read our Chevy Bolt EV review

But some new Bolt EV drivers are finding they can really stretch out that mileage, especially in California where the weather is in the 60s or higher year round.

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Korea-based electronic giant LG is making most of the components that make the Chevy Bolt EV an electric vehicle, including the battery pack, electric motor, and power electronics, and the battery packs for the Volt. Therefore, its production capacity will determine GM’s total output for what is currently its only all-electric vehicle in production.

In what could be a good sign for the Bolt EV and the Volt, LG announced this week an expansion of its production facility in Holland, Michigan.
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GM announced today an expansion of Maven, its car-sharing and ridesharing service, in Los Angeles with the introduction of the all-electric Chevy Bolt EV in the fleet.

Once fully deployed, this new initiative will add over 100 Bolt EVs to the Los Angeles fleet.
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Things are moving fast these days at Opel, GM’s European brand. Both GM and the PSA Group, Peugeot-Citroën, have confirmed that they are in talks to further their collaboration and that it could lead to the sale of Opel to PSA.

At the same time, the company’s top management has been working on a strategy to completely transition the brand to only sell all-electric vehicles.
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Last week, Cruise Automation, GM’s startup working on self-driving technology, released a video of its Bolt EV prototype driving autonomously in San Francisco. Even though the company claimed it was driving autonomously, it was quite boring since it was from a dashcam and looked exactly like a video of someone driving around for a few minutes.

The company learned from its mistake and with a simple in-video feed from inside the vehicle, they released a much more impressive video this week showcasing their latest self-driving progress.
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