The Chevrolet Bolt EV

Earlier this year, GM announced that it is growing its fleet of autonomous Chevy Bolt EV prototypes for its ‘GM Cruise’ startup.

Now the automaker announced the completion of the first batch of 130 prototypes at its Orion Assembly Plant located in Orion Township, Michigan.
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The cost of battery packs is still believed to be the main barrier in bringing down the overall price of electric vehicles.

GM managed to bring to market the first electric car with a reasonable price (<$38,000 before incentives) with a large battery pack (60 kWh), but it’s not yet making a profit on the vehicle.

Again, the battery pack was believed to be the main out of  control expense and now we get one more indication that it is the case based on the newly disclosed list price of $15,734.29.
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While deliveries of GM’s all-electric Chevy Bolt EV remain slow throughout the rollout, the automaker has announced that it accelerated its plans for nationwide availability by one month.

All authorized dealerships nationwide can now order the $37,500 all-electric car for deliveries in August instead of September.
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Earlier this year, we reported on the Pope being offered a free electric car. He was given the choice between a Nissan Leaf and a Tesla Model S. The Pontiff decided to go with the more modest Leaf.

Now we learn that the Pope is expanding his EV fleet with an Ampera E, the European version of the Chevy Bolt EV.
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As we previously reported, GM has been struggling to ramp production and deliveries of the Chevy Bolt EV since its launch in December, but they now seem to have a good trend going over the past two months.

GM’s Chevy Bolt EV deliveries last month rose to 1,566 units, which is still below the rate needed to achieve its target, but it’s still a significant increase.
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I’ve had my 2017 Chevy Bolt for over a month now and have been pleasantly surprised about how much it has to offer. Like I really, really love this car even months after our review.  While I still prefer my twice as expensive 2013 Tesla Model S overall, there are a number of areas where the Bolt beats the Tesla – and I mean the 2013 Model S but also in many cases Tesla’s new/upcoming models as well. Some of these things Tesla could choose to fix, but most are inherent design decisions.

Also I should note before y’all head to the comments that we love all EVs here at Electrek and before a Tesla vs. Bolt fight breaks out remember that we’re all on the same “Team EV” here. 

And with that, let’s look at some advantages of a 2017 Chevy Bolt EV…
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UBS’ global research group tore down a Chevy Bolt EV to publish an in-depth cost analysis of the all-electric vehicle this week.

It’s probably the best look at the cost of what GM presents as “the first affordable long-range all-electric vehicle” so far, but UBS also uses their analysis to estimate the cost of the Tesla Model 3, which is a difficult, if not impossible, thing to do.
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The market share of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids keeps increasing steadily in California during the first quarter of 2017 according to the California Auto Outlook quarterly report. On the other hand, the market share of hybrids, excluding plug-ins, has been declining since 2013 and continues to do so in the current calendar year.

Nationwide new car registrations decreased by 1.4 percent. However, dealers in The Golden State saw a 0.7 percent increase in registrations and the state is now on track to top 2 million new car registrations again for this year. The Californian market hit a low of 1.04 million new light vehicle registrations in 2009 and topped the 2 million mark in 2015 after years of strong recovery since the financial crisis.

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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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