General Motors (GM)

GM is trying to get some traction behind its Chevy Bolt EV as sales have been mostly flat for the first half of the year and now inventories are piling up.

In a bizarre press release about the vehicle today, GM pitches the Chevy Bolt EV by favorably comparing it to a 45-year-old lunar rover.
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Automakers are hedging their bets when it comes to self-driving. They all have development programs in-house, but most of them have also invested in startups.

Now GM, BMW and Toyota are all investing in the same “self-driving startup”, Nauto.
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GM has confirmed that its Orion plant, where they build the Chevy Bolt EV, will see an extended shutdown as part of the automaker’s broader effort to reduce inventories.

It is sending mixed messages about the all-electric vehicle program.
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Albeit slowly, GM’s Chevy Bolt EV sales are still growing – reaching a new high of 1,642 units in the US last month.

It brings the total delivered of the new all-electric vehicle in the US to 7,592 units since the beginning of the year and just over 8,000 since its launch in December 2016.
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Great news for current and future Chevy Bolt EV owners and GM: The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) just released the results of its safety test of the vehicle and it earned the top safety rating.
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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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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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After Volkswagen, Mitsubishi, Chrysler, and Daimler, now GM becomes the latest automaker being dragged into the ongoing ‘Dieselgate’ scandal.

Customers have now filed a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of using ‘VW-like defeat devices’ in over 700,000 diesel trucks from 2011 to 2016.
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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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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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GM is bringing the Chevy Volt to China as the Buick Velite 5. It was announced last year, but they officially debuted the vehicle in Shanghai this week.

The company also confirmed that they plan to start manufacturing all-electric vehicles in China within two years.
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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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Last year, GM stepped into the autonomous driving scene by acquiring Cruise Automation, a startup with Tesla Autopilot engineering talent and founded by Twitch co-founder. It enabled GM to tap into the software talent in California to build its future self-driving technology.

Now GM announces that it plans to add 1,100 jobs in California through Cruise in order to expand its self-driving effort. The move is likely to make the hiring scene for autonomous driving even more competitive for companies than it already is…
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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 has been working on its own driver assist technology ‘Super Cruise’, which it presented as a competitor to Tesla’s Autopilot last year, for a while now. It was first supposed to launch in the 2016 version of the Cadillac CT6 two years ago, but after several delays, the company announced today that it will be available in the 2018 Cadillac CT6 later this year.

They release more information about the semi-autonomous driving system, which is almost presented as a level 3 autonomous driving system – something that is not available today in other vehicles (Tesla’s Autopilot is level 2).
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There are a lot of companies now working on autonomous driving technologies and as many approaches to achieve the ultimate goal of a safe fully self-driving system. With such a transformative technology, there will be an extraordinarily important first-mover advantage.

Navigant Research attempted to create a leaderboard based on each company’s vision and execution in order to get an idea of which ones might have a lead. It published the report this week with interesting results.
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