Final quarter, the Chevrolet Bolt was America’s third-best-selling electrical car (EV). However Basic Motors introduced final yr that the mannequin gained’t make it to 2024.
Unsurprisingly, it gained’t be gone from the marketplace for lengthy. Throughout the firm’s quarterly earnings name this week, GM CEO Mary Barra instructed reporters Chevy is engaged on one other technology of its most profitable EV to this point.
“Our prospects love at this time’s Bolt. It has been delivering report gross sales and a few of the highest buyer satisfaction and loyalty scores within the business,” mentioned Barra. “It’s additionally an essential supply of conquest gross sales for the corporate and for Chevrolet.”
“Conquests are prospects going immediately from a competing model, whether or not they commerce in, promote an older car, or preserve it,” in response to Sam Abuelsamid of Guidehouse Insights.
Right this moment’s Bolt(s)
Right this moment’s Chevy Bolt on dealership tons is a subcompact hatchback provided in two sizes. The Bolt EV begins at $26,500. The considerably bigger Bolt EUV – basically a stretched Bolt with a lot of the added house given to rear passengers – begins at $27,800.
Each qualify for a $7,500 federal EV tax rebate in 2023. That makes them the least costly approach to go electrical in the intervening time.
So why would GM finish the third-best-selling and least costly EV? As a result of the Bolt brothers use battery know-how discovered on no different present GM EV. The corporate is retiring the know-how.
Probably To Share Components With Different GM EVs
Barra had nearly no particulars to supply on the following Bolt.
She might solely say that GM will “execute it extra shortly in comparison with an all-new program” and can use “Ultium and Ultifi applied sciences.”
However these particulars inform us a lot of what to anticipate.
Right this moment’s EVs are constructed on skateboard platforms – nearly-flat mixtures of batteries, electrical motors, steering, and suspension elements that may be scaled up or all the way down to make autos for various wants. GM calls its skateboard Ultium.
Ultium underlies most present and deliberate GM EVs, from the roughly-$30,000 Equinox EV to the $300,000-plus Cadillac Celestiq ultra-luxury automotive.
Chevrolet will, we assume, scale the platform all the way down to subcompact measurement for the following Bolt.
Ultifi is a software program platform that controls GM automobiles’ person interfaces, leisure, and knowledge applied sciences. GM controversially introduced plans to section out the favored Apple CarPlay and Android Auto cellphone projection methods in future software program variations.
