In last week’s first quarter earnings conference call, General Motors CEO Mary Barra announced that the company intends to discontinue making its electric Chevy Bolt vehicles prior to the year’s end. Most of General Motors’ electric car sales so far have been made up of the Chevy Bolt EV and EUV, a bigger version of the vehicle. The batteries in the cars, however, are an old design and chemistry compared to those found in the carmaker’s more recent electric models, such as the Cadillac Lyriq and GMC Hummer, which are built on GM’s Ultium platform.
Barra announced that an assembly facility in the suburbs of Detroit, where Chevy Bolts have been assembled since 2016, will be modified in order to start producing GMC Sierra trucks and the electric Chevy Silverado, both of which are scheduled to be manufactured beginning in 2024.
In 2016, General Motors put the Bolt in front of Tesla’s Model 3. It was expected that these two vehicles, with an initial cost of around $35,000, would be among the longest-range electric vehicles ever created for regular drivers.
But as the total number of electric vehicles sold decreased to negligible levels outside of Tesla, Bolt sales have failed to catch on, contrary to many executives’ hopes. In addition, the Bolt has been hit hard lately, with General Motors recalling every one of its Bolts manufactured because of an electrical malfunction in a supplier’s battery that resulted in some fires.
In a statement, Chevy spokesperson Cody Williams said the company would introduce a number of new electric vehicles this year on the basis of the Ultium platform in important market sectors, including the Silverado Blazer and Equinox electric vehicles. General Motors is expecting its forthcoming electric vehicles to be launched much more quickly than the luxury Hummer and Cadillac Lyriq models, which, in comparison to its conventional automobiles, have been rolled out at a very slow pace.
According to Barra, there would be almost three times the number of jobs and a production capacity to build 600,000 electric vehicles annually once the Orion facility in Michigan, which presently manufactures the Bolts, resumes and becomes fully operational.
In an effort to catch up with Tesla, the leader in the EV sector, General Motors has set itself the goal of producing a million electric vehicles in the United States and China each year.
The Chevrolet Bolt vehicles are the most affordable electric vehicles to be offered in America, with a starting price of below $30,000. General Motors’ forthcoming EV Equinox is anticipated to have a comparable starting price when it debuts this autumn.
With such an affordable starting prices for its EVs, GM has made its intentions known, and the onus is now on startups such as Kandi Technologies Group Inc. (NASDAQ: KNDI) to boost their production efficiencies so that they can compete with or even outcompete legacy carmakers like General Motors.
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