Final quarter, the Chevrolet Bolt was America’s third-best-selling electrical car (EV). However Normal Motors introduced final yr that the model received’t make it to 2024.
Unsurprisingly, it received’t be gone from the marketplace for lengthy. Throughout the firm’s quarterly earnings name this week, GM CEO Mary Barra advised reporters Chevy is engaged on one other technology of its most profitable EV so far.
“Our prospects love at present’s Bolt. It has been delivering file gross sales and among the highest buyer satisfaction and loyalty scores within the trade,” mentioned Barra. “It’s additionally an necessary supply of conquest gross sales for the corporate and for Chevrolet.”
“Conquests are prospects going straight from a competing model, whether or not they commerce in, promote an older car, or preserve it,” in keeping with Sam Abuelsamid of Guidehouse Insights.
Right this moment’s Bolt(s)
Right this moment’s Chevy Bolt on dealership heaps is a subcompact hatchback provided in two sizes. The Bolt EV begins at $26,500. The considerably bigger Bolt EUV – primarily a stretched Bolt with a lot of the added area 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 for the time being.
So why would GM finish the third-best-selling and least costly EV? As a result of the Bolt brothers use battery expertise discovered on no different present GM EV. The corporate is retiring the expertise.
Probably To Share Elements 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 rapidly 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 automobiles 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 vehicles’ consumer interfaces, leisure, and data applied sciences. GM controversially introduced plans to part out the favored Apple CarPlay and Android Auto telephone projection programs in future software program variations.