General Motors’ most affordable and accessible electric vehicle currently in the lineup — the Chevrolet Bolt — will eventually disappear to make way for more EVs on the automaker’s Ultium platform.
GM has said the future Equinox EV, to be revealed in September, is expected to start at about $30,000, making it one of the most affordable EVs GM offers. The 2023 Bolt EV will start at $26,595 and the EUV will start at $28,195.
The Bolt and Bolt EUV, an SUV styling of the car, are on the automaker’s BEV2 platform, which stands for battery electric vehicle.
But GM’s upcoming EVs will be powered by its proprietary Ultium battery propulsion system, raising the question: How much longer will the Bolt be relevant to Chevrolet’s lineup?
“Will Bolt be in our portfolio ‘x’ numbers of years from now? No, it won’t,” Steve Majoros, Chevy’s vice president of marketing, told the Free Press on Monday. “It’s a great product right now. It will be with us for some time. But as we scale and ramp volume here, portfolios change.”
Majoros would not confirm timing for when the Bolt EVs will exit the lineup, but he said, “It’s going to be with us for the foreseeable future and as we ramp portfolio, then we’ll see about the long game for that, so … more to come.”
GM has said it will add at least four new EVs to Chevrolet in the next few years: The 2024 Silverado EV, 2024 Blazer EV, an Equinox EV and an electrified Corvette.
GM builds the Bolt vehicles at its Orion Assembly plant in Orion Township. But as part of a $7 billion investment in manufacturing in Michigan announced earlier this year, GM is upgrading the plant to start building the Silverado EV and electric GMC Sierra at Orion in 2024. GM said production of the Bolt EV and EUV “will continue during the plant’s conversion.”
GM’s luxury brand Cadillac is rolling out the 2023 Lyriq SUV now, GMC has the 2022 Hummer pickup out and Buick will also get an EV in the next few years. GM intends for all its vehicles across its four brands to be electric by 2035.
This would not be the first time Chevrolet bumps a vehicle to make room for another. In 2019 Chevrolet retired the hybrid Volt to make way for the all-electric Bolt, which gets about 250 miles on a single charge.
“We’re in the pioneering stages of EV technology,” said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst at Cox Automotive. “We will see a lot of new product coming to the market and we may see some product go. BMW eliminated a lot of its early EVs.”
Krebs said there remains the possibility of GM keeping the Bolt name to use on a new EV, “if they feel it has value.”
GM revealed the Bolt as a concept car in January 2015 and started producing them in 2016. Since then, it has sold more than 140,000.
But it hit a snag last year when GM had to recall all 2017-22 model year Bolts due to defective batteries that posed a potential fire risk. GM stopped building new Bolts late last year to work with its battery maker LG Energy Solution on fixing the batteries in that recall.
With a battery fix under way, Chevrolet restarted production in April at Orion. It is working to bring production back up with a goal this year of surpassing the Bolt’s annual sales record of 24,000. In the second quarter, GM sold 6,945 Bolt EVs and EUVs, down 38.3% from the year-ago period.
But Majoros said Chevrolet has pent-up demand for the Bolt. Last month, GM said it will be cutting the price for the 2023 Bolt and Bolt EUV by about $6,000. The 2023 model year Bolt EV will start at $26,595. The 2023 Bolt EUV will start at $28,195. Both prices include the delivery fee.
The price reduction is to ensure the Bolt EV/EUV are competitive in the marketplace by making affordability a priority, GM has said.
Jesse Toprak, chief analyst at Autonomy, an EV subscription company, said GM’s decision to lower the price of the Bolt will make it the cheapest EV available and potentially bring in new customers.
Majoros said even when the Bolt eventually fades from the lineup, it offers value now.
“Products come and go all the time,” Majoros said. “It’s what right for the customer at this time if you want to get into an EV that has an attractive price point, great styling, great technology, phenomenal range” and free home installation of chargers.
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Contact Jamie L. LaReau at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.