It’s time to say bye-bye to the Bolt

Soon, there will be one less Chevy available to drive to the levee. GM said yesterday it plans to halt production of all Chevrolet Bolt models by the end of this year. And while not completely unexpected, the announcement marks the end of the road (heh) for America’s very first relatively affordable mass-market EV.

🚗⚡️ Background: The Bolt originally went on sale in 2016, beating Tesla’s Model 3 to market by a few months. The Bolt starts at just under $27,000 before federal and state incentives, making it the cheapest new EV on sale in the US. It’s also quite popular with consumers:

• The Bolt was the best US selling non-Tesla EV in the first quarter, with almost 20,000 sold.
• GM said that 75% of Bolt owners were new to GM, the highest conquest rate for any of its vehicles. Bolt owners are also among the happiest, with 80% saying they would buy another Chevy.

But the Bolt has also caused headaches for GM. Its battery cells are of an older design and chemistry than automaker’s newer EVs, and, in 2021, GM was forced to recall every single one of the ~142,000 Bolts it had sold following reports of their lithium-ion battery packs catching on fire. This cost the company ~$1.8 billion.

👀 Looking ahead… Overall, GM has set a target to reach production capacity of 1 million EVs annually in the US and in China. The factory currently used to produce the Bolt will be repurposed to make electric pickup trucks that run on the automaker’s new Ultium battery technology.