GM said today during a call with investors that the 2023 Chevy Bolt EV and its cousin, the EUV, will no longer be made after this year. When the Chevy Silverado EV comes out at the end of 2023, the Bolt factory will stop making cars and start making electric trucks. After the battery fire recall, the Bolt set a new sales record in 2018 with 38,120 units sold. 2023 is also off to a good start, with 19,700 cars already shipped. The Chevy Bolt EV and EUV are being kept alive by a machine. General Motors announced today that it will stop making electric hatchbacks by the end of the year 2023. During a call with investors, CEO Mary Barra told them the Bolt would no longer be made. She also said that the Orion Assembly plant in Michigan, where the Bolt is made, would start retooling to start making the company’s electric pickup trucks next year. When it came out for the 2017 model year, the Bolt was among the few EVs with a good range. The EPA said its 60.0-kWh battery could take it 238 miles. The content was raised to 259 miles with a 66.0-kWh pack upgrade in 2020, and the EUV was released in 2022 to take advantage of the growing SUV market. Bolt sales never took off as quickly as GM had hoped. They were far behind Tesla, while Chevy continued to sell around 20,000 cars each year. The Bolt’s sales dropped after a controversial recall in 2021 because of fires caused by bad batteries. However, a price drop to about $30,000 for the 2023 model year helped it recover, and 2022 was its best year ever, with 38,120 sales. The Bolt pair is also off to a great start. In the first three months of 2023, 19,700 Bolts found homes. GM has released a new line of electric cars built on the Ultium platform. This platform was first used in the GMC Hummer EV and has since surpassed the Bolt’s older LG battery technology, even though the Bolt’s sales have recently gone up. The Bolt EV and EUV will be replaced by the Equinox EV, which goes on sale this year and starts at more than $30,000. There are no straight replacements for the Bolt EV and EUV. Barra thinks that once the Orion plant is entirely up and running, it will be able to make 600,000 electric trucks per year. After the Chevy Silverado EV, the GMC Sierra EV will come out in early 2024. Both cars are going to be on sale this year.
