Today owners of Chevy’s Bolt EV began receiving notice from General Motors that the sporty compact crossover will be discontinued later this year. The not necessarily unexpected news still was able to send shock waves through the EV community (See GM announces Chevy Bolt is over by Electrek’s Seth Weintraub).
The Bolt was getting a bit long-in-the-tooth as EVs go. It began production in 2016, beating Tesla’s Model 3 to market. It was the first truly affordable long-range EV. Despite continuing modest refinements, the design’s technology has been superseded by faster charging batteries.
Nevertheless, the Bolt has an avid following. As recently as 30 March 2023 one knowledgeable YouTube influencer was touting the 2023 model as “decent step up and represents exceptional value for money even before ever-changing federal and state incentives for electric vehicles are applied.”
Similarly, the pros at Electrek and Kelly Blue Book were calling the Bolt a Best Buy among inexpensive EVs. The key word here is “inexpensive” EV. There are not many—well, only two—and the Bolt is the cheaper of them both.
We were so happy with our first one; we’re now on our second and remain completely satisfied. The Bolt is the best car we’ve ever owned EV or otherwise. (We’ve also owned an early Nissan Leaf and a Chevy Volt.) The Bolt’s compact size fits our lifestyle and its energy efficiency is rivaled only by Tesla.
Disclosure: I worked for GM’s Delco-Remy Division 1968-1970 as a cooperative engineering student. I was a member of UAW Local 1981 until the National Writers Union left the UAW in May 2020.
We’ve driven 60,000 miles in our two Bolts altogether, and we know of drivers (Eric Way of Newscoulumb fame) who have driven well in excess of 100,000 miles on their original car.
One Bolt forum user lamented the Bolt’s demise with the observation that “All of their [GM’s] other upcoming cars are big electron-hogs.” Indeed.
GM’s Equinox is bigger, more expensive, and it will be likely less efficient than the Bolt. It will be less efficient simply because it’s bigger and more massive than the compact Bolt. The Equinox will be 190x75x66-inches versus the Bolt’s 164x70x63-inches. Yes, the Equinox will be more than two feet (26-inches) longer than the Bolt!
GM’s back to building barges.
I am not alone in this view. See GM’s Killing The Bolt EV and Bolt EUV (That’s a Bad Move) by Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield at Transport Evolved.
Efficiency is important. Doing more with less allows you to get more miles of range on a smaller battery. Smaller batteries enable manufacturers to build more EVs on a fixed amount of battery materials. For now at least, batteries are a restrained market.
For example, the Bolt can easily get 4 miles/kWh of battery capacity. The recent Korean entrants are hard pressed to get 3 miles/kWh and the big Ford truck is lucky to break 2 miles/kWh. To go the same distance as a Bolt, Huyndai’s Ioniq 5 will require 25% more battery and the Ford F150 twice as much battery. Ouch.
That GM and Ford are turning out monsters like the Hummer EV and the F150 Lightning shows their preferences: Bigger, hulking vehicles, with correspondingly higher profit margins.
You could power two Bolts for every top-of-the-line F150 Lightning and more than three Bolts for GM’s over-the-top Hummer EV. The top-end trim Equinox will have a battery as large as that in the Hummer.
This is not the way to get the huge number of EVs into the hands of drivers needed for the climate crisis. This is more akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Remember several decades ago when American manufacturers effectively gave up the economy segment to Japanese and later Korean manufacturers because their margins were too slim on small cars. You can see the same pattern again with EVs.
Only this time, the foreign manufacturers are following the same playbook as GM. Volkswagen only sells the ID4 in North America. They keep their smaller, more affordable ID3 in the European Market. The Koreans have followed suit. Hyundai is now shipping bigger, more expensive EVs to the US market, though they have kept the smaller, Bolt-size Kona EV in their lineup—for now at least.
Tesla, of course, has only been building large, high-end cars that fall into the near-luxury class. Their long-awaited Cybertruck was so big at its unveiling several years ago, the commentariat wondered if it would fit inside standard-size garages. Rumors that Tesla might build a smaller, sub-$25,000 car are just that–rumors.
So the choice for an economy EV in North America has been the Bolt, Hyundai’s Kona EV and the Nissan Leaf. Sales of the Leaf have been languishing for years since the ouster of Carlos Ghosn.
The Kona’s base price is $7,000 more than the Bolt and the imported Kona won’t qualify for any subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act. The Bolt qualifies for the IRA’s full $7,500 tax credit. The Bolt qualifies because it’s built in Lake Orion, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.
Despite that 57% of the Bolt’s content was manufactured in Korea, the Bolt is not only American made, it’s built by union labor. The Bolt is assembled by UAW Local 5960. Interestingly, the accessory battery in our car was made in Germany, and the tires in Canada.
The Chevy Equinox EV will be made Mexico.
GM had a winner in the Bolt. With contemporary battery technology they could have made the Bolt the VW Bug of EVs, sweeping the low-end of the market where many Americans still reside. Unfortunately, GM is reverting to form.
