Last year is in the books, and 2017 saw the nationwide launch of Chevrolet’s mass-market electric car, the Bolt EV. Back in late 2016, however, LG Chem, the car’s battery supplier, made a prediction for the Bolt EV. The company predicted General Motors would sell 30,000 Bolt EVs in its first full year on sale. Did GM come close?
Yes and no. It depends on how close one thinks 23,297, the Bolt EV’s total 2017 sale number, is to 30,000. In hard numbers, GM earned a C+ with 77 percent of the predicted sales. Still, we’d call the Bolt EV’s first full year on sale successful. The electric car only launched nationwide in late summer of 2017, which meant the entire U.S. only had access to the car for a couple of months last year. In December 2017, Chevrolet delivered 3,227 Bolt EVs alone. And, for the record, that handily outpaced the Tesla Model 3, which continues to suffer in what CEO Elon Musk calls “production hell.”
It’s a solid start for the automaker, which plans for a wide portfolio of electric cars in the near future. Two new electric cars will arrive in less than 18 months, and GM will bring 20 new battery-electric vehicles to market by 2023.
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Does this include the 1600 or so Ampera-e sales?
Only counting US Sales.
As I posted in the 80% lease EV thread, most are leasing these things and GM’s leasing Arm, GM Financial, highly subsidized the Bolt EVs lease for Q4…With high CA taxes included, reports of $0 down (true sign and drive) then 35 payments of $247/mo; however, from the state of CA you may qualify for state, utilize and a Costco incentive, so you get $3750 back shortly after leasing…If you prefer to spread the $3750 over the monthly amount, you divide it by 35 you get ($107) so your “effective monthly payment” would be $139/mo…This is for a base Bolt with the $750 fast charge option for an MSRP of $382XX; leasing any vehicle near $40K at a sub $5K total lease is a sure fire way to ignite sales…lol…The problem is, GMF will take a bath when accepting these things back…
https://leasehackr.com/blog/2017/10/16/bolt-ev-never-been-better-138-month-0-down
23,297 units is just US alone. Another 2,122 in Canada makes it 25,419. Norway alone had 5000 orders for Ampera-E (Bolt). I’m not sure how many of the 5K were delivered since GM has asked Norway dealers to stop taking orders because of short supply of vehicles. That would put it over 30K. The car is also sold in other European countries like Germany, Switzerland, and Netherlands. GM and battery supplier LG were planning on building 30K units last year. GM might have sold all 30K since they were forced to cut deliveries and allocate vehicles to core markets.
The question is. Was LG predicting only US or worldwide sales?
Good point.
30k expected in US or worldwide.
Anyway GM would have to ramp up if it wants to grab some clients of the Tesla 3 waiting list.
Looking also for the new Leaf,
Tesla may have to cope with much more and tougher competition than expected…
We probably won’t have an answer to why only 30K until someone high up in GM leaves for another company and shares the details with the media…Should also add there was 400 that went to South Korea and there will now be 5000 going there for 2018…
7 months ago, Musk offered a SPECUTIVE yet compelling explanation: https://insideevs.com/elon-musk-californias-zev-credit-mandate-incredibly-weak/
“But the CARB credits are only effective at a production rate of about 20,000 to 30,000 vehicles a year. So that’s why you’ll see, mark my words, it’s not going to be any higher than that for the Chevy Bolt. That’s on order of 25,000 units a year”
The Bolt EV is a subcompact hatchback, it shares this segment with often the cheapest vehicles automakers offer such as a the Spark, Sonic, Fit, Versa, etc…There will be a Buick Encore EV and some other unknown GM EV coming out most likely this year as a MY19; on paper, those GM EV offerings are far more compelling than the Bolts and I’d bet that the Bolt EV sales will begin to nose dive once GMs other EV hit dealers lots which isn’t a bad thing…
I dunno if you can confirm but apparently GM looses USD 9k on each Bolt sold.
That was essentially debunked; the Bloomberg contributors originally published the story with a very disingenuous/clickbait title that said GM loses $9K; more responsible media outlets who picked up the story mentions “may lose” or “could lose” $9K…It was an unnamed analyst with no GM connection who was later exposed and a lot of his other past predictions were exposed to never come true…
However, there could be some truth behind this…The leasing lender is the one who absorbs the loss if the resell value wasn’t as predicted…I believe there were a few Bolt deliveries in Dec ’16, the first major month in CA for Bolt deliveries was Jan ’17, Bolt can only be leased for a minimum of 36 months so we’ll have to wait until Dec ’19 or Jan ’20 to find out what the resale value is and how true that is…However, as charging speed increases and costs continue to go down, I wouldn’t be surprised if it over a $9K loss on returned leases….
Here in France and Europe in general things are a bit different ( Norway aside for obvious reasons)
First the share of EVare slightly higer than in US.
But most of EV sold are hatchbags ( doesn’t seem to a cultural thing in US) BMWi3, Zoe and the eGolf.
So as things are right now Tesla even with the Model 3 can’t stand a chance and I think they are focussed on the US market anyway for now.
However if available the Bolt (under the brand of Opel) could be a real success and I was wondering why it ‘s not yet availabe here in France and in most parts of Europe.
Second point most cars are bought not leased unlike in the US (but for the Zoe clients rent the battery with a monthly payment) .
I have read that the second market was a disaster for the Leaf in Japan and as the capacity of the battery deteriorates; it’s difficult to find a client for a second hand EV car.
It’s still too early to have a view on the EV second hand market here in Europe, EV are still a niche and most cars have been recently bought (looks the same in US).
But as you pointed out as technology emproves 2017 and 2016 cars will certainly quickly loose value.
So maybe that’s a big drawback to buy an EV now….
If I am correct Tesla lease also most of the cars…so how will they deal when the lease comes to an end? Is that may be a financial burden too for them in the years ahead?
I’m basing my low Bolt EV resale value on previous EV/PHEV offerings…Gen1 & Gen2, Spark EV and ELR have awful resale but even worse is people have trouble selling them at the private party value and often need to go to the dealer trade in amount to get rid of it…However, GM has announced 2 new EVs (one will know is the Buick Encore) which most likely will be far more compelling than the Bolt EV which styling has been widely criticized…
Tesla is a little bit different, they are still relatively in demand and upon taking them back Tesla can add things such as free supercharging and activate AutoPilot…Also SOME their previous software limited 60kWh battery units can be “upgraded” to 75kWh by removing the software limitation…
Tesla model 3’s cannot YET be leased, that’ll change but no one knows when…
Disclaimer: I know very little about CARB credits and EV car sales and how they affect the CAFE MPG # ect… However I am in the electrical industry, and I do know quite a bit about energy, and its generation.
My question is why these CARB credits are only applicable to EVs and not diesels nor CNG vehicles. If you think about it, most utility companies generate electricity using coal or other fossil fuels, very few rely solely on renewable energy. In addition, very few people think about what happens to the battery after it “dies”, where are we going to put all of these useless batteries in 20, 30 even 40 years? Its going to be nuclear waste all over again. Not to mention the finite amount of metals used in the batteries and the fuel used in their extraction process.
Diesel however, is already very fuel efficient and thanks to new (pain in the a$$) SCR/DEF/DPF technology, they burn cleaner than gasoline. I would even go as far as to bet trillions of dollars, that a diesel 3500 pickup, runs cleaner and has a smaller carbon footprint than the new bolt.
Then again, battery tech could improve greatly, but at the current state, I think EVs are a very large and unnecessary burden on the economy, environment, car manufacturers and infrastructure.
It isn’t your fault that you’re misinformed misinformation, a lot of the claims can be debunked by google and it’d be a waste of my time to do that for you/GMA…You asked us to “think about it”, I’ll counter with “if you think about it”, why are entire countries banning ICE vehicles?
I’ll share one link, a study with no known funding from oil/Koch, which states:
“Electric cars emit less CO2 over their lifetime than diesels even when powered with dirtiest electricity”
https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/electric-cars-emit-less-co2-over-their-lifetime-diesels-even-when-powered-dirtiest-electricity
There were 500-600 Bolt deliveries in December 2016. In addition, GM has held back some for autonomous driving tests, and some for its rideshare programs. There were also a number of early test cars (mules) used during the final development stage. It would seem LG did a pretty good job of prediction!
I looked it up, 579 U.S. deliveries in 2016 all December…As far as “predicting”, remember they had to liquidate them in 2017 Q4 to get there…2016 + Q1 2017, the Bolt EV qualified for no discounts (other than a $250 employee discount)…For a new vehicle, I understand if you don’t want to put “lease cash” on the hood however a GM loyalty or even the GM points credit card redemption would have been the right thing to do especially when the vehicles like the Z06 qualified for virtually all incentives…That’s why automakers love the month to month incentive system, if they need to sell more vehicles to meet a goal they simply sweeten the incentives…
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