The Chevy Bolt EV is cleaning up in conquest sales, with some three-quarters of Bolt EV buyers in the U.S. new to General Motors.
Insight into the Chevy Bolt EV sales was provided by chief of Chevrolet marketing, Steve Majoros, during the reveal of the debut of the refreshed 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EV, attended by GM Authority.
The Chevy Bolt EV first rolled into U.S. dealers at the end of the 2016 calendar year, showing its greatest sales performance during the following 2017 calendar year with 23,297 units sold. U.S. buyers scooped up 20,754 units last year.
As GM Authority covered previously, Chevrolet has been on a roll lately with regard to conquest sales, attracting more new, non-GM customers in the U.S. last year than ever before. According to Chevrolet communications manager, Megan Soule, nearly half of all Chevrolet sales are conquest customers.
The new Chevy Blazer crossover is part of this impressive conquest trend for the brand, with nearly half of all Chevy Blazer buyers new to the Chevrolet brand, according to senior marketing manager, Chevrolet SUVs, Brad Franz.
As a reminder, General Motors just recently debuted a mid-cycle refresh for the Bolt EV with the latest 2022 model year. The refreshed 2022 Bolt EV was unveiled alongside the all-new 2022 Chevy Bolt EUV. The refreshed Bolt EV features revised styling that includes a more angular, futuristic aesthetic, with a more upright fascia and sharp lighting elements. The 2022 Chevy Bolt EV cabin space was also redesigned with a new instrument panel, controls, and seats, offering a 10.2-inch infotainment screen and 8-inch digital gauge cluster.
Providing motivation is a single-drive electric motor producing 200 horsepower and 266 pound-feet of torque, with a 65-kWh lithium-ion battery pack juicing the motor for upwards of 259 miles of range between plugs.
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Comments
what was the average transaction price? based on the incentives, seems like less conquest and more begging.
sadly we all have to agree. Gm has conquest like Nissan does with big deals and lots of begging.
Tesla sells at MSRP. I have seen Bolts with incentives and discounts combined for up to $15,000 off. $15,000 off is a big fat loser for the dealer. Why stock a vehicle to lose money? Makes no sense. Is this the future for GM? I have seen new 2019 Bolts still in stock too. Not exactly a successful product.
They stock them because the dealer is making money. Don’t know if GM is or not, but no dealer is going to stock a car if they make no money on the sale.
MSRP means nothing if you don’t know the cost of goods sold. A Tesla Model 3 could have an MSRP of say $40k and cost $34k to make whereas the Bolt could have an MSRP of $38k and cost $25k to make. Given they dropped the MSRP of the new Bolt EV and it has more standard features than the existing Bolt EV it means the current MSRP was artificially high. Also, your $15k off normally includes state incentives.
So in the end the dealer still makes money even with a high % off of MSRP. The tax rebate allowed GM to have an artificially high MSRP in the first place. Tesla on the other hand has to sell at MSRP to make a profit (see off the book special order $35k Model 3)
I was in the business for forty years. Amazing, how a keyboard jockey knows it all. Dealers will make money 98%of the time. The Bolt is an excellent product, for what it is, but it’s not a money maker for most dealers. For most, it’s a break even product or a loser.
I bought a Bolt in November 2017 from available stock on a dealer lot within a 20 mile radius of where I live. You can never completely trust what a sales person says, but he said the dealer was fairly satisfied with the Bolt as a product and had sold a decent number, quite a few to prior owners of first generation Electric cars of other brands. I was pretty reluctant to buy GM because of lousy GM experiences in the 1970s and 1980s, but I have found Bolt’s build quality equals that of Asian manufacturers. That is not to say the Bolt styling or seat comfort is for everyone.
I chit-chatted with a Subaru sales person while my girlfriend’s mom was shopping for a used car at the that dealer. The Subaru guy said that dealership was very opposed to selling any Subaru hybrids or EVs because of the high up front cost of training and service equipment. He also said he believed that EVs don’t require enough service, thus the dealership would lose service revenue. Of course that’s not entirely correct because brakes, tires, cabin air filters, coolant, final drive oil, HVAC leaks, random parts that just break and collision damage still need attention even on EVs.
As far as, “conquest sales,” go, couldn’t it be said that Tesla is the leader? Almost 100% of their sales go to first time Tesla buyers. Tesla for now is the leader in total EV units sold. GM, VW/Audi, sort of Ford and maybe Toyota are finally starting to engage with the EV market. We’ll see what happens over the next few years.
Richard: If you were in the business for that long, then you also know the value of a model that will bring in new (to that brand) customers. Once they are customers of that brand, it’s a lot easier to keep them and many will move up on the next sale. So even if it’s a break even or slight loser, the dealer should win in the long run. And then you have the service, parts, body shop…………
Hilarious…You pick up some traffic on the left coast. No one else really cares about EV’s.
My dealer in Ohio had 30 Bolts on the lot, so it’s not just west coast.
Richard, might be showing your bias there bud, EV’s are in fact growing, the makers are all in, and if your drove one for a while, you’d understand. My little hatchback Bolt can blow the doors off many “muscle” cars and EVERY big-engine pickup on the road, and it’s a total blast to drive, makes for a perfect commuter car in Michigan, pretty far from the west coast.
When an EV is comparably priced to an equivalent ICU, has a five minute charging time, and a 500 mile range in all types of weather. I’ll be happy to look but I’m not planning a trip around a charging station. Really, I think an empty fuel tank laying in a landfill for eternity is much safer than a battery.
Agreed. E-waste is something that deserves more serious attention.
It is too bad early initiatives to develop an industry wide standard for swappable batteries was abandoned. Tesla flirted with the idea of a swappable battery but gave it up. I have always pictured an automated service station that would remove the battery by turning Dzus-like quarter-turn screws to drop the empty battery and then lifting a freshly charged battery into place. That also removes the issue for consumers of the battery wearing out – though someone still has to renew battery packs.
EVs change the fill-up equation except for long distance trips and apartment dwellers. In general there isn’t any need to fully charge in five minutes. Overnight trickle charging is done every day instead of a gas station trip once a week. The battery lasts longer too when it is slowly charged.
You’re not wrong about road trips, EV’s simply cannot compare to ICE vehicles for refueling in 5 minutes. But as Bill says, the VAST majority are overnight charge situations, which is why they make much more sense as commuter cars for now.
As battery tech advances, the charge times and range will both improve dramatically. A big concern for me is to keep the government as far away as possible and let the EV makers really innovate.
If allowed to do it’s magic, the market kill the bad ones and reward the good ones.
I hope the new ones have better front seats! The 2020 seats were poor enough I didn’t buy
I bought a 2020 due to excellent pricing and the battery upgrade. But I fully admit seat comfort is the worst of any vehicle I’ve ever owned.
An after-market leather cover solved the issue for me, but Chevy should have caught the seat issue pre-production
I have a 2017 Bolt with the leather/leather-like seats, and the seats seem OK. I’ve been wondering if maybe it is the cloth seats that are so bad, or is it just me? I know the bad seats have to be a genuine issue because the seats have been so roundly criticized. I read on the owner’s forum that in early production some Bolt seats assembled incorrectly assembled and too long bolts poked up into the seat. Ow! I guess in that case, “Bolt,” was an appropriate name for the car.
Re the seat thing: I have this theory that a lot of the Bolt engineering was done in South Korea by typically thin and smallish Koreans. The seats are fine for such individuals, be they Korean or American. The opposite phenomenon if one goes to a current furniture store; most of the furniture is for giants! Perhaps another reason for the giant seats in many cars — you get the picture.
I think that the new 2022 Bolts have better seats.
The Volt and Bolt are good cars, but had terrible introduction and marketing. And most dealers hate them and would much rather sell pick-ups. Volt is gone, but Bolt may finally be recognized as being just right for many users. The styling may be a little quirky, but ergonomics and practicality are second to none. A cynic might compare a Tesla Model 3 to a souped-up Corolla with a Prius dashboard. Model Y is better but still pricey. In any case some folks avoid designer jeans, Apple products, and any status driven purchase.
I have to agree. In the market where I live in the Midwest US, GM marketing for EVs and hybrids is missing in action. Customers won’t go to dealers looking for products they don’t know exist. My neighbors had a vague idea GM made one or more hybrid products but had no idea there was a 100% EV available.
There is also an education problem with the public’s perception that EVs are some sort of impractical, limited driving range, all but experimental product. My neighbors were quite surprised to learn that a regular wall outlet is all that is needed to keep the car charged. People believe some sort of expensive Frankenstein lab equipment is needed for charging. I drove the Bolt for the first two years just charging from a 120 Volt outlet. I eventually got a 240 Volt outlet installed, but It was mainly for the few percent efficiency gain from charging at a higher voltage. From a Dollars spent per distance perspective as of February 2021, the Bolt is equivalent to gasoline car that gets about 80 MPG. I love not having to deal with gas stations.
20k sales and considered a conquest champion while the Cruze, Impala, Sonic and Volt just to name a few were considered poor sellers even in their latter years.
Apples & Oranges.
I never understood why one EV owner would irrationally go after an EV from another maker, as we clearly see here in the comments. There’s nothing wrong with Tesla’s, but other car makers are actually allowed to make EVs too, you’re going to have to accept that lol.
Also, when Chevy, Ford, or Ram throw $10k discounts on the hood of their pickups nobody calls the truck a failure, why the double standard for the Bolt?
The first affordable EV with 200+ miles of range, from an American maker, and still so much hate for it, hard to explain it.
I have to agree the Bolt is fine and choices exist for people who want something else, electric or otherwise. The Bolt is in the sort of mini cross-over utility category. The original Bolt is bigger than a Honda Fit but smaller than most cars marketed as CUVs. In my case, I didn’t really care about making a style statement but looked at the passenger and cargo space. It is possible to put a fully assembled kitchen table through the hatch of the Bolt. I believe that would not be possible with a Tesla Model 3 for example. Also, the model 3 wasn’t easily obtainable when I got the Bolt.
On the upside, the Bolt is very anonymous, looking like at least a half dozen other small cars when viewed from more than 10 feet away. The Bolt is probably a less likely than a Model 3 to get its paint keyed in a parking lot by an EV hating coal-roller.
The ability to blend in is one of the things I liked about the Bolt over the M3. That, plus the price, the higher ride position, and the local dealer support, made the decision a no-brainer.
But I’m no Tesla hater, not at all. In fact I hope to see the rumored $25k Tesla hatch one day, and I hope to see their support network expand, but buying a Tesla living in northern Michigan felt too much like a roll of the dice for me, at least for now.
Apologizes, I wasn’t implying anyone here is biased against Tesla; just that there are random jealous coal-rollers out there in the public who may have nothing better to do than vandalize electric cars. Blending in is good survival adaptation in this case.
I had been hoping the Model Y was going to be the rumored cheap Tesla. Not yet.
Wonder why GM makes their hatchbacks look ugly like the Yaris look of old. They could definitely give it a sharper look like the new Mazda 3s or the Tesla. Maybe they don’t intend to sell big and want their gasoline vehicles to sell. Or, their designers have lost taste for smart looking vehicles.
Neither of those has the room of the Chevy Bolt. Form follows function. Sit in the back seats of each and let me know which one is more comfortable. The Model 3 is sporty, but it comes at the cost of rear headroom, rear seat height, and trunk loading size.
I have noticed that all of the Chevy SUVs and CUVs look like clones of each other. Viewed at a glance from a distance it takes a few seconds to tell which model one is looking at. There is even a lot of visual similarity of looks between models from different manufacturers. My thought is there is only so much that can be done with the shape and not have poor wind resistance characteristics.