A New Chevy Bolt is On the Way With Ultium Power
With General Motors plowing full-speed ahead toward electrification, there are bound to be a few vehicles that don’t make the transition. Chevy’s long-running EVs, the Bolt and Bolt EUV, were two names not expected to make the jump, but the automaker recently announced a new Bolt variant.
GM CEO Mary Barra made the announcement on a recent earnings call. While electric, the Bolt and Bolt EUV do not utilize GM’s new Ultium EV platform, which all other new models do. With the new model, the car will shift to Ultium, though it’s unclear if the EUV will tag along for the ride.
While yet another cookie-cutter electric car might not sound that exciting, the Bolt is a breath of fresh air in an EV market that increasingly seems targeted only at the rich. The current Bolt starts at well under $30,000 and offers a fantastic 259-mile range for the money. With incentives and tax credits, the final price could be much lower than that, making it the most affordable new EV on sale now.
Barra didn’t share any other details on the car, but it’s reasonable to expect a similarly sized vehicle to the one we have today. The range will likely increase with the shift to Ultium battery tech, and the format enables faster charging than the current Bolt offers.
[Image: Chevrolet]
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Chris grew up in, under, and around cars, but took the long way around to becoming an automotive writer. After a career in technology consulting and a trip through business school, Chris began writing about the automotive industry as a way to reconnect with his passion and get behind the wheel of a new car every week. He focuses on taking complex industry stories and making them digestible by any reader. Just don’t expect him to stay away from high-mileage Porsches.
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GM has a long, rich history of creating something great and then killing it with fire. Case in point, the Bolt. First week in Automaking 101 class you learn to not discontinue a product the public is interested in without having a suitable replacement ready to go. I get it if they needed to kill off the old battery platform the Bolt was using, but why not wait to cancel it until you had the Ultium-based Bolt ready? Idiots...
Chevrolet Bolt, the first car to Social Distance.
i saw a chevy bolt ev suv today..wow was it ugly...chevy blows
LG is the manufacturer of GM's EV batteries. Lucky Goldstar. And it has always promised more than it could deliver. They vacuumed up European manufacturers' Lithium-ion orders a couple of years ago by bidding low, and then didn't deliver. So personally, I'm not sold on the company's ethics. Anybody can low bid on a contract, and that anybody has often been LG. Whether they intended to deliver or just defeat rivals isn't clear to me. And if you search LG Ultium batteries, what you find is that they're not delivering enough batteries to GM. Just yesterday this was reported"
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/business/general-motors-electric-vehicles-profits.html
The first batteries for the Bolt were junk -- oops. The second ones were surely Ultiums in all but name, one hopes. So how good, really, is the Ultium? I don't personally intend to find out, but if you believe GM's PR and buy one of their EVs powered by LG, the very best of luck to you.