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It looks like GM has a sensible electric car that will be ready for delivery in the fourth quarter of this year.
Wired Magazine has our first item on the Chevy Bolt.
… over the past couple of years, a number of major automakers—General Motors, Nissan, Volkswagen—have lined up with plans to offer an electric car with (yep) approximately 200 miles of range, for a price somewhere around the average cost of a new American car, about $33,000. They all hope to do so quickly, as fuel efficiency requirements are ratcheting up every year. And they all hope to get there before media darling Tesla does. Musk—billionaire, celebrity, space and solar-energy mogul, would-be colonizer of Mars—has said since 2006 that Tesla’s “master plan” is to work toward building an affordable, long-range electric car. And in 2014 he said that goal was in sight: In 2016 Tesla would unveil a car called the Model 3 with a sticker price of $35,000 and 200 miles of range. Production would start in 2017.
In short, the electric car business has taken the form of an old-fashioned race for a prize—a race in very soft sand. There’s no Moore’s law for batteries, which are chemical not digital. Cell development is all slow, arduous trial and error. When your goal is to drive energy efficiency up while driving costs down on a mass industrial scale, there aren’t many shortcuts or late-night inspirations to be had. But now it looks pretty clear who the winner will be. And it ain’t Tesla. …
… For GM, the Bolt stands to offer a head start in a new kind of market for electric cars. But for the rest of us, there’s a broader significance to this news. It’s not just that Chevy will likely be first. It’s that a car company as lumbering and gigantic as GM, with infrastructure and manufacturing capacity on an epic scale, has gotten there first—and is there now. Tesla is nimble, innovative, and fun to watch, as companies go. But the Bolt is far more significant than any offering from Tesla ever could be. Why? Think of the old saw about how long it takes to turn an aircraft carrier around: It’s slow, and there’s not much to see at any given moment. But the thing about people who actually manage to turn one around is: They’ve got a freaking aircraft carrier.
BEFORE WE GO any further, let’s pause for a moment to savor just how richly ironic it is that General Motors is about to take the lead in the electric car race. GM is, after all, a company that went bankrupt just seven years ago and survived only with the help of a federal bailout; a company whose board of directors was described by President Obama’s auto czar, Steven Rattner, as “utterly docile” in the face of impending disaster; a company that has been the butt of jokes about its lackluster, unreliable, macho cars for years; a company that churned out Hummers while Toyota gave us the Prius. And even more to the point, we’re talking about a company that has a long history with electric vehicles—the way SouthPark has a long history with Kenny. …
The Wall Street Journal reviews the Bolt.
… Still, as much as GM might like to say otherwise, the Bolt is not a conceptual breakthrough but rather a triumph of procurement, namely, the small, lightweight and powerful battery concealed under the floor. Comprising 288 lithium cobalt prismatic cells arranged like rows of business envelopes, the Bolt’s battery pack holds a mighty charge of 60 kwh (with 140 kW peak output, or 200 hp) while weighing 960 pounds, including all the thermal management plumbing. There will be an eight-year/100,000-mile warranty on the battery.
When Chevy’s Volt plug-in hybrid got off the ground in 2008, GM was paying $1,000 for a kwh of automotive-grade lithium-ion storage. Today, that number is $145 per kwh, and GM gets its cell-level batteries from LG Electronics in South Korea.
Wall Street analysts forecast a price drop to around $125/kwh after Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada comes fully online. But, as Bolt battery engineer Bill Wallace noted, “The Koreans already have a Gigafactory.”
And what about Tesla? The Model 3 compact family sedan will make its public debut next month, with production for Q4, 2017 (but Tesla is famous for being on island time). Tesla also promises 200-plus range, and a price of $35,000, before the federal tax credits, effectively undercutting the Bolt by $2,500.
And just like that, the Bolt turns a corner. GM and Tesla, their competitors and all their proxies are poised to fight a price war, a procurement war, over the price of batteries that will drive energy storage below the $100/kwh mark. Numbers like that make electric cars for the masses a real, levelheaded engineering proposition.
Maybe, could be, nobody’s quite sure. But GM wants to be ready, just in case.
And the LA Times.
For years automakers have failed to make an electric car with the two qualities most drivers demand: a long driving range and a low sticker price.
Tesla Motors addressed half of the equation with its Model S, a sport sedan that travels 265 miles on a charge — but costs about $80,000. Other automakers tackled the other half, with electrics that are economical but go only about 80 miles between lengthy charging sessions.
Now General Motors, in a dramatic model debut in Detroit, says it has unlocked the magic formula. Its Chevrolet Bolt concept car will travel 200 miles between charges and sell in the low $30,000 range, after government incentives, GM executives said. The spacious four-door hatchback will go on sale in 2017.
If the automaker can deliver, the Bolt could transform the prospects for widespread adoption of electric cars. The Bolt could be “the first mass-market EV success,” said one industry veteran.
“A 200-mile EV range at about $30,000 in a crossover body shape is a killer combination,” said John Krafcik, president of auto shopping company TrueCar Inc. and former chief executive of Hyundai Motor America. “You are looking at annual sales of 100,000 vehicles.
The Bolt’s range more than doubles that of Nissan’s Leaf, the bestselling battery electric car, along with similar offerings from most major automakers. The car could help quell widespread skepticism about the future of electric cars, especially during a time of plummeting gas prices.
Tesla has promised a model with a Bolt-like price and range for years. But the automaker’s next offering will be the repeatedly delayed Model X sport utility vehicle, now expected to launch late this year, for about the same price as the Model S. The affordable Model 3 is still years away.