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Chevy Bolt - 200 mile range for $30k base price (after incentive)
- Thread starter FredTMC
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- bolt chevy Electric Vehicles review
Kurt Foster
Zero FX Stealthfighter
GM said that they are loosing money everytime they sell the bolt, because they cheat the system because they are so massive. Anyways, the batteries would seem like they could get a deal with tesla considering they arn't competition anymore.
The US isn't the only car market, of course. Looking at the top 20 list here in Norway, I can't find a sedan with a trunk like the Model 3. Even looking at the BMW 3-series (which isn't in the top 20) on the biggest car selling site, only ~40% are sedans, the rest are station wagons.
Even so, the Model 3 seems to be a bigger car than the Bolt, so that will probably sway people into getting the Model 3, even if the trunk has an inconvenient format. And of course, there's the supercharging.
GM plans to sell something like 20-50k Bolts, and I think they could easily do that in Europe alone, if they price it competitively. I don't think it's smart to price it higher than the Model 3.
LG Chem is the supplier of batteries for GM and a number of other car makers. According to various news stories, LG Chem has the capacity to provide batteries for 50,000 Bolts max.
At this moment, most battery makers have unused capacity because worldwide demand for EVs is not high enough, except Panasonic who makes batteries for Tesla. Production of EVs is still quite small. insideevs tracks sales and last year 550,000 EVs and PHEVs were sold worldwide. About 100 million cars and light trucks were sold. That's less than 1/2% of all car sales, and most of those cars have very small batteries.
To build all 100 million cars and light trucks as long range EVs would require the equivalent of 200 Gigafactories and cost about $1-$2 trillion USD. Even with the low volume of production, demand is still quite low too. For most EVs, they are currently customer constrained, for Tesla they are currently price constrained. The rate of reservations for the Model 3 is an indication that it could prove to be the game changer that makes EVs popular. It looks likely the Model 3 will be production constrained for the first couple of years of production at least.
Car makers are largely followers. If a company makes some kind of move that proves popular, suddenly everyone jumps on board. They have been able to dismiss Tesla because they have been rich kid toys up to this point. They dominate the top end sedan sales, but that's a tiny market most car makers can afford to ignore.
If someone makes a product that proves to be popular with the mainstream of car buyers, then they all scramble to catch up. I was in high school when Chrysler introduced the mini-van and within a couple of years most car makers had a mini-van. SUVs have been around for a long time. International Harvester made one back in the 70s and Jeep was pretty much built around that kind of vehicle. Chevy had the Suburban and there were others, but they were always niche vehicles. When the mini-van fad died down, a lot of those buyers moved on to SUVs and that became a boom market with some extreme examples like Hummers.
Accessories run in fads too. Low profile tires have become a fad that most car makers, even Tesla, are all ga-ga about right now. They are very impractical compared to what tires used to be, but it's the fashion. Glass roofs, moonroofs, sunroofs, etc. are also a fad that is booming right now.
If the Model 3 proves to be as popular as it looks like it will be, long range BEVs will become the next new thing and everyone will be scrambling to make enough BEVs. However Tesla will be the only company with enough battery manufacturing capacity. Other companies will start crash programs to build battery factories, but there will be about a 3 years delay where demand will outstrip supply by a large margin and that will be the point where some car companies will probably fold. They won't be able to survive the drought that happens when the buying public sits on their wallets waiting in line for a BEV rather than settle for a new ICE and will keep driving their old ICE a little longer.
Yup, Bolt's battery and electric motor are both made in Korea from LG. GM already released detail info on that.
/sarcasm:
Also with GM, you might run the risk of them pulling the Bolts back, like they did with the EV1...
Krugerrand
Meow
JohnSnowNW
Active Member
That's fair, but Norway's market is a bit smaller than the US. I realize they are the 2nd largest Tesla market, but that's due to incentives which will not continue indefinitely. They will sell more Tesla's state-side, than anywhere else, for at least the first 3 years.
As has been pointed out several times, if people need the the advantages of a liftback they'll simply have to wait for the Model Y. The Model 3 isn't going to fit everyone's needs...and that's okay.
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That's not how it works in Norway. They do not have limited number of tax-incentives. Instead, they have very heavy tax-penalty for polluting cars making them much more expensive to buy and operate. In Norway it is cheaper to buy and drive a Tesla Model S than a BMW 3-series. And that is not going away, on the contrary they are planning to ban completely all sales of polluting cars starting from 2025, so only zero-emission cars can be sold from then on.
JohnSnowNW
Active Member
Thanks for the correction. I guess I was thinking the system was similar to Denmark's.
To say more accurately how the situation is here:
- BEVs have a lot of incentives, including no purchase tax or VAT (25%), free parking, reduced annual registration fee, no toll payments, access to bus lanes, etc.
- PHEVs are also incentiviced, with basically zero purchase tax. And the more poluting a car is, the higher the purchase tax - a big heavy duty american SUV might for instance have a 100k USD purchase tax.
- Some of the BEV incentives can be phased out pretty quick, like free parking and access to bus lanes.
- Other BEV incentives are protected at least until the end of 2017, including no VAT and purchase tax.
It's been proposed that in 2018, the VAT exemption will be replaced by something similar to the US $7500 federal incentive. The goal is to start phasing out the VAT incentive, by first replacing it with a direct incentive that cancels out the VAT, and then start reducing the direct incentive down to zero. This will happen over several years. We might see that in 2020, the incentive is gone and full VAT needs to be paid.
At this point, BEVs will be equally incentivized as PHEVs, *unless* PHEVs are taxed harder. And they will be. In 2020, we might see PHEVs taxed as hard as smaller ICE cars are taxed today, those cars in turn will be taxed as much bigger ICE cars, and the big ICE cars will be prohibitively expensive.
Then some time around 2020, we might start seeing BEVs being requred to pay modest purchase taxes. At this point the BEVs should have a market share north of 50%, so this is necessary to get the required tax revenue from the transportation sector. Gradually the purchase tax will be phased in, while at the same time the purchase taxes on ICE cars are increased. Sometime around 2025 the BEV market share will go above 80%, and we see bans on the sale of new ICE cars start coming into effect. First the most dirty cars will be up for the chopping block, and then the rest will join them.
I wonder if any economist in Norway could look at how the overall economy has changed as there is greater BEV adoption. Especially since you state that by 2020 BEVs will be 50% or more of the market.
What industries have decreased/evolved, what has grown. Has there been a greater construction effort in adding and incorporating EV charging capabilities in workplace and homes, etc... This will be truly edifying and helpful for other countries if someone/group could publish or review these changes. Thanks in advance!
What industries have decreased/evolved, what has grown. Has there been a greater construction effort in adding and incorporating EV charging capabilities in workplace and homes, etc... This will be truly edifying and helpful for other countries if someone/group could publish or review these changes. Thanks in advance!
Barron's article, by subscription, but came up for free on my cell phone. Analyst Karl Brauer for Kelley Blue Book and veteran industry observer says GM will sell between 30,000 and 80,000 Bolt's in 2018. Didn't someone do the math earlier and show that there will only be enough batteries for fewer than 30,00 per year? If so, seems like a pretty significant error for a "veteran industry observer"...
High-Wattage Hopes for Tesla Model 3, Chevy Bolt
High-Wattage Hopes for Tesla Model 3, Chevy Bolt
brucet999
Active Member
GM said that they are loosing money everytime they sell the bolt, because they cheat the system because they are so massive. Anyways, the batteries would seem like they could get a deal with tesla considering they arn't competition anymore.
GM won't sell the first Bolt until the end of this year (if they meet their planned release date) so how can you say that they lose money every time they sell one?
brucet999
Active Member
Lucky you. Whether on computer or iPhone I am asked to subscribe in order to read the article.
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LG is supplying the cells out of their largest facility which is in South Korea. It is nominally a 3.2 GWh facility, but given advances in the cells, maybe at full nameplate it can supply 4.4 GWh later this year. But that's not actually likely since the production mix includes a variety of cells including cells optimized for PHEVs. Furthermore, LG also supplies Volkswagen, Hyundai, and others from this facility. Assuming about 3.0 GWh of capacity for the Bolt, we're talking about 50,000 Bolts. However, that's assuming they do achieve nameplate production. Maybe not in the first year, hence the rumors of initial production capacity slated at more like 25,000 to 30,000.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
Industry observers are better known as "analysts". Even the best analysts can get things horribly wrong and usually there are no consequences for getting things wrong (few people keep track of a tally of what they get right or wrong). When they make a claim, it is best to check their work (see how they arrived at that figure).
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