More accurately, they only want to sell 30,000 a year, as that's all the batteries they can get from LG.
Except GM said on the record that their supply chain allows them to build at least 50,000 Bolts a year during the next several years.
The 30,000 comes from an old Reuters article quoting anonymous supplier sources regarding how many Bolt EVs that GM was preparing at that time to build in the first year of production.
30,000 is more than the number of Tesla Model S cars that were sold in the U.S. last year -- 25,202. And those sales numbers are seriously disrupting the European premium car sales in the US.
Even though people like to deride the Bolt EV for looking like an econobox utility car it actually will be selling in the $30,000+ category and 30,000 car sales in that price range is usually considered good.
Tesla aims to sell a lot more and is scaling their factories for what would, given recent historical sales, be considered outlandishly high sales targets. This is great if Tesla manages even only half that number of sales. More power to them.
But by the standards of existing alt-fuel car sales the Bolt EV is being given a strong sales target and supply chain for a new model. For example, the Prius Liftback sold 113,000 cars in the US last year for an average price in the mid-20 thousand dollar range. The next nearest hybrid, the Prius C (under $20 thousand price) sold 37,484. The Camry hybrid sold 30,640. All other hybrid car models from all makes had sales under 30,000. All plugin hybrid and all pure-electric car models had sales of under 30,000.
