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      GM announces a new Ultium-based Chevrolet Bolt during Q2 report

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 25 July, 2023 - 13:36 · 1 minute

    Close-up view of the Chevrolet Bolt nameplate.

    Enlarge (credit: Jeffrey Sauger for Chevrole)

    One of the first modern mass-market electric vehicles we tested remains one of our favorites. It's the Chevrolet Bolt, which we first sampled at CES in 2016 , then drove for real when it went on sale the following year . A fun-to-drive hatchback that could feel a little spartan—some people hate the seats in early models—it was also quite affordable, with prices dropping well below $30,000 for a car with a range of 259 miles (417 km).

    Understandably we were pretty upset to learn that General Motors was calling time on this solid little EV; in April this year it announced it was ending the product line. But today, during GM's Q2 results call, CEO Mary Barra revealed the Bolt will be back.

    "Our customers love today's Bolt. It has been delivering record sales and some of the highest customer satisfaction and loyalty scores in the industry," said Barra. "It's also an important source of conquest sales for the company and for Chevrolet. We will keep the momentum going by delivering a new Bolt… and we will execute it more quickly compared to an all-new program with significantly lower engineering expense and capital investment by updating the vehicle with Ultium and Ultifi technologies and by applying our 'winning with simplicity' discipline," Barra said.

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      GM confirms Chevy Bolt will die this year, making way for electric pickups

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 25 April, 2023 - 13:54

    A Chevrolet Bolt on the assembly line

    Enlarge / Farewell Chevy Bolt, we'll miss you. (credit: Steve Fecht for Chevrolet)

    Expect the worst and you'll never be disappointed, a pessimist once said. And boy is that ever true about General Motors, a company cursed with the ability to build great products and then doom them with business decisions. The latest casualty? One of our favorite electric vehicles, the Chevrolet Bolt.

    During an early morning earnings call to report GM's Q1 2023 results, CEO Mary Barra confirmed that production of both the Bolt EV and Bolt EUV (a stretched version) will cease later this year at its factory in Orion Township, Michigan.

    The Bolt gets much less respect than it deserves. Tesla made a lot of noise about building an electric car for the masses in the mid-2010s, but it was GM that delivered . The Bolt made it to market before the Model 3, and other than some rather firm front seats, it was a very fine, if frill-free, EV .

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      Domino’s buys 800 Chevrolet Bolt EVs as pizza delivery vehicles

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 21 November, 2022 - 16:21

    Domino's new fleet of 2023 Chevrolet Bolts are unmistakeable.

    Enlarge / Domino's new fleet of 2023 Chevrolet Bolts are unmistakeable. (credit: Domino's Pizza)

    While it may not be your favorite pizza-slinger, one has to respect Domino's Pizza for being forward-looking. Whether or not it actually launched the first pizza delivery service in 1960, it certainly popularized the idea and more recently has been testing autonomous vehicles and sidewalk robots to deliver pizza.

    At some point, before robotic Domino's delivery is commonplace, its pizzas may speed their way to you in an electric car.

    On Monday the company announced the arrival of more than 100 Chevrolet Bolts to select Domino's locations, with another 700 due by the end of 2023. You can even check on their progress online— of Bolt deliveries , not pizza deliveries, although that's possible, too, thanks to onboard telematics.

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      The driving enthusiast’s dilemma with electric cars

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 17 June, 2022 - 15:37 · 1 minute

    The driving enthusiast’s dilemma with electric cars

    Enlarge (credit: Andrew Hedrick/Porsche)

    As I'm fond of saying, electric motors just make cars better. Regular readers will notice that most of our automotive coverage is about electrified cars, but the other kind still represents more than 95 percent of all new cars sold in the US, so we have reason to drive a few of those from time to time as well. And when we do, it's often an exercise in frustration—even a performance car like a Porsche 911 Turbo can't match the immediate slug of torque from an electric motor doing its thing.

    And that's good. Electric cars need to be the future of personal transportation if we want to avert the worst ravages of climate change, albeit only alongside everyone walking, cycling, and taking public transport more. (We could do with a comprehensive redesign of our built environment to make all that safer, too, but I realize I'm veering dangerously into a post-scarcity utopia there, whereas it currently looks like we're in the Mirror Universe .)

    But the uncomfortable truth for the EV-loving driving enthusiast is that while EVs make perfect sense for getting from A to B—absent the occasional edge-case like an emergency cross-country trombone delivery—I'm not sure they're quite there yet when it comes to that last bit of fun.

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