General Motors Co (GM) is ramping up production of Chevrolet Bolt electric cars at a factory north of Detroit and is on track to start delivering vehicles as promised by the end of the year, company officials said on Friday.
Barring a last-minute stumble, GM will be first to offer an electric car with more than 322km of driving range at a starting price of less than US$40,000 before tax credits.
Silicon Valley electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc has said its entry in this new market segment, the Model 3, is to launch next year.
Photo: AP
The Bolt and the Model 3 represent contrasting strategies to push electric vehicles into the mainstream of the US auto market.
Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk has said the company is to overhaul its Fremont, California, factory to build as many as 500,000 Model 3s and related models a year.
The Model 3 design prototypes show a car aimed at German luxury sedans such as the Audi A3 or A4.
Musk has said nearly 400,000 people have put down deposits on the Model 3.
However, GM is taking a more cautious approach. The US$37,495 Bolt, with a 383km range, is a compact, utilitarian hatchback with design features such as a thin front seat to increase rear-seat legroom, aimed at making the car attractive to drivers for ride-hailing services.
GM’s Maven auto-sharing operation is to receive Bolts to offer drivers who want to work for GM’s ride-hailing partner, Lyft Inc.
Company officials would not say how many customers have tried to order Bolts from dealers.
GM is also hedging its bets on production targets after getting burned in the past by over-estimating demand for electric or hybrid vehicles. Sales of electric and plug-in hybrid cars represent just 1 percent of the US light vehicle market, despite government efforts to promote cleaner cars.
At GM’s Orion assembly plant, Bolts are rolling off the same final assembly line as gasoline-fueled Chevrolet Sonic sedans and hatchbacks.
During a tour on Friday, every fourth or fifth car on the line was a Bolt.
The Orion plant is working on one shift, building at a pace of about 90,000 cars a year.
GM redesigned the Orion assembly operation to allow workers to build either Bolts or Sonics and can shift production depending on demand, said Yves Dontigny, launch manager for the Bolt.
At one assembly station, after a Sonic body is mated to its gasoline engine and axles, a carrier wheels the battery pack for a Bolt into place. The same workers secure it to a Bolt body hanging on a carrier overhead.
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