Chevy Malibu production will end later this year as GM prepares to launch new EVs, including the highly anticipated new Bolt EV.

Production of the current Chevy Bolt EV, GM’s top-selling electric car, ended at the end of 2023 as the automaker prepares for its next wave of EVs.

GM CEO Mary Barra says the next-gen Chevy Bolt EV will have “an even better driving, charging, and ownership experience” with new tech and features. As the first Ultium EV in North America to feature LFP batteries, the new Bolt is expected to remain a low-price leader.

Barra confirmed at the Automotive Press Association in December (via Automotive News) that the Ultium-based Bolt will relaunch next year.

During an interview with Daily Drive, GM’s CFO Paul Jacobson said the company is aware of the growing demand for affordable EVs. Jacobson explained this is a big reason why GM is launching an Ultium-based Bolt rather than developing an entirely new platform.

The move will save GM billions, according to its financial leader. “We’ve got a really good product that customers love,” Jacobson explained. “We can realize some of the efficiencies of the Ultium platform using LFP chemistry and technology and make it more profitable for us and significantly improve the business case for it.”

GM to retire Chevy Malibu with next-gen Bolt EV coming

As GM prepares for the new Chevy Bolt EV, it will retire the iconic Malibu nameplate. Over 10 million Chevy Malibu models have been sold since 1964. It’s also Chevy’s only car offered in the US outside the Corvette as the automaker shifts to SUVs and crossovers.

GM plans to end Chevy Malibu production in November as it prepares for its next wave of electric vehicles, including the new Bolt EV.

GM also announced it’s investing $390 million in its Kansas assembly plant to build the new Ultium Chevy Bolt EV. Separately, GM said Cadillac XT4 production will be paused after January 2025 at the facility until it begins to build the Bolt eV on the same assembly line in late 2025.

After losing market share in the US EV market in Q1, GM hopes new models like the Chevy Equinox, Silverado, and Blazer EVs can help it win it back in the second half of the year.

GM accounted for 6.2% of the US EV market through the first three months of 2024, down from 6.9% in Q4 2022 and 8.4% a year ago.

The falling market share is due to Bolt EV sales slipping 64% YOY to just 7,040 in the first quarter. Although Ultium EV sales were up 36%, total EV sales fell over 20%, with the current Bolt being phased out.

Source: Reuters

Just over a month after launching its first-ever EV, smartphone specialist Xiaomi is reportedly well into the development of an encore model. Per the report, Xiaomi Automobile has already been benchmarking an all-electric SUV model against the Tesla Model Y and may be competing against it in the market sooner than you’d think.

It’s been just over three years since Chinese electronics manufacturer Xiaomi announced a new EV-focused arm called Xiaomi Automobile. During that time, we followed much of the smartphone developer’s transition into automotive manufacturing, which ended up progressing faster than even it had anticipated.

Those efforts culminated in Xiaomi’s first model – the SU7 sedan, which gained some serious clout when it debuted this spring, garnering over 50,000 orders in the first 27 minutes of going on sale in China.

With its SU7 order books now sitting at over 100,000 units, Xiaomi has begun wielding its production expertise to ramp up its output to meet demand. In the first 32 days of SU7 production, the new automaker reported that it had already built 10,000 units en route to 90,000 more targeted before the end of the year.

While the SU7 continues to make its mark on the EV market, Xiaomi is reportedly already deep into developing a second model to compete against the global EV market’s current best-seller, the Tesla Model Y.

Xiaomi gets rolling in China, sets its sights on Tesla

Per a report by Bloomberg, Xiaomi’s second all-electric model will be a compact SUV similar to the ever-popular Tesla Model Y. A person familiar with the matter said that Xiaomi was already benchmarking the Model Y during the incoming SUV’s development, setting the stage for s showdown between the smartphone specialist and the American automaker in China.

When Xiaomi began brainstorming its new EV arm three years ago, an SUV was part of the initial plans, but ultimately, it decided to focus on the SU7 sedan first, which remains its priority at the moment.

That being said, the Tesla Model Y competitor is already in the works, and Xiaomi is reportedly targeting a start of production by late 2025 once the second phase of its EV production facility in Yizhuang, Beijing, is completed.

That facility is expected to reach an annual production capacity of 300,000 units annually. Phase one is expected to be completed next month, offering Xiaomi a capacity of about 150,000 EVs annually. Phase two is scheduled to begin expansion sometime in 2024.

According to Chinese media outlet 36kr, Xiaomi also plans to launch a third, lower-priced EV model after the SU7 sedan and SUV to compete against Tesla, but the automaker has not confirmed those plans.

As electric bicycles continue to grow in numbers in the US, so too have concerns over the safety of their lithium-ion battery packs. A new safety standard just passed in China may soon have a considerable impact on e-bike fire safety.

E-bike battery fires, while exceedingly rare, have become a major concern in the US with significant news coverage. NYC is often seen as the epicenter of e-bike battery fires due largely to the large population of e-bike delivery riders and the low-quality Chinese batteries used on such bikes. Delivery riders’ e-bikes usually feature inferior-quality batteries in order to reduce costs to their owners, who use them to perform low-wage delivery jobs.

Keeping the issue in perspective, more deaths in NYC are attributed to space heater fires each year than e-bike battery fires, but the rapid growth of e-bike use in the US means that fire safety will continue to be a growing concern.

With the vast majority of battery fires originating from poorly produced Chinese batteries designed for ultra-cheap e-bikes and e-scooters, it appears the Chinese government is attempting to address the issue head-on. The country just passed new technical standards for the production of lithium-ion batteries like those used in micromobility devices.

Known as the “Safety Technical Specification for Lithium-ion Batteries Used in Electric Bicycles,” the standards regulate the design, production, and sale of lithium-ion batteries for e-bikes.

The regulations specifically address technical concerns relating to production quality and fire risk, and cover 22 specific aspects of the batteries’ design and manufacturing. Issues addressed include battery over-charging and over-discharging, external short circuits, thermal abuse, battery punctures, and several more key areas.

Enforcement of the new standard is expected to begin on November 1, 2024. After that date, no lithium-ion batteries for electric bicycles will be permitted for sale in the country without conforming to the new standard.

The standard currently only addresses the domestic market, which is much larger than China’s e-bike battery export market. There are an estimated 350 million e-bikes on the roads in China, with tens of millions produced each year. In fact, some major Chinese manufacturers alone produce tens of millions of e-bikes and e-scooters each year.

How could the Chinese standard impact US e-bikes?

The vast majority of US-based electric bicycles and their components originate in China. I’ve personally visited several such Chinese factories to see the scale of production that many of these massive suppliers have achieved.

The new Chinese e-bike battery standards are expected to change how electric bicycle batteries are produced in China. Many of the major suppliers of higher-quality batteries likely already meet or exceed the new standards, but the budget-priced batteries known for cutting corners in pursuit of lower costs will likely be weeded out by the regulations.

Unlike in the West, where penalties for breaching standards are often less severe, the Chinese government is more heavy-handed with its control over both private and state-related manufacturing businesses. While that comes with its own litany of issues, it also has the advantage of companies generally respecting and conforming to regulatory standards. That means it likely won’t take very long for battery manufacturers not already meeting these new safety standards to either upgrade their designs and manufacturing or else close down production and switch industries.

Importantly, it appears that the regulations will only apply to China’s domestic market, not products intended for export. However, with China’s market for e-bike batteries dwarfing the rest of the world, it likely won’t make sense for factories to maintain separate production lines and designs for a much smaller export market. Instead, this could very well be a case of a rising tide lifting all ships, where an increase in the manufacturing standards for local e-bike batteries means that export batteries will also come from the same improved production lines.