GM CEO Mary Barra hints at Ultium Chevy Bolt in near future
In an NPR interview before the news of the big GM move to NACS charging, CEO Mary Barra hinted at something we here at Electrek have been jonesin’ for – a Chevy Bolt with an Ultium battery. A Boltium?! Let’s discuss…
The little nugget of info happened about 10 minutes into a Marketplace podcast released yesterday right before the announcement on GM’s choice to follow Ford into Tesla’s NACS charging. The whole thing is worth a listen, but our ears perked up at the following:
Barra: So I’ve been driving a Bolt EUV for several months before that. Absolutely love it.
Ryssdal: So why are you stopping making it?
Barra: Because it’s our second-generation technology. The difference between our second generation and third generation, which is Ultium, is a 40% reduction in battery costs. And we’re leveraging the names of our vehicles that are well understood and known in industry. People, you know, who drive an Equinox today will understand what an Equinox EV, what that delivers to them. But, you know, Bolt is something that has built up a lot of loyalty and equity. So I can’t say more because I don’t discuss future product programs. But, you know, it was primarily a move from second generation to third generation. But that’s [an] important vehicle in our portfolio.
Ryssdal: Nudge nudge, wink wink, I guess.
After attending Volvo’s launch of its EX30 this week, there is so much excitement for a small sized hatchback (micro SUV?) EV with options like fast charging, AWD, and insane acceleration.
Heck, Volvo accidentally created the fastest car they’ve ever built just by adding a moderately powerful motor to the front of the EX30. Chevy could have done this easily with the Bolt and created similar hype. Imagine a Bolt hot hatch that could match some of the acceleration specs of a Corvette? All GM would have to do is add a similar rear motor to the Bolt’s FWD motor, charge $50K, and voila – margins!
Of course, Ultium will afford the Bolt to have decent charging speeds and other benefits as well. Let’s imagine what we’d get in a basic $25,000 Ultium Bolt:
- 51kWh battery – GM Ultium batteries tend to come in 50kWh increments Lyriq (102kWh, Hummer/Silverado 204kWh, etc). I imagine the base, $30K Equinox will have a ~51kWh battery and around 215 miles of range. With the Bolt’s smaller size, you might be able to get closer to 240 miles of range out of 51kWh.
- AWD option – GM showed us a small 30kW motor at the 2020 Battery Day that it said it could use to make any of its vehicles AWD. This wouldn’t necessarily be for performance so much as getting out of snow and mud and maybe adding some efficiency to offset the additional weight and electronics of the second motor. Of course GM could just add 2x150kW Bolt motors and get a 0-60 time in the low 3-second area and sell this for $50k and… just take my money.
- Charging speed will have to obviously be better than the current Bolt’s 54kW but with such a small battery, it will be hard to get it to 150kWh. Still, though if we’re talking about a $25K car, and I think anything over 100kW is acceptable.
- Efficiency – The Bolt is already one of the most efficient vehicles on the road but with an added Ultium heat pump, improved electronics, and motors, we could be looking at one of the most efficient EVs ever made.
- $25,000 without subsidizing? Interestingly, Barra in the interview said that the company could save 40% on the cost of batteries using Ultium vs the Bolts 2nd generation EV system. That means they could likely get to the Bolt’s current price point without having to subsidize anything. Of course Barra also said that GM wouldn’t be able to make a profit on sub $40,000 vehicles until 2030 so the ‘it is coming soon’ piece might be wishful thinking.
Electrek’s Take
Rejoice, fellow Bolt EV owners! Our favorite car isn’t dead, just going on hiatus. Of course, GM has disappointed us in the past, and things like ditching CarPlay doesn’t sound like they’re totally in tune with its customer base at the moment. On that note, please, Mary, make the EV, not just the EUV.
I don’t expect GM to announce an Ultium Bolt (“Boltium“? sorry!) anytime soon because it wants to shift their small car buyers to its soon-to-be available, bigger $30K Equinox. But given the love and hype behind the Bolt, we’ll be watching this one closely.
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Tesla (TSLA) is no longer confidently stating growth in its automotive business for 2025, and it has delayed updating its guidance until the next quarter after a disappointing performance in the first three months of the year.
2024 was Tesla’s first year in a decade where its vehicle deliveries went down year-over-year.
Just a few months ago, in January, Tesla was confident in predicting that it would return to growth in 2025:
“With the advancements in vehicle autonomy and the introduction of new products, we expect the vehicle business to return to growth in 2025.”
Today, Tesla released its Q1 2025 financial results, confirming that it had its worst quarter in years to start 2025.
The automaker is now clearly not as confident about returning to growth in its automotive business this year.
Tesla updated its “outlook” section this quarter to highlight the potential impact of trade policies and now no longer discusses automotive growth in isolation. Instead, it bundled automotive and energy businesses together and said that it will “revisit its 2025 guidance” next quarter:
It is difficult to measure the impacts of shifting global trade policy on the automotive and energy supply chains, our cost structure and demand for durable goods and related services. While we are making prudent investments that will set up both our vehicle and energy businesses for growth, the rate of growth this year will depend on a variety of factors, including the rate of acceleration of our autonomy efforts, production ramp at our factories and the broader macroeconomic environment. We will revisit our 2025 guidance in our Q2 update.
Tesla’s vehicle deliveries are already down about 50,000 units so far this year compared to last year.
It will be challenging to catch up in the current macroeconomic situation.
Tesla again guided the start of production of “new affordable models” in the first half of 2025, which could help the automaker to deliver more cars.
However, as we have previously reported, these new vehicles are expected to be stripped-down Model Y and Model 3, which will cannibalize Tesla’s current sales and limit its growth to those products.
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US DC fast charging is becoming more reliable, and charging stations are getting bigger and busier, according to a new Q1 2025 report from the EV data analysts at Paren.
DC fast charging station reliability is on the rise
Paren’s latest US Reliability Index – “Can I successfully charge at this charger?” – increased from 81.2 points in Q4 2024 to 82.6 points in Q1 2025, a notable jump of 1.7%. According to Bill Ferro, CTO at Paren, “This continues a quarterly trend across the US non-Tesla fast charging infrastructure, which suggests that the ongoing efforts to replace or sunset older hardware are having a positive impact on station uptime. In addition, newer entrants into the field are bringing time-tested hardware along with enhanced driver experiences.”
Utah, Alaska, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Nevada were the top-ranked states for DC fast charging reliability in Q1 2025.
Growth slows, but charging stations are getting larger
New DC fast charging ports grew to 55,580 at the end of Q1 2025, up 3,667 from last quarter, with total stations reaching 10,839, an increase of 794. This is fewer new additions compared to the surge seen at the end of 2024, reflecting typical seasonal slowdowns due to winter weather. However, there’s a bright spot: the average number of ports per station among non-Tesla networks rose to 3.9, compared to 2.7 year-over-year. The Tesla Supercharger network now averages 13 ports per station.
Utilization rates reflect the urban-rural divide
Average utilization – that’s the minutes of a charging session as a percentage of time a station is open each day – dropped slightly from 16.6% in Q4 2024 to 16.2% in Q1 2025, following typical holiday travel patterns. But overall, charging use is climbing, especially in dense urban areas with significant rideshare and apartment communities that rely heavily on public chargers.
Early days for NACS transition
The Combined Charging System (CCS) remains dominant, with 59% of new ports, and the shift toward Tesla’s NACS (J3400) standard is still in its very early stages. Only 104 non-Tesla NACS ports were added this quarter at non-Tesla networks, so drivers of new non-Tesla vehicles need to use their adapters if they want to use Superchargers.
Fixed pricing prevails
Charging operators primarily use fixed pricing (80%), with Time of Use (TOU) pricing making up 16%. Pay-by-time options are rare, used only 4.2% of the time.
California is the only major state where TOU pricing surpasses fixed pricing, while many states, such as Oklahoma, Vermont, and Arkansas, almost exclusively utilize fixed pricing models.
As for the most expensive places to fast charge your EV? The top four metropolitan statistical areas are all in California, with average rates at $0.60 or $0.61 per kWh.
Rural and low-income areas at risk
The Trump administration’s cancellation of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program poses a significant threat to rural and low-income communities. Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, cautioned, “Our data is a harbinger of less expansion in rural and lower-income markets as CPOs will increasingly focus on urban markets, seeing high utilization, often north of 30%, versus markets with less than 5% utilization.”
‘Charging 2.0’ – a new industry phase
McDonald summed up the report by marking 2024 as a pivotal year, stating, “2024 was a year of mixed news in the US DC fast charging industry, but it will be remembered as a pivotal turn to a new era we are calling ‘Charging 2.0’. Charge-point operators and new players in the industry are increasingly focused on creating a great customer experience, improving reliability of chargers, and reaching profitability – a shift from chasing the availability of incentives, racing to get chargers in the ground, and then crossing your fingers that utilization will grow over time.”
Read more: Trump just canceled the federal NEVI EV charger program
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Tesla (TSLA) released its financial results and shareholders’ letter for the first quarter (Q1) and full-year 2025 after market close today.
We are updating this post with all the details from the financial results, shareholders’ letter, and the conference call later tonight. Refresh for the latest information.
Tesla Q1 2025 earnings expectations
As we reported in our Tesla Q1 2025 earnings preview yesterday, the Wall Street consensus for this quarter was $21.345 billion in revenue and earnings of $0.41 per share.
The expectations had been significantly downgraded over the last month, as analysts were surprised by Tesla’s announcement of much lower deliveries than expected in the first quarter.
Did Tesla meet them?`
Tesla Q1 2025 financial results
After the market closed today, Tesla released its financial results for the first quarter and confirmed that it missed expectations with earnings of $0.27 per share (non-GAAP), and it also missed revenue expectations with $19.335 billion during the last quarter.
This is a big miss for Tesla despite the company admitting to selling a lot more regulatory credits this quarter.
At $595 million in credit sales, Tesla would have lost money without it in Q1 2025:
In short, Tesla is on the verge of being a money-losing company.
We will be posting our follow-up posts here about the earnings and conference call to expand on the most important points (refresh the page to see the most recent posts):
Here’s Tesla’s Q1 2025 shareholder presentation in full:
Here’s Tesla’s conference call for the Q1 2025 results:
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