General Motors (GM) released Q1 sales results Monday, showing a promising kickoff to 2023, with EV sales reaching over 20,000 for the first time in a quarter. The automaker says it expects the progress to continue this year as it’s on track to build another 50,000 EVs in North America through June, with plans to double that in the second half of 2023.
GM releases Q1 2023 EV sales totals
At a tech conference in February, GM’s CEO Mary Barra claimed the company was off to a solid start to the year, saying:
We are different from the rest of the traditional OEMs, and this is our really going to be our year to demonstrate it.
GM’s Q1 sales results, released Monday, show the company is trending in the right direction, selling over 20,000 electric vehicles for the first time in a single quarter as it ramps production.
According to the release, Q1 was the third consecutive record quarter for the Chevy Bolt EV and EUV, selling 19,700 alone, up from 358 in Q1 2022 while the Bolt was recalled. Bolt production resumed in April 2022 and has since become a top-selling EV model for its affordability and functionality.
GM has two other fully electric models in the premium segment, the Cadillac Lyriq and GMC Hummer EV. Lyriq sales reached 968, while two Hummer EV pickups were sold in the first quarter.
The automaker expects the growth to continue this year, with Cadillac Lyriq deliveries rapidly accelerating and the Hummer EV pickup and SUV models being built and shipped from GM’s Factory ZERO.
In the first quarter, GM built over 500 BrightDrop Zevo 600s at its assembly plant in Ontario, Canada, as it works to develop its position in the commercial EV segment.
According to GM, Chevy Bolt EV and EUV production will reach 70,000 units in 2023 to meet the growing demand for affordable EV options.
The new Chevrolet Silverado EV WT edition will begin deliveries in late spring, with over 340 fleet customer orders already.
Electrek’s Take
After struggling in 2021 and early 2022 due to the Chevy Bolt recall, it’s good to see GM getting back on track with its third consecutive record quarter in EV sales.
At the same time, 20,000 EV in sales is a fraction of GM’s over 600,000 total sales, representing just over 3%, while many automakers are achieving double-digit and even 100% EV sales.
Rivian produced just over 1,000 EVs by the end of 2021 and plans to sell 50,000 units in 2023 after manufacturing 9,395 in the first quarter.
The automaker continues falling further behind as it announced plans to invest nearly $1 billion in V-8 engines earlier this year. V8 engines will not help GM build more EVs and surely won’t help close the gap with Tesla and other EV makers.
Hopefully, GM’s upcoming EVs launching within the next few years, including the Chevy Blazer EV, Chevy Silverado EV, and Chevy Equinox EV, will help the automaker accelerate its focus on zero-emission, fully electric vehicles.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
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To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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The OPEC logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of a computer screen displaying OPEC icons in Ankara, Turkey, on June 25, 2024.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images
Eight oil-producing nations of the OPEC+ alliance agreed on Saturday to increase their collective crude production by 548,000 barrels per day, as they continue to unwind a set of voluntary supply cuts.
This subset of the alliance — comprising heavyweight producers Russia and Saudi Arabia, alongside Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates — met digitally earlier in the day. They had been expected to increase their output by a smaller 411,000 barrels per day.
In a statement, the OPEC Secretariat attributed the countries’ decision to raise August daily output by 548,000 barrels to “a steady global economic outlook and current healthy market fundamentals, as reflected in the low oil inventories.”
The eight producers have been implementing two sets of voluntary production cuts outside of the broader OPEC+ coalition’s formal policy.
One, totaling 1.66 million barrels per day, stays in effect until the end of next year.
Under the second strategy, the countries reduced their production by an additional 2.2 million barrels per day until the end of the first quarter.
They initially set out to boost their production by 137,000 barrels per day every month until September 2026, but only sustained that pace in April. The group then tripled the hike to 411,000 barrels per day in each of May, June, and July — and is further accelerating the pace of their increases in August.
Oil prices were briefly boosted in recent weeks by the seasonal summer spike in demand and the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, which threatened both Tehran’s supplies and raised concerns over potential disruptions of supplies transported through the key Strait of Hormuz.
At the end of the Friday session, oil futures settled at $68.30 per barrel for the September-expiration Ice Brent contract and at $66.50 per barrel for front month-August Nymex U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude.
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
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