Unfortunately Bolt is still a compliance car from GM

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d2170

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47
Unfortunately, Bolt's volume will be very limited, still a compliance car ...

Last week Tesla's quarterly conference call, Elon Musk talked about the Bolt, he said:

"Like, for example, the federal tax credit and then that caps out of the 200,000, the CARB credits, which, because the CARB rules are relatively weak, we can sell – there are some quarters where we can't even sell CARB credits. And when we can, it's maybe $0.50 on a dollar or something like that, whereas the other car companies get to fully absorb the value of the CARB credit. So just for example gives GM roughly – from my count, $7,000 to $10,000 advantage over Tesla for their Chevy Bolt.

That's why you shouldn't ask like why, well, GM appears to be losing $10,000 a car on the Bolt. No, they're not. They are making it up on CARB credits. But they get the full retail value of the CARB credit, whereas we get the wholesale value when we're lucky. But the CARB credits are only effective at a production rate of about 20,000 to 30,000 vehicles a year. So that's why you'll see, mark my words, it's not going to be any higher than that for the Chevy Bolt. That's on order of 25,000 units a year"


So, from this we conclude with certainty that 1) GM is probably losing about $7,000-10,000 per Bolt, and 2) Bolt is a compliance car, GM has no intention of selling it in volume like the Model 3. (e.g. LG Chem and GM are not building huge battery factories)


Given current global warming issues, I say GM's Mary Barra is not doing enough.


Conference call ranscript here:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4068889-tesla-tsla-q1-2017-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single

Audio here:
http://ir.tesla.com/events.cfm


Mary Barra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Barra
 
Elon Musk's comments are obviously speculation from a competitor...

Compliance is certainly a reason for selling the Bolt, but it is not necessarily the only reason.
 
Only someone with their head in the sand would deny the bolt is a compliance car but so what. It's a great car for what it was designed to do. For a lot of people it's exactly what they were looking for so all you bolt owners can thank those Silverado owners for subsidizing your Bolt. And those that bought it, it's yours for as long as you want it. Not like the EV1. I don't know why people think it's such a negative to be a compliance car. Why does that matter?
 
"Compliance car" is an existing term that refers to a production ICE vehicle that has been adapted to use an EV powertrain, and is sold in limited numbers. The Bolt isn't one of those, in that it was designed and built as an EV. You can also apply the term "compliance" to intent, I suppose, and in that case the Bolt may end up being a "compliance car" in that sense. I think that it could have gone either way, but that the current situation was the most likely, at least in America. Maybe GM will start building Ampera Es in Europe, and it will be wildly successful there.
 
I think Musk is upset that he will run out of credits before anyone else, giving other companies a distinct price advantage in a year or two.
 
Geo said:
I think Musk is upset that he will run out of credits before anyone else, giving other companies a distinct price advantage in a year or two.

Except for their range and price point, the Model 3 and the Bolt are not comparables. The Model 3 will win over BMW and Audi buyers, not the Bolt. But the Bolt is great at $219/month leased. The demand for the Model 3 is very high so I don't expect its lease price will be low in the first two years.
 
Any car that is being produced with the intent to comply with the laws of the country or the state, is a compliance car..........soo what?

It is still a great car.
 

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Any car that is not produced by Tesla is a compliance car and is evil.

Give me a break. What does GM (or Ford, or Nissan) have to do so that some Tesla fan-boy doesn't label it a "compliance car"

And even if it is built only in order to comply with the law, so effing what?

GM is building plenty of Bolts. The dealers in California are awash in unsold Bolts. The problem is that people are not buying them.
 
All this discussion over the meaning of the term "compliance car" is beside the point. The real question is this:

Will GM manufacture enough Bolt EVs to meet demand?

They're clearly doing so in at least some states where they get CAFE credits, and they have an obvious motivation to do so. But will they adequately serve the other markets? In my mind it's yet not obvious that they will. The supply seems to be especially tight in foreign markets like Canada, Norway and Korea.

This may be due to a slow ramp-up designed to limit the cost of fixing early production problems. Or it may be due to wanting to ride out the higher costs of early production. For example, the widely quoted $145 per kilowatt-hour that LG Chem is charging GM for its battery cells may, for all we know, only apply to the third year of a three year contract (note: that's complete and utter speculation on my part, not to be used as "evidence" for anything).

The jury's still out on this. We're really not going to get a better idea of GM's intentions until they're delivering vehicles to all markets and the supply has stabilized.

What we do know is that GM has invested a lot of money to develop the Bolt and in so doing have produced an EV that has better utility per dollar than anyone else. That's a pretty significant accomplishment. If they just wanted to knock out a "compliance car" to score CAFE points they could have done it much more cheaply. In my mind that's a hopeful sign.
 
Just because this is a Bolt forum, some of you are getting all defensive for all the wrong reasons, and missing the point, missing the big picture.

It's about global warming, not so much which car or which company or which personality.

FYI, I plan to lease a Bolt after my current EV lease runs out -- simply because its lease will be much cheaper than the Model 3. Range of 250 miles in the city will be great. But if it turns out in 2018 the Model 3's lease will cost about the same as the Bolt then I will lease the Model 3. Model 3 clearly is much more desirable than the Bolt to most people.

There is nothing special about making electric cars. All auto manufactures know how to make them. The only issue is the price and performance of the battery.

This is not a religious war folks, but many here seems hell bend on a religious war. Same kind of religious war over at the Tesla forum.

For me, the rules are simple, going forward I will lease the cheapest EV with range of over 200 miles. After 3 years, lease the next one.
 
SeanNelson said:
Will GM manufacture enough Bolt EVs to meet demand?


Well, if they created the right car, they too would have 400,000 people waiting in line for it.

Don't misunderstand me, I think the Bolt is wonderful at 238 miles of range at $37,000. At the same price point, Tesla has 400,000 people waiting for the Model 3 because it is a much better car.
 
No, Tesla has 400,00 people on a list because :

- it was the only game in town when 95% of those people added their names
- the deposit is refundable
- a bunch of those people think that they will be getting a model 'S' -mini for $35K (which will not be the case)

I actually know a couple of people who recently added their name to the list because they wanted to buy a Solo. ElectraMeccanica had a program where they would match a deposit for other non-shipped vehicles (up to $1K), so they put down a deposit on the model 3, not expecting to get to the head of the list before 2020, and will buy a Solo for $1000 off next year, then ask for their money back from Tesla.

You can't really say "it is a much better car" when it isn't available yet. It 'ISn't anything (yet) - it doesn't exist.

And there are 400,000 people waiting to see what the model3 will be - not 400,000 who are going to buy one. I think that quite a few of those people will end up with a Nissan LEAF2 or a Bolt, once they see what they will have to pay for a model3 equipped the way they want (and how long they will have to wait to get to the top of the list).
 
d2170 said:
Don't misunderstand me, I think the Bolt is wonderful at 238 miles of range at $37,000. At the same price point, Tesla has 400,000 people waiting for the Model 3 because it is a much better car.

No one (outside of Tesla) knows how good the Model 3 really is. Nor does anyone know what the option price list looks like, and hence how much his/her desirably equipped Model 3 will cost.
 
d2170 said:
Unfortunately, Bolt's volume will be very limited, still a compliance car ...

Last week Tesla's quarterly conference call, Elon Musk talked about the Bolt, he said:

"Like, for example, the federal tax credit and then that caps out of the 200,000, the CARB credits, which, because the CARB rules are relatively weak, we can sell – there are some quarters where we can't even sell CARB credits. And when we can, it's maybe $0.50 on a dollar or something like that, whereas the other car companies get to fully absorb the value of the CARB credit. So just for example gives GM roughly – from my count, $7,000 to $10,000 advantage over Tesla for their Chevy Bolt.

That's why you shouldn't ask like why, well, GM appears to be losing $10,000 a car on the Bolt. No, they're not. They are making it up on CARB credits. But they get the full retail value of the CARB credit, whereas we get the wholesale value when we're lucky. But the CARB credits are only effective at a production rate of about 20,000 to 30,000 vehicles a year. So that's why you'll see, mark my words, it's not going to be any higher than that for the Chevy Bolt. That's on order of 25,000 units a year"


So, from this we conclude with certainty that 1) GM is probably losing about $7,000-10,000 per Bolt, and 2) Bolt is a compliance car, GM has no intention of selling it in volume like the Model 3. (e.g. LG Chem and GM are not building huge battery factories)


Given current global warming issues, I say GM's Mary Barra is evil.


Conference call ranscript here:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4068889-tesla-tsla-q1-2017-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single

Audio here:
http://ir.tesla.com/events.cfm


Mary Barra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Barra

Just because Musk says something doesn't make it true (which appears to be the thrust of this post - Musk said it).
 
If the Bolt was only being sold in CARB states, and was only being produced in the numbers necessary to satisfy ZEV requirements in those states, then the Bolt could be considered a compliance vehicle. In California, GM would have to sell a total of 400 for the entire year to satisfy the ZEV requirement. Sales are well past that now...
 
d2170 said:
SeanNelson said:
Will GM manufacture enough Bolt EVs to meet demand?
Well, if they created the right car, they too would have 400,000 people waiting in line for it.
The topic of this thread isn't the relative popularity of the Bolt vs. the Model 3. It's whether or not the Bolt is a "compliance car". That has nothing to do with how many people want one.
 
The topic of this thread isn't the relative popularity of the Bolt vs. the Model 3. It's whether or not the Bolt is a "compliance car". That has nothing to do with how many people want one.

Normally I'd agree. But in this case I think that GM may have planned for both possibilities: that the Bolt would sell very well, in which case they'd run more shifts and ramp up production, or that it wouldn't, and they would then try to just meet the 30k per year target, or whatever figure would be right for a compliance car. Personally, I think someone may have put a thumb or two on the scale, via the seats, but that's just my paranoid speculation. ;)
 
LeftieBiker said:
But in this case I think that GM may have planned for both possibilities: that the Bolt would sell very well, in which case they'd run more shifts and ramp up production, or that it wouldn't, and they would then try to just meet the 30k per year target, or whatever figure would be right for a compliance car.

Yes, it is an entirely realistic possibility that they planned to be able to produce at either compliance levels or significantly higher levels depending on market demand, especially given the unpredictability of future oil prices.
 
There seem to be two common definitions of "Compliance Car":

1) Any electric vehicle not made by Tesla

2) An electric vehicle made exclusively (or at least primarily) to earn CARB credits. As such it will be limited in volume and sold only in CA (and some/all ZEV States - CT, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, OR, RI, VT)

The Bolt certainly fits the 1st definition, but not the second since it is being sold in non-ZEV States (and even in countries outside the US).

Low volume does not equal compliance car (the Bolt outsold the Model s and X in January). A gradual rollout in select markets does not make it a compliance car (Tesla has always and will continue to do the same).

Any EV sold in all 50 states and not production constrained fails the compliance car definition on all counts. Low sales volume may reflect design/pricing/leasing issues, but does define it as a compliance car.

GM has plenty of ZEV credits and is not buying them on the open market. They had no need to produce another compliance car as the Spark EV filled that role quite nicely.

If someone has a logical definition for "compliance car" that fits the Bolt, I'm all ears. The fact that Elon Musk said it was doesn't make it true.

All Teslas could be considered compliance cars - they would not exist if it was not for CARB/ZEV credits. The only quarters that Tesla has shown a profit, that profit was less than the income from ZEV credit sales. Tesla has been on the brink of failure several times (most notably in 2008), and without the revenue garnered from ZEV credits would very likely not exist today. The Model S, X and 3 exist only because of CARB/ZEV credits.
 
d2170 said:
Just because this is a Bolt forum, some of you are getting all defensive for all the wrong reasons, and missing the point, missing the big picture.

It's about global warming, not so much which car or which company or which personality.

FYI, I plan to lease a Bolt after my current EV lease runs out -- simply because its lease will be much cheaper than the Model 3. Range of 250 miles in the city will be great. But if it turns out in 2018 the Model 3's lease will cost about the same as the Bolt then I will lease the Model 3. Model 3 clearly is much more desirable than the Bolt to most people.

There is nothing special about making electric cars. All auto manufactures know how to make them. The only issue is the price and performance of the battery.

This is not a religious war folks, but many here seems hell bend on a religious war. Same kind of religious war over at the Tesla forum.

For me, the rules are simple, going forward I will lease the cheapest EV with range of over 200 miles. After 3 years, lease the next one.

You speak my mind. Thanks.
 
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