Good news if you're in Redwood: Boardwalk Chevy gets 39 bolts next week

Anyone on this forum from Redwood California?

Looks like Boardwalk Chevrolet is expecting 39 Bolt EVs to arrive next week, with more the following week!

About 1,100 miles south in Redwood City, Calif., about 40 customers have preordered Bolts, according to Michael Little, a sales consultant at Boardwalk Chevrolet.

"Those people have paid a $1,000 deposit that holds your place in line," Little said. "We're expecting to receive 39 Bolts the week of Nov. 28 and another 14 on Dec. 12."

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Excellent now maybe we can start reading owner reviews

That is actually Redwood City, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Unfortunately all their allotment until February has been "pre-ordered" with the down payment.

Very similar around the Bay, San Leandro dealer is the same, as is Captiol.

Hopefully GM sees the demand and ups the build rate a bit, going from one every 5 cars to every 3...or whatever the current rate is.

Frankly, they should keep demand high enough to charge full price and not have to offer incentives (so long as they produce a min of 30K vehicles thru Dec 31, 2017). As long as there is a waiting list, they should just keep a solid 2500/mo production rate and maximize profits.

If you go to their web site, they list five in transit. In fact if one does a rough estimate of bolts in transit it is somewhere between 150-200. I thought there would be more. My sales guy told me in October when I placed my order, to expect it the first week or second week of January. He appears to be right on his estimation, and GM seems to be taking a slowly slowly approach.

SparkE said:

Frankly, they should keep demand high enough to charge full price and not have to offer incentives (so long as they produce a min of 30K vehicles thru Dec 31, 2017). As long as there is a waiting list, they should just keep a solid 2500/mo production rate and maximize profits.

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It totally depends on their goals for the Bolt.

If I have the choice of the Volt on their very aggressive/attractive Lease rate, or the Bolt at Full MSRP with the Leasing company keeping the Federal Tax credit, I will pass on the Bolt and go for the Volt while being a little bummed. My other options are to look at another manufacturer(the BMW i3 has better lease terms than the Bolt right now).

It is believed that they are losing money on every one produced, so what is a bit more 3 years down the line(Lease turn in when it does not match Buyout Value) to create a legion of enthusiastic, happy leasers?

I hope they go for Happy and Enthusiastic owners and have them continually jump off the lots, as opposed to trying to sell at MSRP and hope that enough people who are not the early adopters decide to take the plunge.

zappcatt said:

SparkE said:

Frankly, they should keep demand high enough to charge full price and not have to offer incentives (so long as they produce a min of 30K vehicles thru Dec 31, 2017). As long as there is a waiting list, they should just keep a solid 2500/mo production rate and maximize profits.

Click to expand...

It totally depends on their goals for the Bolt.

If I have the choice of the Volt on their very aggressive/attractive Lease rate, or the Bolt at Full MSRP with the Leasing company keeping the Federal Tax credit, I will pass on the Bolt and go for the Volt while being a little bummed. My other options are to look at another manufacturer(the BMW i3 has better lease terms than the Bolt right now).

It is believed that they are losing money on every one produced, so what is a bit more 3 years down the line(Lease turn in when it does not match Buyout Value) to create a legion of enthusiastic, happy leasers?

I hope they go for Happy and Enthusiastic owners and have them continually jump off the lots, as opposed to trying to sell at MSRP and hope that enough people who are not the early adopters decide to take the plunge.

Click to expand...

To use a term from when I did meetings all the time : I think we are in violent agreement (although we said it differently). My point is that as long as they "continually jump off the lots", they should keep volume such that they can sell at MSRP (as I stated it : "keep demand high enough"). They have about a year where they are the ONLY game in town at or near that price point/range (220+ miles, ~ $30K after tax credit). They should take advantage of it (at LEAST for the first 6 months).

IF they are really losing money on each car sold (based on COGS, not sunk dvmt costs) it's a no-brainer.

IF they really want the car to be a success, they roll out slowly (low build rate) to make damn sure there are no quality or assembly issues before ramping up to higher volumes.

As a general issue, they should sell at whatever the market will bear (within reason). It seems rather stupid to me to ramp up production super-quickly and be forced to charge less when if they ramp slowly they can get top dollar. Once the 'early adopters' in CA, OR, wherever are satisfied, then start shipping to the next 3 (or 5 or 10) states with the highest demand and satisfy the early adopters in THOSE states. And lastly, roll out to the entire country at MSRP until demand is satisfied at that price point. Start lowering the price just a bit before the next 200+ mile vehicle is actually available on lots. (So long as they can sell a decent number over the course of the entire year.) If they exceed Tesla's (or maybe the LEAF, not sure) max volume for a year, even by 5%, then the car can be trumpeted as 'the most popular EV ever, based on yearly sales'. Since there are over 400,000 Tesla model 3 deposits, grabbing just FIVE PERCENT of that total the first year would put them over 20K in sales. I think that is doable (I'd be surprised if 10% of those people wouldn't grab a Bolt in 2017 to get a 200+ mile, $30K EV now instead of getting a Tesla 'later' (especially those with reservation numbers over 200,000, which would take YEARS to arrive).