1st Chevy Bolt Deliveries Have Begun In California!
GM has finally begun delivering the first Chevy Bolts to buyers, buyers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The first customer has received their #BoltEV! Time to take this #gamechanger on the road. https://t.co/wtaJYRAlse
— Mary Barra (@mtbarra) December 14, 2016
Amusingly, the 3 vehicles were apparently delivered at a location rather close to Tesla’s local facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area. I wonder how intentional that was?
Interestingly, the first 3 deliveries where to customers who previously used electric and/or hybrid vehicles — with the most recent vehicles being a BMW i3, a Chevy Spark EV, and a Toyota Prius — so not really gas car conquest sales.
That’s something that I’m very curious about — will the Chevy Bolt EV sell well amongst first-time electric or hybrid vehicle buyers? Or will it mostly be an upgrade for 1st-gen EV drivers? We’ll have to wait to see.
Here’s the video from Mary Barra’s tweet above in case that doesn’t easily play for you:
Autoblog provides more: “The 3 new Bolt owners are a retiree from Fremont who’d previously driven a Chevrolet Spark EV; a software developer in Castro Valley who ditched his BMW i3; and a real estate broker from Portola Valley who turned in his Toyota Prius.”
An interesting sample group. Representative? I guess that we’ll know fairly soon, as California deliveries are expected to pick up as the month goes on. Deliveries are also expected to begin in Oregon this month; with deliveries in New York, Virginia, and Massachusetts following in early 2017.
Supposedly, the Bolt EV will be available nationwide by mid-2017 — which would make sense, as then it would still beat the Tesla Model 3 to market, even if it’s a bit later to nationwide availability than initially thought. So, we should have a real idea about who exactly Bolt EV buyers are by late 2017. Hopefully there will be a lot of ICE vehicle conquests, but who knows at this point? The very positive Motor Trend review (Car of the Year award) should help sales amongst non-EV buyers somewhat I would think.
As a reminder, the Chevy Bolt is one of five finalists for the 2017 CleanTechnica Car of the Year award. Vote here:
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