If any company is going to replace the Bolt spiritually, the one that created the original seems like a safe bet to do it again. Chevy has already confirmed a second-generation Bolt underpinned by the Ultium platform, but it will not arrive until the 2025 calendar year. GM says it will keep the costs down by using LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries, but it also says it will “leverage the best attributes of today’s Bolt EUV,” meaning it might be larger and, therefore, more expensive than the outgoing Bolt EV.
In the meantime, before the Bolt’s arrival, Chevy will sell the Equinox EV. This model was slated to start at just $30,000, but the price has since been pushed up to nearly $35,000. With an $8,495 premium over the Bolt, we’d hardly call the Equinox EV a spiritual successor.
Killing the Bolt will go down as a huge blunder; GM sold 62,045 units in 2023. To put that into perspective, the Bolt’s previous best sales year was 2022, where it only sold 38,122 units. Why get rid of a model that just had its best sales year ever, without a replacement waiting in the wings?
