GM has promised to launch 30 new EV models by 2025, and the automaker teased a couple of these at the recent From Automaker to Platform Innovator event for investors.
GM President Mark Reuss said that Chevrolet will launch an electrified version of the Equinox. “The Chevrolet crossover you see up here is an Equinox EV or the equivalent and is part of our 30 EVs by 2025. This Chevy will be a high-volume player when it arrives priced at approximately $30,000.”
The Equinox SUV is GM’s second-best-selling vehicle, behind the Silverado pickup, an electric version of which is scheduled to debut in January. A $30k price tag, just about 5 grand above the current MSRP of the legacy Equinox, would be an eye-opener.
“We also have a Blazer EV that will be an affordable, high-volume entry,” Reuss continued. “And we’re working on something else even below those from a price standpoint, but we aren’t prepared to discuss the details of that quite yet.”
The Chevrolet Bolt EV currently starts at $31,000, so we can hope that the mystery vehicle will be the truly low-priced EV that the market desperately needs.
More EVs built on the Ultium platform are definitely in the pipeline. “The array of Ultium-powered EVs will include high-volume entries, including a Chevrolet crossover priced around $30,000, Buick crossovers, trucks from Chevrolet, GMC and Hummer EV, as well as exquisitely crafted Cadillac EVs such as the upcoming Lyriq and Celestiq,” the company said in a press release.
GM forecasts that its annual revenue from EVs will grow from about $10 billion in 2023 to $90 billion by 2030. It also says that 50 percent of its North American and Chinese manufacturing facilities will be capable of EV production by 2030.
This all sounds promising, but we EV journalists have been disappointed so many times that I have to mention a remark in a recent GM press release that I don’t like at all: “GM plans to reach leadership in EV market share in the US while growing its profits from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.”
If GM is serious about the second half of that statement, it pretty much guarantees that the first half won’t happen. If GM or any other legacy OEM truly wants to challenge Tesla for mastery of the EV market, it needs to start phasing out its ICE vehicles, and stop advertising them.
Source: InsideEVs