By Gary S. Vasilash

General Motors was rather chuffed with its U.S. sales results for Q2 2023 as well as for the first half of the year.

It delivered 691,978 vehicles in Q2, up 18.8% from the same period last year. And for the first half it has delivered 1,295,186, or 18.3% more than in the first half of 2022.

Drilling into the electric vehicle space, the company sold in Q2 13,959 Chevy Bolt EV/Bolt EUV models, up an impressive 101%. Even more impressive, with Bolt sales of 33,659 for the first half, that’s a 360.9% increase. However, due to a problem with battery fires that occurred in the summer of 2022 General Motors stopped production of the vehicles as it handled a recall, so there were fewer vehicles available last year. What’s more, when it brought the vehicles back on the market it did so making the pricing exceedingly attractive—even for people who otherwise wouldn’t have considered an EV.

Then there are two other EVs in the GM portfolio:

• Cadillac Lyriq
• Hummer EV

As for Cadillac, it delivered 1,348 Lyriqs in Q2 and a total of 2,316 during the first half. The vehicle wasn’t available during the first half of 2022 so there is no comparison.

As for the Hummer EV, there were 47 deliveries in Q2 and a total of 49 for the first half. Yes, two were delivered in Q1 2023. Those numbers are down 82.7 and 86.8%, respectively. There were 185 days between January 1 and June 30. 49 Lyriqs.

All in, General Motors sold 36,024 electric vehicles during the first half of 2023.

To put that number in perspective, know that it sold 78,169 Chevy Malibus during the same period, and while nary a word is pronounced about the importance of that midsize sedan to its future portfolio, for the past few years there have been more pronouncements about how EVs are going to be transformative to the company’s fortunes than mere mortals can imagine.

Of course, “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

But there are two factors that need to be kept in mind.

1. GM has announced Bolt production will end in November. On the Chevrolet shopping site it is able to proclaim that the Bolt is “America’s Most Affordable EV.” Strike that from the books.
2. When the Chevy Silverado EV was first announced the company talked about the WT (as in “work truck”) trim starting at about $39,900. However, it recently said that when the first WTs roll off the line, they will be 4WT trim, capable of 450 miles and featuring AWD, for a price of . . .$79,800

Hard to see how the company is going to have sustainably large EV sales numbers as it goes into the future.

It may have the capacity–lots of capacity–but there are another two factors that come into play:

1. Execution
2. Market demand for vehicles that aren’t necessarily leading in affordability.