General Motors will continue to delay production of new Chevrolet Bolt EVs at the company’s Orion assembly plant in Michigan “through the week of Jan. 24, 2022,” the company said in a statement emailed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The automaker said it would instead “continue to focus on battery module replacements” for tens of thousands of Chevy Bolts that were recalled earlier this year due to potential fire risks within the batteries.
The plant has been shut down since August 23, and GM has repeatedly pushed back production dates for new Bolt vehicles.
In October, GM started shipping dealers replacement battery modules for the recalled Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles. A GM spokesperson said the company was not publicly disclosing any specifics on the number of modules that had been shipped or replaced.
“We continue to ramp up repairs and are focused on completing the repairs as quickly as possible,” the company spokesperson said in an email. ” In fact, we notified employees as our Orion assembly plant (the assembly plant for the BOLT EV) that we are keeping the plant down through January to continue to prioritize recall repairs.”
In May, the company planned to add new software that would prevent fires to the 2017 to 2019 Bolts that were originally recalled after a few fires were reported. When the software wasn’t effective, Chevy issued a recall in July. The automaker recalled all Bolt EVs in August after a newer model year Bolt caught fire.
LG Chem, the manufacturers of Chevy’s Bolt batteries, has since agreed to pay the nearly $2 billion cost of the recall.
During GM’s investor day in October, the company said it would double its revenues by the end of the decade and take over EV market share from Tesla. The company previously pledged to release 30 new EVs by 2025, but so far, all GM has announced schedules for are its GMC Hummer EV pickup, which is scheduled for delivery by the end of 2021, the Hummer EV SUV, which is scheduled for 2023, and the Cadillac Lyric, which should come to market by early next year.
