As promised by General Motors CEO Mary Barra in March, GM plans to crank out additional Chevrolet Bolts at its Orion Assembly Plant in Michigan later this year. The need for extra output isn’t because of rising sales in the United States, however.

In GM’s second-quarter 2018 sales report, the Bolt’s U.S. tally fell to 3,483 vehicles, down from Q1’s 4,375 deliveries, as well as Q2 2017’s 4,500 units. Last year’s Q2 sales came when the Bolt hadn’t even reached all U.S. markets. No, GM needs more Bolts because other countries want them. (Read More…)

No, that image you saw floating around on Twitter wasn’t some prankster’s idea of a joke. Buyers will be able to purchase a Buick LaCrosse bearing the ST trim designation. For 2019, Buick’s adding a new level to its LaCrosse lineup, but it won’t go as far as offering a GS version. That’s the Regal’s responsibility.

So, what does the ST (Sport Touring) trim bring to this traditional, full-size, V6-powered family sedan? (Read More…)

Full-size truck buyers looking for the latest thing are spoiled for choice this year. Besides an all-new Ram 1500 (currently unavailable with a V6) and the usual offerings from Ford, there’s a next-generation Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra arriving this fall.

Unlike those other models, the GM twins went somewhere full-size truck builders fear to tread: the land of four-cylinders. Looking at GM’s newly released price list for the 2019 Silverado, it’s clear the new 2.7-liter turbocharged inline-four stands to save buyers money in more ways than one. (Read More…)

It’s not a pure EV, but in the early part of this decade, Chevrolet’s Volt offered one of the few mass-produced electric driving experiences on the market. Now in its second generation, GM’s “extended-range electric vehicle” — which packs a 1.5-liter gas generator — has seen its status dwindle as all-electric competitors rivals sprout like dandelions (among them, the confusingly named Chevy Bolt). Lesser plug-in hybrids abound.

Though the Volt still represents an easy-to-live-with compromise between gas-fueled convenience and emission-free commuting, GM knows it needs to do something to sweeten the pot. Extending the range beyond 53 miles seems pointless. But what if the car could charge almost 50 percent faster? (Read More…)

That “someone else” might be a Chinese buyer. At least, that’s what former Cadillac president Johan de Nysschen implied in March, shortly before packing his bags and hitting the road.

The premium sedan market stands to grow along with the rest of that country’s appetite for high-zoot models, he said, even though the overall take rate might shrink.

American buyers, however, have made it clear what they want. And what they want isn’t what Cadillac’s planning for its Lansing Grand River assembly plant, if sales stats tell us anything. (Read More…)

General Motors has pulled the wraps off its 2019 Chevrolet Blazer, a vehicle that in no way reminds anyone of past vehicles bearing that heritage-steeped nameplate.

Sporting two rows of seating, an edgier profile than either its smaller Equinox sibling or its hulking Traverse big brother, and two engine choices, the Blazer’s main competition seems to be the Ford Edge, rather than its three-row GMC Acadia platform mate. (Read More…)

General Motors enlivened the perpetually grim Twitterscape Wednesday with a tweet depicting what Corey Lewis calls a “pure trust fund” gentleman wearing natty duds. After the initial discussion surrounding the nature of the tweet, your author, Chris Tonn, and Lewis attempted to pin down the particular hue of this fellow’s outerwear.

Celery. Pistachio pudding. 1960s motel bathroom. All applicable.

But wait, that wasn’t the purpose of the tweet! Surely this can’t have something to do with a gaping hole in the Chevrolet brand’s crossover lineup? (Read More…)

It’s June, which means it’s the time of year for my son to visit his grandfather in South Carolina and spend a week at golf camp. Sometimes I have to spend the week working, sometimes I spent it traveling, and sometimes I get to spend it hanging out with my dad and his friends.

Most of them are cast from the same group of molds: either self-made or with only minor family advantages, a long history of executive positions or highly remunerative small business ownership, more millions left in the bank than they have years left in the tank. They’re not interested in art or literature, they have a casual and hilarious disrespect for modern social ideas, they maintain a sort of gruff good humor about everything from heart attacks to coastal hurricanes. We will not see their like again, which is kind of a shame.

Yesterday one of them came over to say hello, meet the grandchildren, and to ask me a couple of questions about his next vehicle purchase. I long ago figured out that these fellows don’t necessarily want my authentic opinion regarding the merits of the SL65 or the Continental GT. Rather, they want me to nod approvingly at whatever they’ve already decided to buy, at which point we can have a nice lunch and engage in some mutual appreciation of our good fortune in life, regardless of how unevenly said fortune is distributed.

This fellow was different. He came prepared: with notes, impressions, questions. He had hard financial limits in mind, which is vanishingly rare among a class of Baby Boomers who no longer bother to count pennies or Krugerrands. Most importantly, he gave me something to think about long after he’d left.

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The small San Francisco startup bought by General Motors in 2016 could generate a lot of money for the automaker in the near future.

According to sources who spoke to Bloomberg, GM wants to unlock the value of its self-driving Cruise Automation division (officially GM Cruise LLC) — a 50-person company valued at $600 million at the time of purchase. Japan’s SoftBank, which recently pledged a $2.25 billion investment in the division, now values Cruise at $11.5 billion.

To put that figure into context, GM’s market capitalization hovers around $50 billion. The word “Cruise” should be accompanied by an old-timey cash register sound. (Read More…)

While Part I of the Fisker Karma story introduced the car and its tech, and Part II reviewed the interesting combination of features and design mandates which accompanied the advanced tech, Part III is the one you’ve really been waiting for.

It’s all flames, floods, and failures.

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Despite the negative stigma long associated with Chinese-built goods, we’ve grown used to — if not accepting of — the idea that some of our domestic vehicles might originate from a Chinese assembly plant. The Cadillac CT6 Plug-in, for example, hails from the Orient, as does all versions of the Buick Envision crossover. Volvo S90s sold in the U.S. also call China their birthplace.

Now, according to a 2019 model year VIN decoder document sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from General Motors, there’s two additional models that might carry Chinese heritage. Keep a lookout for a VIN starting with “L.” (Read More…)

Chuck Stevens joined General Motors’ Buick division as a very young lad in 1978, one year after the automaker’s gargantuan full-sizers hit the gym and sent buyers flocking to dealerships. Now 58, Stevens says he’ll step down from his role as chief financial officer and executive vice president at the beginning of September. He’ll remain as an advisor until March 2019.

GM named Stevens CFO for its global operations in 2014; before that, he oversaw the automaker’s North American finances starting in 2010 — a turbulent time for The General.

In his wake, a woman whose actions helped rustled up quite a bit of cash for the automaker will pick up where he left off. (Read More…)

In Part I of our Fisker Karma Rare Rides trilogy, we learned of the technology and promise lying just beneath the swooping curves of the sedan’s seriously stylish body. Today we talk economy of fuel, space, and materials.

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To my recollection, we’ve only had one EV-type vehicle thus far in the Rare Rides series, and it was Toyota’s ill-fated and corporately sabotaged RAV4 EV. That changes today, with another plug-in vehicle that crashed and burned.

Today’s Rare Rides is the first installment in a three-part trilogy of the life and times of the Fisker Karma.

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Hell, maybe they could use a driver monitoring camera, too. In other words, Cadillac’s Super Cruise system. How else would one react to seeing this video of a Tesla employee apparently dozing behind the wheel of a Model S while flying down a California highway?

The video, uploaded by YouTube user Mike Cagulada and posted on Twitter by Amir Efrati of The Information, was apparently shot near Tesla’s Fremont assembly plant on June 4th. By the looks of it, this driver isn’t bobbing for apples — he or she is asleep. (Read More…)