The new vehicle can travel more than 200 miles on a single electric charge.
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Although the vehicle will also be introduced in many global markets the auto will be majorly aimed at the U.S. market.
GM product development chief Mark Reuss (Royce) said the company’s 200-mile range estimate for the Bolt is a bit conservative.
LG Electronics has invested more than $250 million in an engineering and manufacturing facility in Incheon, Korea, to support the component development and manufacturing for Bolt EV components.
Ken Chang, vice president of vehicle components for LG Electronics, acknowledged the company is “new to the powertrain space”, even though it’s long supplied batteries and display technology to automakers.
LG has been tasked with supplying the battery cells and pack, electric drive motor, power inverter module, on-board charging equipment, power-distribution hardware, climate-control compressor, battery heater, accessory power module and infotainment electronics, among other components.
“Being selected as GM’s EV technology partner positions LG as a key player in next-generation vehicular technologies”, said Woo-jong Lee, president and CEO of the LG Electronics Vehicle Components Co, said in a released statement.
“We’ve had such great success working collaboratively in the battery area that now we’ve expanded work with LG across the propulsion system”, said Pam Fletcher, GM’s top engineer for electrified vehicles.
GM seemingly has big aspirations for the Bolt EV.
The new GM-LG partnership is seen as one of the largest yet between a United States carmaker and an overseas supplier, aiming to shift both development time and the production cost to a partner that has a massive technical expertise.
The Bolt will be built at GM’s Orion Assembly Plant in Orion Township beginning in late 2016, GM said. The Bolt is expected to be able to go about 200 miles and will carry a price tag of about $30,000 (after incentives) when it arrives in 2017 or so.
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Earlier this year, GM unveiled Bolt, seeking to compete with Tesla and other automakers working on electric vehicles. The Bolt is also supposed to be sold at a decent price too, so expect it to be much cheaper than Tesla’s offerings. In 2010, LG provided GM with the battery cells utilized in the first Chevrolet Volt five years ago, while further back in 2007 GM’s OnStar service used the communications module given by LG. After that, LG Chem became the sole distributor for battery cells for the first-generation Volt.
