General Motors plans to resurrect Bolt EV with major advertisement spending

General Motors (GM) is working on preparing an advertising blitz as the company is resuming the production of its Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle and is looking to revive sales. The program to resurrect the Bolt EV among customers comes after GM recalled each unit ever sold because of a rare but destructive battery fire issue.

The automaker will advertise the Bolt and slightly larger Bolt EUV electric vehicles during every Major League Baseball opening-day game on Thursday to tell consumers that the vehicle is back. Chevrolet will spend more on advertising the Bolt this year than any vehicle in its lineup except its top seller, the Silverado pickup truck.

With the advertising solution, GM aims to leave behind the discussion on the battery fire and recall probe and move forward. “It’s always tricky," said Steve Majoros, Chevrolet’s marketing director. “We have done a lot of work to understand the broad perception of the situation. We’re not going to publicly address and come up with some mea culpa. We don’t see broad reputational damage."

Bringing back customers to Bolt after a year of recalling batteries for all 142,000 vehicles that were sold will prove quite challenging for GM. The company had told vehicle owners not to park the vehicle inside and, in some cases, keep them 50 feet away from other vehicles due to battery fire issue.

While Bolt is making a come back, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is still investigating LG because of fires in the vehicles along with other models made by Stellantis NV, Volkswagen AG, Hyundai Motor Co. and Mercedes-Benz Group AG.

Chevy sold a record 24,800 Bolts in 2021. With the Bolt coming back and the Hummer EV and Cadillac Lyriq in production, GM is working to get its EV ambitions back on track.

(with inputs from Bloomberg)