(Bloomberg) -- Want a way to boost electric vehicle sales? Make them cheap.
Some three years after General Motors Co. kicked off Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra’s plan to go electric with a $100,000 Hummer EV, the company is finally selling battery powered-cars in bigger numbers.
It can thank the comparatively cheaper and smaller Chevrolet Equinox.
GM sold almost 10,000 electric Equinox SUVs in the third quarter, lifting the carmaker’s total battery-powered sales to a record of about 32,000 vehicles. The tally marks a 60% jump from the prior-year period and a 46% increase from the second quarter, the company said in a statement Tuesday.
The Equinox EV starts at roughly $35,000, before a $7,500 federal tax credit. By comparison, Tesla Inc.’s Model 3 starts at $40,000. Chevy started building the lowest-priced version of the small SUV toward the end of the quarter, boosting the company’s growth expectations for the model and the rest of its plug-in lineup.
“It’s got further significant upside,” Rory Harvey, GM’s president of international markets, said in an interview.
To fuel sales elsewhere, GM’s GMC brand is pairing up with Costco Wholesale Corp. to offer $1,000 discounts on Hummer EVs to members of the retail giant.
Among carmakers, GM is still well behind Tesla in sales and is chasing Korean duo Kia and Hyundai, which sold nearly 11,600 Ioniq 5 EVs in the quarter.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
