General Motors believes having a full portfolio of electric vehicles on sale at the same time will allow each of them to succeed more than previous, singular efforts have. After selling the EV1 by itself in the late 1990s, followed by the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid in 2010 and the Chevy Bolt in 2016, "we have learned a lot from ourselves," GM President Mark Reuss said Wednesday at the Automotive News Congress in Nashville. In each case, having no other electrified offerings in the lineup made it hard for the automaker to promote that one model at the expense of its profitable, gasoline-powered vehicles.
"The company, at that time when we launched the original Bolt, was afraid and didn't really get behind it," Reuss said. "We would have liked to have had a portfolio of electric vehicles to go to market with. It's hard to put one car in market and have anybody get behind it in a sales network."
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