GM is still promising to start shipping the Chevy Bolt EV by the end of the year. After some fear of delays, it looks like it is about to keep its promise as dealerships in California and Oregon are reporting being granted their initial allocation for the upcoming all-electric vehicle.

Rick Alpern, General Manager of Southern California-based Keyes Chevrolet, told Hybrid Cars last week:

“Initial allocation is 78; I have 35 deposits so that leaves 43 open slots,”

After talking to his GM representative, he is hopeful that he will get the shipment by the end of the year to complete his first wave of deliveries.

But one of GM’s promises that now looks evidently broken is the “launch in all 50 states.” Alpern says that only dealerships in California and Oregon will be part of the first wave of deliveries. California and Oregon are both states with Zero-emission Vehicle Mandates requiring automakers to sell a percentage of zero-emission vehicles out of their total deliveries.

GM committed to 50 states availability of the Chevy Bolt at launch last year, but later admitted that it will first come to “states where electric vehicles are more popular”, which translates to “states with Zero-emission Vehicle Mandates” and it is understandable. It is the goal of ZEV mandate after all.

But GM insists that the Chevy Bolt EV is not a compliance car with the sole purpose to comply to those mandates. As previously discussed, it has yet to prove that considering it is planning a capacity of about 30,000 vehicles for the first year and it may end up being a lot more difficult to find those vehicles outside of ZEV states since they are worth a lot more to GM there than anywhere else.

States with ZEV mandates include California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont

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