Autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EVs roll off the line in Michigan

When General Motors announced that it would start testing self-driving Bolt EVs in and around Detroit, it also said it would be building them up the street (give or take a few miles). Some six months later, the first group is rolling off the line.

GM announced Tuesday that it completed production of 130 Chevrolet Bolt EVs equipped with hardware and software capable of autonomous driving. The cars were built at the Lake Orion plant, where Chevrolet builds the standard Bolt EV, as well as the Sonic.

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All three vehicles are being produced in the same facility, which makes GM the first company to build self-driving development cars in a mass-production facility. Some of these cars will stick around Michigan, but the rest will be shipped off to San Francisco and Scottsdale, Arizona.

GM and Cruise Automation, a startup it acquired in the race to develop self-driving-car tech, have been testing autonomous Bolt EVs on the roads around San Francisco and Scottsdale for about a year now. There are approximately 50 of these cars on the road, so this new batch will bring GM's fleet up to a healthy 180 vehicles.

Here's how Chevrolet builds the Bolt EV on the same line as the Sonic

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