GM, Mercedes, DS, China, Korea, BYD.

GM shuts down Bolt plant: As inventories swell, GM has halted the lines in Michigan, where the Chevy Bolt and Sonic are made. While the carmaker claims the shutdown was temporary and down solely to slow Sonic sales, there is an oversupply of its EV as well. Still the Bolt is only available in some states before a nationwide roll-out in August. At the same time, only a few Ampera-e have been allocated to Europe – too few maybe but it is impossible to simply rebrand the Bolt for Opel due to specific parts suppliers cannot deliver quickly enough.
reuters.com, electrek.co

S-Class facelift: Mercedes unveils its latest luxury flagship that now includes 48-Volt tech and a plug-in hybrid variant with a bigger battery at 13.3 kWh for a range of 50 km. The 7.2 kW on-board charger and a new wallbox promise faster charging but the S-Class PHEV won’t be available at on-sale this fall.
autoexpress.co.uk, daimler.com

DS electric SUV by 2019: PSA fledgling DS prepares to fly solo and revealed a second model to follow the DS7 Crossback PHEV. Next up will be a compact SUV comes 2019 and it will also incorporate an all-electric variant. Two years later anoter SUV is to join the club, this time as a standalone hybrid.
autocar.co.uk

German “Extrawurst”? Beijing might make an exception for German carmakers regarding China’s EV sales quota, WiWo reports after speaking to the German embassy in the Chinese capital. They revealed, there would be “a satisfactory solution” but how that could look like or, what that actually means or, if it will also apply to other countries has not been said. Only recently, OEM associations from the four biggest car nations had turned to Beijing begging for mercy so they could pollute the planet a little longer.
wiwo.de (in German)

Korea grants special treatment to Tesla as Seoul wants to open its subsidies from September to include the Californian EV maker. Its models had been excluded before because Korean regulation limits incentives to electric vehicles that take less than ten hours to charge.
koreajoongangdaily.joins.com, theinvestor.co.kr

Dreaming ever bigger: BYD is about to expand again further with the extension of its production facility in Lancaster, California set for completion next month. The plant will then be able to produce 1,500 electric heavy-duty vehicles, i.e. buses as well as trucks, a year with its 700 employees.
cnbc.com