Chevrolet Unveils New All-Electric Long-Range Bolt

Affordable electric cars and automation have been two of the big auto trends at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.

General Motors is one of the companies to make a major announcement at CES with the unveiling of its Chevrolet Bolt. The five-passenger electric car has a range of approximately 200 miles and can reach 60 mph in about seven seconds. At a cost of only $30,000, it’s poised to be in direct competition with Tesla’s yet-to-be-released Model 3 car.

The car was first introduced as a concept in January 2015, and is now set to be in production by the end of this year. GM CEO Mary Barra said the 2017 Bolt will come with robust features, including a mobile app that will “enable car sharing” and “advanced GPS routing.”

Several years ago, GM introduced its shorter range Chevrolet Volt hybrid model. Although it wasn’t a big seller, it marked GM’s return to the electric-vehicle market, and the company hopes to gain wider appeal with its new long-range all-electric Bolt model.

“The Chevrolet Bolt represents the first serious electric vehicle available to mainstream consumers,” remarked Karl Brauer, senior analyst at Kelley Blue Book. “It will be an interesting test to see how the market embraces the Bolt in this era of cheap gas. But from a value and function standpoint, it sets a new benchmark in alternative-fuel options.”

GM’s North American executive vice president, Alan Batey, said that the Bolt is poised for success amid looming uncertainty over the direction of fuel prices as well as stringent U.S. regulations calling for automakers to eventually sell vehicles that average almost 55 miles per gallon across models. Additionally, he pointed to California requirements for carmakers to sell zero-emission vehicles.

“There are certain states in the U.S. where you need to sell electric vehicles if you’re going to be able to sell your portfolio,” said Batey. “As part of that, we have a need to have a range of electric vehicles. People think that the only reason people buy these is because of high fuel prices, but if you actually talk to consumers, they buy it because they want the greatest and latest technology, and it just happens to be an electric vehicle.”

Batey continued by saying that the Bolt is crucial to overhauling Chevrolet’s image in California and large urban markets, where it has performed poorly in recent years. He believes that the Volt has been more effective than any other vehicle for repositioning the Chevy brand in California over the past five years.

“For Chevrolet, California is a massive opportunity because our performance there has been poor for so long,” Batey said. “Bolt will play a really important role in helping build the Chevy brand in California.”

The Bolt has the potential to gain momentum upon its release with a lower price than electric cars with a comparable range, such as Tesla’s Model S, which costs about $70,000. However, Tesla plans to release a less expensive option, the Model 3, as early as March of this year.

Will these vehicles end up in direct competition with each other? It appears likely that this will be the case, however, Barra believes that GM’s scale, dealer network and manufacturing experience gives it an advantage over newer entrants to the car business. At the same time, Tesla welcomed the Bolt in a statement this week.

“Commitments from traditional carmakers to build electric vehicles advance Tesla’s mission to accelerate the advent of sustainable transportation,” Tesla said. “We hope to see all those additional zero-emission vehicles on the road.”