CarBrandLogos archive · Chevrolet · 2016

ChevroletBolt

The first affordable long-range electric car — and it beat Tesla to market by a year.

Photo: Kevauto · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Chevrolet history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Chevrolet Bolt, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV Premier rear 6.20.18

Origins

General Motors put the Bolt on sale at the end of 2016 with a claim nobody else could match at the price: more than 200 miles of range in a car costing around $37,000 before incentives. The Tesla Model 3, announced to enormous fanfare, would not reach real customers in volume for another year. For a company still associated with cancelling the EV1, it was a pointed piece of engineering.

2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV Premier rear 6.20.18 · Kevauto · CC BY-SA 4.0

Design and engineering

The car itself was deliberately plain — a tall five-door hatchback with a flat floor, a surprisingly roomy cabin for its footprint, and a front-mounted motor. The battery was developed with LG, and the packaging work was largely done by LG's engineering arm, which made the Bolt cheaper and faster to produce than a ground-up GM programme would have been. It won a string of awards and drove well, with strong one-pedal regeneration.

2019 Chevrolet Bolt EV - April 2019 · Gregory Varnum · CC BY-SA 4.0

In production

It was also the source of GM's most expensive electric-vehicle failure. Manufacturing defects in the LG-made cells caused a series of fires, and General Motors eventually recalled and replaced the battery packs in every Bolt built, at a cost measured in billions and largely recovered from the supplier. The reputational damage was worse than the money.

2019 Chevrolet Bolt EV - April 2019 · Gregory Varnum · CC BY-SA 4.0

Legacy

Production ended in 2023 with the Bolt still one of the cheapest electric cars in North America — and, at the time, one of the best-selling. GM announced almost immediately that it would return, rebuilt on Ultium cells and a lower-cost lithium-iron-phosphate chemistry, as a subcompact crossover.

At a glance