The 200 miles range is big progress relative to all the 100 mile range BEVs that also cost 30k USD. The sale of the Leaf and the e-Golf will drop to nothing. You still need to be a diehard environmentalist in order to pay 37.5k USD before incentives for a car that is actually worse than a 15k USD gasser in terms of range and time to refuel. So this is no revolution by any means.

We need self-driving BEV taxis for the economy to make sense for the mass consumer.

The Verge has a test drive and they already conclude the drive is unremarkable. So no fun factor either. Tesla's will be able to sell many more Model 3 for 45k USD than this Bolt at 37.5k USD simply because Model 3 will be fun and luxurious by comparison and not that much more expensive.

I have to wonder how much range they gained by developing a new version of Bluetooth...twenty feet? Fifty? I can't imagine it was worth the cost.

@Alan, GM is balancing the size of the car with the smallest battery size that will achieve the 200 mile goal post. It's the only way to make a car thats also affordable. Plenty of single occupant commuters will snap this up over the next few years, and pay next to nothing in monthly fuel costs.

It may not fill every need, but I predict this will be a very popular car.

I'll almost certainly buy one to replace my Ford Focus Electric, as it will beat almost any other contender to market by at least a year, probably 2 or 3.

For all the critues, for most of world this car is idle solution for pollution problems, conjestion and oil replacement. Per km running cost is only 1/5 of petrol and with passge of time cost can be halved.congrats GM for being first with this range small car.

At second thought I am disappointed the Bolt does not seem to have any sophisticated safety or autopilot features. It better come (at least as a configuration option) in the final production version. Also I agree that this car is too small for the US market. The Verge has a video test drive that shows how cramped the cabin is. The reporter is a big guy and he barely fit in the front seat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONfPm7OdTVs

Herman true the Model 3 might not enter production in late 2017. It may be late 2018. Musk has said the real engineering problems is not designing a new BEV which is not that complicated (at least compared to a gasser) but rather engineering its production. Tesla's engineers are mostly occupied with designing the production lines rather than the cars they make. For Model 3 the biggest challenge will be the 50Gwh factory. If that factory is not ready to make the battery packs for the Model 3 say because of extreme demand for Model S and X and power packs its introduction will be delayed. Model X was foremost delayed because Panasonic did not have the capacity to supply batteries for both the Model S and Model X.

I predict the Model 3 will be delayed until late 2018 because of extreme demand for Tesla's other products. Expect 80k units of model s and x for 2016, then 130k units in 2017 and 200k units in 2018. Then for 2019 300k units including 100k units of Model 3 and 500k units for 2020 of which 300k will be Model 3. Tesla will also launch a Porsche 911 killer in 2020 that could sell 60k units per year when distributed globally. I expect Tesla to launch a dedicated driverless taxi service between 2020 to 2022. That will become Tesla's main focus and business going forward and it will change the entire world of transportation unlike the Model S, X and Model 3 which is essentially practical toys for the wealthy.

Tesla's strategy is only to make a BEV if it can be made better than a comparable gasser and for the same price. E.g. the Model S is better than Porsche Panamera and they cost the same. Like Model X is better than Porsche Cayenne and they cost the same. The problem with the Bolt is that it compares to Chevrolet Sonic that costs only 15k USD has full range and fuel nearly instantly. This is why the Bolt will also be a failure. It can't compete with comparable gassers and only have appeal with truly diehard environmentalist.

When Tesla launch the Model 3 it will cost the same as a BMW's series 3 and be a better car so it will sell ice-cream on a hot summer day. We will see if I am right but I am sure I am.

The strategy is all wrong by the old automakers because they keep making plug-ins that sucks compared to their gasser competition. If they can't change that strategy they will continue to fail and Tesla, Google(?) and Apple(?) will continue to eat their market shares. However, Tesla will not be a real and global thread until they start making millions of self-driving taxis that does 100k miles or more each per year for paying customers. That will change the world and it starts in 2020 to 2022. Hopefully, Tesla will not be the only such taxi service in that time frame. The more the merrier and the faster the global change.

I get the distinct impression that some commenters on this website are here purely to either complain about the auto industry as a whole, or flog their own agenda, or are Tesla fanbois. Nothing is ever good enough until it's perfect for their own particular unique set of circumstances AND perfect for everyone else, too. Or maybe they are simply "anti car ownership". I don't get it. If EVERYONE relied on "self driving taxi" instead of their own vehicle, it would double the traffic on our roads, and surely we don't need that.

The Bolt is not a particularly small car. One of the video reviews online (the Verve one, mentioned above) has a person 6 ft 5 in tall fitting into it AND fitting into the back seat. It is roughly the size of Chevrolet Trax and Buick Encore (and Honda HR-V and several others), and those have been selling very well.

Self-driving has nothing whatsoever to do with being an electric vehicle. The Bolt will have an optional safety package that includes a forward collision mitigation package. I want no part of self-driving.

There is absolutely no freaking way that Tesla will ever be selling 200,000 Model S and X per year. It is simply too expensive to ever be a mass market vehicle.

The Bolt is the first production EV that will be capable of handling my needs for a daily-driver vehicle (200 mi / 320 km is right on the edge) and is in a tolerable price range, and it also appears to have good performance (7 sec to 60 mph). I am seriously considering one, since my current daily-driver will be due for replacement in the same time as when this hits the showrooms. And yes, I would much rather deal with the local Chevrolet dealer than deal with Tesla's sales and service model.

GM is to be commended for making this happen. For EVs to become mainstream, the compromises have to be acceptable, and I think this one is the game changer.

E.c.i. as you probably can imagine I am enthusiastically interested in technology and the question of how we can use new technology to make a better world. Because I spend a lot of my free time to study and think about that I believe I get a few good ideas along the way. However, it would be sad if only a few people heard about them so I blog about it at GCC and else ware thereby potentially reaching thousands more. I sincerely think that creating driverless vehicles of all sorts are the fastest way to end oil and most of this planet's pollution and death by accidents and it frustrates me that the world's largest industry is not investing more money in making that happen. Instead, the go along investing in endless of micro improvements of existing combustion engines, fuel cells that will never happen and also BEVs that target the most impossible gasser segment to compete with - the 15k USD gasser. Maybe, if I keep arguing that this is all wrong and driverless BEV taxis is the fastest way to obtain mass market implementation of BEVs, then maybe, someone out there with real power reads it and I succeed in changing their mind and thereby actually make a difference for the better.

So 200 miles, or about 55kWhrs of battery at $143 dollars per kWhr at cell level means slightly less than $8K in cells. I still don't see that there is $37K cost in this car. They can tell us that these cars are too expensive and they can make it the reality by pricing them to be too expensive. A Cruze is a $15K car that is profitable but a Bolt is a Cruze with the engine taken out (nearly) and an electric drive train put in. So maybe it cost them $23K to make the Bolt. I suspect the price is high to inhibit sales because they don't have the battery supply capacity to sell high volumes.

I AM a software developer, and driverless cars are not difficult to do in software. I agree with Henrik that driverless cars are the likely and best future, and can't come too quickly for me and the 30,000+ people who die a year in auto accidents.

Liability costs add a $1,000/year to car insurance, which will drop off when the computer drives the car. This will make driverless car cheaper than gassers or close. Also consider all the old folks, the young folks, people with disabilities, drunks who lost their license and others, who will benefit from driverless cars.

I don't know if Tesla or GM will win this race, but I think Tesla may just become (with Google and Apple) the final nail in the coffin for the old guard (GM/FORD/etc). And I'm cheering them on!

@Alan and others complaining about the Bolt

From today NY Times in an article titled "Carmakers Forge Ahead With Electric Vehicles"

The Bolt is a roomy, four-door compact car that seats five people...

Maybe, just maybe, GM did not kill the electric car.

I can say there will be self driving cars in the next 5 years, but that is just a guess with no evidence. Quit trying to seem like some prescient sage oracle and show evidence.

Useful information; positive, negative or neutral, is welcome. Unsupported wishful thinking, repeated frequently, simply diminishes a posters credibility.