Chevy Bolt Unveiling (Live Blog)

The Chevy Bolt is expected to be one of the most monumental electric cars in the history of electric cars, and is thus very highly anticipated by EV enthusiasts. It is almost definitely going to be the first mass-market, affordable, long-range electric car for sale in the US. The production version of the Chevy Bolt is about to be unveiled at CES 2016, and our own Kyle Field is reporting from the ground on the unveiling.

This is a live blog in which I’ll insert his tweets and pics, as well as some side comments, as the unveiling unfolds (does that make sense?).

Here we go…

→ Comment from Zach: 80% in 60 minutes is okay for regional or around-town trips, but GM (and anyone else interested in really providing competitive, long-range electric cars) needs to go the way of super-fast charging (what Tesla calls Supercharging). That’s about twice as fast as current DC fast charging (which is apparently the most the Chevy Bolt will be capable of, unfortunately.). Who wants to take a long road trip in which they have to spend an hour charging every few hours? 30 minutes might be acceptable for the average Joe, but I don’t think 1 hr will be.

→ Comment from Zach: Clearly, GM is very serious about being a leader in the EV spaces, and in the tech space in general. It has a lot of cool announcements here that demonstrate it can be a leader. With Mary Barra on stage highlighting the Bolt yet again, at another big event, it’s clear GM is prioritizing this work, and that’s a huge plus (for GM as well as the EV industry). That GM is making this a platform to build several electric vehicles on is a great step, imho, and could mean a bright future for GM.

→ Comment from Zach: Again, that’s great. It inches below the average price of a new car in the United States (after the tax credit), and it’s the first car to do that with long range and fully electric driving. It’s a bit higher than Tesla’s reported target price for the Model 3 ($35,000 before the $7,500 tax credit), but it also seems that GM will have at least 1 year to bring that price down before the Tesla Model 3 hits the market, so GM seems to be in the driver’s seat on this point. Kudos to GM.

That’s it. I’ll let Kyle provide a more complete review of the unveiling and the car after he gets his hands on it and hopefully takes it for a test drive.

In the meantime, thanks for the tweets, Kyle!

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