The estimate of 238 miles announced Tuesday leapfrogs the projected 215-mile range of Tesla’s similarly priced Model 3, which is expected to reach the market about a year after the Bolt, in late 2017.
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Not only that, but its very ethos varies considerably from the Model 3: whereas the Tesla is a sport sedan that stakes its claim on being stylish-yet-green, the Bolt’s a more practical auto by nature, filling the needs of as wide a swath of the market as GM’s engineers could realistically reach.
Nobody likes waiting. And with the announcement that the Chevrolet Bolt’s range is going to outdo the Tesla’s Model 3, GM is about to take full advantage of that fact. It’s the first mass-market electric vehicle to cross the 200-mile (322-kilometer) range, a range that will meet or exceed nearly every person’s daily driving needs.
It’s worth remembering here that the Chevy Spark EV has a range of ~82 miles, with a 19 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery pack, so the Bolt’s range-to-battery ratio is actually about the same as the Spark (the Bolt has a 60 kWh battery pack), despite the differences in shape and size.
While it may come as a shock to some, one of Tesla’s biggest competitors on the lower-end of its product offerings comes in the form of the Chevrolet Bolt.
GM says the Bolt’s range was determined in testing by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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GM North America President Alan Batey called the Bolt EV a “game-changer for the electric-car segment”. Even Apple Co-Founder “The Woz” who is a Tesla fan is trading his Model S for the new Bolt EV. The Bolt has the same capacity as the 2017 Nissan Leaf at 60kWh and it has been said that we should expect to see a range of 240 miles from the Leaf.
