Excellent, With An Expiration Date

Dek: It’s a brutal paradox at the heart of the American EV landscape: We need more affordable options, yet launch a simple, no-frills EV and you’ll struggle to win any buyers. Unfortunately, consumers want big, luxurious cars, even if the car payments are drowning them.

No car better captures this intractable issue than the reborn 2027 Chevy Bolt EV, a brilliant, affordable EV that is already doomed.

Let me explain.

(Full disclosure: Chevy invited journalists to Westlake Village, California for the Bolt EV launch. I drove up, but they still put me up in a swanky hotel and charged my car for free.)

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Source: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs

What Is It?

The Bolt is the original long-range affordable EV. When it launched in 2016, it beat Tesla to the punch in offering an EV that average Americans could buy that still offered around 250 miles of range. But its pioneer status came with limits. First-gen Bolts had no heat pumps, a gas-carryover software suite, and, originally, no fast-charging support. When “fast” charging support did come, it was at paltry 55-kilowatt speeds, making the car borderline unusable for road trips.

Yet it was charming, cheap, and fun to drive. So Chevy’s taking another crack at it with this new model. It solves the biggest issues with the old car, borrowing the excellent Google Built-In infotainment setup from the other Chevy EVs and adding far more respectable 150 kilowatt fast charging capability. In fact, with a 10-80% charge time of 26 minutes, it charges faster than the Chevy Equinox EV, Blazer EV, or even the Cadillac Optiq and Lyriq. 

That’s thanks to an all-new battery, which now uses lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) chemistry. LFP batteries are cheaper, more stable, can be charged to 100% without issue, and don’t degrade as much as high-nickel batteries, which are used in just about every other Western EV. These qualities make them a perfect fit for more affordable, smaller EVs. And though the battery hasn’t gotten any bigger—still 65 kWh—range is up from 247 miles in the old Bolt EUV to 262 miles here. And yes, all 2027 Bolts get the SUV-esque body of the EUV, rather than the original model’s hatchback shape.

Power comes from the same front motor used in the Equinox EV, good for 210 horsepower and 169 lb-ft of torque here. That’s a bit low for the Equinox, but here it’ll get the bolt from 0-60 in 6.8 seconds, and feels punchy at any speed. All of this starts at just $28,995 with destination charges, making it the cheapest EV in America.

If all of that sounds good, you better act quick. Because I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that the Bolt is doomed. The Kansas factory that makes the Bolt will do so for just 18 months before it’s retooled to—you guessed it—build more gas SUVs. 

Photo by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs

That puts Chevy marketing in a weird place. Chevy Representatives at the event waxed on about how loyal Bolt customers are, how important affordability is, and how exponential their EV growth has been. But the sad truth is that Americans have repeatedly scorned small cars in general, and small EVs particularly. The loss of the $7,500 tax credit and the onset of tariffs—which incentivized GM to move more profitable models into its U.S. factories—likely sealed its fate.

It’s a damn shame, because the 2027 Bolt is a great car.

How Is It Inside?

The first thing you’ll notice in the new Bolt is the reworked interior, as the outside looks largely the same as the previous model. The big news here is the inclusion of the Google Built-In infotainment system from the other “Ultium” cars, though technically GM does not use that branding anymore. 

Photo by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs

That means you get all of the EV goodies I like about my Blazer EV—one-tap one-pedal-driving control with two levels of aggression, automatic power on/off, excellent route planning, native Google Maps, native Spotify, native Apple Music, and available video streaming through Youtube, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime Video. The trade-off is, of course, no CarPlay or Android Auto. I’m fine with that, but I know a lot of you aren’t.

The Bolt also has a feature that’s long been disabled in other GM EVs, despite them appearing to have the hardware for it: Video recording via the 360-degree cameras, just like Tesla’s sentry mode. Unlike the Tesla system, it records directly to a USB stick, though I didn’t have much time to play with how it all works.

Inside you’ll also find a truly exceptional assortment of cubbies and shelves. There are two shelves in front of the passenger, a glove box, giant door cards with water bottle holders, a center console, cupholders, a phone slot, another flat spot next to it, and then a separate trough for handbags or wallets, with another cupholder. And all of the front cupholders have removable dividers, making them resizable to fit your most absurd Stanley or your skinny-ass Red Bull.

The Bolt offers plenty of physical buttons, which is great for EV shoppers who hate using screens for every single interaction.

Photo by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs

The rear seat, too, is bigger than you’d expect for a car this size. I’m no giant, but my 5’ 6” frame had about 10 inches of spare legroom when sitting behind myself. Front seat headroom is also excellent, and I have a theory as to why. The Bolt’s chief engineer is 6’ 5”.

There are also physical controls for just about everything important. All of the climate buttons are physical, as are the heated and cooled seat buttons. There are toggles for the lane departure system, the heated steering wheel, and more. A volume knob is included, though it’s a bit of a reach from the driver’s seat.

Unfortunately, that seat is still under-padded, as it was in the old Bolt. I didn’t get to try the base model, as every car Chevy had available had the available EvoTex leatherette chairs, but I still found them to be uncomfortable after three hours of mostly back-road driving. Side bolstering is basically nonexistent, and I’d want a thicker cushion below me if I was using one of these for ride-sharing. 

Photo by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs

How Does It Drive?

It’s a hoot. The Bolt doesn’t have particularly direct or talkative steering, but its tiny wheelbase and instant torque made it entertaining on Mulholland Drive and other nearby canyon roads. It’s got plenty of power to rip out of corners and, though there’s a decent amount of body roll in normal driving, it settles down and becomes quite predictable when pushed hard. Only in tight downhill braking events did it get overwhelmed by the weight of its battery, bucking and losing composure.

But this isn’t really meant for that sort of driving, anyway. Around town it’s eager and quiet, but bouncier than I would like. Like most cars with short wheelbases, it gets bounced around by road imperfections, which is perhaps why Americans associate small cars with being uncomfortable. 

The Bolt comes in a variety of fun colors, too.

Photo by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs

Still, once settled on the highway, it’s a nice place to be. Noise is well-controlled, and available Super Cruise hands-free driving remains class-leading. The new version in the Bolt will even follow your Google Maps route automatically while on the freeway, positioning itself in the right lane for interchanges. 

Unfortunately, though, Super Cruise remains an absurdly costly option. It’s only available on cars that already have the Comfort, EvoTex, and Technology package, and then costs another $3,255 on top of that. That means if you want Super Cruise, you’ll pay $6,660 more than the Bolt’s base price, or 23% more. Then, after three years, you’ll also have to subscribe to keep using it.

I get that this technology isn’t free, but I also think that if Chevy didn’t make it so expensive, it would be widely perceived as a clear leader in driver assistance. But as it sits, most people I talk to still haven’t heard of Super Cruise, despite it being a world-class system that’s been on sale for 9 years now. It was nearly impossible to find a Bolt on a dealer lot with Super Cruise last time around, and I expect that to be the case here. Chevy says they can increase production of Super Cruise models to match customer demand, but with such a short production window and such a high price, I think it’ll remain a rare option.

Early Verdict

I love this car. I love that it’s available in a bunch of fun bright colors, and offers 360-degree cameras and cooled seats and all of the kit you’d want on a luxury car. I love driving it hard, and I love sitting in it in traffic, albeit only until my butt gets sore. It’s just so charming to be in a car that’s actually affordable, and actually sized and specced for the lives we live, not the idealized lives we see in car commercials.

Unfortunately, though, that’s not what we really buy. As much as I’d like to blame GM and call it short-sighted for making this such a limited-run car, I can’t. I have seen this story play out so many times, where a company launches a reasonable, charming EV that journalists love, only for it to be passed over by consumers that want a gazillion miles of range and a cooled sunglasses holder as standard equipment.

I loved driving the Bolt on twisty roads in Southern California.

Photo by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs

So the new Bolt was always doomed, even before GM issued its execution order. It was always going to sell to nerds like me and you, who read EV news and pine over cheap runabouts, not 9,000-pound monster trucks. For that audience, 18 months of production will probably be enough.

But the real dream of the EV market is a car like this that becomes a new people’s car, a triumph of reason over excess that puts us on a more sustainable path. The Bolt is proof that we can build that car. But until Americans decide they want cars like this, the dream will remain just that.

Contact the author: Mack.Hogan@insideevs.com. 

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