The Bolt is back by popular demand, and we got to drive it in the hills of Malibu to test out its myriad improvements over the old model, including an all-new battery, faster charging and improved Super Cruise hands-off driving system.
It’s also in dealerships now at the most affordable EV price in America, but not for long, as GM has already said it’s only around for a “limited time.” So, should you rush out and buy it?
The Chevy Bolt was originally released in the 2017 model year. It was GM’s first real, modern effort at an EV, designed to be all-electric rather than a compliance car like the old Chevy Spark EV. (GM did previously design the EV1 from the ground up, but it came along before the lithium ion era of EVs, and was decidedly a compliance car).
The Bolt was also a great car. Not only was it a good size unlike the ridiculous land yachts we’re seeing so many of today, it had a phenomenal price, especially near the end of the model’s life. It was good enough to be Electrek’s vehicle of the year for 2022.
But, due to an extended recall and because the Bolt used GM’s first-gen EV platform, rather than its then-current “Ultium” battery branding (which it has since retired), GM cancelled the vehicle in late 2023, even though it was having its best sales year ever.
Thankfully, that wasn’t the end of the Bolt. Owners begged GM to bring it back (including us here at Electrek), and GM complied.
And now, that upgraded Bolt is finally out – it should be in stock at your local dealership now, and we got a chance to spend a couple days driving it around the hills of LA to see if it’s just as charming as it ever was.
Meet the new Bolt, same as the old Bolt (but better!)
The main headline differences between the old Bolt and the new Bolt are the battery, the charging, and the software.
There are some very minor exterior design differences, but you’d really have to be looking at the cars side by side to pick any of them out (slight differences in the grille, headlights, taillights, and rear bumper). In particular, the brake lights are higher and more visible than the prior version, which is the largest and most welcome change.
More importantly, on exterior design, Chevy decided to axe the smaller Bolt EV and only bring back the bigger Bolt EUV, which I think is a mistake, but the Bolt is still more right-sized than almost anything else on American roads, so I wont press that point too far.
And perhaps even more importantly… look at all these fun colors!
(And then, upon checking our local dealer’s inventory the next day, we found… 8 out of the 11 cars they had were monochrome. Sigh. Customers, please demand a color, any color, and bring some whimsy to the roads that have been taken over by drab silver and white)
The battery and charging are much bigger differences. The new Bolt has a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery, which should have more long-term durability and is also lower-cost than an NMC pack (although, that might be offset by the fact the battery is sourced from China – there’s currently no LFP manufacturing in the US, but they’re working on that).
The battery has roughly the same amount of storage as the previous one at 65kWh, but slightly more range at 262 miles. Chevy says this is primarily due to a more efficient electric motor.
More importantly, charging speed has been drastically upgraded. Whereas the previous Bolt peaked at just over 50kW, the new Bolt peaks at 150kW. That gives it a 10-80% charge time of around 25 minutes.
That charging now happens through a native NACS port (aka Tesla port, aka SAE J3400 port). This means easy Supercharger use, but a CCS adapter is still available for $189. The car also comes with GM’s “Dual Level Charge Cord” with 120v/240v adapters, and a J1772 AC adapter is available for $67.
Supercharging is easy, and will get easier
We got to test out the charging at a nearby Tesla V4 Supercharger with peak 325kW capacity. It’s rare for manufacturers to give us this chance on drive events, but Chevy went to the extra effort because it’s such a big upgrade from the previous Bolt.
The charge process was simple, though required starting the charge manually through the Tesla app, as is often the case with other EV brands. However, GM has an update in the works that will allow for seamless Plug & Charge at Tesla Superchargers coming in a few months (it already has Plug & Charge on GM Energy, EVgo and Ionna networks). Then you won’t need to open the app, just plug in and charging will start automatically, debiting whatever account you’ve set up.
The charging session also started quicker than we’ve often seen from non-Tesla vehicles on non-Tesla charging networks – it took about 20 seconds from plugging in until the first energy was delivered, which is pretty quick. GM said it can take “up to 2 minutes” but we were satisfied with how quickly the session started in our test.
Better yet, we saw a Bolt charge more than twice as fast as any we’d ever seen before, so that’s just swell.
We pulled in with 17% charge, which apparently put us out of the super-optimal peak charge range. By the time I started filming, we were getting 113kW at 25% SOC. Apparently, one car hit a peak of 157kW during the same event.
The display shows how much the car is capable of taking and how fast the car is currently charging, so you can tell if the car’s battery or the charging station itself are limiting charge speed (e.g. if you’re sharing a 150kW charger with another car).
Or, you can swap over to various infotainment features and watch youtube or access other apps from the Google Play Store. Chevy includes 8 years of “OnStar Basics” with every Bolt, which includes data for maps, all audio apps (one of those is Apple Music, which is newly available on GM EVs), voice assistance, crash response and remote mobile app features. There’s an additional tier called OnStar One for $35/mo, which includes video streaming data (cars with Super Cruise get 3 years of this included)
In the end, we spent 23 minutes charging and got 41.5kWh of energy before ending the charge at 80% (it’s recommended to leave DC chargers at 80%, as charge rate falls off drastically after that; however, since this battery is LFP and not NMC like most other EVs, you can and should charge it up to 100% when home AC charging). That roughly tracks with Chevy’s “10-80% in 26 minutes” number, which is over twice as quick as the old Bolt can do.
Even AC charging is quicker, as the Bolt has an 11.5kW AC charger. Better yet, its bidirectional-capable, and can discharge at that same rate and power your entire home, through GM Energy products. This will cost you several thousand dollars, but basically turns the Bolt into a home battery – at least when it’s plugged in.
11.5kW is a lot of capacity for V2H, able to power the necessities and more. Unfortunately, this system is not V2G-capable, nor does the Bolt have any V2L capacity (e.g. a 120V plug somewhere in the vehicle, or a charge port adapter with a plug strip on it).
So if you don’t have GM Energy products, the only way to get juice out of the car is through its front and rear USB ports, or its inductive phone chargers (which, side note, seem to be near the air-con vents, as my phone was cold when I pulled it off the pad – nice to avoid overheating).
Surround Vision Recorder is an integrated dashcam
Another new headline feature is Chevy’s “Surround Vision Recorder,” a feature that utilizes the car’s safety cameras as a dashcam, so you don’t have to install your own dashcam separately.
All you need to do is plug in some sort of storage device (flash drive, SD card + adapter, etc – make sure to get a “high endurance” model or it will wear out in a month) to the car’s USB-C port and the car’s cameras will continuously record to it, replacing old footage when the drive fills up – it’s about 1GB per 10 minutes of footage, counting all four cameras. You can then view the footage in the car, or take the USB drive out of the car and view/save the footage on another device.
The feature isn’t quite as advanced as Tesla’s version of the same feature, nor can it be used when the vehicle is parked.
But it’s also newer. What’s cool is that at Chevy’s October debut event, the car didn’t have this feature, and now it does. That’s because Chevy is committing to over-the-air software updates for this vehicle, which means your car will gain new features while you own it (like Plug & Charge for Superchargers, coming in a few months).
So, you just might see the feature improved over time, or other features rolled out to Chevy vehicles.
Super Cruise – most affordable hands-off vehicle in the US
Super Cruise is a “hands off” system, which means as long as the road is mapped, conditions are good and you’re watching the road, it won’t nag you to touch the steering wheel (but it’s still SAE level 2, which means the driver is still responsible for the car, unlike Mercedes’ level 3 Drive Pilot, where the car can actually responsible for driving).
At about $35k for the lowest-priced Bolt configured with Super Cruise, that makes it the cheapest vehicle in America with “hands-off” driving capability.
We got a chance to try out GM’s Super Cruise software on a quick drive up and down the 101 freeway, testing its new ability to follow highway interchanges.
This is a big deal in the LA area, given the large amount of highway interchanges required for navigation through the area – I’ve got friends who live in an hour away, and I touch eight freeways on the way to their house.
