Chevrolet Bolt EUV Returns 2027: LFP Battery, 262 Miles, 150kW Fast Charging [2025]

The Chevrolet Bolt Is Back—But Not For Long

General Motors just did something that shocked the EV industry. After killing off the Chevrolet Bolt in April 2023 to make room for production of pricier models, the company announced in July 2025 that the car would return—completely redesigned with a new battery pack and ready to hit dealerships in 2026. But here's the catch that everyone's talking about: GM is only bringing it back "for a limited time only," which means your window to buy one of the most affordable EVs on the market might close without warning.

This isn't just a story about one car coming back to life. It's a story about what happens when customers get loud enough that a company has to listen. It's also a story about how battery technology is fundamentally shifting the economics of electric vehicles—and how legacy automakers are scrambling to keep up with the cost advantages that companies like Tesla, BYD, and Li Auto have been leveraging for years.

The original Chevrolet Bolt was a phenomenon. It arrived in 2016 with over 200 miles of range at a time when affordable EVs were basically fiction. It was efficient, practical, genuinely fun to drive, and—this mattered more than anything—it didn't require you to mortgage your house. GM sold tens of thousands of them, and EV enthusiasts loved the car. But there was a problem hiding underneath the hood: GM lost money on every single one. By some estimates, each Bolt cost GM thousands of dollars in lost profit compared to what the company could make on a comparable gas car.

Then came the battery recall. In 2020, LG Energy Solution (GM's battery supplier at the time) had manufactured some cells with improperly folded tabs. These tabs could shift inside the battery case, potentially causing short circuits and fires. The recall covered the entire Bolt fleet and cost GM $1.8 billion. That's not a rounding error—that's a catastrophic loss. The bad press that followed was equally expensive to GM's reputation.

When Mary Barra announced the Bolt's return in July 2025, she didn't do it at a glitzy media event. She mentioned it almost in passing during an earnings call. That was intentional. GM knows the Bolt is a loss leader. The company is bringing it back because the political pressure was too high to ignore, not because they suddenly figured out how to make money on the car. But something genuinely important changed: the battery pack.

The new Bolt uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry instead of the nickel-cobalt-aluminum (NCA) cells that powered the original. This shift matters more than you might think. LFP batteries are cheaper to manufacture, safer, more durable, and they charge faster. They're the reason Chinese EV makers have been able to undercut Western automakers so dramatically. And now, GM is betting that LFP can finally make the Bolt profitable.

Why The Original Bolt Failed Financially

Understanding why GM killed the Bolt in the first place is essential to understanding why the company brought it back—and why it might disappear again. The economics of EV manufacturing in 2022 were brutal for legacy automakers.

GM invested heavily in building a dedicated EV platform called Ultium (which they've since stopped calling by that name, which tells you something). This platform was designed to underpin dozens of future electric vehicles—sedans, crossovers, trucks, everything. The problem was that Ultium was built around nickel-cobalt-based battery chemistry, which was expensive. GM needed to sell a lot of vehicles on this platform to amortize the development costs and manufacturing setup.

The Bolt, meanwhile, was built on an older platform that didn't use Ultium cells. It was profitable in a theoretical sense—if you didn't count the development costs, the recall, or the fact that GM was selling it at a price point where the company couldn't make a meaningful profit margin. When you did count those things, the economics collapsed.

Here's the math that GM was running in 2023: Producing a Chevrolet Bolt meant tying up factory capacity that could be used to build a Chevy Equinox EV or a GMC Lyriq. Both of those vehicles had significantly higher starting prices—the Equinox EV starts at $34,995, barely cheaper than the old Bolt EUV—and much higher profit margins. From a pure business perspective, killing the Bolt and reallocating production to these vehicles made sense.

But the market had other ideas. When GM announced the discontinuation in April 2023, something unexpected happened: Bolt sales exploded. Dealers reported long waiting lists. People who had been sitting on the fence suddenly realized their window to buy an affordable EV might be closing forever. The announcement that the car was going away made people want it more.

Then came pressure from environmental groups, from Congress (electric vehicle policy has become deeply political in the United States), and from Bolt owners themselves. The car had developed a cult following. People weren't just buying Bolts because they were cheap—they were buying them because they represented something: an EV that didn't require six figures of household income to own.

GM CEO Mary Barra eventually yielded to this pressure. But she didn't suddenly decide the Bolt was a great business. She decided it was politically expedient.

LFP Chemistry Changes Everything

The key to understanding why the Bolt might actually work second time around is lithium iron phosphate. LFP is a different chemical formula for batteries than the nickel-cobalt chemistry that dominated Western EV manufacturing for years.

Lithium iron phosphate uses iron, phosphate, and lithium instead of nickel, cobalt, and aluminum. This shift sounds technical, but it has enormous practical consequences. LFP cells are cheaper to manufacture—significantly cheaper. They're also safer because they're more thermally stable, which means they don't catch fire as easily as nickel-cobalt cells. They last longer, too. An LFP battery might have 80% of its original capacity after 1 million kilometers of use, whereas a nickel-cobalt battery might be down to 70% by then.

The trade-off is energy density. LFP cells store less energy per kilogram than nickel-cobalt cells. That means you need to carry more weight to achieve the same range. This is why most Western EV makers resisted LFP for years—it seemed to violate the fundamental rules of EV engineering.

But Chinese EV makers like BYD proved that this constraint wasn't actually binding. If you built a slightly heavier car and optimized everything else for efficiency, you could achieve excellent range with LFP chemistry. You'd also make significantly more money on each car you sold.

GM had been importing LFP cells from CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited), the Chinese battery giant that supplies BYD and other manufacturers. But CATL's cells are subject to tariffs when imported into the United States—costs that get passed directly to the consumer. GM has announced plans to build its own LFP manufacturing facility in the U.S., but that won't be operational until sometime in 2026. For now, the company is absorbing (or partially absorbing) the tariff costs to keep pricing competitive.

This raises an interesting question: How long can GM sustain this? If the tariffs are high enough and the tariff costs are too large, the Bolt might become unprofitable even with LFP chemistry. That could explain the "limited time only" language that GM has been using. The company might be planning to build the Bolt just long enough to satisfy political demands and maintain the goodwill of its customer base. Once public attention moves elsewhere, the Bolt disappears again.

The Numbers: 262 Miles and 150k W Charging

Let's talk about what changed with the new Bolt. GM released range and charging specifications in October 2025, and the numbers are impressive compared to the old model but require some context.

The new Bolt EUV will achieve 262 miles of EPA range. For reference, the previous-generation Bolt EUV managed 249 miles of range. So GM improved the range by about 13 miles, or roughly 5 percent. That's not revolutionary, but it's honest. You're not getting some dramatic leap in efficiency; you're getting a modest improvement that comes mostly from the fact that the new battery pack is better engineered.

The real improvement is charging speed. The old Bolt could accept a maximum of 55 kilowatts of DC fast charging power. This was painfully slow by modern standards. At a fast-charging station, a Bolt would be sitting there for close to an hour to get from 10 percent to 80 percent state of charge. Other EV drivers at the charger would literally wait for Bolts to finish and move out of the way. It was a legitimate frustration point for owners.

The new Bolt will charge at up to 150 kilowatts. GM claims that a 10-to-80 percent charge will take approximately 26 minutes. Let's check this math.

Assuming a usable battery capacity of approximately 65 kilowatt-hours (the new battery pack is roughly similar in size to the old one), and assuming an average charging power of 120 kilowatts over the 10-to-80 percent window (fast-charging power typically drops off as the battery approaches full charge), the calculation would be:

GM's claim of 26 minutes is realistic. It might even be slightly optimistic if the charging power doesn't maintain 120 kilowatts throughout the entire window. But you're looking at roughly a 2-3x improvement over the old Bolt's charging speed. That's genuinely meaningful.

Here's what that improvement actually means in practical terms. With the old Bolt, if you wanted to take a cross-country road trip, you'd need to plan your stops carefully. A 249-mile range meant you could drive for roughly 4.5-5 hours before needing to charge. Then you'd need to sit at the charger for almost an hour. The entire cycle meant that every 900 miles of driving required roughly 15-16 hours of time investment—driving plus charging.

With the new Bolt, the numbers change. You're driving for roughly 5 hours, then charging for 26 minutes, then driving again. The charging is no longer the bottleneck—it's almost invisible compared to the driving time. That's a meaningful improvement in road-trip feasibility.

Pricing: More Expensive Than Expected

Now let's talk about cost, because this is where the story gets complicated. In October 2025, Chevy released pricing for the new Bolt EUV:

For context, the previous-generation Bolt EUV started at

But here's the issue: the market context has changed dramatically. When the old Bolt was in production, there were very few affordable EVs. A

Now, in 2026, the Chevrolet Equinox EV starts at

GM has indicated that a stripped-out version of the Bolt will eventually start at less than

There's also the matter of features that have been removed compared to the old model. The new Bolt doesn't support Apple Car Play or Android Auto via the infotainment system. This is a significant downgrade in terms of user experience, especially for a car that's supposed to compete on price. Using the built-in navigation system instead of Google Maps or Apple Maps is a noticeably worse experience.

The Torque Question: Why It Matters More Than You Think

Here's a detail that hasn't gotten much attention, but it's important: the new Bolt makes significantly less torque than the old one.

The previous-generation Bolt produced 266 pound-feet of torque from its 150-kilowatt motor. The new Bolt's specifications haven't been officially released, but early reports suggest the torque output is closer to 200 pound-feet. That's a reduction of roughly 25 percent.

You might think: "Who cares? Torque is just a number. What matters is 0-to-60 time." And you'd be partially right. But the reason torque matters on an EV is different than on a gas car. On an EV, torque is directly proportional to how responsive the car feels off the line. It's the characteristic that makes driving an EV feel different from driving a gas car.

When you press the accelerator in the old Bolt, there's a tidal wave of instant acceleration. You feel the weight of the batteries pushing you into the seat. It's fun. It's responsive. It makes the car feel alive, even though the top speed is nothing special.

With less torque, the new Bolt will feel more muted off the line. It will still accelerate adequately, but it won't have that distinctive EV feel that made driving the old Bolt enjoyable. This is a necessary trade-off to accommodate the slightly heavier LFP battery pack while maintaining reasonable performance. But it's a genuine change to the driving experience.

Supply Chain and Tariff Complications

There's a complicated story happening in the background that affects the Bolt's viability. The new Bolt uses LFP cells from CATL that are imported from China. These imports are subject to tariffs under the Biden administration's electric vehicle manufacturing rules.

The specific tariff situation is complex, but the essential point is this: importing cells from China into the United States and then incorporating them into American-made vehicles triggers tariffs that effectively increase the cost of the cells. GM is currently absorbing some of these tariff costs to keep the Bolt's starting price under $30,000, but this is clearly not sustainable long-term.

GM has announced plans to build an LFP battery manufacturing facility in the United States, likely in partnership with another company. Once this facility is operational—estimated for sometime in 2026, though timelines have been known to slip—the tariff situation changes. Cells manufactured in the U.S. don't incur the same tariffs as imported cells. This could theoretically improve GM's margin on each Bolt.

But here's the risk: even with domestic LFP cell production, GM faces a simple question: Is it economically rational to build Bolts, or is it better to use the same production capacity for higher-margin vehicles? The answer depends on several variables: the actual manufacturing costs of LFP cells in the U.S., the volume of Bolts that consumers demand, and whether GM faces any regulatory pressure to maintain affordable EV production.

The "limited time only" language suggests that GM has already decided the answer: build Bolts for a limited period, satisfy the political and reputational demands, then discontinue the model. Whether that happens in 12 months or 36 months remains to be seen.

The EV Market Shift Toward Affordability

The return of the Bolt reflects a broader shift in the EV market that's happening right now. For years, EV manufacturers focused on premium and high-end vehicles. Tesla started with the Roadster and gradually worked its way down to more affordable models. Traditional automakers followed the same pattern: Porsche's Taycan, BMW's i-series vehicles, Mercedes' EQS. All premium, all profitable.

But the market has demonstrated that affordability matters. Chinese manufacturers like BYD, NIO, and Geely have found enormous success building EVs that start well under $30,000. In many markets outside the U.S., the most popular EVs are the cheapest ones, not the premium ones.

In the United States, the legacy automakers have been slower to embrace this reality. They've invested billions in premium-focused EV platforms and have been reluctant to cannibalize sales of higher-margin vehicles by offering affordable alternatives. But the market is pushing back. Consumers want affordable EVs, and if legacy automakers won't provide them, Chinese manufacturers will.

The Bolt's return is GM's acknowledgment that this market shift is real and significant. The company can't ignore demand for affordable EVs anymore, even if the profit margins are thin. But GM is clearly not comfortable with the idea of making affordable EVs the center of its business. The "limited time only" framing suggests the company is offering the Bolt as a stopgap measure while figuring out its long-term strategy.

Technical Engineering: Fitting a New Battery Into the Old Space

One of the impressive engineering accomplishments with the new Bolt is that GM managed to redesign the battery pack to work with LFP cells while maintaining compatibility with the existing vehicle architecture.

The old Bolt was built around a specific battery pack size with specific mounting points. When you decide to switch to a completely different cell chemistry—from nickel-cobalt to iron-phosphate—you're essentially redesigning the entire battery from scratch. The cells are different sizes, the way they're arranged is different, the thermal management requirements are different, everything is different.

GM had to ensure that the new battery pack fit into the same physical space, used the same mounting points, and integrated with the existing vehicle cooling and management systems. This isn't trivial. It's the kind of engineering work that takes months and costs significant money.

The fact that GM was willing to make this investment suggests that the company believed—or was forced to believe by market demand—that the Bolt had a viable future. If GM had thought the Bolt was a complete waste of resources, the company wouldn't have invested in engineering work to make a new battery pack fit the old vehicle architecture.

Production Reality: Building Cells Costs More Than Assembling Them

Let's talk about something that rarely gets discussed in EV journalism: where the actual value and profit margins are in EV production.

When you buy an EV, the battery pack accounts for roughly 40-50 percent of the total cost of the vehicle. Everything else—the motor, the frame, the interior, the electronics—accounts for the remaining 50-60 percent.

But here's the crucial part: the battery pack is where all of the profit is. Building battery cells is a high-margin business if you can do it at scale. Assembling vehicles is a lower-margin business that requires enormous investments in factory infrastructure.

This is why Chinese manufacturers like BYD have been so successful. BYD owns its battery manufacturing plants and builds its own cells. That vertical integration means BYD captures most of the value chain. When BYD builds an EV, a huge percentage of the profit comes from the battery cells, not the vehicle assembly.

GM, by contrast, relies on external battery manufacturers for cells. GM buys cells from LG Energy Solution, CATL, or other suppliers and assembles them into packs. This is a lower-margin business. GM is essentially a battery pack assembler and vehicle assembler, but it doesn't own the most profitable part of the supply chain.

This is also why the tariff situation matters so much. If GM is importing cells from CATL and paying tariffs on those imports, those tariff costs cut directly into GM's already-thin margins on the Bolt. It's not sustainable unless GM can either bring cell manufacturing in-house or find another way to reduce costs.

Why The Bolt EUV But Not The Hatchback?

One detail that's worth examining: the Bolt is returning only as the EUV (crossover) body style, not as the original hatchback.

GM's official reasoning is that retooling the factory to produce both the hatchback and the crossover would be too expensive and too time-consuming. It's probably true that producing both variants would cost more than producing just the crossover. But there's likely another reason hiding behind this decision.

The EUV body style is slightly larger and slightly more expensive than the hatchback. Vehicles with more interior space and a higher price point typically have better profit margins. By bringing back only the EUV, GM is choosing to avoid the scenario where it's building very low-margin hatchbacks. It's a defensive decision—the company would rather not build the car at all than build it with minimal profit.

For customers who specifically wanted the hatchback design, this is bad news. The Bolt hatchback was beloved by some owners for its practical design and efficient use of interior space. But if you want a Bolt going forward, you're getting the EUV crossover version, which costs more and offers less interior practicality.

The Charging Network Reality

When you talk about EV range and charging speeds, you have to account for the reality of the public charging network. The new Bolt can theoretically accept 150 kilowatts of charging power, but can the charging network support it?

The U.S. charging network has improved significantly since the old Bolt era, but it's still fragmented and inconsistent. Tesla's Supercharger network is proprietary. The other networks—Electrify America, Evgo, Charge Point—operate independently with different pricing models, different connector standards (though this has improved with recent standards adoption), and different uptime rates.

If you drive a Bolt, can you reliably find a charger that supports 150-kilowatt charging? Probably not yet. Most Level 3 DC fast chargers in the U.S. still max out at 50-100 kilowatts. There are some newer chargers that support higher power, but they're concentrated in certain corridors. A cross-country road trip in a new Bolt might still involve sitting at 50-kilowatt chargers for longer than GM's optimistic 26-minute estimate.

This gap between the vehicle's theoretical capability and the network's actual capability is something that won't be resolved for several years. The charging network is improving, but it's improving slowly and unevenly.

The Political Context: Why The Bolt Is Back

You can't understand the Bolt's return without understanding the political and regulatory context of EV manufacturing in the United States.

The Biden administration has made electric vehicles a priority. The Inflation Reduction Act provides substantial tax credits for EV purchases, with bonuses for vehicles assembled in the United States with battery cells sourced from North America. The administration has also been critical of Chinese dominance in battery manufacturing and has pursued policies designed to encourage domestic battery cell production.

In this context, the Chevrolet Bolt—an affordable American vehicle with an American assembly plant—is politically valuable, even if it's not profitable. GM bringing the Bolt back is, in some sense, a response to political pressure and incentives, not purely a business decision.

GM CEO Mary Barra has been careful to frame the Bolt's return as a commitment to affordable vehicles, but the truth is probably more nuanced. The company was facing criticism for discontinuing the only truly affordable EV it was making. Bringing it back—even if only for a "limited time"—allows GM to say it's addressing this concern without committing to long-term Bolt production.

The regulatory environment is also changing. The Environmental Protection Agency has announced progressively stricter emissions standards that will make it increasingly difficult for companies to sell gas vehicles without offsetting those emissions with EVs. Building affordable EVs like the Bolt helps GM meet these requirements and avoid potential fines.

So the Bolt is back partly because customers demanded it, partly because regulators are pushing for it, and partly because GM calculated that the reputational damage from discontinuing an affordable EV was worse than the financial pain of building it.

What This Means For The Used Market

Here's an interesting consequence that's already happening: used Bolt values have stabilized dramatically since the announcement that the car would return.

When the Bolt was being discontinued in 2023-2024, used Bolt prices on the secondary market were actually increasing. This is unusual. Most used cars depreciate over time, but the Bolt was appreciating because people recognized that they would soon be unavailable. The scarcity premium was real.

Now that the Bolt is returning with a new battery pack, the used-car calculus has changed. If you can buy a new Bolt EUV for roughly $30,000-34,000, why would you pay a premium for a used 2022 Bolt? The answer is: you probably wouldn't. This suggests that used Bolt values are likely to decline from their peak as new models come on the market.

For current Bolt owners who were thinking about selling, this might be a window to get a favorable price before the used market adjusts to the new supply. But for consumers looking to buy a used Bolt, this is good news. Prices should become more reasonable as the market equilibrates.

The Question Of Profitability Going Forward

The fundamental question about the Bolt's return is this: Can GM actually make it profitable, or is the company just building the Bolt as a political gesture?

LFP chemistry makes the math better than it was with nickel-cobalt cells. The cells are cheaper to manufacture, which should improve GM's margins. But the question is how much cheaper.

If we look at battery costs, LFP cells are estimated to cost roughly

But cell costs are only one component of the total battery pack cost. You also have to account for the pack structure, the cooling system, the electronics, labor, overhead, and profit for the battery supplier. Total battery pack costs might be $15,000-17,000 for an LFP Bolt.

Given that the Bolt starts at

Unless GM has some other way to reduce costs—perhaps by building Bolts at a factory that was previously idle, or by dramatically improving manufacturing efficiency—the car still doesn't pencil out as a profitable venture at the price points being announced.

This supports the "limited time only" framing. GM is likely planning to build Bolts just long enough to satisfy market demand and political pressure, then discontinue the model again. The company's long-term strategy is probably to focus on higher-margin vehicles like the Equinox EV, the Ultium-based trucks, and the upcoming Chevy Silverado EV.

Comparing To The Competition

When the new Bolt launches, what will it be competing against? The landscape is very different from 2022, when the old Bolt was in production.

The Chevy Equinox EV starts at

There's also the Tesla Model Y Standard Range, which starts at roughly $43,000 (after adjusting for the current lack of federal tax credits on Tesla vehicles). The Model Y costs more, but it has better charging speed, better acceleration, better interior tech, and it's a Tesla—which carries both positive (brand prestige) and negative (concern about reliability) connotations depending on your perspective.

In the segment of truly affordable EVs (under $35,000), the Bolt EUV is probably the best value proposition available in the U.S. market, assuming you're not interested in Chinese brands like Geely or waiting for Chinese manufacturers to enter the U.S. market. But the Bolt faces an existential competition: it's not that compelling compared to the alternatives.

The Battery Swap And What It Reveals

The technical achievement of redesigning the Bolt's battery pack to work with LFP cells is worth examining more carefully, because it reveals something about how automotive engineering actually works.

When a company decides to switch battery chemistry—especially from a premium chemistry like NCA to a lower-cost chemistry like LFP—it requires rethinking nearly every thermal and mechanical aspect of the battery pack. LFP cells have different thermal characteristics, different voltage curves, different safety profiles. The pack structure has to be redesigned to account for these differences.

GM could have taken one of two approaches. The first approach would be to minimize changes: use the exact same pack structure, just swap in LFP cells, and see if it works. This is the fastest approach but probably doesn't work well because you're forcing cells with different characteristics into a structure that wasn't designed for them.

The second approach—which GM apparently chose—is to redesign the entire pack structure to optimize for LFP cells while keeping the pack physically compatible with the existing vehicle. This means new thermal management approaches, new cell grouping architecture, new electronics and monitoring systems. It takes longer and costs more, but you end up with a better product.

The fact that GM was willing to invest in this level of redesign is actually a positive signal about the Bolt's potential. If the car was just a throwaway compliance project, GM probably would have gone with approach one and accepted whatever performance or reliability issues resulted. Instead, the company appears to have done the engineering right.

The Endgame: Will The Bolt Survive Long-Term?

Let's be honest about the most likely scenario. The Bolt will probably be discontinued again, probably within 3-5 years, and probably without much warning.

Here's why. First, GM's production capacity for EVs is finite. Every Bolt that rolls off the assembly line is a vehicle that's not rolling off the line at a higher-margin segment. Second, the regulatory pressure that's forcing GM to build the Bolt will eventually ease as the overall EV transition accelerates. Third, GM's long-term strategy is probably to consolidate EV production around its Ultium platform, which is designed for higher-margin vehicles.

The Bolt is the automotive equivalent of a politically expedient concession. GM is saying "yes" to affordable EVs, but in a way that's limited in scope and time. The company gets to point to the Bolt as evidence of its commitment to the EV transition while maintaining focus on more profitable segments.

For consumers, this has real implications. If you're considering buying a new Bolt, you should probably do it soon. The "limited time only" language is almost certainly accurate. Once the Bolt is discontinued—and it will be—you probably won't see another affordable American EV from a legacy automaker until the industry dynamics shift even more dramatically than they already have.

The sad truth is that GM doesn't want to be in the affordable EV business. The company is in the affordable EV business right now only because it has to be. Once the political and reputational pressure decreases, or once GM figures out how to satisfy these demands with other products, the Bolt will disappear.

What The Bolt's Return Says About The EV Transition

Beyond the specific story of the Chevrolet Bolt, the car's return reveals something important about where the EV transition is in its evolution.

We're past the point where EVs were exotic luxury items. We're also past the point where companies could justify the economics of building affordable EVs at low volumes. The question now is whether legacy automakers can actually compete in the segment of truly affordable vehicles, or whether this segment will be dominated by Chinese manufacturers who have developed more efficient cost structures.

The Bolt's return suggests that legacy automakers are still trying to compete in this segment, at least to some degree. But the "limited time only" language suggests they're doing so reluctantly. This might be the future of the affordable EV market: legacy manufacturers building just enough affordable models to satisfy regulatory and political requirements, while Chinese manufacturers eat their lunch in terms of volume and profitability.

For consumers, this has one clear implication: if you want an affordable EV and you live in the U.S., you should probably buy one soon. The window for affordable American-made EVs might be closing, and the next generation of affordable EVs might not be available in the American market for years.

Conclusion: A Reprieve, Not A Revolution

The Chevrolet Bolt is back, and that's genuinely significant news for consumers who want an affordable EV. The new battery technology is better, the charging speed is much faster, and the price is competitive given the alternatives available in the American market.

But the Bolt's return isn't a sign that GM has suddenly become committed to affordable vehicles. It's a sign that GM felt pressure to bring back a car it didn't want to build, and the company is building it only for a limited time while figuring out a longer-term strategy.

The Bolt represents a middle ground that probably won't last. Eventually, GM will either embrace affordable EVs as a core part of its business strategy—which seems unlikely given the company's margin concerns—or the Bolt will be discontinued again, probably without much warning.

For the next few years, the Bolt will be a solid option for someone shopping for an affordable EV. The range is adequate, the charging speed is competitive, and the price is right. But treat it as a reprieve, not a revolution. The future of affordable vehicles in America probably involves more Chinese options and fewer domestic ones, unless legacy manufacturers dramatically rethink their strategies.

The Bolt had a good run the first time. Whether it has a good run this time—and for how long—remains to be seen.