The Affordable 2027 Chevy Bolt Is A Heavy Update To The Old One. That Wasn’t Easy

Right out of the gate, the 2027 Chevrolet Bolt is an interesting animal. Priced at $29,000, it’s due to be the cheapest new electric vehicle for sale in the United States. But it’s not a “new” car, in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s an extremely heavy update to the old Bolt—a familiar body with new batteries, motors, software, over-the-air update capabilities, modern safety tech and more under the skin. 

That no doubt helped keep its price down. But making this happen was a bigger engineering challenge than you may think, and General Motors’ people had to find some clever ways to rise to the occasion. 

That kicks off this Monday edition of Critical Materials, our morning roundup of industry and technology news. Also on deck today: Waymo may have a school bus problem, and Chinese EV giant BYD’s plans for the Japanese market come into focus. 

30%: Inside The Bolt’s Big Makeover

Photo by: Chevrolet

GM discontinued the Bolt at the end of 2023, something the carmaker’s president recently told us was a regettable decision. That’s because, as popular as the previous Bolt was, its battery setup made it broadly unprofitable. GM aims to actually make money on the new Bolt instead. (Imagine that!) Pre-production 2027 Bolts are now coming off the assembly lines, and customer deliveries will start in January.

Retooling an older car with modern gear is probably why the costs stayed low and why the turnaround time was so quick. But as veteran EV journalist (and InsideEVs contributor) John Voelcker explains at Car and Driver, extensive renovations can be just as tough as building something new, if not more so. Some highlights:

Bolt chief engineer Jeremy Short spoke exclusively with Car and Driver after the car was shown to current Bolt owners last week at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. He said the hardest single part of the project was changing every electrical component on the vehicle while tooling from the Orion Assembly plant in Michigan was being reinstalled at a different GM plant in Fairfax, Kansas. That made rapid design changes more challenging, since development prototypes weren’t yet coming off the lines as new features were finalized.

It was obvious the new Bolt would need a modern battery. But as the company’s least expensive EV, it would have to cost as little as possible. That led GM to adopt lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) cells, becoming its first North American EV to use them. They come from a Chinese supplier, and the company will likely swallow significant import penalties until its own LFP cells come off the line at its Spring Hill, Tennessee, cell plant in late 2027.

“Everything electrical is new” on the 2027 Bolt versus its predecessor, Short said, from switches and wires to control modules and high-voltage components… For both the electrical architecture and the powertrain, many components were taken wholesale from the larger Chevrolet Equinox EV. That compact electric SUV has sold well since it finally hit the market in May 2024, and using its high-volume components further cuts GM’s costs.

That story’s worth a read in full. Sadly, this software update means the Bolt loses Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which the old one used to have. But overall, it’s not a bad way at all to deliver a modern product within the parameters of what people expected from the previous one. Just don’t think that job was an easy one.

60%: Waymo Under Investigation For Safety Issues Around School Buses

Photo by: InsideEVs

As carmakers, tech firms and other concerns chase increasingly autonomous driving, Google’s Waymo remains the gold standard for the whole field. It boasts more than 100 million fully autonomous miles on public roads, seems to announce an expansion into a new city each week, and claims to have a better safety record than human drivers. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. 

Reuters today reports that America’s auto safety regulator, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), has opened a probe into about 2,000 Waymo self-driving vehicles. The issue, apparently, is how they behave around stopped school buses:

The probe is the latest federal review of self-driving systems as regulators scrutinize how driverless technologies interact with pedestrians, cyclists and other road users.

NHTSA said the Office of Defects Investigation opened the review after flagging a media report describing an incident in which a Waymo autonomous vehicle did not remain stationary when approaching a school bus with its red lights flashing, stop arm deployed and crossing control arm extended.

The report said the Waymo vehicle initially stopped beside the bus then maneuvered around its front, passing the extended stop arm and crossing control arm while students were disembarking.

A Waymo spokesperson said the company has “already developed and implemented improvements related to stopping for school buses and will land additional software updates in our next software release.”

Not what you want, when kids are running around. That incident happened in Atlanta and thankfully, no injuries were reported. But it’s another example of the challenges facing autonomous vehicles: they have to be better and safer than human drivers, in all situations, every single time. 

90%: BYD To Launch In Japan With Heavy Discounts, Challenge To Dealer Model

Photo by: BYD

One industry story I’m very interested in is BYD’s launch in Japan. The Chinese EV and hybrid giant has making rapid inroads into almost every car market on earth, but Japan is a notoriously difficult nut to crack. Buyers are extremely loyal to their homegrown brands, wary of plug-in vehicles and generally skeptical of imports—save for the odd Mini or Renault, or BMW and Mercedes on the higher end. 

As we’ve reported previously, BYD will enter Japan stressing its value proposition. Low prices, discounts and incentives will hopefully entice Japanese buyers, as will a forthcoming kei-car-sized EV. From Nikkei Asia today, here are more details:

Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD and Japan’s Aeon will enter into a sales alliance by the end of this year, Nikkei has learned. With the major retail chain’s discounts and incentive programs, consumers will be able to buy an electric car for less than 2 million yen ($13,300).

Aeon will initially set up sections handling the new service inside some 30 of its commercial facilities and general merchandise stores across the nation. The expected deal may change Japan’s conventional automobile distribution structure that is dominated by dealerships affiliated with carmakers.

[…] Buyers will be allowed to opt for a discount on vehicle prices, have reward points added to their Waon electronic money issued by Aeon or a get subsidy for battery charger installation at their home.

The purchase incentives will amount to several hundred thousand yen. Combined with central and local government subsidies for buying EVs, purchase incentives will total some 1 million yen. For example, the price of the Dolphin, BYD’s mainline compact EV, is expected to fall below 2 million yen from 2.99 million yen.

While Japan’s car market is comparably small—about 4.5 million new vehicles were sold there last year—if BYD can pull this off, it will be quite a victory for its global expansion plans.

100%: How ‘New’ Do You Need Your New Car To Be?

Photo by: Patrick George

GM’s approach to the Bolt is a novel one. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen as extensive an “update” to an “older” model as I have here. But other examples in the industry abound, like the latest Nissan Z or even the gas-powered Ford Mustang. Both are very heavy re-works of exsting platforms rather than fresh new hardware. It’s not a bad way to deliver something “new” while keeping costs down.

Plus, how much does that actually matter to the consumer? And how “new” does a “new car” need to be? 

I have a 2024 Kia EV6, which is a fantastic EV that’s already starting to feel a bit dated compared to some of the other cars I drive for work. And right now, I’m testing a Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid. It feels a bit like a car from 2015, but the hybrid system is impressive, and the thing just gets the job done.

How important to you are the latest and most cutting-edge features? Or are you willing to go with an older, perhaps more dated “new” car if it simply works like you want it to? Let us know you thoughts in the comments.

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com