Will the Chevy Bolt EV Ruin the Car Industry?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 3:38AM EST · Published Sep 13, 9:10AM EDT

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Will the Chevy Bolt EV Ruin the Car Industry? — © courtesy of Chevrolet

Electric vehicles have at least three drawbacks as far as customers are concerned. They take too long to charge. Cheap oil makes traditional vehicles affordable. Electric cars can only go 200 miles. Once these factors fall away, electric cars will gain a great deal of appeal.

General Motors Co.’s (NYSE: GM) Chevy partially answered one of these. Its new Bolt EV has a 238-mile range:

Chevrolet promised to offer the first affordable electric vehicle with 200 miles or more of range and will exceed those expectations when the 2017 Bolt EV goes on sale later this year. With the vehicle’s EPA-estimated range of 238 miles, owners can expect to go beyond their average daily driving needs — with plenty of range to spare — in the 2017 Bolt EV when charging regularly.

That is a trip from New York to Boston without a stop.

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One of the primary appeals of the Bolt EV is its price. GM has not announced one, but based on the price of its stablemate Volt at $33,220, it probably will be low enough to compete with Tesla Motors Inc.’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) Model 3.

From Karl Brauer, a senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book, made an extraordinary comment:

There’s no denying Tesla’s influence on the automotive industry, and the arrival of the Chevrolet Bolt is probably Tesla’s most impactful result yet. GM would have developed an EV to help it meet CAFE standards, but Tesla proved there’s a real-world market for an EV with real-world mileage. Except Chevrolet went one better than Tesla, offering its real-world EV with real-world pricing, making it the first viable, mainstream EV in the automobile’s 130-year history.

The case has been made over and over that gas-powered cars will rule the road for decades. Probably that depends and the price, availability and usability of electric cars, and the price of gas. While a number of the world’s largest car companies are well along in releasing electric cars, Chevy has at least one advantage. It is GM’s largest brand, with a massive dealer network and a reputation that is a century old.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.