Chevy touts Bolt as special, but not weird

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Chevrolet Bolt has been described as General Motors' electric moonshot, a Tesla fighter and a game changer.

But Chevy wants consumers to see the Bolt as something else: a regular car.

In a market that's still blase about electric vehicles, Chevy sees the Bolt's ability to fit seamlessly with the rest of its lineup as key to its hopes for significant sales volumes. Confident that the car's battery range of 200-plus miles is enough for most situations, designers and engineers who showed it off at a media testing event here last week focused on the Bolt's ride quality, handling, connectivity technology and utility.

"If you're going to go to the masses, it can't be this quirky thing," said the Bolt's chief engineer, Mike Lelli. "There are lots of people who like the car not because it's zero-emissions but because of the way it drives."

Quirkiness has long been a hallmark of hybrids and plug-in cars, with Toyota quickly discovering that Prius drivers wanted styling that made their environmental consciousness obvious from a half-mile away. BMW's i3 is among the most conspicuous cars on the road, and Tesla didn't put a pair of falcon-wing doors on its Model X to blend in.

Chevy thinks the Bolt, the first long-range EV to sell for less than $40,000, can be the car that brings EVs into the mainstream. Its design is distinctive enough to earn an approving nod from a Prius owner during a test drive along the Pacific Coast. But for most passersby, and more importantly, from inside the driver's seat, the Bolt is made to look and feel familiar and conventional, albeit with a 10.2-inch touch screen on the instrument panel and a 960-pound battery pack underfoot. 

"There was an emphasis in making the car special rather than stand out as weird," said Stuart Norris, the Bolt's South Korea-based design director. "We need it to work for more than just the die-hard EV fans."

Chevy is starting to work the Bolt into its "Real People, Not Actors" commercials, not by making it the central focus but rather by casually parking it alongside other nameplates. Company officials are proud that the Bolt has won mainstream awards, such as Car and Driver's "10 Best Cars" list for 2017. (The publication said the Bolt delivered "the range and price we were promised with better performance than we expected.")

The Chevy Volt that GM introduced in 2010 likewise racked up awards, but people saw it as anything but normal. The Volt's T-shaped battery pack limited space in the rear seat to two people, and GM had trouble convincing people that they could use it in their normal routines, despite its extended range. Volt sales fell far short of internal expectations. 

GM decided early in the Bolt's development process that packaging it as a small crossover -- thus targeting one of the industry's fastest-growing segments -- and focusing on making it a standout for reasons other than its lack of a gasoline tank would greatly increase its potential. The spacious interior, which measures one class larger than the exterior dimensions, makes the car practical for ferrying small groups of passengers in the Lyft and Maven fleets and gives owners the versatility to use it for more than just commuting to work. 

"It wasn't, "Let's take a Sonic and strap a battery pack on it,'" said Steve Majoros, Chevy's marketing director for cars and crossovers. "And it's not a single-occupant, Monday-through-Friday car. It's got to meet expectations for a car in general."