It’s not often that a car returns to production after being officially declared dead, but that’s what General Motors did with the 2027 Chevy Bolt EV. The automaker has also said the affordable electric’s return will be brief, lasting only 18 months, but Mandi Damman, the Bolt EV’s executive chief engineer, told us that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
Soon after GM announced that it would cancel the Bolt EV to make room at its Michigan assembly plant for electric Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups (only to experience difficulties with the switchover and slow sales once production finally ramped up), plans to resurrect it were put into action. The assembly line was moved from Michigan to Kansas, where another plant had excess capacity, and parts were squirreled away to build prototypes of what would become the 2027 Bolt EV.
But as with the Michigan plant, GM anticipates having to kick the Bolt EV out of the Kansas plant soon to free up capacity for other vehicles. So we asked Damman whether the process could be repeated, with assembly-line equipment moved and parts and development resources stockpiled once again until a new production site could be found.
“In theory, yes,” Damman said, without commenting on whether that will actually happen. She said the Bolt EV’s price point and strong customer loyalty—even higher than that of Corvette owners, she said—were both factors in the decision to bring it back. They also sound like they’ll still be relevant in 18 months.
At $28,995 (including a $1,395 destination fee), the Bolt EV is the least-expensive EV in the U.S., beating the Nissan Leaf by a small margin. That’s important given the dearth of affordable new cars on the market—electric or otherwise—and slowing EV sales. The time when every new EV introduction is met with a wave of pre-orders and dealer markups is over. And if Bolt EV owners like their cars even more than Corvette owners, GM must be doing something right. Hopefully, it doesn’t repeat history and kill this good idea again.
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