The Chevrolet Bolt EV will be here before you know it.
General Motors said on Tuesday that it's gearing up to take electric the car into production. It says it's on schedule to begin production vehicles by the end of this year.
Engineers working on the Bolt EV are currently working alongside assembly plant workers in GM's Orion Township facility to finalize the tools and processes that will ultimatley be used for retail production. The company also published new images of a pre-production model and released a video of the upcoming car.
The Bolt EV, of course, is GM's first electric vehicle with a range of 200-plus miles per charge. The car will price at about $30,000 after tax incentives.
“We’re at another critical and important point in the development of the Bolt EV,” Josh Tavel, Bolt EV Chief Engineer, said in a press statement. “We’ve moved from working in math and building cars by hand to building Bolt EV’s on the line. We’re now testing the tooling used in the plant so that we deliver a high quality 200-plus mile EV that our customers are eagerly anticipating.”
The fact that GM is on schedule to begin production on time is significant because it means the company will have a huge time advantage over Tesla, which is also planning to launch a long-range, mass market car.
Tesla's next car, dubbed the Model 3, is expected to be revealed at the end of this month, but won't go into production until the end of 2017. Like the Bolt EV, the Model 3 is expected to have a range of 200-plus miles and fall into a similar price range.
You can learn more about what to expect from the Model 3 here.
However, it's worth noting that the Model 3 will begin pricing at $35,000 before tax incentives, which means that with tax incentives, the cost could drop as low as $25,000 in some states.
GM's Bolt EV begins pricing at $37,500 before tax incentives.
Check out the video of the car coming together in the factory below.
