We've had a brief drive in Chevy's new Bolt, and we learned its price back in January, and now—perhaps in hopes of drawing a bit of attention away from that price and range competitor from Brand T—Chevy is revealing quite a few more details about its 200-plus-mile affordable electric car. Always keen to under-promise and over-deliver, the Bolt engineers are still cagey about exactly how far north of 200 miles the EPA window-sticker range will land or exactly how much quicker than 7 seconds it will accelerate to 60 mph (Tesla is claiming 215 miles and less than 6 seconds for its 2017 Model 3), but they're revealing a lot more info about the battery pack, motor, and drive unit.

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The 60-kW-hr battery pack was co-developed with and is fully assembled by LG Chem in Korea. It employs 288 prismatic pouch cells (each 3.9 inches tall by 13.1 inches wide) that are curiously packaged in pairs but wired in three-cell groups. Their chemistry is similar to that used on the Spark EV but with a bit more nickel content to allow it to operate at a slightly higher temperature. The whole setup is considerably different from that of the extended-range Volt, as the Bolt requires energy-storage optimization whereas the Volt needs a balance between power delivery and energy storage. Capitalizing on copious lessons learned in the second-gen Volt and Spark EV, this battery holds more than triple the energy of the Spark EV battery pack (60.0 versus 18.4 kW-hrs) but weighs just over twice as much (961 versus 474 pounds).

The pack assembly is tightly packaged with almost nothing but the cells, the wiring connecting them, and the 6.9-liter DexCool plumbing system that warms and cools them inside the structural pack. Moving most of the control and charging gear outside the pack simplifies serviceability. Bolting in the battery pack with its structural steel tray and five beefy cross-car beams increases the vehicle's torsional rigidity by 28 percent. That structure also protects the battery cells in the NHTSA NCAP side-impact pole test. The battery is expected to last the useful life of the car and will carry an eight-year/100,000-mile warranty.

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Fully recharging a discharged battery pack will take about 9 hours using a typical Level 2 home charger and the 7.2-kW onboard charger. A 50-kW direct-current combo "fast charger" of the type used at all EVgo locations will be capable of adding 90 miles of range in 30 minutes. A Tesla Supercharger can add 170 miles in the same time. These 50-kW stations aren't as ideal for long-distance travel, but they're positioned to allow L.A.-San Francisco travel, and a similar corridor in the northeast is nearly complete. So if you're hell-bent on electrified cross-country road tripping, the Tesla Model 3 is the "affordable EV" for you. On the other hand, the DC fast-charge combo protocol is an SAE standard, not a brand-unique one, so chargers of this design are likely to proliferate farther and wider than Tesla Superchargers. (Of course, Teslas can use these chargers, too, with an adaptor.)

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The Bolt's single front-mounted motor is remarkably compact thanks to many lessons learned in previous EV programs. The switched-reluctance permanent-magnet design leverages technology we covered in the second-gen Volt. The magnets themselves are formed with the heaviest, fanciest rare earth material—dysprosium—carefully located where it does the most good, dramatically reducing the amount of this material required. The magnets are placed in V-shaped recesses in the rotor, just like they are in the Volt's larger "B" motor. Then the stator uses the same copper bar windings that concentrate far more electrical current in a smaller volume than round-section wire could. The end result is a very compact package that packs a 200-hp/266-lb-ft punch. Power density is up 56 percent relative to the comparatively low-tech Spark EV motor.

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In order to meet targets for acceleration (sub-7.0 seconds), grade climbing (30 percent), and general passing performance, and thanks to the fact that the new motor can spin much faster than the Spark EV's (8,810 rpm versus 4,500), the single-speed transmission runs a much shorter gear ratio than did the Spark EV—7.05:1 versus 3.87:1. (Also note that the Bolt uses a more efficient two-stage helical gear reduction, while the Spark used a planetary gearset.) With that gearing it delivers 1,844 lb-ft of axle torque, 583 more than the Spark. This apparently more than offsets the Bolt's 600 pounds of added curb weight because the Spark EV took 7.5 seconds to hit 60 in our testing.

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Playing devil's advocate (and Tesla Model 3 cross-shopper) we inquired as to whether the Bolt could at some later date incorporate all-wheel drive as Tesla claims the Model 3 will. We got the standard "no comment on future product" reply, but it certainly appears as though adding a rear motor would require a redesign of the trailing twist-beam rear suspension and/or other major structural modifications, so don't hold your breath on that front. Insane and ludicrous acceleration modes therefore seem equally unlikely. But the Bolt should hit the road at least a year ahead of the Model 3, and because GM has delivered about 100,000 federal tax-credit-qualifying EVs to date, the supply of credit-eligible Bolts may well outnumber the tax-break-qualifying Model 3s. Then again, maybe EVs are like smartphones, and an Apple user would never consider a Samsung. …