If you're in the market for a car, there are some good reasons not to buy Chevrolet's new Bolt EV. Maybe you insist on leather seats, take long road trips to the middle of nowhere or have a boat to tow around. If not, GM's new long-range electric vehicle will be at the very least entirely sufficient for your needs. At best, it will be a giddy surprise.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The first affordable electric car to top 200 miles on a single charge was expected to be a vehicle of compromise, a bundle of "buts." Indeed, the most impressive things about the Bolt are the attributes it lacks. The car is not tiny, boring or slow. And it handily topped its goal, coming in with an EPA-estimated 238-mile range, almost exactly the distance between New York and Boston or Washington, D.C.

It is not, however, a looker. "Pragmatic" is probably the best adjective to describe the car. It looks like a stubby pod, cluttered by a smattering of busy design cues — swooping creases, bits of black plastic, and too many lights. The odd design works like clown-car magic on the interior, however. Chevy managed to peg the driver's seat high for a commanding view of the road, while leaving plenty of headroom for tall people in the front seats and in back.

The Bolt's design is neither futuristic nor timeless, but that's likely the point. GM has boldly designed electric cars in the past, and it didn't go so well. The Bolt simply looks like a lot of other contemporary cars — a little Buick Encore, a little Honda HR-V and a dash of BMW i3. The shape grows on you. It's athletic — small without being wimpy, sturdy without being bloated.

The 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV. ((Chevrolet))

Nice ride

Forget about curb appeal. On the road, the Bolt is charming. It's quick, even for an electric car, thanks to a relative dearth of weight and clever gearing of the electric motor. It accelerates eagerly all the way up to its 95 mph limit.

Steering is tight and precise with plenty of weight and feedback. The ride is simultaneously forgiving and firm, thanks to GM's chasis-tuning expertise and the big slab of a battery. The 60 kwh lithium-ion monolith keeps the vehicle grounded through turns, stiffens the frame and absorbs the typical vibration that comes with pushing a box of metal through the air at highway speed.

That massive battery, however, comes at a hefty price. GM spends about $9,000 on each one compared with a couple hundred bucks it costs to build a small gasoline engine. The yawning chasm of cost is clearly recouped somewhat inside the car. The cockpit is a cheap collage of plastic and hard rubber that feels down-market even on a $30,000 vehicle. It is "nice" in the way Ikea furniture is "nice," which is to say it is thoughtful, pragmatic, and not terrible looking. You just don't want to touch it too much.

The important bits are better. The 10.2-inch touchscreen in the dash is responsive and intuitive to use. There's WiFi that actually works. Behind the steering wheel, the 8-inch digital gauge cluster is sharp and useful. In addition to the current speed, it prominently displays a real-time array of ranges: the maximum, minimum and average amount of miles left on the battery, which are constantly calculated based on how the car is being driven and how hard the climate control system is working. Chevrolet appears to be almost bragging about the car's range and, like most electric carmakers, it subtly encourages efficient driving by gamifying the experience.

One of the Bolt's best features is a regenerative braking paddle behind the wheel, which simultaneously slows the car and recharges the battery when pulled. After 20 minutes of driving, I found myself hardly using the floor pedal. It's addictive, engaging and a constant prompt of the car's raison d'être.

Beating Tesla

So how did GM pull off a $30,000 car with 200 miles of range? Tesla's promise to deliver on the same equation is still about a year away. Many have expressed surprise about how soundly GM beat the most innovative car company in the world to the punch. But this race wasn't won by engineering brilliance. It was a financial battle between David and Goliath. This time, Goliath won, which shouldn't shock anyone who understands economies of scale.

At Tesla, unit economics are a brutal reality. With only two cars right now, the company's fortunes rocket or swoon every time it misses or beats production estimates by 1,000 vehicles.

GM can spread costs and revenue over a fleet of about 40 vehicles and four separate brands.

GM didn't need to go on a building spree either. It's had an assembly plant outside Detroit since 1983, and it's been building Chevrolet Sonics there for five years. Batteries, meanwhile, are just another part that can be ordered. GM was able to source its power-packs from LG Chem in Korea.

The company is expected to lose somewhere in the neighborhood of $9,000 per Bolt, but it likely doesn't crunch the numbers that way. The vehicle is part R&D exercise and part marketing expense.

"Tesla loses money on every car, too," said Bill Visnic, editorial director of the Society of Automobile Engineers; GM is just better equipped to mitigate that loss and leverage it into gains elsewhere.

In a few years, a long-range, affordable electric car will no longer be a novelty. Chevrolet has simply made a very good version of that machine before anyone else. It's a winner-take-all market, but only for the next few months when competitors will begin rolling off the line. Almost every automaker has now committed to making electric vehicles, most recently Fiat-Chrysler and Mercedes.

Chevrolet says early demand for the Bolt is outstripping supply, but when we strolled through GM's Orion Assembly Plant, it was making only about 100 of them a day. Chevy churns out Camaros twice as fast. But GM didn't make the Bolt because it thought it would outsell its most popular models. It made it because it could.

Kyle Stock,

Bloomberg News

AT A GLANCE: 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV

Vehicle type: Five-passenger, four-door hatchback

Base price: $37,495

Powertrain: Electric with 200 horsepower and 266 pound-feet of torque

Fuel economy rating: 128/110 mpg equivalent

Performance: 0 to 60 mph in 6.5 seconds

SOURCES: GM; Car and Driver