Image Credit Stuart Goldenberg

Before we get to the Bolt’s implications, let me describe the car. Most of the lower-priced fully electric cars on the road today — vehicles like the Nissan Leaf, the BMW i3 or Volkswagen e-Golf — are afflicted with a problem that is a nonstarter for many Americans. They get, at most, around 100 miles per charge. That is enough for a lot of people to get to work and back, but not enough to let them feel entirely comfortable about it.

At the other end of the spectrum are Tesla’s luxury rides, the Model S and Model X, which each get more than 200 miles per charge, enough to put to rest any range anxiety. But relief comes at a cost. After federal rebates, the S starts at $66,000, and the X starts at $74,000.

The Bolt isn’t a luxury car. It’s surprisingly spacious inside (it could easily accommodate two car seats for my children) and has a nicely designed touch-screen infotainment panel. But it looks and largely drives like a generic compact car. What is revolutionary about the Bolt is that it bridges category distinctions — it brings luxury car electric range at mass-market prices. In fact, it beats the luxuries. In their cheapest configurations, every Tesla gets a lower range than the Bolt.

“Normally for electric vehicles we talk about going from point A to point B and back to A,” said Darin Gesse, G.M.’s product manager for the Bolt. “This car is designed to go from A to B to C to D and back to A, so it has more of a lifestyle focus, and it’s not just a commuter car.”

How did G.M. create Tesla’s dream car first? There is a lot to it, as I saw on a tour of the company’s Bolt operations. G.M. started building one of the world’s most advanced battery testing facilities in 2008, around the time the company faced imminent death after the financial crisis. The car that emerged out of that research, the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt, can be said to have literally saved the company. The Volt was frequently held up as evidence of G.M.’s creativity by politicians who favored a bailout of Detroit. President Obama, who led the successful rescue, said in 2012 that he would buy a Volt after he left office.

Image Parts of a Bolt battery in a lab at the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Mich. Credit Laura McDermott for The New York Times

Most of G.M.’s advantages come down to size and operational efficiency. Tesla has had to build a huge factory to produce the Model 3’s batteries at scale. G.M. batteries are being outsourced to the electronics giant LG Chem. Tesla has had to retool a car-making facility in Fremont, Calif., for its own purposes, while G.M. is tapping into its existing production system. At the company’s Orion Assembly plant outside of Detroit, I saw Bolts on the same line as gas-powered Chevy Sonics and Buick Veranos. Robots and workers seamlessly shifted between the Bolt and more traditional cars as if nothing was different.

Finally, G.M. enjoys the regulatory advantage of producing a fleet. Because the high-mileage, zero-emission Bolt helps the company stay under the federal government’s fuel-economy standards, it perversely allows G.M. to keep selling more profitable, gas-guzzling cars, like the Tahoe S.U.V. As a result, G.M. could lose money on each Bolt and still find the overall project valuable to its bottom line.