Bolt EUV

Make
Chevrolet
Segment
SUV

If headlights are like windows into the soul of a car, then Chevrolet's forthcoming Bolt EUV is a sophisticated creature. GM just showed off the Electric Utility Vehicle's headlamps for the first time, and they feature Chevrolet's first-ever combination daytime running lamp and sequential turn indicator. A strip of LEDs along the lower edge of either headlight lights up solid white until the turn signal is activated, at which point a stream of yellow spreads from the inside out to signal a coming turn or lane change.

It's a neat effect, and one that would have had essentially no business being on an affordable mass-market vehicle until just a few years ago.

Design features like the Chevrolet Bolt EUV's headlamps may seem minorly significant, but they're one of the ways that automakers attempt to differentiate their products and communicate something about what they stand for. In this case, Chevrolet is likely trying to telegraph that like the headlights, the Bolt EUV itself is new and unlike anything that's come before it. That's an important message to get across as GM braces to reinvent itself around electrification over the coming years.

It's no accident that Chevrolet has tapped the Bolt EUV to carry its first-ever implementation of the semi-autonomous Super Cruise system that debuted on the Cadillac CT6 several years ago.

When it launches next summer, the 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV will face an unlikely predator in the form of Ford's new Mustang Mach-E, but Chevrolet is hoping its more traditional crossover approach will prevail. Last month, the company teased a rather high-tech-looking cabin with a big, tablet-sized central infotainment screen and a digital instrument panel. The crossover will ride on GM's BEV2 platform, eschewing the more advanced "Ultium" platform that will underpin the forthcoming GMC Hummer EV, and it will launch alongside a thoroughly revised Bolt hatchback,