GM to reveal Chevrolet Bolt, a 200-mile electric car for $30,000

In a surprise move, General Motors will reveal on Monday plans to build an electric car called the Chevrolet Bolt in two years — one that can travel 200 miles on a full charge, and cost roughly $30,000, a direct challenge to the plans of Elon Musk's Tesla Motors.

As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, GM will unveil the Bolt concept Monday at the Detroit auto show, with an eye towards starting production in 2017. As envisioned, the car would compete head-on with the forthcoming Tesla Model 3, which Musk has said would target similar specs and timing, and the Bolt would be sold nationwide — a significant expansion of GM's electric-car efforts. While the automaker will reveal a new version of the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid on Monday as well, its only current pure electric car, the small Chevrolet Spark, is sold in California and Oregon only, and sales totaled all of 1,145 for 2014, according to HybridCars.com.

GM executives have said in the past that the company was working on a 200-mile EV, a standard that could overcome "range anxiety" among mainstream customers. While low gas prices have hurt sales of efficient vehicles overall, electric-car sales grew in 2014, thanks mostly to federal and state government incentives; sales of the Nissan Leaf rose by a third this year to 30,200 in the United States.