The 25 Best Inventions of 2016
20. A Crowd-Pleasing Electric Car
For most buyers, electric vehicles fall into two camps: too expensive (think the $66,000 Tesla Model S) and too limited (the Nissan Leaf gets just 100 miles per charge). General Motors aims to bridge that gap with the Chevrolet Bolt, which touts crowd-pleasing features, like more than 200 miles of driving on a single charge, at a relatively low cost. “This is an opportunity to take electric cars mainstream,” GM engineer Pamela Fletcher says of the Bolt, set to launch in December.
One industry analyst estimates that GM could sell as many as 80,000 Bolts next year, which would boost the overall market by almost 67%—a small but significant step toward reducing our collective reliance on planet-warming fossil fuels.