Way back in 2023, I called out Chevrolet for some significant design problems with the Chevy Bolt’s taillights, which used an idiotic method that was so confusing at least one owner resorted to printing special stickers they applied to the car that explained to confused drivers just what the hell the taillights did. I can’t think of a worse or more embarassing condemnation of a taillight design than that, where owners are having to make their own add-on explainer stickers.
The issue with these taillights – and I should note, it’s not just the Bolt that is guilty of the particular error I’m about to describe, also in the GM stable is the Buick Envista and some Kias and Hyundais, too – is that the brake and turn indicators are set very low on the bumper, while a larger, more obvious set of taillights that are just restricted to the running lights, are above, set in locations that one normally expects to see full taillights.
This arrangement is, as you likely have noticed for yourself, confusing and frustrating.
I mean, just look at these stickers that poor Bolt owner had to resort to:
Appalling!
While all of these taillight designs are embarrassing failures, it’s worth remembering that there really is no better teacher than failure, and our pals over at GM seem to have finally understood the assignment. I say this because the 2027 Chevy Bolt finally puts the brake lights and indicators in a place where real human beings know where to look:
…and here’s some confirmation from an outside source; I also thought it was good for you to hear a normal, well-adjusted person mention this, so you’d know it’s not just a beef with taillight obsessives like myself:
See? it’s not just me!
Also significant is that the Buick Envista also appears to have updated taillights that move these important lights to a reasonable location, at least that’s what appears to be happening based on spy shots of a partially-disguised 2027 Buick Envista.
The point of all of this is that, sometimes, kvetching and griping about something works. I believe that GM had noted all of the people complaining about the poor taillight design, and when the time came to give the Bolt a face (and butt) lift, they made a change.
The system works, people! Now if we can only get Hyundai/Kia to cave into the pressure! Keep fighting the good fight!
Top photo: GM
Is GM still making cars that turn on the reverse lights for…some reason…unrelated to backing up? That would be the next item.
My 2024 equinox has such tail lights. They turn the reverse light on to, I guess, help you find your car. But specifically when you hit the un-lock button the reverse lights illuminate. So, you know, like in parking lots where there are also cars that might be actually reversing.
In mine this can be turned off in the settings. But I believe that 99% of the people who own these cars are unaware of any of this.
GM calls it Exit Lighting, and yes. It can be turned off.
I don’t remember my Lyriq doing it, but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. My Cruze, though, definitely did.
Yes, they turn for about a minute after parking your car. They say it’s to add some light for safety but it’s very confusing for most people
The worst.
1st-gen Bolt was slightly questionable with the turn signals in the bumper, but at least the brake lights were where you’d expect them to be. Then for the refresh they made it worse! How very GM. At least they reversed.
No one going to comment on how much of an improvement the “flat” bottom of the tailgate/bumper transition is?
That change is part of why the taillights were able to move back to “Normal” locations. That clamshell tailgate required stoplamps mounted where they’d be visible, even if the gate was open. That meant lights in the bumper, unfortunately.
Or due to safety regs… a 2nd set of brake lights on the inside of the rear hatch, just in case you are stopped on the side of a busy highway at night with your rear hatch open, so there are brake lights that are still visible by approaching cars.
Lucid did this (2nd set of brake lights) w/in the Lucid Air trunk
Seems kind of weird but I get the intent of the regulation
GM and Hyundai/Kia among Im sure others that have designers making clamshell rear hatch is the despised bumper mounted lights
Simplistic answer is dont have a silly clamshell rear hatch so the rear lights can All be where everyone expects them in the 1st place!
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We had two ’23 Bolts (an EV and an EUV). Both had the stupid lower brake lights.
I resorted to adding a cheap brake flasher for the top brake light onto the cars to prevent getting rear ended.
Before you go off on brake flashers, note the one I picked was configurable. I had them set for 4 quick flashes, then on steady + a 60 second time delay between enablement, so if you are in stop and go traffic, after the first brake, the brake lights worked normally (no blink, just off/on with the pedal). They worked well, were easy to install, and not very annoying for anyone coming up from behind.
We actually loved both cars. Small wheel base and plenty of instant torque made for fun little rides. Nothing wrong with the 23s other than the brake lights and death fangs on the EV hatch, but wanted a bit more for our daily so I up’d our game from the EUV to an Ioniq 6 Limited AWD sedan EV (faster, quieter, more stuff, AWD, faster). My daughter with the 23′ Bolt EV moved where there’s no level-2 charging as an option, so she sold hers and went with an Escape PHEV . Now she can -almost- make her entire daily commute on a single charge.
Nice they fixed the lights, but I still don’t think for a second that GM is learning from their mistakes. Let me know when they put CarPlay / AA back into the cars, then I might be interested. That’s proof-positive that they are still NOT listening to their customers
I was in a RAV4 last week with a CarPlay implementation that made me want to stab the screen with a screwdriver.
At least the 1st-generation Bolt in that one image only has the turn signals in the bumper, and the brake lights are where any normal human would expect them to be. I still agree that zero signal lights should be that low, unless they’re redundant, but it’s better than the brake AND turn signals being down there.
Yes, the light situation has been fixed, but styiling-wise, this is one of those cases where, had I not been told, I would have never been able to tell which is the old one and which is the new one. I guess designers did the 2023 in the morning, the 2027 restyling in the afternoon, put it in a drawer and took a 4-year well-deserved break.
I literally almost rear-ended an Envista recently because of this! Like even the CHMSL didn’t register in my brain because the brake lights were just so low (and dim IIRC – it was during the day)
I was behind one over the weekend…all I could think was, who the hell thought this was a good idea, and why did so many other idiots approve it?
Jason, you actually explained the reason for bumper-mounted rear indicators yourself in your January 2023 article, “Turn Signals In Rear Bumpers Are Just Bad.” You correctly pointed out that the lighting has to remain visible when a tailgate or trunk lid is open, and you identified three engineering solutions: keep the lamps off the movable panel, put the functions on the bumper, or duplicate the lamps. (The Autopian)
The part I think you keep overlooking is that this isn’t merely a matter of where drivers “expect” taillights to be.
UNECE Regulation No. 48 contains specific requirements for lamps installed on movable components. Under §5.18, the applicable position, geometric-visibility and photometric requirements have to be satisfied at the fixed positions of the movable component. §5.21 also limits how much rear position lamps and rear direction indicators may be obscured by a movable component, with additional lamps being one of the permitted solutions.
Australia’s ADR 13/00 follows the same basic regulatory philosophy and specifies actual geometric-visibility angles. For example, rear position lamps require visibility 45° inward and 80° outward. ADR 13 also provides for additional lamps where equipment or accessories would otherwise compromise compliance.
This is why the apparently redundant lighting arrangements on vehicles such as the Land Rover Discovery/Defender and other SUVs with tailgate-mounted spare wheels exist. The designer isn’t necessarily putting lamps on the bumper because somebody forgot that drivers have eyes. The designer may be solving a very specific geometric-visibility problem created by a movable tailgate, spare wheel, or both.
And there’s an important distinction here: I agree that a high-mounted indicator may be easier for a driver to notice. That’s a perfectly reasonable design argument. But it isn’t the same thing as saying the lower lamp is a “mistake.”
Ironically, your own January 2023 article already explained the regulatory reason these lamps exist. (The Autopian)
So, after three years of revisiting the subject, perhaps the next article could be about the actual lighting regulations and why manufacturers arrive at these apparently redundant designs in the first place.
The engineering is more interesting than simply declaring the lamps stupid.
Now, another case of “Bumper Taillamp Derangement Syndrome”®
I object. The Torch shall not be bound by words like ‘reasonable’ and ‘actual’. I will allow ‘stupid’.
You sound like you’re well versed in this stuff, and I am not, but it still seems like there’s a solution here that doesn’t involve making the lights in the bumper the only ones that do anything. Audi SUV’s have clamshell hatches with all of the lighting on the hatch itself. When the hatch opens, the smaller lights in the bumper are used. They didn’t simply leave the hatch mounted lighting there for decoration and only use the slim strips in the bumper. It’s not so much “where drivers expect the lights to be” as it is that the lights under the rear glass are acting as decoys and the actual brake lights look like rear reflectors that we’re all used to seeing. If there were no lights up there under the rear window, there would be a big clue one has to look elsewhere for brake lights.
What I’m getting at is it’s a pretty straightforward problem to design around. The Bolt isn’t a particularly good looking car and if they needed to change some of the design to satisfy requirements it wouldn’t have been detrimental to the styling. They easily could’ve done it the right way from the start, which is evident from the refresh.
You made my three points for me; thanks!:
1) Other people have figured it out before, so this is not a new problem without a solution
2) If Chevy couldn’t figure out how to make their hatch design work like other people did, then change the hatch design to be narrower like the refresh does now
2) Even if they were dead-set on the wide hatch, adding the fake tail lights on the hatch was a cosmetic design decision that results in confusion for following drivers and I guarantee has resulted in more than one avoidable fender bender in the real world
In summary: bad engineers, bad.
Now they just need to stop turning on the reverse lights when the doors open or you lock or unlock them.
I have a few neurons of my brain dedicated to answering the question, “is that car backing up, or is it just being a Chevy?”
I know what you mean its one my least favorite games just under the speed up slow down shuffle. It’s turned into a game of chicken everyone is relegated to. I’ve seen traffic in parking lots from it. Explaining it to new drivers is also interesting. It’s always something along the lines of that’s dumb, why, do the people know, why is that allowed.
Seriously! I was behind an Escalade? Tahoe? Suburban? School Bus? at the valet at a casino and I was absolutely blinded!
You can turn that off in the car’s settings
Yeah, but unless you manage to convince all GM owners to do so, it’s still a problem affecting the general public.
You are asking the same public to go though settings that can’t fathom how high beams works and think the light on the dash is an octopus friend. Even Tesla’s figured out if you want to do something not normal default to normal. Default to normal is a pretty standard idea. GM engineers need whatever the opposite of a Nobel price is just not as far as Darwin but they are enabling people who might qualify for Darwin awards.
The turn signals still are not amber. (How can I complain, my 2 Kraut wagons don’t have amber signals either).
I was just in the US last week for the first time in ages, and the confusion you get from seeing a red light flash on the back of a partly obscured car in traffic is a problem that every other country has solved by using the same colour indicators as the US uses on the front and sides of its vehicles.
I think it’s been discussed on this site before and the consensus was automakers do it for aesthetics in NA. It’s mind boggling. They go out of their way to design a worse lighting unit just for us while the ROW basks in amber glow.
But the looks-red-butt-flashes-amber problem has been solved for at least 30 years. It’s maddening.
It’s knowing that particularly the German cars have amber rear turn signals in their native home that red signals in the US annoys me endlessly.
If the hatch is open, it appears the tail/brake lights would be pointing skyward?
I think maybe, *maybe* there’s a rule that says the taillights must be visible with the tailgate/trunk/hatchback is open. the Aston-Martin Lagonda had an extra pair of taillights *inside* the trunk, just so they could be visible if you drove your Lagonda around with the trunk open.
But that can’t be the case for the Bolt, since they’ve moved the lights to the proper place and proven that it could have been done in the first place.
This makes me genuinely happy.
We bought our 2022 Bolt EUV in September of ’25 and that was one of the first things I noticed. I thought there was a problem but the dealer assured me that was the way it was supposed to be. I even inquired on the Bolt Facebook group and they told me the same thing so we bought it anyway
“the brake and turn indicators are set very low on the bumper, while a larger, more obvious set of taillights that are just restricted to the running lights, are above, set in locations that one normally expects to see full taillights.”
I saw a BMW X3 with this same idiotic arrangement earlier today.
I have to wonder… what the hell have automotive designers been huffing to ever think this idiotic tail light arrangement was ever a good idea?
And let’s not forget the full width hatch doors on some Audi CUVs, the Chevy Bolt and some other CUVs that require repeater brake lights in the trunk as the lights won’t be visible if the hatch is open.
Has it been Auto Designer Amateur Hour over these recent years?
Auto Designer Amateur Hour has been going on for decades.
High beams dual-purposed into always-on daytime running lights during the 90s.
Loud car horns dual-purposed into remote door lock announcers, turning every parking lot, parking garage, and quiet neighborhood into a honk-fest.
Turn signal lights that dance and animate instead of just blink.
Ambulance LED brake lights that are so maliciously, blindingly bright they’re a safety hazard, especially at night.
Always-on dashboard lighting causing drivers to obliviously drive without exterior lights at night.
The previously-derided ugly-ass Bangle-butt trunk seam design copied from the rear of BMWs to the front of just about every modern car.
Control buttons and switchgear removed from dashboards in favor of textureless flat panel touch screens.
Flat panel touch screens that jut out of the dashboard as if they were ipads attached via third-party mounts instead of being integrated into the dash design.
I have a 2012 Acura that uses that 90s high-beams-as-DRLs crap. Thankfully the function has a dedicated fuse you can pull.
Door handles turned from a one-step button push into a multi-step process, plus inner handles that require a whole separate emergency-escape mechanism (which in the case of a certain automaker, is hidden and partially inaccessible, especially in an emergency – the one time you would actually need it)
I just don’t understand how people at GM and Hyundai thought this was a good idea in the first place.
I’ve really come to like the Envista (it’s a hatchback car by any other name!) and this fixes one of my biggest gripes. Now if GM would just offer a real manual in some sport trim level – Buick Envista Skylark maybe?
still red turn signals tho 🙁
Look at how much lavish space they have to expand downward onto the overwrap of the rear fenders too! Why are car stylists now so afraid of vertical taillights?
Right? I think it may be a “the cost to repair will be too high because those lights are likely to get broken” thing, but everything on a modern car is already costing an arm, so why not a leg, too, if we at least get some decent styling out of it.
There are some Kia’s and Hyundai’s that have low ass taillights like this also where you think the reflector would be
It seems like this is happening at the other end of vehicles too these days. As in: Heloooo, my headlights are up here.
“…GM … made a change.”
…just in time to discontinue the car next year.
As GM always does.
They also removed Carplay and Android Auto. So you either get phone mirroring or the good tail lights. Can’t have both!
Heaven forbid that GM offers what people want to own that doesn’t self-implode.
Did they really fix them if the turn signals aren’t amber?
Don’t encourage them to go all German/Euro and disconnect the signal stalk.
I think you mean American as Tesla has been leading the charge on bad design.
The 1st Gen Bolt EV 2017-2021 at least had brake lights where they belong, just the turn signals were permanently in the bumper, and the bumper brakes only lit up when the hatch was open. The facelifted Bolt EV and Bolt EUV were decontented by putting all the indicators in the bumper so they didn’t have to do the hatch open/closed adaptation, and isn’t that just a little bit sad on a +$30k subcompact car.
Was behind a older Bolt the other day and noticed how wrong this looked.
Have they fixed it so that the reverse lights don’t stay on after parking, or is GM still married to that idea?
It’s meant to escalate tensions in Costco parking lots.
Though it’s the only place in the world you’ll see working turn signals on a BMW.
Design brief: Find a way to infuriate every driver in America on a budget of $3.
and every parking lot pedestrian
You can turn it off in the vehicle settings, which I did to mine as soon as I bought it. I imagine it’s the same for all GM vehicles, but most people don’t know about it
I had no idea, it pissed me off the entire time I owned my Camaro