Back to the topic at hand - how do we know the Model 3 will be a luxury vehicle? People buying the $35,000 model may very well cross-shop it with a Bolt, and I will bet the Bolt will probably come equipped with more features for the same amount of money (and there is the fact that no one pays MSRP for a GM car, so it will probably be priced exactly the same as the Tesla in the real world).
So if someone is looking at the base model and needs the tax credit, there is a Bolt that will be available earlier than the 3 and they might decide to jump on that and guarantee themselves the tax credit vs waiting for the base model 3, which will most likely not come with the credit. So I would say the Bolt IS a comparable vehicle when we are talking about the base models.
From what little has been said by people in the know about the Model 3, we know the Model 3 will be in a larger vehicle than the Bolt and I don't think it will be cross shopped all that much. The ICE cars the low end Model 3s will be competing with will be cars like the Toyota Corolla, Subaru Legacy, Ford Focus, and other cars in that size range. A loaded Model 3 will probably compare well with the BMW 3 Series and the bottom ends of other luxury brands.
In the car market, EV buyers have been largely ghettoized by dealers who really don't want to sell EVs. They will sell them because they pretty much have to, but they do everything they can to discourage customers. As a result, the EV world is a separate world from the ICE world. People who like and/or own EVs tend to be fans of the cars, but to the rest of the world they are odd balls who are a fringe all their own.
There will be interest in the Model 3 from current EV affectionados, but overall that is such a small segment of the market they aren't significant for the Model 3's success. The measure of the Model 3's success will be in how deep a dent it puts in the ICE compact sedan market. It needs to win over buyers not because it's an electric but despite it's electric.
That has happened to a large extent in the high end luxury sedan market, which is tiny to begin with, but Tesla currently is the winner in that market in the US and is a very serious competitor in most countries where Teslas are sold. If Tesla repeats that success with the Model 3 in the compact sedan market, EVs Tesla will have truly disrupted the car market and things will never be the same again.
If Tesla succeeds in disrupting the market, everyone will be scrambling to build competitive EVs, but Tesla will be almost 10 years ahead of everyone else with a much younger and more flexible company. A lot of companies will repeat mistakes Tesla already made and fixed and dug in management will get in the way and make change more difficult. Companies with more flexible corporate cultures like BMW will likely make it. Others that have been working on EVs for a while like GM and Nissan will likely make it. Some companies will likely fail. I would put Chrysler at the top of the likely to fail list, they aren't even very well prepared for the CAFE changes coming in the next decade. Toyota and VW are big enough they can get bail outs if they get in serious trouble, but neither of them are really ready for the change and they will likely either be scrambling to catch up or continue to sink a lot of money into failed technologies like hydrogen fuel cells.
In any case, the Bolt is only a minor competitor to the Model 3.