I went to a local Chevy dealer tonight to check out a nice robin egg blue Bolt for a friend of mine who is getting rid of her 7 year old 5 series BMW.
Handling and performance was great. With four adults in the car, it still felt peppy. Visibility was awesome, especially compared to any Tesla (I have both the S and X). It would have been hard to fit three adults in the back seats, but two adults back there was fine - more than enough leg room. The two side back buckets seats could have been a bit wider though. The $43K sticker price car we drove also had heated back seats!
The single pedal regen and acceleration handled very smoothly. On the freeway, I saw 53 kW of regen shown on the instrument cluster, which is a lot for this fairly light EV. The regen also takes the car all the way down to a stop (unlike a Tesla, grrrr).
While the Bolt is actually a shorter car than the Volt, the Bolt has significantly more interior space. It is much taller, and without a front engine, it has a very stubby front end, meaning more room for interior. The Volt backseat isn't good for adults, whereas the Bolt works great. The hatchback is nice with access to a good sized cubbyhole in the bottom - a panel goes over top of it to give a flush back seat cargo area when the back seats are down. No frunk though.
The car has Apple CarPlay! And Android Auto! No nav, but with good CarPlay integration, you don't really need a nav system.
One of the competitive advantages I had thought Tesla would always have is their Supercharger network. But I just did a search on Plugshare and found 138 CCS fast charging locations in the LA/OC/Riverside metro areas. Yipes. And new CCS chargers are being installed at a very fast rate (and VW's settlement is only going to help).
The only included EVSE is a 120V 12A charger, so you'll have to spring for a $500 EVSE for your home, but frankly, that's the way Tesla is going as well. On-board is a 7.2 kW J1772 charger (32A at 240V), and $750 for the 50 kW DC CCS option (a must have in my opinion).
The Bolt also has the usual array of driver safety options like collision warning and braking, pedestrian detection, blind spot warning, etc. It also sports a very fancy rear mirror that converts into a video screen of the rear camera with the flip of a switch. Compared to my almost useless rear view mirror on my X, this was an interesting feature.
So let's see, compared to a Tesla we have:
- almost equivalent long range (238 miles)
- much cheaper (versus Model S)
- available now versus three years from now (versus Model 3, assuming you don't have one on order already).
- Seemingly just as good fast charging network
- Carplay, Android Auto
- Decent acceleration and handling, nimbleness of a smaller car
- Good cargo.
Dudes, I think we finally, finally(!), have a Tesla competitor on our hands. Of course, it's hamstrung by being sold through clueless Chevy dealers (although the older sales guy we had tonight drove a Volt, so he wasn't completely clueless, only said one or two egregious exaggerations). I predict that once the word starts getting out, GM is going to have a hit on their hands.
Handling and performance was great. With four adults in the car, it still felt peppy. Visibility was awesome, especially compared to any Tesla (I have both the S and X). It would have been hard to fit three adults in the back seats, but two adults back there was fine - more than enough leg room. The two side back buckets seats could have been a bit wider though. The $43K sticker price car we drove also had heated back seats!
The single pedal regen and acceleration handled very smoothly. On the freeway, I saw 53 kW of regen shown on the instrument cluster, which is a lot for this fairly light EV. The regen also takes the car all the way down to a stop (unlike a Tesla, grrrr).
While the Bolt is actually a shorter car than the Volt, the Bolt has significantly more interior space. It is much taller, and without a front engine, it has a very stubby front end, meaning more room for interior. The Volt backseat isn't good for adults, whereas the Bolt works great. The hatchback is nice with access to a good sized cubbyhole in the bottom - a panel goes over top of it to give a flush back seat cargo area when the back seats are down. No frunk though.
The car has Apple CarPlay! And Android Auto! No nav, but with good CarPlay integration, you don't really need a nav system.
One of the competitive advantages I had thought Tesla would always have is their Supercharger network. But I just did a search on Plugshare and found 138 CCS fast charging locations in the LA/OC/Riverside metro areas. Yipes. And new CCS chargers are being installed at a very fast rate (and VW's settlement is only going to help).
The only included EVSE is a 120V 12A charger, so you'll have to spring for a $500 EVSE for your home, but frankly, that's the way Tesla is going as well. On-board is a 7.2 kW J1772 charger (32A at 240V), and $750 for the 50 kW DC CCS option (a must have in my opinion).
The Bolt also has the usual array of driver safety options like collision warning and braking, pedestrian detection, blind spot warning, etc. It also sports a very fancy rear mirror that converts into a video screen of the rear camera with the flip of a switch. Compared to my almost useless rear view mirror on my X, this was an interesting feature.
So let's see, compared to a Tesla we have:
- almost equivalent long range (238 miles)
- much cheaper (versus Model S)
- available now versus three years from now (versus Model 3, assuming you don't have one on order already).
- Seemingly just as good fast charging network
- Carplay, Android Auto
- Decent acceleration and handling, nimbleness of a smaller car
- Good cargo.
Dudes, I think we finally, finally(!), have a Tesla competitor on our hands. Of course, it's hamstrung by being sold through clueless Chevy dealers (although the older sales guy we had tonight drove a Volt, so he wasn't completely clueless, only said one or two egregious exaggerations). I predict that once the word starts getting out, GM is going to have a hit on their hands.