Chevy Bolt Electric Vehicle (EV)

[Robaroni]

As some of you know I'm keen on renewables. My ultimate goal has been to be completely off fossil fuel (FF).
In that progression I have gradually worked up to eliminating gas and internal combustion engines (ICEs) from our life.
The latest advance has been the leasing of our Chevrolet Bolt and I have waited until we had a few thousand miles on it before my reviews. I wrote one for our local newspaper on EVs in general and one for Clean Technica specifically on the Bolt.

We picked up our Bolt May 8th of this year on a three year lease. We leased for several reasons. First, this was a completely new car and I'm always hesitant to buy untried products. Technology is advancing very rapidly in EVs an in three years they will be better than they are today. Leasing afforded us to drive an EV now and in three years simply return it for the latest technology.

Let me say right off the bat this is an extraordinary vehicle. The more we drive it the more we love it! Like its sibling the Volt hybrid GM has really thought out the Bolt. Ergonomically it was easy to learn and use. The regenerative braking is the best I've seen in an EV and I drive this car in what's called 'L' mode. In this mode if you take your foot off the throttle the mass of the car generates power that is stored back in the batteries. It's so effective that I've often driven 50 to 100 miles without using the brakes, regen also brings the car to a complete stop. There's also a paddle on the back of the steering wheel to increase regen if you need to slow down and stop faster.

There have been complaints about the seats but we did not have any problem even after several hours in the car. The seats sit high like an SUV so getting in and out is very easy and now that we are getting older the height is easier on my wife's bad knees.

The car is rated at 238 miles per charge, we get around 270 to 300 miles which is plenty for us as we don't really take trips any longer than a couple of hundred miles once or twice a year. The furthest we have gone so far is 225 miles. Some of that in the rain and most of it with the air conditioning on. We had about 65 miles left when we got home - not bad at all.
The ride is good and the hatch means we get to load all our winter food stores from the farm 60 miles away without any trouble. Having the car sit high also means better ground clearance for winter driving.
The Bolt is quite peppy and it easily gets to highway speeds faster than most cars.

With almost 3k miles on the Bolt we have not had one single problem, not one squeak or rattle either. It has been perfect from day one. The hidden beauty of EVs is their low maintenance, the Bolt's maintenance for the first 150k miles is to change the cabin filter and rotate the tires! That's it and the batteries are expected to last a couple of hundred thousand miles or more. (GM guarantees them for 8 years or 100k miles). We chose white thinking that our air conditioner will work less on hot days.

What don't we like? There's no GPS, a car that needs to know where charging stations are should have one. We use Android Auto, it works fine but GM should have a GPS. There should be a light when the charge door is opened, the visors are too small and we would like to have a tow package for a small trailer for those times when we need materials for our local big box store.
The interior is plastic but it's very well done, we don't even notice it anymore but there is a thin strip of chrome below the vents that reflects in the passengers eyes at certain times of the day.
There's not much to complain about. Smooth, quiet, handles and rides well and we figure charging it from our already paid for PV array we'll be saving about $3,200. over our 30k mile lease.

Why didn't we wait for a Tesla Model 3? I think Elon Musk has done some extraordinary things and I hope the 3 does well but it's not for us. First, we live in rural America, Tesla is 150 miles away, GM is 15 minutes away. We wanted a hatchback and we wanted to know that if we ever hit a deer GM could fix it without expensive body panels.
Now the 3 is out. It doesn't have a key FOB, you use your cell phone. To open the glove box you have to use the touch screen, I'm glad we got the Bolt.

I highly recommend the Bolt, I think it's the best affordable EV around.
Rob