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Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

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Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#111

Post by TheCoelacanth »

vinay427 wrote: post #89
35bge57dtjku wrote: post #37

A car that would leave you with about a $600/month payment is 'for the masses'?

"The federal EV tax credit of $7,500 gets the price down to less than $30,000" [1] "the estimated average transaction price (ATP) for light vehicles in the United States was $33,666 in March 2016." [2] A car that costs less than the median purchase price for new vehicles in the US seems pretty close to "for the masses" to me. It's at least in the running for more than half of all new car buyers in terms of price (not…

The average price takes into account all sizes of cars. It is not an average sized car; it's towards the small end which makes prices lower. It's very close to the size of a Kia Soul which goes for $16k and smaller than a Chevy Trax which goes for $21k.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#112

Post by JBReefer »

boredpudding wrote: post #36
mikkael wrote: post #33

Surely a nice car. But I wonder where all this electrical power for all those electrical cars in the future will come from? Probably from nuclear power plants with their still unresolved nuclear waste problematics - not even speaking about nuclear accidents. From this point of view I have some doubts that mass adoption of affordable electrical cars will be beneficial for the environment...

It's better for the environment than the current fuels. It's the best option we have.

Also, you reduce the space that needs converting from {All the cars on Earth} to {All fossil fuel powerplants}. There are ~1 billion cars. I can't find good numbers for coal and gas plants, but it can't be more than a 200k or so.

That's a gigantic improvement in our ability to rapidly reduce CO2 from transportation.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#113

Post by yessql »

Cyph0n wrote: post #23
avar wrote: post #16

The article only briefly touches on this, but LG Korea is a huge part of this. They make the motor, battery & drivetrain, basically everything that makes this car an electric car. Chevrolet is just manufacturing the parts that would be mostly identical to any of their other cars. Rather than Tesla being worried about Chevrolet, I think they'd be more worried about the likes of LG & Samsung in the longer term.

Isn't Tesla's battery tech developed by Panasonic? And I believe that some of their initial Autopilot tech was sourced from Mercedes. It's very difficult to find an auto manufacturer that can build a car from the ground up, primarily because the economics aren't scalable.

Panasonic just makes the cells, Tesla makes the batteries. Soon Panasonic will be making all the cells under Tesla's roof.

Tesla has hired Li-Ion specialist Jeff Dahn, so at a minimum Tesla is involved is prescribing the additives to their cells to give them the unique properties that Tesla wants.

Tesla has also dictated that the cells have a unique form factor, "2170" instead of the 18650 standard, and most automotive OEM's used prismatic cells instead of round anyway.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#114

Post by yessql »

Klathmon wrote: post #30
archildress wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great point. Tesla is, to me, fundamentally a battery company.

To me, Tesla feels like a "marketing" company. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Yes, their battery tech is improving, and they make pretty damn good cars, but most of all Tesla is getting people excited for electric cars. Before they came around, electric cars were shitty ecoboxes that were worse in just about every way to an ICE car. They were ugly, had no range, were missing features, expensive, slow charging, e…

Tesla is probably the most vertically integrated automotive OEM. Tesla doesn't advertise via any traditional channels.

Yes, they have changed people minds about EVs, but calling them a marketing company is silly, when you compare them to traditional OEM's that mostly just do final assembly and buy advertising.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#115

Post by brightball »

mikeash wrote: post #98
brightball wrote: post #38

I still don't understand why anyone would buy a Bolt (or a Tesla) over a Volt. Since I heard about the Volt initially back in 2006, it was the most logical and practical approach to powering a vehicle that I'd ever heard. Eliminate gas usage on 95% of your driving, but have gas available for long range and fast refueling against the entire infrastructure of the US. Pure EV's are nothing more than "around town" cars i…

I can't speak for the Bolt, but I bought a Tesla over a Volt for several reasons. For one, it's a much more practical car. The Volt has only four seats. The latest generation has a fifth sort-of seat you can squeeze someone into if you really need it. My Tesla seats five adults and two children. It also has about three times the cargo space in a five-seat configuration. Long range travel is not an issue. Visit https:…

Good explanation. Checking the map in the southeast is pretty sparse though.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#116

Post by mikeash »

brightball wrote: post #115
mikeash wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for the Bolt, but I bought a Tesla over a Volt for several reasons. For one, it's a much more practical car. The Volt has only four seats. The latest generation has a fifth sort-of seat you can squeeze someone into if you really need it. My Tesla seats five adults and two children. It also has about three times the cargo space in a five-seat configuration. Long range travel is not an issue. Visit https:…

Good explanation. Checking the map in the southeast is pretty sparse though.

Which part of the southeast are you looking at? If "the southeast" comprises NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, and TN, then the only sparse areas are northern AL and MS and western TN, and northern AL and western TN have sites under construction which will probably be done in a month or two.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#118

Post by rwmurrayVT »

mikeash wrote: post #98
brightball wrote: post #38

I still don't understand why anyone would buy a Bolt (or a Tesla) over a Volt. Since I heard about the Volt initially back in 2006, it was the most logical and practical approach to powering a vehicle that I'd ever heard. Eliminate gas usage on 95% of your driving, but have gas available for long range and fast refueling against the entire infrastructure of the US. Pure EV's are nothing more than "around town" cars i…

I can't speak for the Bolt, but I bought a Tesla over a Volt for several reasons. For one, it's a much more practical car. The Volt has only four seats. The latest generation has a fifth sort-of seat you can squeeze someone into if you really need it. My Tesla seats five adults and two children. It also has about three times the cargo space in a five-seat configuration. Long range travel is not an issue. Visit https:…

That map was a really excellent link. I noticed there was one a few minutes away from my office. I just went and checked it out. Very cool! That explains why I seem to notice Tesla vehicles multiple times a day.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#119

Post by hx87 »

brightball wrote: post #88
Vik1ng wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lOV6PdVQbk Consumer Reports touches a bit on that. One advantage is for example that you don't have to worry about the maintenance and reliability of the combustion engine.

I leased a Volt for 3 years to try it out without having to commit to the early adopter risk. Oil changes were every 20,000 miles. Occasionally the engine would turn on and run automatically because I hadn't used it at all in a few weeks just for maintenance sake. For a gas first approach like most hybrids I think it's a bigger concern. In the Volt since it's just a generator I don't know if the maintenance burden is…

The first gen Volt had a parallel-hybrid mode, which increases wear compared to a pure series-hybrid, so maintenance isn't as low as it could be.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#120

Post by mark_l_watson »

My wife drives a "nicer" car but I am really happy with my old 1998 Toyota Corolla: stick shift, nothing has ever gone wrong with it, and it gets incredible gas mileage. I occasionally get it detailed and worked over by a local guy, a real artist, who builds large car models from scratch - he keeps my car looking good.

That said, I am tempted to trade it in for a Bolt EV. If I add more solar panels to our roof, I can try for a zero carbon footprint (except for the car manufacture and maintenance).

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