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The Chevy Bolt Is the Ugly Car of the Near Future

bloomberg.com

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Re: The Chevy Bolt Is the Ugly Car of the Near Future

#61

Post by burger_moon »

RKoutnik wrote: post #49
dirkg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want a nice car Translation: I can afford a luxury car, Tesla is one of the nicer luxury cars and happens to be electric.

The Model 3 starts at $35k, the Bolt at $37.5k. If you're in the market for the Bolt post-Model 3 launch, then there's not much difference in price - why not go for the classier car?

Well dealer distribution is one point. You don't have to go far to find mechanics that can service your Chevy. If you live outside a major city it's a pia to get your tesla serviced.

Additionally Chevy allows people to buy parts for their cars and you can service it yourself or at an independent shop.

Re: The Chevy Bolt Is the Ugly Car of the Near Future

#62

Post by colechristensen »

slg wrote: post #53
colechristensen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. It seems like the battery packs on cars are engineered to manipulate people, and this would be an easy way of making two very different cars seem the same. Lithium batteries degrade. With heat, with time, with charge cycles. Article after article writes about how Tesla's battery packs barely degrade! 8% capacity loss over 100,000 miles. This has to be a lie. Unless they've come…

Shouldn't this be an easy think to prove/disprove by just measuring the electricity used to charge the car over time? If my car required 15-20% more gas each year, it would be pretty obvious by simply keeping an eye on the amount of money I spend on gas.

No.

Imagine the batteries that are like a gas tank that shrinks over time.

My assertion is that (for example) a car starts out with a 30 gallon tank that shrinks over time. When the car is new, it's engineered to be "empty" when the tank is half full.

It'll take the same 15 gallons to refill on the first day as it does a few years down the road when the tank has actually shrunk to be 15 gallons in size.

Re: The Chevy Bolt Is the Ugly Car of the Near Future

#63

Post by pseudometa »

forgetsusername wrote: post #33
pseudometa wrote: post #5

"Tesla loses money on every car too." This is false, Tesla averages $18,000 margin on every model S & model X it sells. "So how did GM pull off a $30,000 car with 200 miles of range?" It didn't. It is $30k only after $8000 of federal tax credits.

Tesla also includes the tax credit in their price. And at present they don't even have a car. Why are people so bitter that GM is competing? Is this not a good thing?

"Tesla also includes the tax credit in their price." This is false... Tesla advertises their model 3 targeted base price as $35,000. This is before any tax credits.

Re: The Chevy Bolt Is the Ugly Car of the Near Future

#64

Post by pchristensen »

dirkg wrote: post #38

Why are diesel cars hated in the US? You can get a range of diesel car sin Europe which give you 50-60mpg, have all kinds of comforts and can be cheap, without the trickery of tax credits.

In many places it's not that easy to find diesel pumps, and since about 2005, diesel has been 10-30% more expensive per gallon in the USA, negating a lot of the benefits from fuel economy.

Re: The Chevy Bolt Is the Ugly Car of the Near Future

#65

Post by colechristensen »

Thorncorona wrote: post #51
colechristensen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. It seems like the battery packs on cars are engineered to manipulate people, and this would be an easy way of making two very different cars seem the same. Lithium batteries degrade. With heat, with time, with charge cycles. Article after article writes about how Tesla's battery packs barely degrade! 8% capacity loss over 100,000 miles. This has to be a lie. Unless they've come…

Keep in mind you wouldn't regularly fully discharge a car battery pack, however you would discharge a phone battery. Thus capacity reduction occurs at a slower rate than a laptop or phone.

The yearly losses are fixed, unrelated to usage. The per-cycle losses are indeed less when you don't fully discharge, but only by a relatively small amount.

Lets say you have a battery with a capacity of 100. Empty it completely 100 times and the capacity might be around 95.

Empty it only 20% 500 times (for the same total energy usage) and it's capacity might have only degraded to 97.

Better, but not nearly enough to erase the other effects.

Re: The Chevy Bolt Is the Ugly Car of the Near Future

#66

Post by tclAmockingbird »

RKoutnik wrote: post #50
untog wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt you're correct in summarising why many current Tesla owners buy Tesla cars. But if they want to be hugely, mass market successful they need to expand their client base beyond customers who "need" luxury options in a car. It's Tesla that would need to match GM's market proposition, not vice versa. > I want a nice car, not just an electric one, and Tesla's got that in spades. And I suspect many Bolt owner…

> And I suspect many Bolt owners want an economical car, not a luxury one, and the Bolt's got that in spades. See my other reply in this subthread - Bolt/Model 3 will be equivalent in terms of price, so I don't see how the Bolt is more "economical".

The federal tax rebate is likely to phase out over the course of the Model 3 introduction: it isn't a given that the effective pricing will be be similar. It's also premature to compare pricing without the Model 3 specifications.

Re: The Chevy Bolt Is the Ugly Car of the Near Future

#67

Post by Decade »

dirkg wrote: post #38

Why are diesel cars hated in the US? You can get a range of diesel car sin Europe which give you 50-60mpg, have all kinds of comforts and can be cheap, without the trickery of tax credits.

Instead of trickery of tax credits, you get trickery of rigged emissions tests. Because when you regard air quality, it is not just carbon dioxide, but various nitrous oxides.

Also, most diesels are noisier, and diesel fueling stations are further apart, and the federal tax is higher, and gasoline-electric hybrids have much better consumer branding.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/automobiles/as-the-world-e...

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a4567/4330313/

Re: The Chevy Bolt Is the Ugly Car of the Near Future

#68

Post by slg »

colechristensen wrote: post #62
slg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't this be an easy think to prove/disprove by just measuring the electricity used to charge the car over time? If my car required 15-20% more gas each year, it would be pretty obvious by simply keeping an eye on the amount of money I spend on gas.

No. Imagine the batteries that are like a gas tank that shrinks over time. My assertion is that (for example) a car starts out with a 30 gallon tank that shrinks over time. When the car is new, it's engineered to be "empty" when the tank is half full. It'll take the same 15 gallons to refill on the first day as it does a few years down the road when the tank has actually shrunk to be 15 gallons in size.

Yep, you are right. I was thinking of it in terms of efficiency and not capacity.

Re: The Chevy Bolt Is the Ugly Car of the Near Future

#69

Post by drewg123 »

brohoolio wrote: post #27
vvanders wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the supercharger network which is often glossed over but pretty critical when you're considering it as a primary car.

Honestly I'd probably rent a car if I need to drive far enough that I have to use the super charger network.

Its ironic, isn't it. The main reason I want to buy a tesla is due to their advanced autopilot making long distance driving easier. Yet the whole electric thing makes those drives take longer due to recharge time. I wish there was a trailer with a diesel generator you could rent to tow behind your tesla.

Re: The Chevy Bolt Is the Ugly Car of the Near Future

#70

Post by marcell »

Reading between the lines, I think this car is a trick and not meant to sell at all. They get fleet wide mileage credits by producing it, and they are losing money on each car. Electric cars are easy to make, especially if you don't put much effort into it (example: regenerative brake paddle is separate from normal brake paddle). Dealers don't make as much from servicing electric cars.

I suspect the fact that it's ugly is a feature: it will hamper sales a bit and reduce the chance that they'll need to produce lots of this car.

Is the mileage credit on electric cars calculated as a formula of the range? If so, that would explain why they focused on getting a 200 mile range.

Edit: selling this car will also eat into the U.S. limit on tax credits for electric cars, which hurts their competitor Tesla.

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