71–80 of 432 posts
My perception of American designed and engineered vehicles is that they’re really awful, not just from a reliability standpoint but also from a user interface standpoint. GM, Ford, and Chrysler haven’t been building good vehicles in my lifetime - once I switched to Hondas I’ve yet to have any serious engine trouble even in some very old vehicles, whereas every American car I’ve owned has been a money sink. Of course…
Maybe lithium-ion batteries in mass-market vehicles aren't such a good idea. We may need a battery technology that can survive poor maintenance less than perfect battery construction, and low-cost vehicle designs. Tesla had to put a titanium plate under their battery. That's not a mass-market solution. BYD is converting over to lithium iron phosphate, which is much better behaved when damaged. Toyota is working on so…
might want to put it into context though... there are on average 160,000 passenger car fires per year and about 360 deaths due to that. i'd like to see that figure broken down per 100k miles driven or per 100k cars of the type but i can't seem to find that easily. https://www.nfpa.org/vehiclefires
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For a vehicle that approaches $80,000, I would hope so.
I paid $53k (long range with a factory installed tow hitch). Average new car price is $41k, and I will save at least $5k over five years in fuel costs. EDIT: Compare to the top end of Chevy vehicle pricing: https://www.autoguide.com/new-cars/chevrolet/
It's firmly in BMW, Mercedes, Land Rover territory, not Chevy territory, which it's being compared against.
The flammability of lithium batteries kind of freaks me out. I hope we get to non-flammable batteries soon. Imagine a future where every car in a dense parking garage is lithium BEV, and then one of them catches fire. As far as I know, these fires are extremely difficult to put out, requiring enormous amounts of water. What if the fire spreads to many other cars? I'm not sure if this fear is at all rational. Probably…
On the other hand, around 2035 when most cars are EVs, the Hollywood action movie car "explosions on impact" would finally be a realistic description of actual car behavior.
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Price and panel gaps
My Model Y, delivered within the last few weeks, has no panel gaps (edit: the panel gaps, measured with an $8 tool at delivery, are within spec). It was delivered in perfect condition and is garage safe. I can even park next to other cars safely.
> The automaker told Bolt owners to limit the charge to 90 percent, plug in more frequently and avoid depleting the battery to below about 70 miles of remaining range. Tesla's approach here would be to issue an OTA update that told your car to treat 90% as 100% and 25% as 0. I can't decide if I like that better or worse.
> I can't decide if I like that better or worse. It's a really good question. Let's think about it. As you've outlined it, Tesla's approach prioritizes the user's confidence in the product, rather than the user's knowledge about the product. Naturally, when a product is faulty, the user's confidence in the product is inversely proportional to their knowledge about the fault; the less I know about the fault, the more…
More like Tesla prioritizes removing user error
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I think there's the 5 second cool factor but after that novelty you're probably just as disgruntled as the fact that you lost 35% of the range for your car. I hope the Chevy bolt is a rare case and stories like this don't pop up with the other upcoming electric vehicles. The new lightning F150 looks very attractive.
I don't see how electric cars are any different than mobile phones. So basically this means a 3 year life span in terms of battery performance. Regular combustion cars though also suffer reduced mpg so I am not saying this is an apples to apples comparison.
So what is a family with a two car garage supposed to do, park the Bolt a block away? This seems like the kind of thing GM should get wayyyy in front of with a very generous offer to buy back the cars as a trade towards another GM model.
If a Bolt owner without a permanent garage spot can manage, then certainly a Bolt owner with a permanent garage spot can manage. The latter has strictly more options than the former.
My perception of American designed and engineered vehicles is that they’re really awful, not just from a reliability standpoint but also from a user interface standpoint. GM, Ford, and Chrysler haven’t been building good vehicles in my lifetime - once I switched to Hondas I’ve yet to have any serious engine trouble even in some very old vehicles, whereas every American car I’ve owned has been a money sink. Of course…
For about 18 months in 2017 and 2018, I had a job that had me in a new city every other week. Lot of rental cars. And I started to have very strong preference.
I would go out of my way to get a Chevy. Great Android auto integration. Good controls generally. Decent cars.
It kills me to hear that Bolt is have these problems. I was thinking of buying one as my next car.
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> I can't decide if I like that better or worse. It's a really good question. Let's think about it. As you've outlined it, Tesla's approach prioritizes the user's confidence in the product, rather than the user's knowledge about the product. Naturally, when a product is faulty, the user's confidence in the product is inversely proportional to their knowledge about the fault; the less I know about the fault, the more…
Isn't this basically what Apple should have done to avoid their throttling lawsuit? Told their customers to change their behaviors?
They still throttle now after the lawsuit, you can just stop it if you want to. Also an important difference with Apple is that the iPhone throttling wasn’t a safety concern.