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

motortrend.com

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

#141

Post by vinay427 »

35bge57dtjku wrote: post #123
vinay427 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

I'd be more inclined to agree with you if everyone always bought new cars.

By that measure, almost all cars aren't for the masses because they don't compete with used car prices.

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

#142

Post by greglindahl »

cx1000 wrote: post #85

Two questions: the article mentions "magnets made from a rare earth metal called dysprosium" are used in the motor. How rare is this and will it eventually limit volume? >the wide range of its current and projected uses, together with the lack of any immediately suitable replacement, makes dysprosium the single most critical element for emerging clean energy technologies - even their most conservative projections pre…

It's not necessary to use rare earth elements in an electric car motor -- Tesla doesn't, for example.

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

#143

Post by phkahler »

mikeash wrote: post #102
phkahler wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I wonder where the top Speed Limit comes from... Gear ratio. It says the motor spins to 8800rpm which is high but not crazy high. Given a top speed of the motor the gear ratio will determine the top speed of the car. They may have optimized it for better acceleration at the expense of top speed. Many people in the US never drive that fast so it's not a bad tradeoff. If you're wondering about having multiple gear r…

I believe that multiple gear ratios could make sense for high-end EVs. For example, the Model S P100D's top speed of 155MPH is pretty low for a car of such power and low-end acceleration. And its acceleration tends to fall off at higher speeds (if you watch drag races against high-end ICE cars, the Tesla tends to stomp them initially, then the ICE car starts to catch up after a few seconds) and I have heard that bein…

My colleagues looked into a 2-speed gearbox for EVs and they just couldn't make the case for it. Tesla was also going to use one early on and seems to have abandoned that idea.

For the Model S (or any EV), increasing top speed would mean either increasing the motor RPM, or increasing the gear ratio which would reduce acceleration. I don't know what limits their top speed to 155 and don't want to guess.

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

#144

Post by greglindahl »

_ph_ wrote: post #59

Great to see a really middle class electrical vehicle coming to the market with a good range. The big question though is: how many of them does GM plan to make? I have read that the first year production is planned to be 30k units with a possible extension to 50k units later on. That would be rather small numbers compared to what Tesla today sells and especially to the 400k preorders for the Model 3. I hope, that GM…

LG apparently has enough battery capacity that GM could make more, but I suspect GM doesn't have a good idea of how many they could sell. If you look on the Internets, you can see quite a few complaints about the Nissan Leaf buying experience: dealers are chock full of salespeople who do not understand electric cars. That will take time to fix.

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

#145

Post by sammydavis »

raphaelj wrote: post #53
Cyph0n wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think Tesla was relying on MobileEye for Autopilot. Now they are using NVidia chips instead.

And they always used their own software, it wasn't like a mobile eye product they licensed.

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

#146

Post by projektfu »

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.

It's true that LG Korea is a big part of it, the same way Toyota was a big part of the Prism, but on the other hand this is par for the course of how cars are made these days. The engineers at GM work closely with engineers at their suppliers to develop a system. They likely share a lot of trade secrets. They generally do not try to eat each other's lunch after collaborating on a platform.

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

#147

Post by projektfu »

hx87 wrote: post #130
mcguire wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain further?

GM initially promised that the first generation Volt would be fully series-hybrid--the engine would drive the electrical generator and have no mechanical connection to the rest of the powertrain. This means that the engine can spin at its most efficient RPM (most of the time, peak torque RPM) regardless of how fast the car is going and thus everything on this engine could be optimized to run at that speed, which redu…

The Volt has a planetary gear system that is engaged at highway speeds when the gas engine is being used anyway. At certain speeds, it uses less gas to maintain speed that way instead of generating electricity and using it. When it is more efficient for the engine to supply electricity only, that is how it is done. I don't view this as a compromise at all. It wouldn't make sense to chose a less efficient path just to maintain some sort of purity.

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

#148

Post by projektfu »

sebnukem2 wrote: post #100
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 totally agree with you. The Volt seems like the perfect car, but I ultimately picked the Prius over the Volt for 2 reasons: the Prius looks a lot better and, more importantly, has a lot more interior space that I need. The Volt felt both heavy and cramped, like a flawed first generation product. The 2nd gen Volt is a big improvement.

After test driving both, as well as the C-Max, the Volt felt much snappier and suits our lifestyle better. We don't need 5 seats but we like the layout of the cargo space. The overall ride of the Volt is very smooth. In 2.5 years we haven't needed an oil change. My one complaint is that it doesn't corner as well as my 1999 Corolla did.

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

#149

Post by projektfu »

alex_duf wrote: post #31
vinay427 wrote: post #5

I'd like to take a moment to point out, as was done in the article, that receiving this award is further validation that electric cars are becoming mainstream. We can compare it to an upcoming competitor (the Model 3) but at the end of the day, they're vying for positions on the same team. That being said, a lot of this felt like an advertisement as another poster mentioned. One thing I would like to see is better ch…

Yes, the EV industry needs to come up with a standard as quickly as possible now that it's pretty sure EV are here for a while.

There are standards and, like networking standards, they improve over time. Tesla has a nonstandard approach mostly because they are offering free electricity. There's no real reason why an L3 charging station couldn't offer both connections if Tesla would permit it.

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

#150

Post by projektfu »

WorldMaker wrote: post #127
cx1000 wrote: post #85

Two questions: the article mentions "magnets made from a rare earth metal called dysprosium" are used in the motor. How rare is this and will it eventually limit volume? >the wide range of its current and projected uses, together with the lack of any immediately suitable replacement, makes dysprosium the single most critical element for emerging clean energy technologies - even their most conservative projections pre…

It's pretty easy to charge an EV and many owners do charge at home as their primary place to charge. I have a '12 Volt that I charge on a standard outlet in my garage at home. This "trickle charge" is fairly slow, but enough to charge the Volt's smaller battery overnight and give me just shy of 40 miles for the day, which is more than enough most days to get to work, run errands, get back home on a single charge with…

I've also thought about a level 2 charger and I just haven't seen the need. If we accidentally forget to plug in overnight, we may temporarily have a gasoline car that is more efficient than any car I've previously owned.
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