2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV
caranddriver.com
caranddriver.com
> can be had for less than the price of the average new car.
Emphasis mine and obviously they are factoring in the $7,500 tax credit which I guess is fine.
I dislike this "price of the average new car" line and it gets repeated a lot. Car manufacturers must love it since it tries to normalize that price as "average" when its not very representative. Grand total "average new car" price that the media is using everywhere is $33,666, but that's only because of the average price of luxury cars and trucks driving the number way, way up. There's a breakdown by sector in KBB's numbers:
http://mediaroom.kbb.com/new-car-transaction-prices-up-2-per...
Scroll down to the second table for more realistic numbers. At any rate the median new car price, if we could get it, would be much more telling. Sadly I can't find it anywhere.
After the tax credit the base model is the average cost of a Mid-size Pickup Truck ($30,045) or average cost of a sports car ($30,712)
But well above the average cost of a mid size car ($25,095) or crossover ($27,056) or subcompact ($17,218)
The best I can find is $24000 [1], which sounds believable. But that's not referenced. There's a lot of articles stating that most people actually can't afford new cars [2]. Those articles, and studies they're talking about, are comparing median income and average car price, though.
[1] http://www.financialsamurai.com/the-110th-rule-for-car-buyin... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/your-money/new-cars-are-to...
I drive about 800km per month and I'd pay $10/mo in electricity to do that in a Bolt, versus $150/mo in gasoline for my current car.
I don't get those figures at all... 800km (500 miles) is approx two-three recharges on the Bolt or about one tank of gas (depending on vehicle). Ignoring how incredibly cheap you are claiming electricity is ($5/full charge), there's nowhere on earth where a full tank of gas costs $150 (or even two full tanks).
Something went badly wrong when you came up with these figures.
This article lists it as[0]: 4.9 L/100 km on the highway.
That's $52 Canadian, not $182 Canadia. I'm pretty sure that 5.77 km/liter figure you're quoting is 100 km/liter making your figure off by a huge amount.
[0] http://driving.ca/toyota/corolla/reviews/road-test/road-test...
Here's the Toyota source: http://www.toyota.ca/toyota/en/vehicles/corolla/specificatio...
For the lowest model, for highway mileage, it's 6.5L/100km. CAD67 for an 800km highway trip. That is great gas mileage!
I'm still wrong. Even for a Ford F150, which gets 9.6L/100km, it's still only about CAD100 for the trip.
Electricity is $0.08/kwh for the low tier where I live (Vancouver, Canada), so $4.80 to charge the 60kwh battery from zero.
The Bolt has an EPA range of 380 km. So, I was figuring that it would require two (and a bit) charges to hit the same 800km number.
Chevy Tahoe is the epitome of enormous gas guzzling SUV and it gets 8x that, at 16mpg.
I don't know how they didn't notice this though, because most people have a general idea of how often they fill their car and how much it costs.
Ever been to Australia?
AU$1.50 / litre, 60 litre tank, $90 per fill, two full tanks AU$180.
So it costs you $137 USD to fill up your large tank twice.
That's pricy, but not as bad as it sounds without unit conversion.
My vehicle holds 30+ US gallons. Filling up once is USD$75 at Costco (yesterday). Figure $90 at a regular station. (depending on the price of gasoline.) Filling up twice will probably exceed $150.
The 30+ gallons get me about 500-540 miles typically.
There are some tax advantages with leases that some people can take advantage of, but for most people, leasing is not going to save them money but it does provide a convenient way to always have a new car.
For Maserati, some of their models actually carry a negative money factor, so you are being PAID to lease. You can lease an $80k Ghibli for $600/month for 3 years, that's way less depreciation than if you bought and sold the car after 3 years.
BMW only usually only does about $3k downpayment anyway.
Assuming you want to keep driving new cars, that is.
Between low-balling used-car dealers and Craigslist randos asking if you'd take personal checks, for many people selling a car is more stressful than buying a car.
There's an assumption there about getting higher residual value on a used vehicle than what the dealer has in the lease paperwork.
The marketplace for used cars (before Beepi and Shift) is hardly efficient, and you might extract optimal price if you're willing to drive to multiple used-car dealerships or meet random people off Craigslist at random hours to accommodate test drives.
Some people would rather not deal with that, hence leasing that provides a guarantee a used vehicle will be accepted at pre-negotiated residual value.
I'm not sure where you're from, but this is Hacker News, so I'll just ask - Who are all these people who can afford to live in California? ;-)
It's all relative. Remember, the annual new car market is the number of cars on the road divided by the life of a car. This accounts for the sale of used cars as well.
Honestly, if you consider $1,000 on new tires to be a frustrating expense, then you really can't afford to purchase new cars in the first place. A new vehicle is a multiple of the cost of new tires and even more so when the balance of your last vehicle is rolled into the new financing and spread out over payments with interest. I worked at a car dealership while in college. There's a reason the "finance guy" drove a 10+ year old Honda that he paid cash for.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/11/28/new-cars-and-auto-...
http://www.financialsamurai.com/the-110th-rule-for-car-buyin...
Also, there is a certain value in having a reliable car with predictable monthly costs. Sure, you can get an extended warranty to cover unexpected expenses, but there is still the hassle factor of having your car constantly in the shop after a certain point.
There's nothing wrong with buying a car and keeping it for 10 years, but there is also nothing wrong with having a new car every X years.
You're right of course about features, including safety features. Personally, I'm not going to get rid of a reliable running car for most new technology. But then I've always been a drive car until (or a little bit past :-)) the point where it's not reliable transportation any longer.
Really depends on the car. It isn't uncommon for some sets to breach $1000, even at Costco.
People with families will probably spend a little more for a minivan or SUV, which will skew it higher. Students (or people in their 20s in the early phases of their careers) will spend less, balancing out the minivan purchasers. Totally guessing though.
As long as most middle class American don't total their cars at the end of 4-5 years, I'd say they probably get 1/2 of that value back as trade-in.
I'd wager it's more like 8-15k every 4 to 5 years in installments of $300/mo for those staying in a perpetual mode of making car payments.
And that is assuming you aren't leasing, which a lot of people do. No trade in value there.
For leasing, you aren't paying for the full cost of the car either, in fact, depends on the company you could actually come out ahead when compared to purchasing.
I've had friends lease recent model cars on 3year/12K terms and get about 60% residual value on their term sheet. I think 1/4 to 1/3 is an extreme case, unless you're choosing really crappy manufacturers that are known to fall in value quickly
The total amount of new vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2015 was 17.5 million [1]. Since the average is $33666, we can assume half are above, and half are below that price. In reality, there are far fewer than half above that price, since an outsized sale price pushes that average up.
Half of 17.5 million is 8.75 million. The U.S. Census estimates the 2015 population was 323,995,528 [2], with 116,211,092 households [3]. With every household replacing their car every five years or so (total guess), that leaves us 23.2 million households that should have been buying a car in 2015. That means that about 37.7% of the eligible U.S. households bought a car worth over $33666.
That is bizarre enough that it leads me to believe there is a serious fault in my methodology or it just so happened that car sales were abnormally high in 2015 due to an enormous rise in consumer confidence. Either way, I'm more confused now than when I started scribbling on my metaphorical cocktail napkin.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awsj.com+U.S.+Car+Sale...
I didn't understand why you split the market into 'above-average' and 'below-average' prices though? I highly doubt the distribution is symmetric -- most of the probability mass is probably in cheaper cars, and there are smaller numbers of very expensive luxury vehicles pulling up the average price [1]. In that case, a much smaller number of households buy the 'above-mean-price' vehicles. Also, wealthy households tend to replace their cars more frequently; luxury car dealerships do much of their business in rolling people over every 3 years into a new vehicle lease.
In any case, 116mm / 17.5mm cars per annum households is 6.6 years per car per household, which seems totally reasonable to me since many households own multiple vehicles, and many vehicles are owned outside of households.
[1] http://fortune.com/2015/02/17/luxury-car-sales/ - 'Top-shelf brands, with cars generally selling for more than $40,000, represent a big and growing slice of the car business. They now account for 11% of total new car sales, when measured by number of units sold'
This context helps to explain what's going on, especially the cars per year metric you added. It would be nice to have more information, but it appears that 11% luxury segment can have an outsized effect on the mean sales price of the vehicle sales.
In a real interview, you normally wouldn't have access to a calculator or a computer. The point is to show you can arrive within a factor of 2-3x of the actual real-life answer just by smart guesstimating and doing arithmetic in your head.
One reason is because consultants often get asked these sorts of on-the-fly questions by clients, and they need to provide reasonable answers without looking them up.
Anyway, if the technique is good enough for Fermi [1] or Drake [2], what's the problem?
Even in 2008-2010 annual sales never dipped below 10M.
Detailed stats - https://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gap_hist.xlsx
116,211,092 * 2 / 15 ~= 15.5 million new cars per year which is within the ballpark of 17.5 million new cars.
Next, averages tend to be well above median. One BMW might bring the average up relative to 20 Honda Civics. Further, the low end of the market is more likely to buy used than new. So ~1/3 of the market is buying new cars, 15% of that is buying the expensive new cars and your looking at top 5% income earners at $167,000+k/year.
Granted, not everyone making 150k is buying a 50k car, and some people making less than 150k are buying 50k cars. But, if you think in terms of that kind of income then a 50k car is less ridiculous than you might think.
Maybe car sales are highly variable from year to year?
Having multiple, older vehicles that are 1. fully paid off, 2. dirt cheap to insure, and 3. old enough that you can actually work on them yourself is a good way to make sure you have something usable at any one time, even if the general maintenance needs are higher than average.
PS: Don't forget all those Verizon van's are part of that 2 average.
My new neighbors, though, are ridiculous in their car ownership (in my opinion). They are a married couple with only a new baby, but for some reason they have three cars. I've never seen them drive the third car, it's just in their garage and they park the two cars they do drive in the driveway.
Besides, there have been a couple of times where simply due to bad luck both of our newer cars were in the shop at once. Having the backup of the CVCC for a few days was genuinely useful.
Many suburban empty-nesters I know have three. I don't know why that's popular or makes any sense.
On the other hand most urban twenty-something's I know don't have any, so I'd agree the 2 car average seems possibly high.
Ye gods. :|
Mom and dad's daily drivers + dad's baby and/or project.
If you get outside of urban areas, car ownership is much higher, since you can't get anywhere without them.
Take a look at the size of high school and commuter college student parking lots on Google Earth, and then consider that every single one of those cars probably belongs to a household with 3+ cars (mom, dad, teenager).
Very common for parents to upgrade and pass their old car down to their 16-year-old instead of trading in.
Pretty much all the families I've known have at least two cars.
Now, we could get rid of the Scion and use the VW as the new DogMobile. But the Scion is long paid off, reliable as a hammer, and we don't put miles on a temperamental old VW that wasn't that reliable to begin with (in comparison to a Toyota-made Scion). The resale value on Leafs is horrible, and we like the car. Long since paid off, too, and since it's our "nice car": no dogs allowed.
Oh, and my Dad just texted me this weekend asking if I wanted his 1963 Austin-Healey 3000. As much as it pains me, I'm probably going to turn him down and let him sell it. Too many vehicles the way it is, and nowhere to put the Healey except a storage unit. But until I give a definitive "no", there's the possibility that we could be a four car family.
Ridiculous, yes. But for some the vehicles just kind of pile up.
A household next to me has within the last five years had three residents: mother, father, son then about twenty. They had three cars.
A household down the street: mother, father, employed daughter, employed son (the last there part time). All have their own vehicles:sports ute, truck, sedan, truck.
It is possible that a household at the end of the block, mother, father, daughter in high school, has three cars; but I'm not sure whether father and daughter use the same car or a different one.
We are in a city, close to public transportation. I suspect that as one gets farther out into the suburbs, one finds more households with three or more cars.
We're well below median household income; but we must have transportation at all times.
I have found the sweet spot for used cars to be about $4000. Won't need too much work for a couple years, and I refuse to take the depreciation on more expensive cars. Cash-and-carry, I will not have a car loan, either - not paying interest.
My ego is not in my ride.
A quick search shows there were 260,350,938 registered highway vehicles in 2014. The truth is US auto fleet age is older than it has ever been so car sales are not abnormally high and could actually accelerate (assuming robots don't drive them all!).
http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...
I think the issue is here. Yes, most households don't hold onto a car for longer than 5 years, but not all households upgrade to a brand new car every time. (Heck, I've never owned a brand new vehicle ever.) So one new car sale could result in 2-3 households upgrading their vehicle, as cars are passed down the line.
Maybe you're not stating a symmetry assumption about the distribution of prices about this mean, but in general you can't actually assume that.
http://press.ihs.com/press-release/automotive/average-age-li...
How much do you drive?
What kind of vehicle do you want?
How long do you plan on keeping the car?
Etc...
Here's one case: I just bought a new Tundra a couple months ago (cash because I don't like debt). I could have saved $5K (15%) and gotten one 3 years old with 40K miles on it.
That's the problem with some models. The resale value is SO good that the value proposition for buying used is almost nil.
Since my trade-in Tundra was 10 years old with 178K miles, let's assume that's the life of the new vehicle too. I don't think saving 15% to buy a vehicle that's 20% through its life span is a good deal.
With unlimited resources you can keep anything on the road. But 8k is about 25% the cost of a new truck, so you'd have to be bonkers to put that much into something that old.
No, my assumption is fine. Oddly, yours is flawed. My assumption doesn't use national averages that include southern states and non-coastal states where cars last forever. In my unique living conditions, my assumption is fine.
Again, there are more factors at work here. The trucks practical life was over, not because it couldn't be repaired, but because it didn't make sense. When a repair bill becomes greater than the value of the car, you stop repairing it.
They eyeroll at my 2002 Honda, and I eyeroll at their $1000/mo payments.
Also, I'd like to think your average developer is more financially literate/savvy than your average American. Otherwise, the housing crash wouldn't have happened. You know, people with no money buying expensive houses. People carrying credit card balance and rolling them over.
Those people exist, and they are many.
You may like to think so, but I have seen absolutely no evidence of that...
Out of 330M people even if 5% of population is buying a new car in the given year that is whooping 15M cars per year. USA sells around 17M cars year +-2M. One simple proxy to arrive at the 5% figure is the number of people in 16-19 age group where they might get parent's old car and the parent might buy a new one. That population is around 20M in USA.
Of course I have not accounted for taxi fleets, car rental fleets, corporate purchases etc. In fact go to think of it 17M cars per year does look like a very low number.
To top it off, when you're financing, used car loans are rarely as attractive as manufacturer/dealer incentives - BankRate says they average about 3% annually nowadays, so an 18% mark-up to the value of the used vehicle over the 6-year ownership period.
> *Kelley Blue Book Average Transaction Prices do not include applied consumer incentives
Trucks make up the top 3 best selling vehicles in the US by a large margin -- accounting for 42% of the top 10 best selling vehicles in the US. They are also the most heavily discounted because their margins are so high. And KBB intentionally leaves that information out of their figures.
So all those $8-12k discounts on Ford/GM/Dodge pickup-trucks are not even taken into account for that average. Meaning KBB's numbers are complete trash.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-does-typical-america...
Hallelujah! I really hope the rest of the manufacturers and their car lines come around to this model. I know they make more $$ on their $2000 nav packages, but people are rejecting them in droves because they are horrible and need to be updated through clunky, often expensive processes.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/10/autos/car-navigation-frustra...
The phone navigation apps are made by software companies who actually have to compete with each other to make the best system. Compare to car nav systems where you only have one option, and the comparison of navigation systems between different cars is going to be a very very small factor in which car you end up buying. You buy the car you want and take whatever you get for navigation.
Car manufacturers (to generalize a bit) are not particularly good at software, and do not have much incentive to get better at it.
In my experience the only thing Google Maps navigation has going for it is superior data. I really wish I could have my car's UI with Google's data.
People downvoting honkhonkpants, please don't. You may disagree with him, but it's a well thought out discussion.
The OBD-II data should include odometer readings. I assume phones could at least get that via bluetooth dongles, but I'm not aware of any nav apps that do.
Well, I think most people would include price as something going for it as well.
Plus, data is huge. I have a nav package in my car but never use it because it can't route me around accidents/construction like Waze does. Driving in rush hour traffic on a construction-laden road every day, this has proven invaluable...
Disclaimer: I work for Google but not in the Waze team
[0] https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3855/14390588297_f2743d8f05_b....
Oh, AND I can use either Android or Car Play in my car, as well.
I still like the map, and I have it on most of the time, just because I like maps, but I'd never pay the extra for the nav system again.
I have a 2010 Prius, and I'm quite happy with its built-in navigation. Its UI is worse at first-time address entry, but is substantially better for... Just about everything else.
You'd probably have to do that for your dedicated GPS anyways, right?
I suppose I could achieve the same effect by clearing up space on my phone, figuring out exactly where I'm going, grabbing offline data for it, praying that I don't ever drive out of that area, deleting the offline data after my trip...
Or, I could just use my car's built in maps.
Here's how to use it: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838
Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on Maps.
In that case just use the HERE WeGo App (for iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-effortless-city/id...) which has free offline maps for pretty much every country and doesn't need a data connection for navigation in offline mode. I use it every time I'm in another country.
T-Mobile ONE gives you unlimited* 4G LTE data in Canada and Mexico, and throttles you to 128kbps in ~140 other countries (enough to get basic maps).
Their previous plan, Simple Choice, would throttle you to 2G speeds when you were in Canada, but it was still enough to use Maps.
If you're a long-term visitor, then, yes, you should just get a local prepaid SIM from Rogers.
Disclaimer: I'm a T-mobile customer.
It's great if you travel in any area with coverage, anything outside and you'll have trouble - I recently decided to drive to Scugog (from Oshawa) - I didn't have data from almost the entire ride.
I was lucky as I had HERE maps (with downloaded offline maps).
Edit: When I was in Uganda I used OsmAnd (open street map android) for offline navigation and it worked fine (especially considering the standard of mapping and roads available in Uganda).
> The Android Auto app is currently available in the following countries: Argentina Australia Austria Bolivia Brazil Canada Chile Colombia Costa Rica Dominican Republic Ecuador France Germany Guatemala India Ireland Italy Japan Mexico New Zealand Panama Paraguay Peru Puerto Rico Russia Spain Switzerland United Kingdom United States Uruguay Venezuela
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-superbook...
Nav seems nice so far but the real test is always several years after the latest update...
Each year was a new one for a couple hundred bucks. I bought mine, but given that it's a DVD, out of curiosity I checked if it was possible to pirate them and I only found one possibility in some Russian guy's home directory Apache index. Toyota Highlander dealer navigation DVDs weren't that hot of a commodity when I looked, rather surprisingly.
I don't WANT to update my navigation system. That's exactly what I HATE about Google Maps etc. In fact, I have gone so far as to opt out of updating my car's system to enable Android Auto after I tried it out in a rental and found it to be an epic bowl of buggy fail that nearly got me in an accident.
And of course, that didn't stop the Android team from breaking basic Bluetooth support in Android 7.0.1 on my Nexus 5x because they're go-getters in that department.
My car is a useful device that I need to count on daily, not a @#$%ing mobile app like Candy Crush.
Overall I do feel built in nav systems offer the best experience, I just wish car manufacturers could figure out a better update process.
I wonder if it would be cost effective for you to simply have another dedicated device and data line if you get a Bolt? Reusing an older device ($0) + $10/mo data sounds better for even 5 years of service (10125) = $600 vs. $2000 for nav system.
As for me, I just bought a car this year, and while the next one will be electric, I'm pretty happy with the current set of wheels.
A Bolt costs roughly $32K (depending on incentives, maybe more). A Toyota Camry Hybrid starts at $26,790. And, I know what you're going to say, "electricity is free!" That's just untrue. Recharging electric cars is far from free.
The Bolt costs roughly $10 to recharge its 238 mile battery. A Camry Hybrid can drive approx 680 miles on a full tank and costs $37 to completely refill. So you're saving about $8 per every 680 miles you drive.
So the breakeven for the cost difference of the two vehicles (@$5,210) is 442,850 miles. Neither car is going to make it to 400K miles, so therefore you won't make your money back from a Bolt.
PS - Yes, my post uses tons of assumptions: Incentives for the Bolt, cost of electricity, cost of gas, average miles figures, and so on. You cannot make a post about this topic without doing so. Feel free to pick particular figures/assumptions apart, but pointing out "this is all based on estimates!" isn't very constructive within itself.
So unless they can quantify why a Bolt is superior to a Hybrid (and cost definitely isn't a winning argument) you'll struggle to convince the average American household to own one.
To me that is impractical.
If 'most families' acted in the rational manner you present above, then people wouldn't be leasing/financing new cars at the insanely high rate we do in the US. Given that there's a market for it though, the Bolt seems like a great option for GM to offer....
I thought the point was to stop polluting? If not polluting has to be cheaper and easier, too, none of these conversations will make any sense.
I expect that the Bolt will also have crappy resale value, if, as I think we all expect, EVs continue to get substantially better over the next few years.
The reason to get a Bolt right now is because you are ideologically committed to EVs or because the whole deal of mostly not having to deal with fueling up your car/liking the acceleration profile of an EV/etc., not because it's genuinely the lowest TCO.
On the downside is that it's not fully EV, still stinky gasoline.
The battery pack replacement is a major maintenance cost, even if everything else is running fine. That's something a used EV buyer should take into account.
True. This is a voting with your dollars situation. If you favor the way in which electricity is generated in your area over using an IC engine then the Bolt is your car regardless of how the finances work out.
I'd say the biggest simplification in your analysis is only factoring cost, but not the cars themselves. Again, what do I know, right?
That seems way high.
For your post to matter, you should really cite figures or at least detail your math a bit.
I assumed he used california prices. I live in canada and electricity is half the price as it is in cali based on that website (but the weather could affect millage as well).
So 60 kw-h is $7.20. Brings the breakeven miles down a fair bit, and I guess it should be possible to have quite lot cheaper electricity for charging (and lots of people will have to do the calculation with higher prices).
This number (which actually varies somewhat widely depending on which source you look at) hides a huge standard deviation.
For example, http://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ lists the overall number at $0.1044 but by that ranges from $0.0776 to $0.1705 if we ignore the Alaska and Hawaii outliers. And even then, the number this lists for Massachusetts is $0.1535 but my bill (in Masachusetts) say $0.1906....
Of course gas prices vary quite widely state to state too.
As an example, the 'energy' charge on my electric bill is basically the average for my state (Oregon), but the rate I actually pay is about 50% higher due to other fees.
In many parts of the country, power is much, much cheaper than mine. My friend pays less than $0.10 per kw/h in Georgia, which also has a $5,000 state subsidy (on top of the $7,500 federal subsidy).
Do the math with $6 full charge cost and a $12,500 subsidy and it quickly turns in the EVs favor...
At .02 ? Nope
Annual Average Price per Kilowatthour by State 46 Connecticut 17.76 47 Alaska 17.94 48 Hawaii 26.17
Sadly, this is no longer the case. They've actually gone in the opposite direction, imposing an additional $200 annual fee on EV owners
http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2015/06/24/georgias-electric-ve...
The EV fee is a bit disproportionate because of the limited range and fewer average miles driven, but there's no easy fix.
PGE charges tiered rates, each tier of about 325 kWh where I live, and the rates in the third tier are almost 40c per kWh. During summers and when using an AC, that's the marginal rate people you end up paying to charge your car. They might offer lower rates specifically for car charging but will impose other restrictions making it less attractive.
Cutting e.g. $3/charge off the cost doesn't really swing the figures towards paying off the Bolt's extra $5.2K starting price over the life of the vehicle.
The upfront costs are not prohibitive, they are just upfront, and in return, you can sustainable feedback loop, less gas station visits, less oil changes, few moving parts so fewer "unknown" repairs. Regular maintenance is a breeze. The ride is head and shoulder above a mid-lux vehicle.
But separately, depreciation on EVs is a bit unknown. The powertrain should be good for a very long time - but the battery pack may cancel out any benefit relative to IC cars.
Can your EV fully recharge in 5 minutes? No? Then I think we call it at least a draw in terms of saving time.
Breaks, fluids etc.
It helps that maintenance on gas cars has been reduced dramatically due to advances in chemistry and material science, allowing for very long maintenance intervals and "lifetime" fluids in transmissions, cooling systems, and differentials.
More moving parts simply means more failure costs over time.
But at this point in time, we do not have hard data to compare ice with ev.
Also, simply incorrect on breaks. Regenerative breaks means rotors and pads have a much much longer service interval.
A Prius has regen-braking too, so you can get 100k on a set of pads. You still need to flush the fluid though because it is extremely hygroscopic and begins to break-down and lose effectiveness with age, so it isn't something you want leave for the decade it takes the pads to wear, lest you find the brake pedal on the floor when you need it the most.
But tires are the biggest maintenance expense of a car. And EV's weight + torque can make them eat tires. Edmunds didn't even get 10k miles out of the $1600 tires on their Model S.
You may not realize, but EVs should use special tires. Michelin makes EV-specific variants of their lineups that are designed to handle the heat and load requirements of an EV.
https://www.wired.com/2016/05/hidden-battle-make-perfect-tir...
So, until EVs ditch their tires, maintenance for them is still going to be pretty close to their gas counterparts.
I think there are more people like me out there in the world than there are the financial independence types that scrutinize over marginal TCO discussions. And, those people aren't buying new cars anyways.
ICE engines probably do need fluid changes more than EVs. However that's not a huge expense all things considered. If you give them at least moderate care, ICE engines are very reliable.
http://www.pauric.net/blog/?p=418
I maintain all the vehicles in our household. From the coil packs that regularly fail on the mazda. The water pumps that fail periodically on both the mazda and honda to the lead acid batteries that die every 3-4 years due to the cold winters.
More moving parts simply means more things will wear out more quickly. Regardless of which brand of synthetic oil I pour into the engine.
For someone like me, I'll stick with ice for now because the cost and time to do this work has a great ROI compared to the premium for EV.
That gives a saving of $74/680m or breakeven around the 50k miles point, if my maths is correct.
There are proposals in the US to change how states collect tax from cars if electric vehicles gain widespread adoption. Currently the highway trust fund gets most of it's money from the motor-fuels tax and that will dry up. Mileage-based taxation is being looked at, where your odometer reading would be collected via the OBD-II port.
If you drive 1000 miles a month (average), that's $29.20 in savings a month, or $350.40 a year in fuel costs (assuming base gas/electricity prices inline with what I have here). If you think gas prices will average $3.00/gallon for the lifetime of the car, the fuel savings are $41.80/mo per 1000 miles, $500.40 a year in fuel costs for 12,000 miles, and evens out at just under 125k miles. For $2.00/gallon the 1000 mile savings are $16.70, $200 for a 12,000 mile year. That said, I think I average about 20,000 miles a year on the family car that we use to ferry kids to/from school and most daily errands.
The very important thing to consider though is whether or not you have access to free public charging. If you can find a free public charger and work it into your schedule in some way (maybe run some errands by foot in the area), you might be able to eliminate almost all of your home charging. If I was able to do really good at this, and only home charge for 10% of my usage on average (probably a tall order), and assuming that availability of free chargers doesn't change drastically for the worse, at current gas prices that would put my average (12,000 miles) yearly savings at $710.04. I consider $3.00/gallon a more likely average over that time, and that puts the yearly savings at $860.04, and it evens out at just under 73k miles. .
That's not super compelling when compared to a Camry Hybrid, but it may be cheaper overall, depending on how the future unfolds. That said, if what others are saying and Hybrids have increased maintenance costs, it may be enough to make electric the clear winner in this comparison, but I don't know.
Avg 3-5 cents kwh for overnight charging here via ComEd's hourly pricing system. Assuming a decent level of inefficiency here via the charging process and ComEd's variable rates after 8pm I'm closer to $3 to charge than $10.
So the Camry gets 3x the range, but at 20x the cost. The Bolt is 6-7x more economical per mile for me in Chicago, which is fairly impressive.
Not sure how that plays out from a real dollar perspective, but I imagine after incentives the Bolt might be the cheaper option. I also imagine an EV car is a simpler machine than a ICE car, so you may have maintenance and reliability benefits. Personally, the complexity of a hybrid is a pretty big turn off. I'd rather just get a lower HP ICE car that naturally gets good milaeage and deal with worse performance than go the hybrid route.
The nice thing with electric is you get all these cost savings and you get some decent performance as well. The Bolt does 0-60 under 7 seconds. The Camry Hybrid is almost 10 seconds.
Whoa, inconsistent brake feel? That's kind of terrifying. You'd think Chevy would calibrate the brake feel across states.
this weird feel is one of the problems that halted tesla's collaboration with toyota on electric rav4 drivetrains.
Toyota’s rejection of Tesla’s proprietary regenerative braking system, as it enabled the system upon release of the accelerator which Toyota felt was too abrupt and disconcerting for their customers. Any adjustment meant opening up and sharing either Tesla or Toyota’s “code” – of which neither was willing to do
It's still a bad surprise, but you can tap the brakes if you want to slow down.
If you're in B mode, it will use compression braking (and if you're stopped, it'll bleed off energy by spinning the engine without any gas), but that doesn't change when you actually press on the brake pedal.
I rented a 2009 Prius once, and was surprised by the brake pedal being completely electronic. When the battery was completely full, I noticed the brake pump noise occurring immediately upon touching the brake, instead of partway down the travel like it usually does when regeneration is working.
My mom's Leaf also has a fully electronic pedal, but I've never driven it down a very long hill with a fully-charged battery, and there's no telltale brake pump noise, so I don't know if it changes its behavior with the battery filled to capacity.
Maybe I just haven't noticed the change in brake feel or it is a UK specific feature.
You can hear this by starting at the top of a hill with a full battery and in `D` mode. Then, as you roll down it, you can hear a noise from the engine as it is being turned over as it uses the regen energy.
I doubt it's that alarming. When you let off the accelerator in a manual transmission vehicle, it's more of a "test the water" type of thing, and then you can change gear from there.
It's not like people are going to rely on engine braking to come to an immediate stop.
What there is is that, if the battery is completely full, the energy has nowhere to go. So the car does not use full regen. This could be mistaken for a "warmup".
As another poster commented, this changes the accelerator feel, not the brakes.
Muscle memory is very important, and having the car behave unexpectedly is bad.
I've heard that the Tesla's regen is so aggressive that it will even turn on the brake lights. In that case then, I agree.
How low are we talking about here? I'm thinking this is nitpicking :)
It's being worked on (there were some talks between Tesla and a French manufacturer) but it isn't there yet.
> As of September 1, 2016, there were 1061 CCS fast-charging connectors in the United States, versus 2010 Tesla Supercharger hookups
Let's not do this.
Also, Tesla has already done so much for any car manufacturer:
- They have made all patents free to use by anyone. - Elon has stated that he would welcome other car makers to join in on the Tesla Supercharger network if they are willing to contribute in an equal manner.
Seeing as Tesla has more Evs on the road than anyone else by a large magnitude, and they have proven their charging network far more than anybody else, it's odd nobody else wants to join in. But that's Wall Street for you. Nothing will be given away "free", and we can't be seen working with the competition. Despite many of the 'shareholders' are institutions who likely would own shares of both companies regardless. And at the end of the day, Wall Street is a secondary market that should mean jack.
Hell, the only reason other companies are now pushing for EVs so much is because Tesla lit a fire under everyone else and despite Wall Street betting against them (high volume of shorts), Tesla is now the top selling luxury sedan in the U.S. Now everyone else is scrambling. We will see one or two major automotive companies that have been prominent in the last century fall. They will either A. not keep up with the EV world (maybe they receive too much money from the fossil fuel industry) or B. Their tech will not keep up and/or fail and they will lose all their competitiveness.
The Chevy Volt is the most common plug-in electric car. Tesla is 3rd behind Nissan in cumulative sales.
Second, not sure where you are getting your numbers, but both the Model S has sold more than the leaf, add in the Model X, which is also out selling the leaf A LOT in 2016 and it's not even close. Also, people are dumping their leafs so quickly, most of them are sitting in used car lots which they are having to slash the price of them so much just to move them.
I thought this was the case too, but was recently told that the Nissan Leaf has sold pretty well too.
I'd say I see about equal numbers of Teslas and Leafs driving around my area. And Chevy Volts are nearly as common, though that's not a true EV.
Even if they have to pull new cables to deliver more power the conduits will already be there.
Seriously, Ford, Nissan and whoever spent many many years in committees designing one charging standard after the other. Meanwhile, Tesla built an actual high amps charging network. The other manufacturers need to realize they have wasted 5+ years with dick in hand doing nothing.
quadratic? otherwise we're in trouble
Quadratic: n * x^2
Exponential: x^n
In all cases, x is assumed to be a variable, and n should be assumed to be a constant > 1.
If you pick the same value for n and put these functions into El goog, the answer should become fairly clear.
Also you can put "n *" in front of all of them if you want, but multiplying by a constant is usually omitted because it doesn't affect the shape of the graph.
Well, I'll continue to downvote comments here that do it. Mathematical concepts are an important part of our culture and of the public conversation.
ETA: There are other sources of drag, of course -- tire drag, and mechanical friction in the drivetrain -- but AFAIK the power required to overcome those is linear in speed, and so the energy is constant for a given distance. Anyway, at highway speeds, air resistance dominates.
Yet I do believe the 200+ mile range and price will get enough people in one and really start to shift the EV from being an early adopter accessory to a viable everyday car.
Good on ya, GM.
Anyway, how quick does it charge, either to full or 50 or 80%?
[1] http://www.chevrolet.ca/bolt-ev-electric-vehicle.html
edit: I am wrong, the article mentions quick charging, but the official website doesn't.
For $750, Bolt buyers can opt for direct-current fast-charging capability via a Combined Charging System (CCS) port. As of September 1, 2016, there were 1061 CCS fast-charging connectors in the United States, versus 2010 Tesla Supercharger hookups. Most CCS stations charge at 50 kilowatts, and Chevrolet claims they can be expected to add 90 miles of range in 30 minutes of charging. Not bad, but that’s roughly half the rate of Tesla’s 120-kW Superchargers, and access to CCS chargers definitely isn’t included in the price of the Bolt.
My apartment building has two EV charging stations (always taken) and my work has 9 (always taken).
I don't think vehicle technology or execution has been the limiting factor for a while.
200mi+ is the threshold that will make a lot of people feel completely comfortable using an EV day-in and day-out.
Charging stations will go up when EV sales go up--this will help.
People vastly overestimate how far they drive regularly, or even ever. It really is a mental thing.
What's the cost of a one-time 30m wait to refuel instead of a 5m wait? I think it'd be far less than the benefit of no refueling wait the other 364 days of the year.
Also, the cost isn't infinite. If you were, for instance, totally unable to drive the electric car to the ski hill for your vacation you could rent another car, so worst-case you're out like $200 which is far less than you'd save in fuel the rest of the year.
Most people simply get stuck on the costs instead of being able to amortize them across the whole period and weigh them against the benefits.
I don't own a car at all currently (bus+bike+lyft/uber for me). I've been thinking about buying one, but the longest ride I'd like to do is to get to Washington DC to see friends and family. The DC metro area (and to be real, my preference would be to park somewhere and take transit once I got to the region) is 235 miles away, which is right about the top rated distance for this bolt - but when you read that the observed range for highway driving is 190 miles, and add in unexpected detours and the like, it makes me think I'd need to plan to recharge along the way. Thinking about where I could do that reasonably - and I would totally be down to stop for an hour for a meal and the like - and looking at map of the supercharging stations, leaves me with not a lot of redundant options. Charging station full or out of service? Odds are good that the whole trip will lose its competitive advantage over taking the bus or train rather quickly.
To me that's the source of range anxiety. If I knew I had decent charging options all over the place, I'd want one of these pretty badly.
I get that the EV market is seeking people who make small trips and commuting and the like because that's the easy end of the market to capture, and that's how a lot of people use their cars. But as a society I wish we could just better address those needs via investment in things like urban mass transit and the like.
I would never take a privately owned vehicle on a road trip. One of my coworkers rented a giant obese SUV for a road trip and when it broke down in the literal middle of rural nowhere, it was no problem, the rental car company drove another car to their breakdown in much less than an hour, then they didn't have to deal with paying for 100 mile tows and scammy rural mechanics knowing you will pay anything to get the heck out of there. Also no wear and tear on their regular car. Plus its fun to drive something new.
When I'm on a long road trip, time is of the essence. I don't want to spend more time at gas stations then I have to.
There's also getting yourself to the airport. They tend to be far on the outskirts of town (This also involves paying an arm and a leg if you opt to park.)
If you need a rental car on the other end, you can also look forward to 30 minutes for shuttling, waiting in line, paperwork...
Combined with the cost (Especially for multiple passengers), and the largely unpleasant experience of flying, and I will happily drive 300 miles from Vancouver to Portland, over taking a plane. 400 is probably my limit.
If all the driving you're doing is in the city, yes, an electric car is a great option. They are not a great option for a longer road trip. (Also, fuel economy/effective range goes down quite a bit when you are going above 60 MPH - and most cars are traveling at 75 MPH on an interstate. Gas cars will spend only a little more time at a gas station, but doing the same in an electric will cost you a lot of time.)
Unless you're driving 800 miles into the middle of nowhere, which is so far from a typical use case that it isn't really relevant to the discussion.
For most people, EVs will be better overall. But I wish proponents wouldn't act like there aren't corner cases like this where it doesn't make sense.
It won't take long for this entire 'range' question to invert.
Considering that this is something apartment dwellers can't do themselves, and there isn't a direct profit motive for the landlord, this is where regulations should come in.
[0] https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/unit...
Autonomy will also eventually allow for in-fight recharging. A vehicle will just pull up behind you and plug in.
> $30,000. The liquid-cooled lithium-ion battery pack stores 60.0 kilowatt-hours of energy (equivalent to about 1.8 gallons of gasoline), enough to earn a 238-mile range
Good price too
With a Tesla you can take it on a road trip, as long you plan it around hitting supercharging stations. In the bolt, you can go 200 miles, but have to stop for the night to grab a full charge.
But if you aren't the type of person to drive more than 4 hours a day, or have an alternative vehicle for longer trips, this could be a great choice.
734 Supercharger stations: https://www.tesla.com/supercharger
843 CCS stations: http://www.afdc.energy.gov/locator/stations/widget/results?u...
The article is misleading by counting "hookups" (plugs) instead of locations.
> As of September 1, 2016, there were 1061 CCS fast-charging connectors in the United States, versus 2010 Tesla Supercharger hookups.
All of these facts are directly from TFA...
Yes they do. Everyday thousands of tourist drive from BFE to Orlando, it's one of the reasons stretch of I-4 along the attractions is the deadliest in the US (too many tourist that all drive differently).
It may not be common in your region of the world, but it is extremely common in other regions.
Keep in mind the Bolt hasn't gone on sale yet. Nobody's bought one, there are zero Bolt drivers available to pay money to Blink/CP/NRG that are laying out $50K+ to build each CCS charger. If they've built nearly 900 of them around the nation anyway, on the premise that the cars are coming, think about how fast the network can expand when there are actual cars on the road to justify doing so. Volkswagen is going to dump almost $2 billion into building CCS chargers as part of its settlement for the emissions scandal.
Like all technology, early adopters will suffer "just one or two plugs" for a while... or not, if you're in Pennsylvania like me, and the chargers are unused and available 100% of the time I check Plugshare... so that in a few years, when there are half a million or more EVs on the road... that is, potential customers... we will have created demand that led to those additional plugs being built.
Complaining that there are only 1579 fast charge plugs for the Bolt before it goes on sale is like complaining there weren't enough iPhone docks available before the iPhone came out. The accessories showed up after the customers that can buy them did.
The Bolt is there to be bought, not admired.
Out of curiosity, I wondered if the upcoming Tesla Model 3 has any water pumps. It has no need to cool an engine, right? So, maybe I'd avoid replacing fuel and coolant parts. Less parts, means lower cost of ownership, right? ...Maybe?
Teslas have 3 water pumps, to pump ~26 quarts of coolant to keep the battery cool. Sigh.
Maybe I'd have no fuel injectors to replace in a Tesla, but the physics of getting me from 0-60 in a reasonable amount of time must necessitate a minimum complexity.
I wish I could fast forward ten years to see total cost of ownership of EVs versus gas/petrol powered vehicles.
I hasten to add that I do not know the expected cost of repairs between the two types of engines. Would be a good fact to know.
Compare this with old motors, where you could just replace individual parts. Sure, they had more parts, but most were replaceable.
Edit to add: If I'm misrepresenting, please correct me.
We need that same law at the Federal level, except with some more teeth so that the repair info isn't locked behind a ridiculous price tag. If I were dictator, I'd make a law requiring all repair info for major products to be freely available. Companies used to do this several decades ago, and it was much better for the consumer, and didn't have any adverse affect on the companies (except that they couldn't make extra profit by monopolizing repair, but that's not "adverse" any more than it's "adverse" that I'm not legally allowed to own slaves).
There's also no possibility for a backup on an IC engine, if you water pump dies, you're not running. It would be pretty easy for an electric car to have their simple water pumps cover for each other to provide a limp-home or reduced power-mode.
I support electric, and my next car -will- be electric .. but at the end of the day. this car is as ugly as hell. I'll support it only to the support the industry and more entrants.
For the back end of this car, it is good to know that the battery pack looks something like this ____==== . It is slimmer in the front, and taller in the back. The rear must be taller to allow any room for rear passengers and cargo.
Additionally, the whole industry is moving from sedans to crossover/SUVs, and the Bolt EV is indicative of that
As for the styling cues, there are a lot a people who still want to remind people that they own and drive an environmentally friendly car.
I don't know if I just got used to it, or if they changed it extensively, but the styling of the production vehicles seems muted compared to the pre-prod vehicles.
Can you point to any particular styling cues or reason you think the vehicle is ugly?
(I work for GM, but not on this program)
http://www.hybridcars.com/aples-steve-wozniak-choosing-pract...
You can check his twitter, also he checks in to Tesla charging stations all the time.
* Supercharger can charge at 1.2kWh per minute. (90kWh/75minutes). That means a 10kWh battery can be charged in about 8 minutes which is comparable to a typical gas station time.
* Many plugin hybrids have about a 10kWh battery that gets about 25-30 mile EV range.
* The battery in one Tesla (90 kWh) could be used to build 9 plugin hybrid cars. Since the battery is so much smaller, the additional car price is also much less.
* Big improvement for the environment. The US likes SUVs. And many car trips are short distance (getting groceries, going to school, etc.) If these can be covered by the battery, then the impact of the low-mpg SUV is much reduced.
* Ironically, it would allow a business opportunity for gas stations. Imagine a EV quick charge cable right next to the gas pump. Fill the up the gas tank and quick charge the 10kWh battery at the same time.
* It would be a good fit for those without garages (such as apartments). The EV part of the car is simply a nice to have. The charging is quick enough to do it at those charging stations at supermarkets, workplaces, etc. But it's ok if they can't find any empty EV parking spots, the gas engine will get them home.
It's always too late to push for something that is just a bad product.
I don't think this is true. A plug-in hybrid will always have an advantage over a gasoline car, in that it can do short trips without starting the gas engine at all. So for repeated short trips, it acts like a BEV. But unlike a BEV, there's no range limitation or worrying about where to find a charging station.
I've thought fairly hard about a pure BEV and I can't see myself getting one except as an additional vehicle. But I could see getting a plug-in hybrid like the Volt in the near future. Anecdotally, all the people I know who are seriously considering BEVs are buying them as second or third cars. There's certainly a market, but I think it's going to saturate pretty quickly, because a lot of people don't want to have one vehicle for known-distance commuting and then another vehicle for unknown-distance or long trips. While these trips may represent a small percentage of driving in terms of actual mileage, they're enough to shape the choice of cars. (E.g. someone may not drive to grandma's house out in the sticks more than a few times a year, but if the car can't handle that drive, it's not going to get purchased, period.)
I really don't understand why other manufacturers aren't pushing hard on fast charging networks. As you say, those long trips may not be common, but people won't buy the car if it can't make them.
Toyota and Ford hybrids have been successfully used by cab companies for quite some time now. The old Honda IMA setup was troublesome, but their new setup is great.
It's not like standard gas power trains are simple anymore either--turbocharging, direct injection, and dual clutch transmissions are common, even in affordable cars.
Not a solution for the long distance folks, but for my 46 mile round-trip commute, I can charge each evening on 110 and don't worry about going out to dinner or other side trips I want to add to my day.
Perhaps in 5 years a used Bolt will be a sensible purchase. Until then, I'll let everyone else buy them new and pay the depreciation for me.
My brother used to sell used cars and a good friend runs a couple small dealerships nearby. I call him when I need a car, tell him what kind, how much, what features and he goes out and finds one at auction for me.
It takes a month or so, but I always end up with a great deal.
If you know someone who can do that for you, it's a great deal for you and an easy sale for them.
Losing 44% of your profit is going to be a big deal to a lot of dealers.
I'm wondering if the Tesla model that so many dealer networks have been battling will be required to make the transition to EVs. A manufacturer that has, say, 40% of their dealers dry up is probably going to, for survival sake, start dealing direct. That's my theory anyway.
Interesting. Just for an oranges to apples comparison, I wonder how many KWh the most efficient gas powered generator can produce on 1.8 gallons of gas.
"The gasoline-powered generators produce at best 6.13 kilowatt-hours per gallon of fuel, at worst 4.42, and a median of 5.7." [1]
So it sounds like it's ~5x as efficient as a gas generator. [1]https://settysoutham.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/portable-gener...
Electric motors are about 90% efficient.
So electric motors are about 5x more efficient than ICEs.
So to charge a 90kwh battery, you need roughly 99kwh of energy.
Which for me, since it's charging in my garage, the excess heat is actually kind of nice as it will keep my garage slightly warmer in the winter and thus my house as my garage is on the lower floor.
Either way, it's still WAY more efficient than any time of combustion engine. Including hydrogen. Hydrogen is kind of a wasted effort (unless we are doing fusion ;p )
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3
Efficiency of coal plant is ~ 33%
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_01.html
Natural gas is about ~40%.
So in reality you are getting 90% of ~35% or 31.5%.
That's 11 hours at 3500W for 7.5gal == 5.1 kWh/gal.
1.8 gallons in that generator gives about 9.2 kWh. Or, 11.7 gallons to get 60 kWh.
Some other quick searching says gasoline has 33.4 kWH/gal and that typical gasoline engines in cars are around 25% and the best peak at maybe 35%, giving between 8.4 kWh/gal and 11.7 kWh/gal. Which is between 5 to 7 gallons for 60 kWh.
I don't think buyers are going to save 22k in gasoline over the course of the life of the car.
Disclaimer: I work for GM and drive a Sonic. I did not work on this program.
It's not marketed as a luxe vehicle like the Tesla; it doesn't have the same performance as the high end Teslas.
It's more expensive than seemingly comparable vehicles, until you try to find a vehicle to compare it to.
It's quicker than most (nearly all) compact cars and crossovers.
It doesn't have the ground clearance to be regarded as a Crossover/SUV, but it is too tall to be considered a hatchback. While being a tall vehicle, it has a low center of gravity due to the battery being very low and heavy.
It is a small car, but it is heavy, again due to the battery.
All in all, this car will have to make it's own market, because there really is nothing exactly like it.
(disclaimer again, I do work for GM)
Driving a gutless little thing amongst the real vehicles is scary.
My takeaways:
1) Lease! EVs are evolving so rapidly that buying one outright seems unnecessarily risky. Or wait and buy one used for cheap.
2) We really do need standardized charging. If it's free, as I have heard, why doesn't Bolt and other forthcoming EVs support the Tesla Supercharging technology? Being instantly able to leverage that network would be a big deal.
3) The holy grail is going to be 500-700 miles of range, where you can do road trips (goal being a reasonable driving distance per day, not swapping drivers).
So in answer to your question the fire hazard of both is identical and many MANY vehicles with non-leather seats have seat warmers (including mine).
The i3 is not only a blast to drive, I think it gives the Chevy a run for its money. First, it has 114 mile electric range, and an additional 70 mile gas range (in the range extender version) by firing up a small 2 cylinder generator. So, you essentially have an infinite range as long as you're within 70 miles of a gas station.
Also, it's a BMW, and drives like a premium car. Expect great handling, and great performance. It's BMW's fastest production car from 0-42 mph, beating out even all of the M cars, so that tells you a little bit about how zippy it is.
Tire sizes: Front: P155/70R19, rear: P175/60R19
It's very fast off the line a well - it is BMW's fastest production vehicle from 0-42 mph, beating even the M class cars, so that tells you how "snappy" it is.
I would test drive one; you'll be impressed.
Even though the engine in the i3 REx and the Volt don't get used as much as the engine in a Prius, it still adds a lot of failure points and a lot of additional maintenance that pure EVs don't have.
And you're complaining about damage from dogs? How do you think cloth seats are going to fare with dogs? Most people who have nice cars and dogs end up getting some kind of fancy seat covers or other dog-specific solution, as far as I can tell, so their seats don't get ruined.
Cloth holds up much better to having drinks spilled on it than leather. The leather could potentially be permanently damaged if you don't clean it up quickly. Most cloth seats will just need paper towels. If you really don't clean it up for a long time you can steam clean cloth seats, which you cannot do with leather.
I'm wondering if maybe you've never had real leather seats and are mistaking pleather or vinyl for leather? Vinyl seats will hold up pretty well to abuse, but they are awful to sit in.
My cloth seats hold up fine to my dogs. Typically cloth seats nowadays are a lot more resistant to scratching and tearing than leather seats are.
Going to be real curious what drop off it experiences in winter. I am seriously considering a lease for one of these, I would not buy any first generation practical EV; I don't consider any of the sub 100 gang to be practical.
What I am really curious about is how this will effect pricing on the short range EVs. I don't see the pricing to remain steady on anything short of 200 miles going forward.
Even Consumer Reports likes it, though they state the boxy form is dork like it in no means goes full dork like the i3. Again, CUVs are the where the market is hot now and this was a great choice by GM. CR review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIYG0NR42LU
Even now the depreciation on Leafs are crazy, and this just makes it more so. The way I look at it right now the EV market is like fast moving computers, everyone is scared to buy in that they will miss the next upgrade and have buyers remorse, and that is the 200m mark. This just confirms it.
If I were in a two-car household, I'd probably make a Leaf my second car right now because, for all that it's a way worse first car than a 200 mile range EV, it's not much worse of a second car, and the cost pressure downward on it is insane right now.
I'm a bit worried about the battery but looks like I'll be getting it replaced before the battery capacity warranty is up (60k miles).
Are you noticing range fallling?
Out of warranty, to get a new battery, you don't get to keep the core, is $5,500. That warranty runs out at 60K miles. I was delighted to see the Bolt warrantied for 100K miles but will need to look at the details to see if that covers accelerated capacity degradation.
That is definitely the cycle number where you'll start to see a capacity drop, but 25% still seems very high for that range.
First and 2nd gen batteries will generally have to be replaced around 600 +-10% cycles. It's 'normal' for all pure EV vehicles - so the durability of the battery pack is directly proportional to its capacity.
California has mitigated this to a degree by making their state subsidy means-tested: [1], which is a good first step.
1: http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/07/electric-vehicles-incent...
It would be nice if the funds for the subsidy came directly from fuel-carbon taxes, but those sort of revenue earmarks are mostly for appearance's sake anyway.
I'm having trouble getting upset.
I don't understand this because the last time I went into the VW dealer they had the MSRP of the e-Golf crossed out with a sharpie, and the price was written in higher, by the exact sum of the state and federal credits. How can the buyer expect to capture all of the federal incentive?
*A rare proper usage of the term "literally"
Just want to point out that it's a continuum -- both in people that the technology is well suited for, and at this point in time in 2016.
The technology will continue to evolve. There are early adopters, late adopters, and some clinging to their V8s.
Can't the same charging stations be used for different brands of cars? Seems wasteful if each manufacturer has to build their own network.
GM is definitely at about the same volume as Tesla -- They've sold ~130,000 Volts / Amperas, maybe ten thousand Spark EVs, and a few thousand Cadillac ELRs..
As of the end of Q3, Telsa has sold 160,000 total vehicles, so GM and Tesla are likely within ~10%-15% of each other in total EV sales.
Also, while we grew up thinking of gas engine sounds as powerful, after driving an EV gas engines just sound like angry lawn-mowers. People in their hot cars seem like kids with playing cards in their bike spokes.
And if the Tesla can smoke tires, I'm sure they'll release a software patch to "fix" that in the future.
Uber, maybe?
It looks like a normal car. As it should. Can't wait for the days of auto manufacturers bashing their EVs with the ugly stick to end.
Are the major car companies even trying to make reasonable electric cars? They all look so weird and have weird design decisions that make me not want to buy them at all.
But BMW went all-in on a new platform and new materials, and that led them to the suicide doors. I don't think there's any excuse for the front end, though.
It looks more like Ford's CMax Hybrid: http://www.cmaxownersclub.co.uk/uploads/1/new-cmax.jpg
(always wondered why people buy brown cars)
[edit: wow so much hate]
GM being able to put the same range on a $30k car is just batteries getting cheaper.