Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year | Hacker News Reader

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

motortrend.com

117 pointsShivetya153 comments

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.

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

It's not just you. They're pretty open about the fact that they're a battery company.

The spin is shifting, they started as a car company with socio-ecological conscience and now moving onto green energy of all forms.

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, etc... There were exceptions, but for the most part this was what the average person believed.

And while you could argue that much of this is still true with Teslas when compared to other luxury brands at the same price point, Tesla has gotten people interested. They've gotten people excited for electric cars. They've made people want them even though they might be worse on paper.

And that's a big deal. They are not only making a great product, but they are pushing their competitors to step up their game and really focus on their electric offerings.

Off the top of my head, the pre-Tesla EVs I remember are the GM Impact, an electric RAV4, and an electric S-10/Ranger (the latter primarily sold to corporate fleets).

The EV1 spawned a movie, with most owners very interested in buying.

If you think a RAV4 is a shitty ecobox, well, I'm not sure how I can help.

I owned an ICE Rav4. I would absolutely characterize it as a shitty ecobox version of an SUV.

it's also a quality assurance company, similar to apple. "we put these different parts together, and guarantee they function the way we say they do."

similar to intel and microsoft making first party hardware, their core becomes more valuable when oems get better.

> similar to intel and microsoft making first party hardware, their core becomes more valuable when oems get better

So, you mean the opposite of Android?

I think that describing them as a "marketing" company oversimplifies things in important ways as Tesla wouldn't have been successful without a lot of other key attributes as well (financial planning, product development, extensive development of the product's complements, etc).

I do think that you are exactly right in regards to their competitive advantage, though. A company that competes with them will need to do a lot of work to convince the market that their electric car is in the same class as a Tesla. That will take years of work, a lot of money, and it will require them to do some things that risk damaging their existing business.

I suspect that we are actually agreeing here and maybe I'm just saying it in a different way?

I agree 100% and I think we are saying the same thing.

Wasn't that one of Musk's stated goals early on? I can't recall the exact words but I thought he had made a statement to the effect that he wanted to show the world what an electric car could be, to raise the bar for all manufacturers.

That doesn't seem quite right to me. A lot of what gets people excited about Tesla's cars in the fact that they're great. Getting people excited about your product by making a great product isn't what I'd consider marketing. They do some marketing as well, but it doesn't seem like the core of their business at all.

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.

But they don't make the batteries, panasonic does.

Tesla design and formulates the batteries. Panasonic puts them together.

And battery production is shifting to the Gigafactory, which is a joint venture of the two companies.

Tesla will inevitably be a battery company because battery energy density, charge time and cost are the #1 things holding back electric vehicles from prime-time, and because of the huge investment into Gigafactory.

I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla ends up licensing their battery tech and that supercharging becomes a standard.

Isn't the the whole purpose behind https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you ?

One would think, but has anyone actually taken them up on these? Perhaps no one else wants to swallow their pride and realize that Tesla took the lead, here.

>> I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla ends up licensing their battery tech and that supercharging becomes a standard.

I would bet it is actually. Licensing is really where the money is. They've built a substantial lead in the EV market and have some pretty impressive technology.

If Musk is really serious about expanding the markets he says he is, the fastest way to do that is license his technology to other companies. Let them help him increase these EV markets far faster and scale up far greater than Tesla ever could on their own.

And even better for the market: license under the GPL :)

Of course, it doesn't make a lot of sense on a commercial perspective, but that's probably one of the most effective ways to bootstrap the market. Plus, it would make for a very interesting case study.

Tesla is a "lifestyle" company... like apple. Think about how they're acquiring solar city, they have the powerwall and solar panels. They want to use their equipment to power your home/vehicle. If you're a tesla consumer you're at least upper middle class and care about the environment.

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.

It's said most IP is Panasonic's although Tesla is partner and probably works on tech too for optimizations for the Gigafactory.

Tesla's battery tech is developed by Tesla. Panasonic is the manufacturing partner. Like Apple & Foxcon.

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.

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.

That is interesting. I wouldn't say it puts Tesla in direct competition with LG & Samsung, but does address the 'how will they ever catch up?' questions wrt traditional car makers. (Not that I'd give these arguments that much credence.)

A commoditised battery/drivetrain solution allows the incumbents to focus on what they do best - building high quality cars at scale. So in this respect the challenge lies with Tesla.

(FWIW I'm a huge Tesla fan but I enjoy reading EV articles on HN because the discourse is a bit more balanced than more pro-Tesla communities.)

This is a genius quote. batteries and self driving car systems will be commoditized.

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.

I think there's a good comparison to make to other tech industries. LG, Samsung, etc. used to just be memory manufacturers, or just display panel makers, but over time they've come to make all the parts of computing devices and now are major competitors to older, more established players.

AFAIK, LG doesn't get involved in medium and heavy industries like ship building, but Samsung (now Samsung-Renault) has made cars in the past. Knowing that the Chaebols like to use a "fast-follow" approach, once electric cars become commonplace, it would be a fairly small lift for any given Korean car maker (Hyundai/Kia, Samsung, etc.) to engage with the existing supply chain and just put some product out.

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 in a lot of the country, which I'm sure is great if you can afford it or fun for early adopters but otherwise just an impractical luxury.

That first 40 miles approach turned the MPG formula on it's head by making clear that miles-per-day is the real metric that people need to worry about.

Going forward, the approach of the Volt could easily be modified to replace the gas generator and tank with fuel cells, bio-diesel, ethanol or any other power source that comes along.

The perk of the approach is that you have 2 options and you aren't purely SOL after a long power outage from a hurricane or other unexpected event. That happens with an EV and you don't have another way to charge it via wind/solar you're left with a very expensive brick.

I already have 2 cars, so I'm not concerned about range.

One of those cars is a Prius. While it has been very reliable, as we come up on 200,000 miles my wife is getting anxious about failure modes that are hybrid only. I mostly don't want to ever have to get another oil change again.

Wife has the minivan for when we all are going somewhere, daughter has a beater ('95 Buick) after she wrecked(totaled) my Impala(and two other peoples cars), All I need is an around the town car. I drive 3.6 miles to work, home for lunch then back to work and home again in the evening, sometime a few errands. The only practical drawback is how low slung these small cars are. As a backup if my wife's van is in the shop, we need something higher off the ground as the wife has had six back surgeries and getting in/out of something low is hard for her. If Chevy would do an all electric equinox...

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.

FTA: The battery is expected to last the life of the Bolt EV, and it’s covered by an eight-year/100,000-mile warranty.

100,000 miles is not remarkable for cars made in the last decade at least. Most will go 100,000 miles easily with only routine fluid changes. Granted that may be more than what an EV needs but it's not something most people really "worry" about.

None of my current cars are less than 10 years old and none have less than 100,000 miles; my main family car for long trips is a Honda minivan w/210,000 on the clock and it runs like new and is very reliable. And I only paid 8,000 for it when I bought it with 80,000 miles.

So it's warrantied for 100k miles, not that it's going to die at 100,001. Are any of your cars warrantied for more than $100k?

Not like the battery is expoxied in and you can't replace it.

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 quite as much of a concern.

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.

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 reduces wear and maintenance requirements. However at the last moment GM revealed that at certain times the engine would drive the wheels directly, probably to prevent some idiots from driving at maximum power and depleting the battery.

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.

> I still don't understand why anyone would buy a Bolt (or a Tesla) over a Volt.

It's a great second car. For families, you buy one PHEV (like your Volt) to handle commutes or road trips, and one Pure EV second car that only gets used for commutes and such. Pure EV's also have significantly lower maintenance.

> Pure EV's are nothing more than "around town" cars in a lot of the country,

This isn't like a LEAF with low 80ish mile limits. At 220+ miles, this new Bolt could drive from Chicago to Milwaukee and back without ever stopping to charge -- quite a bit further than just "around town".

Or Prius Prime? The new version of prius plug in would give epa estimated 133 mpge which is the highest number for any car sold in USA. So if you really consider efficiency and even carbon emissions then that is the car one should get. A good amount of electricity is generated in America by coal based power plants so in a way, comparing mpge numbers make more sense while thinking about reducing the carbon emissions. Also found this tool really useful to see carbon footprint of a car.

Www.carboncounter.com

Definitely the right approach. The more options out there like that the better IMHO.

I'd just like to add that mpge does not really make sense for EVs.

There simply aren't enough EVs to make any significant impact on short-term carbon emission. All the EVs produced by the end of this decade won't make even a tiny dent. You can't really think of EV as relevant at all in the short term. You have to think of it as part of a two-decade long strategic plan.

The same is partly true for PHEV with sufficient battery capacity.

So the question is really, how is electricity generated in 20 years?

I think there's reason to be optimistic about that question.

In general, when it comes to the environment: don't mistake the forest for the trees.

But I see that, ironically, both environmentalists and deniers like to focus on carbon emissions on EVs (equivalent or not). Environmentalists like to say that they're "zero-emission" to boost their ego, while deniers like to show worst-case scenarios to try to make EVs no better than gasoline cars. But if you're calculating the carbon emission of an EV today, you've already missed the point.

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://supercharge.info and see just where you can reach on Tesla's network alone. OK, places like North Dakota and Arkansas won't work too well, but certainly the places I'd like to visit are covered. I find myself planning a lot more road trips with the Tesla than with previous cars. I didn't like burning all that gas before, but now it's just fun. In the past year, I've driven from my home near DC to south Florida, to Ohio, to Montreal, and I'm planning a trip to Wisconsin next month.

As far as long power outages go, I'm less worried with the Tesla than with previous cars. Every morning, the car has 237 miles of range left. With my gas cars, that figure fluctuated anywhere from 500 miles to 40 miles. Gas pumps require electricity to work, so you have to wait for power to come back (or go somewhere that has it) either way. But I know that I'll always have the canonical "half a tank of gas" that they say you should ensure you have for emergency.

EVs are highly practical these days. What they aren't (yet) is both practical and affordable. The Bolt is helping to change that, although the lack of fast charging infrastructure means it doesn't quite get there.

I totally understand why people would want to stick with gas cars or hybrids, whether it's because you live in or visit places like North Dakota, or can't stand the extra charging time needed for long trips, or can't charge at home, or whatever. But I hope this helps you understand the other side.

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.

Just for an example, I'm in Greenville, SC (which has a location) but regularly drive to Columbia, Florence and the surrounding areas of Myrtle Beach (Murrell's Inlet specifically). That entire route doesn't have anything.

I could round trip Columbia in a Tesla. I could make it to Florence with about 90 miles left but I'd have to get somewhere that I could charge for 22 hours to get enough juice to get back (per the 4 miles per charging hour on the Tesla site for a new standard outlet).

Assuming that 270 mile range was accurate Murrell's Inlet would be doable at 260 miles just barely but then I'm still looking at 67.5 hours wait to charge enough to get back.

EDIT: Just as a side comment, Columbia really seems like a place where they need one since it's the center point to so many routes in the state.

If you'd been watching the supercharger build-out, you'd see that Tesla started by making it possible to drive through SC on I-85 and I-95, and now they're filling in. I suspect there are a lot more Tesla owners in Atlanta and Research Triangle Park than SC... lots of well-paid engineers in Greenville work for BMW and drive BMWs.

Very, very true. This entire area owes most of its economic recovery to BMW.

Columbia is well within range for a round trip without recharging. Myrtle Beach has a supercharger planned. Florence could be sticky, depending on exactly where you're going and how long you're staying. If you want to make a quick day trip, then you'd need to get Tesla's CHAdeMO adapter and hit a third-party quick charging station in Columbia. If you're staying overnight and are near one of the L2 chargers in Florence, or there's an accessible dryer outlet wherever you're staying, then you could just fill back up overnight.

This is pretty amazing timing. Sometime between when you wrote this comment and when I'm writing this reply, Tesla opened a supercharger in Columbia, SC. Not even kidding. I guess they agreed with your assessment!

That's just weird.

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.

Funny! And yeah, it's a great way to keep track of Tesla's buildout, especially for people who can't see the map in one of their cars. And even if you can, they show (many, but not all) planned sites and sites under construction, whereas Tesla's official stuff only shows you ones that are operating.

For people interested in EVs in general, you can also check out PlugShare to see nearly all public chargers:

https://www.plugshare.com

Many of those are slow chargers not suitable for long-distance travel, but you can filter the map depending on what you're interested in seeing.

It hits every trip need of mine except for that ill-advised 1000 mile road trip. Looking forward to the UK variant.

They're not bringing the first gen model to the UK: http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/vauxhall/94351/opel-ampera-e-el...

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.

I also picked a Prius EV. It think that was a mistake. A Volt would have made my EV driving percentage way higher.

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.

Maybe because you don't want the cost, complexity, and weight of having two completely different drive trains?

As chevy shows with the CotY you can make a hell of a car if you design a car for electric and invest the weight/savings in the better electric car. Why carry around a complete drive train for the 5% case when that you could invest in the electric side for the 100% case.

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 charger standardisation now that Tesla has its own apparebtly faster but non-standard alternative.

It's like the rise of California wineries. If someone wins they all win.

Except for the fact that TSLA stock price trades as if it will dominate all the markets it operates in.

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.

Compatible chargers would be great, but you have the same old problems of a standards war.

Could mathematical tools for fair division help? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_cake-cutting

For example it could be used to decide who pays what to buy into the standard, who helps build out the network etc.

Or they could ask Dolby Labs or Sony for help if they really want to lean how to screw up a standards war so everyone loses for years on end.

This is a big deal.

Car of the year, when you're talking about normal internal combustion cars, doesn't really matter that much. When you start talking about new (and, for $30000, scary) tech like electrics and hybrids 10-12 years ago, it makes a big impact on purchasing decisions.

I bought my 2005 Prius largely based on the car of the year recommendation on the 2004 Prius (among other research, sure). That recommendation helped validate that I wasn't buying an experiment - people who know cars thought this was a great buy.

I don't think it's such a big deal. The Volt won in 2011, and that car didn't change the automotive world substantially.

You may be right.

However, the Volt is basically just a hybrid with a bigger battery. By 2011, hybrids were pretty common, so being nervous about the tech wasn't as much of an issue. That's the point I'm trying to make: for most people, $30k is a pretty big investment. New tech is a risk, and awards like COTY go a long way to overcoming consumer resistance to that risk.

It's possible, though, that Tesla has done enough to prove out electric cars. Tesla won COTY as well.

This is a pet peeve of mine, but I don't get why cars need to change design (subjective: and make them ulgy) just because they are EVs?

Tesla showed the world that a car could look like a "car" and still be electric. I'm all for innovations in design, but weird/ugly designs are also a reason that stops people from buying electric cars.

To me, the Bolt looks just like all the other (non-EV) small/medium-sized hatchbacks, I'd say it's one of the things it has going for it compared to other small EV's.

It's weird how obvious this is to consumers but how it's been lost on car manufacturers for so long. Literally everyone I know says the same thing about how ugly they are. Maybe now Tesla is helping them finally get it.

I think it's a result of wind-tunnel design and also trying to maximize interior space on a small chassis. I agree though, I don't like the look of most compact cars these days and even the Model 3 has sort of a weird looking "bulldog" snout for a front end.

The Bolt sacrifices aerodynamic efficiency for cargo space according to

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/chevy-bolt-family-design-a...

"the Bolt still ended up with a drag coefficient of 0.32. The Toyota Prius has a coefficient of 0.24.

The Bolt’s relatively high drag coefficient explains why, even though its battery pack is more powerful than the Tesla Model 3’s, it has a 200-mile driving range, compared to the the Tesla’s 215-mile range, according to Electrek. The Tesla has a coefficient of 0.21"

More than enough reason for me to wait for the Tesla...

Did they change the design? This looks just like every other small hatchback sold (it looks just like my Toyota Yaris, for instance).

If you just don't like that type of car, I'm confident this tech will move up to full-size sedans in a few years as production scales up.

It's simple, if the made this car look good they would never keep up with demand.

The Bolt is just a beautiful car, more so than the Tesla model 3. I'm glad they make EVs that don't look like Buicks or LeBarons.

BMW i3 is a great example.

http://o.aolcdn.com/commerce/autodata/images/USC40BMC601B021...

Would it have been that much more work to fit it all into a 1-series?

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2013/05/2013-b...

The wheelbase is only 3" longer on the 1er.

Exactly! and BMW i8 is an example of an EV that looks pretty sweet[0]. So, it's not like car manufacturers can't make good looking EVs, it's that they chose not to.

[0] http://buyersguide.caranddriver.com/media/assets/submodel/78...

I'm a little saddened by all of the comments about this "article" being written like an advertisement. Perhaps if people watched the actual award presentation they'd feel differently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SijPcSOhev4&t=1803

Also, some more info on behind the scenes: http://www.motortrend.com/news/behind-the-scenes-2017-car-of...

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 predict a shortfall of dysprosium before 2015. [0]

My other question, as a non EV, owner is how easy is it to charge these? Can I charge from home or do I have to compete with others at charge stations? At work we have so many EVs that people have to rotate their cars throughout the day.

Note: I'm pro electric car, just curious about scalability

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysprosium

»Despite their name, rare earth elements are – with the exception of the radioactive promethium – relatively plentiful in Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million, or as abundant as copper. They are not especially rare, but they tend to occur together in nature and are difficult to separate from one another.« —Wikipedia

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 without needing to charge away from home (work doesn't have any chargers right now or easily accessible outside plugs) or use a cup or so of gas.

This certainly works pretty well for me. I could install a higher voltage charger at home and charge faster, once I have the money to invest in that effort, but given my car is typically sitting in my garage overnight anyway, I haven't felt a strong need for it just yet.

I think that home charging is something of an overlooked game changer about EVs. Admittedly not everyone will have that ability just yet (apartment complexes and people that need street parking don't easy available electricity to their parking spaces yet), but there is something really convenient to know that your car is charging at Home while you sleep where it would be sitting unused anyway.

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.

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

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).

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 does ramp up numbers more.

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.

Is there any information about their total battery production capacity?

I wonder where the top Speed Limit comes from, is it battery cooling or artificial limiting to proclaim a better Range? In Germany that number raised a few eyebrows.

I would assume it's to simplify the gearing.

Most electric cars lack a variable-ratio transmission. At some point and you only have the final drive to reduce the speed of the electric motor.

The final drive has to strike a balance between torque for negotiating inclines and top speed, as the electric motor cannot rev to infinity, neither can the power systems handle infinite power though them.

An electric car with a two-ratio gearbox would be ideal for both taking off from a standstill and top speed.

What does the Model S use then?

A way more powerful motor and power electronics that allow for a "taller" (smaller reduction ratio) final drive.

IIRC the AWD versions (recognizable by a 'D' at the end of the model name, as in P90D) use 2 motors, one for the front and one for the rear. These two motors have different gear ratios, so one is more opimized for torque and the other for high speed.

The rear wheel drive versions have a single ratio which has to strike a balance between speed and torque.

This is also the reason that the AWD versions are faster than the RWD even though they are heavier due to the additional motors.

Tesla wanted to use a 2-gear transmission for the original roadster, but they couldn't find one that could handle the massive torque, so they ended up with a single ratio gearbox.

Source: http://www.autoblog.com/2008/01/23/breaking-tesla-has-a-solu... and Ashley Vance's biography of Elon Musk.

One of the concerns I have is that many of the EVs that are being released are not capable of towing significantly. I own a horse and we need something that can tow a braked 3.5T trailer.

This market in the EU is primarily serviced by diesel 4x4s. I can see a future where the diesel engine is banned and only at that point will something fall out of the woodwork to cope with that towing capacity.

Extra battery in the floor of the trailer? Hooks into the car and gives it some extra juice, why wouldn't that work?

IIRC it's not the battery power as much as it is the cooling.

Many of the parts on electric cars overheat when pushed pretty quickly, and while adding cooling similar to a traditional ICE seems to be the answer, it adds even more weight and complexity to a platform which is already fighting to save every oz.

Even the Tesla Model S can't do more than a single lap around many tracks without overheating.

The diesel-electric locomotive comes to mind. The road has different challenges than rail, but the application is proven.

I have heard that the more recent Model Ss (Models S?) are a lot better about being able to keep up with power output on tracks, although what you say was definitely true for a long time.

I think that there will always be some internal combustion driven vehicles for tasks such as these.

Doesn't seem specific to electrics. I owned several trucks that couldn't tow that trailer. Towing capacity has more to do with the frame, brakes, and cooling than it does with energy and power. Still I think someone will make series hybrid pickups at some point. They already make big rigs that way.

A top speed around 150 km/h isn't unusual for smaller ICEs either. Unless you spend that much time on the Autobahn and do mostly city driving the speed limit isn't really a problem in my experience. But I guess with an electric vehicle you're unlikely to drive long distances at those speeds anyway.

Not a big Problem, but being limited to 150 was one of the main things why my old ICE car to me felt unsafe to drive on the Autobahn. For short periods its just safer to be able use the most left lane at 160-180 than to go 120-130 in the Center and wait for a chance to overtake with not much headroom over the left at 140-150.

germany is one of the last countries where that may be perceived an issue. Literally all other countries in the world have a speed limit that is way below 150km/h. So top speeds above 150 are just there for germany and for bragging rights, not for any practical purpose. What's more interesting is the torque and acceleration available at higher speeds.

Sluggish acceleration or below par top speed isn't a perception problem on the Autobahn, it's a real problem.

It's completely practical to drive long distances at high speeds because of the well-maintained road surface and well-maintained cars. There are plenty of stretches of the Autobahn with no speed limits.

This is a common scenario: you're in the middle lane, and a particularly slow driver is in the middle lane (who should be in the right lane), you attempt to overtake in your underpowered econobox, and out of nowhere a Porsche or high-end BMW is sitting on your tail, and you try to overtake asap to get back into the middle lane to let the other guy pass. This is doubly true if you're going up a slight hill, which exaggerates the lack of torque. Another common scenario is a truck driver, overtaking another truck driver in the middle lane, and you have to move to the left lane to avoid him (truck drivers are supposed to keep to the right lane).

Source: someone who's driven plenty of shit, underpowered rentals in Germany, e.g. a Fiat 500X and a Renault Captur. Why anyone, apart from rental companies, would buy these ugly, overweight, underpowered shitboxes is beyond me.

lack of torque and sluggish acceleration are an issue that is unrelated to a top speed that is artificially limited for whatever reason. Electric cars tend to have vastly superior torque and acceleration at the same horse power rating. They are perfectly usable on the autobahn.

you're attacking a point that I never made.

Motors lose torque as speed increases, its a fundamental limitation caused by back-EMF. ICE engines tend to have peak torque at several thousand RPM depending on their design. Therefore while electric motors are much better accelerating from a stop they are not as suited for providing torque at high speeds.

Our car tops at 155 km/h and the most problematic thing to me is acceleration above 100 km/h rather than actual top speed. Overtaking is something that takes a while and you always have to factor in a lot more distance to oncoming cars in the left lane considering that they may be a good deal faster than you. I tend to be comfortable at 120–130 km/h in the right or middle lane, but admittedly, other people may prefer to drive faster. It comes with an efficiency trade-off that may prevent them from using EVs, though ;-)

Acceleration shouldn't be a problem for an electric motor, though, so despite a somewhat slower top speed I'd envision that things like being on the on-ramp to the Autobahn, or overtaking maneuvers are less of a problem than for ICE-powered cars with a weak engine.

>> 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 ratios, it doesn't make much sense in EVs. These motors already behave in a similar way. For a given (maximum rated) current they will produce constant torque from zero to what is called "base speed" which is the point where the back-emf matches the bus voltage. Beyond that speed it enters an operating region called "field weakening" where some of the current is used to oppose the magnets which is equivalent to reducing the back-emf so it can go faster. In this region it operates much like a constant power device so the torque drops with the inverse of rpm much like a CVT. There's another metric called the constant-power-speed-ratio (CPSR) which is the top speed divided by the base speed. In my experience, CPSR for an EV is likely to be somewhere between 3 and 5 though it can be much higher.

Source: one of my specialties happens to be algorithms for very high CPSR. It's an odd place I never meant to go, but I would enjoy taking a stab at tuning the Bolt.

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 being able to change gear ratios would help with that, although I certainly could be misinformed.

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.

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

Leasing is a thing

Still too much, when you could probably lease a civic for way less

Is it less than you pay {Civic monthly lease + (Civic Monthly Gas Cost - Bolt Electricity Cost)}??

Honest question! It seems like a critical mark for GM to hit with such an odd looking vehicle.

> odd looking vehicle

On this note, why is it that EVERY EV (except for the Tesla) has to "look a little weird" or "make a design statement"?

That's even less 'for the masses' AFAIK.

"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 in size or amenities, obviously).

[1]: Parent article

[2]: http://mediaroom.kbb.com/new-car-transaction-prices-up-2-per...

You jumped from mean to median. The /median/ new car price in this country is about $22k.

I stand corrected, I misread the article I was quoting. Apologies for the error.

TCO for electrics is also likely to be lower: http://seekingalpha.com/article/543861-report-shows-lower-to... and their total lifespan is likely to be higher, even taking into account a battery swap after 10 - 20 years.

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.

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.

I wonder if taking pre-orders for the model 3 was a way for Tesla to lock up orders in anticipation of competition?

I thought the pre-order down payment was fully refundable.

It is, so it's not really a "lock," but it'll get some people to wait if they have money in it. And it's also an easy way for Tesla to raise some money. They got $400+ million for "free" that way.

This largely reads as a paid ad. There are plenty of numbers comparing old and new models, yet very few when they compare to Tesla. It would be interesting to read a more neutral comparison though.

If they heavily compared it with the Tesla, it would be a sign that the technology isn't ready for mainstream adoption.

Only enthusiasts set on buying an EV will sit down and compare the two given the 2x price difference. For most, the purchasing decision will be squarely against petrol vehicles in the same class.

Plenty of references are made to other cars. Various aspects are compared to the Focus RS, Fiat 124, Golf GTI, and Prius.

None of which costs $100,000+

>yet very few when they compare to Tesla

What Tesla? The one that costs twice as much? Or the one that doesn't exist yet? This is beside the point that Tesla is mentioned numerous times in the article.

While I agree the tone of the article is a paid ad, the reason you can't compare it to a model 3 is because the model 3 doesn't exist yet. Comparing it to a Model S is ok in the sense that you _can_ compare a Cessna 172 to a Learjet, but why? Different markets, different price points.

It's more like comparing economy class with business class.

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...

Not entirely sure if these stats are up to date, but the US is still using fossil fuels for the majority of its energy. http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=us_energy_...

Thanks. And yes, currently we can still burn fossil fuels to satisfy our hunger for energy but I was projecting into the future. My thinking goes like this: Let's define the amount of current electrical power used for non-automotive purposes as E0(2016). Currently there is only a negligible amount of electrical cars, so the amount of energy used for automotive purposes Ea(2016) will be comparatively close to 0. I think in a (maybe not so) distant future time point t where electrical cars have mass adoption (just think of a scenario where all cars on the street are electrical) we will in addition to non-automotive energy E0(t) need electrical power for automotive purposes Ea(t) for every car on the street. And Ea(t) >> Ea(2016) will be huge. Where will such a huge amount of electrical power come from if not from nuclear power plants with all their problems? Other points to consider: 1. At some point in the future fossil fuels will run out - so no fossil fuel cars and no fossil fuel power plants any more. So E0(t) will also not come from fossil fuels anymore. As a sidenote on today's situation: I don't see a big difference for the environment whether a car burns the fossil fuel or a electrical car uses energy created by power plants that burn fossil fuels... 2. We have a growing earth population which will even increase the amount of energy consumed for non-automotive purposes in the future, so E0(t) > E0(2016). 3. Increased demand for electrical energy together with decreased amount of energy providers (fossil fuel power plants will be no more) will increase energy prices in the future.

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.

Well, yes and no. My thinking is that for the climate it does not matter if you burn the fossile fuel in a car or in a power plant. At one point all the fossile fuel will have been burnt one way or the other and the same amount of CO2 will have been blown in the atmosphere. I am sure humanity will not stop consuming fossile fuels before they are exhausted unless it becomes economically unattractive to do so...

It makes a difference because power plants are more efficient, and once electrical charging infrastructure is in place, changes to the input power source is easier.

According to my knowledge current car motor efficiency is about the same than power plants: gasoline car motor 40%, diesel car motor 43%, coal burning power plants 30-45%, gas burning power plants around 30% efficiency. All numbers are from Wikipedia.

But even if power plants would be more efficient (meaning producing more energy for the same fuel input) it still would make no difference from a CO2 emissions point of view after all fuel has been burnt...

1) You're not up-to-date on recent nuclear power safety data.

https://www.wired.com/2016/04/nuclear-power-safe-save-world-...

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-...

2) Wind and solar could accomplish a lot. It already does in Germany, at least.

Regarding 2): Well, in Germany around 29% of the electrical power is currently from renewable energy sources (12% wind, 6% sun, 6% bio mass, 3% water, ...). Not (yet) enough for today and not enough for all future electric cars... https://www.bmwi.de/DE/Themen/Energie/Erneuerbare-Energien/e...

When discussing battery powered vehicles, solar and other intermittent power sources are the obvious answer. The economics are better than gasoline and they pair nicely with energy storage systems.

Nuclear waste isn't a big deal, from a technical perspective. Find a good, geologically stable location, encapsulate the waste in strong containers, and put it there. The quantities are so small that it's not a big undertaking. The real problem is dealing with people's overblown fears, like how you have to do crazy things because the waste remains dangerous for tens of thousands of years. Never mind that lots of more commonplace industrial waste remains dangerous forever and we don't take anything like the same sorts of precautions.

But solar and wind are really starting to take hold, so I don't think you have to worry a whole lot either way. They have some big advantages over nuclear even if you ignore unfounded fears, such as being able to install them in small quantities rather than requiring billions of dollars and years of construction. And the cost is dropping rapidly, so that it'll be cheaper than nuclear soon if it isn't already.

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