Chevy Bolt: the First Practical, Mass-Market Electric Vehicle | Hacker News Reader

Chevy Bolt: the First Practical, Mass-Market Electric Vehicle

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278 pointshelloworld287 comments

We just managed to sell another flagship GM vehicle, and the software was so bad, it was nearly a deal-breaker. (Most years of this model had software bugs that were so bad, they could literally kill you — for example, the exhaust system could overheat, and burn the car down). Also, basic electro-mechanical things, like seat belts and the FM radio started to die after 3-4 years. This is with light use in CA.

Even when new, the new model handled terribly compared to the old GM (same model, engine size, etc).

Its compauter regularly locked the rear wheels when turning and going uphill, and the steering geometry caused it to squeal the tires at low speeds in parking lots. Neither the old GM, nor the replacement had these problems, and all three are essentially identical body styles.

Tl;dr: Congrats to GM, but I’m waiting for literally anyone else to ship a competitive EV.

Case in point. I thought I read bolts (volts?) sometimes put themselves into reverse and accelerate while off+charging. I wanted to paste a link, but found this article instead. It looks like this safety issue is by design. (Also, CR says the handling is “choppy” on uneven pavement, which matches my old lemon):

http://www.chevybolt.org/forum/#/topics/7778?page=1

“On this rainy morning while turning to park in a stall and so I take my food off the accelerator and expected the heavy regenerative braking. Instead it accelerated in to the stall and so I had to brake heavily and it still didn't seem to take hold. Luckily the cement parking block stopped the car albeit I still went over it.”

Response from other owner:

“Very possible for Regen to deactivate in slippery conditions. Hitting a large bump may also disengage Regen, which will feel like the car is actually speeding up (since you are expecting it to decelerate).”

your case in point is that someone who wanted to park decided not to use his brakes?

is removing your foot from the accelerator instead of using the brake a standard learned behavior amongst bolt/volt owners?

Yes, because that’s how regenerative braking works. This was discussed at length in the linked article.

That sounds dangerous. By comparison the Prius uses regenerative braking when you hit the brake, but if that isn't enough it will switch to normal (friction) braking.

Having something that switches from braking to no brake without warning seems like ... terrible design.

A Prius performs light regenerative braking whenever you're not depressing the accelerator; it primarily uses regenerative braking when using the brake pedal, but will switch to the friction brakes if you brake harder than the power train can move energy back into the battery or the battery state of charge is at the upper limit.

The Prius also has a one pedal B mode though which sounds similar to the L mode in this Bolt.

That's just a low-gear mode, like putting an old 3-gear automatic in 2nd gear, to engine brake downhill.

Uhhh, manual cars have worked like this forever. In first gear especially the braking when you let off the gas is enough to be jarring if you're not gentle

Yes, but there is no computer turning mechanical engine braking on and off based on some set of non-trivial conditions.

Ehhhh that's not quite true either.

Above a certain rpm the engine cuts fuel completely and engine braking is strong. In cars with electronic throttle control the computer might also open the throttle to maximize energy consumed compressing air.

As you pass through that cutoff range the engine starts firing again, maybe 700 rpm above idle. Engine braking stops being effective when this happens.

Also, newer cars don't do a full fuel cut when engine braking with a cold engine or if the catalyst is getting too cold to work. So sometimes engine braking isn't very strong.

Basically you can't rely on engine braking so when you're doing it your foot usually hovers on the brake pedal. This isn't any different than the hybrids

#carbureted4life

Whatever the case, I've found engine braking to be fairly consistent in manual transmission cars at a given speed/gear. But, I've never thought I could rely on it to bring me to a stop in a parking lot. It blows my mind that an EV driver would think that.

No, actually, since it's unclear how much braking regeneration will provide, when I brake I start by taking my foot off the accelerator but if I'm at all in doubt, I'll put my foot over the brake.

Also, since Tesla regenerative braking always turns off below 5 mph, I always have my foot over the brake pedal at low speeds.

Yes. Same with Tesla's default settings, and with any Toyota hybrid.

I drive a Toyota hybrid, and have never even remotely considered relying on regenerative braking to even slow my vehicle. If I want to slow down, I press the brake. If there's any slowing because of regenerative braking, I have never noticed it.

Pressing the brake on a Prius will use regenerative braking. It only switches to friction braking if you brake extra hard, or the battery is already charged.

So there's no need to "avoid the brake pedal to use regen" the way it sounds like these Bolt drivers are doing. Which seems really dangerous.

This makes me wonder if I actually use friction braking more than once every other month.

You're right now that I think a little harder about it. I used to have a 2006 Prius, and though it did charge the battery while coasting, it wasn't anything like Tesla-style one-pedal driving. I was in the habit of shifting to B while coasting down the hill where I lived, which is why I have the memory of regen braking while not pressing the brake pedal.

I can't speak for GM cars but the Leaf regenerative braking isn't enough to stop the car in this situation, only slow it.

To me regenerative braking feels like putting the car in D3 or turning off overdrive. As soon as you stop giving enough gas to accelerate or hold speed it just drags the car down.

I would never expect it to slow the car to a stop for me.

Also in the Leaf the amount of regenerative braking applied is diminished if the car is over 90-95% charged. It has 4 dots indicating level and they have halos indicating the max possible based on conditions.

Maybe if you're used to driving manual cars and use engine braking? Sometimes I try to engine brake while the gearbox is in neutral by mistake, it's not a pleasant feeling when you don't feel yourself slow down.

If people are used to the car reacting in a certain way and it suddenly changes I'm not surprised that in can be enough to momentarily lose control. I wouldn't like that at all.

Isn't engine breaking a thing that most people do or at least learn? Or can't you engine break with an automatic?

Engine breaking isn’t as effective in a torque converter automatic because the torque converter allows the engine to “free wheel” a bit. They also like to upshift pretty quickly so engine braking in a 6th gear basically does nothing. Even locking it to first or second isn’t quite the same as in a manual. Also I think some automatics will put the car in neutral sometimes when coasting. I think my Mazda 3 does this. You can definitely feel a small jolt when you are cruising down a hill on the highway and switch to “manual” mode as is it tries to engage 6th gear.

Engine breaking is common to all vehicles, especially GMs. But engine braking is almost non-existent with automatic transmissions.

I've noticed this plenty:

"Hitting a large bump may also disengage Regen, which will feel like the car is actually speeding up (since you are expecting it to decelerate)."

But that's not a design fault, you're essentially using a "weaker brake" to stop, then you go over a large bump which overpowers the brake for a second. Even real brakes have that issue, but they "catch" quicker than the regen-only.

I just don't drive with L, the regen pedal allows much finer tuning.

No, the point is that the car decides on its own that the "weaker brake" will not do anything, which surprises the user.

The car doesn’t decide... physics does. The regen peddle is still engaged, it’s the jolt that overpowers the regen. It’s just physical brakes recover better from that jolt than regen.

That seems crazy to disable something the use is expecting in gnarly traction situations.

In comparison I've driven our Tesla in heavy rain, snow and regenerative braking has never disabled, although traction control does take over occasionally. Tesla also gradually ramps down the braking to zero at 5mph so it doesn't suddenly disappear.

Deceleration will reduce your available traction which in most cases is better served for steering.

In my experiences, regen is disabled when ABS is activated

about 2/3's of this car is built by LG, if that makes you feel better

Considering my last two LG phones (different models) bootlooped, not really.

Its what I keep telling people,

GM has been during PR on this car but the software is still far from complete.

another case of post shipping software debugging philosophy ?

It's easier to accuse GM of the opposite problem: Most of their software still has to be "properly" waterfalled and QAed because they don't update software on shipping vehicles. GM's software is often terrible because the software feature list was finished two or three years before the model comes to market. What bugs makes it past QA gets shipped and likely will never get fixed in the lifetime of that vehicle. As the software gets bigger and more important to vehicle operation, you can see how it may be increasingly tough for QA to keep up.

"Kill you"? Sorry but this is fud unless you can cite death rates.

This site here lists the Volt as lowest death rate listed among small 4-dr cars.

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates

I looked, and I see the error bar is 0-39, which is so large that the average death rate is within that error bar.

All the cars I mentioned have internal combustion engines, FWIW.

I wonder if the volt does so well because of limited range — I doubt typical owners clock many highway miles at speed, given that it is most useful in congested cities.

Anyway, here are lists of recalls across their lines. Glancing at it reveals shocking things (the GMC canyon hood can unexpectedly open, and it has killed people, to pick one at random).

I don’t know of a decent comparison of such things across makes, but from a qualitative perspective, I think GM’s recent track record is unacceptable.

https://www.edmunds.com/recalls/chevrolet.html

https://www.edmunds.com/recalls/gmc.html

The Volt has an internal combustion engine. The range is not limited, it has electric + gas propulsion modes.

I have driven my Volt on many 500+ mile trips using the battery at first then the gas engine to generate electricity for the wheels. I'm still alive and all my passengers are still alive.

My 2012 Volt has had no recalls. It's been in the shop 3 times since I bought it in 2012. Two were for oil changes and one was a regular check up. That's it. I haven't been to a gas station in around 6 months (because I haven't had any really long trips in this car during that time).

It's fun to say all cars are bad because a few are bad, but it sure isn't accurate.

The volt has 'unlimited' range. When the battery is exhausted, its ICE runs to power the electric engine. Volts get driven as hard as normal cars.

That's very interesting, thanks for sharing. I really like the Bolt (or did) but won't allow myself to buy another GM vehicle for other reasons. My dad is an old 60s car guy, GM diehard and a collector. Has a lot of six figure originals from their heyday. His favorite is definitely his 1970 Buick GSX SS Stage 1 that they only made 1,000 of or so. He's the original owner and it's all original. My brother has a Buick Grand National which is a pretty cool car too.

I never cared much about car brands but usually leaned towards GM as a result, Pontiac always caught my eye. GM's lineup seemed as good as anything. Once I had to take my car in for a recall I found how wrong I was. Both the dealer screwed me (expected) and GM corporate did as well (unexpected).

Long story short, they did an ignition console swap and after they were done they gave me 2 sets of keys and told me that one was for the door and one was for the new ignition. GM's CEO even stated on her blog that this was not to be the case. I wasn't the only person complaining about being told to have two sets of keys either. I filed a corporate complaint and they told me to pound sand. I did file a BBB report on the dealer and they never replied so I guess it just went on their record uncontested.

As well, GM later denied payment for a faulty gas tank issue that they sent me a mailer about for reimbursement but never paid me. The fix had already been done at the tune of $550. I followed their instructions exactly, quite time consuming tracking down receipts I no longer had and so forth. They still said I had something wrong with my application. Don't know what it was, at that point I was done hassling with them and had made my final decision on GM.

The verdict is no more GM for me or my family for the rest of our lives. There's plenty of alternatives. My wife now has a Subaru Crosstrek and I'm buying a Tesla Model 3. The new Honda Civic hatchback is pretty neat. Ultimately I believe I'm going electric from here on out, but never GM.

That sucks. Our GM dealer installed some counterfeit electrical parts (I bought it new!) and then it developed electrical issues — if you left it off for 8 hours it would sometimes drain the battery and fail to start.

At that point, other GM dealers refused to look at it without taking a large up-front deposit.

Corporate didn’t actually use the words “pound sand”. It would have saved me time if they had.

Eventually, I took it to a Chevy dealer, and they upgraded the radio firmware. The electical problems were caused by a CAM protocol bug that prevented the ABS from powering off sometimes.

This was all in the first 1000 miles.

It had unrelated issues due to the fake parts, but the dealer “honored” the warranty by switching them out for a different brand.

1,000 miles, you're probably covered by the lemon law on that if you just want to return it. I can't say at 1,000 miles I'd not be fuming about a large up-front deposit being asked of me.

Amazing. Well, I wasn't going to hand GM any money again anyway, but my slight admiration I had of their Bolt is now gone, so thank you for that. GM is pulling their usual cheap Android vendor that wants Apple prices method I suppose, which I should've known. Yup GM corporate simply told me that the dealer is their eyes and ears and could do nothing other than side with them. Really helpful.

I certainly hope you don't have any further issues with it for the remainder of its lifespan because this stuff is a big waste of time. I've been at the point for years that I'll just pay more and get the Toyota or Honda even if it looks like I'm paying for nothing on the spec sheet.

GM really goes out of their way to charm all their loyal customers.

Yes, I'm sorry you got screwed,, but every manufacturer has a story just like this one - I'm not really a 'GM Guy' but I don't think this is a fair brush to paint them with.

So many things went wrong that it’s hard for me to think I’m a huge outlier. Though, CR does currently rank Chevrolet (but not GMC) above Tesla for reliability:

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...

And the Bolt is their most reliable car, apparently.

Perhaps I am being unfair, or perhaps they improved. Still, given the nature of the issues I hit and continue to hear about, I’ll continue to avoid them.

It's fair. It happened.

I actually could have lemon-lawed it, but once it crossed that line it didn’t have any more trouble until the warranty expired.

A few months after that, the driver-side heater went out, and the radio started to fail.

The fact that so many things failed makes me think there are significant systemic issues with GM vehicle platforms (and not just individual components).

The more I think about the regenerative braking issue on the Bolt, the more I think my car had the same root-cause problem, which makes me wonder if it impacts their whole line: Traction control sporadically engages on a regular basis.

That’s not a big deal on ICE cars, but if they really disable regenerative braking when traction control enganges, it’ll eventually kill or severely injure a pedestrian. One of the worst things a vehicle can do is have an intermittent braking system!

Anyway, I no longer own the vehicle. Getting rid of it was worth every wasted penny. :-)

Didn't you say your issue was caused by some non-standard parts installed by the dealer?

Read the whole thread; there were many issues at different times according to the OP's comments.

Good god (the heater, radio etc). Definitely sounds like the Bolt was rushed to market, a lot of those things are pretty basic QC issues. One thing going out early might be reasonably acceptable, but I agree with your other posts here, too many things to give the benefit of the doubt on. What did you replace it with?

I don't think these issues are unique to GM sadly.

I once got into a shouting match at the dealership over warranty engine issues for my Jeep. I've had similar experiences with Ford as well. So we have GM, Chrysler, and Ford all with horror stories. I'm sure buyers of foreign cars have the same stories to tell.

I recently test drove a Honda CRV and told the salesperson explicitly not to call me and that we're just test driving and comparing various models for a couple months. He not only sat us down with the 'hard sell' but literally called me every day for 2 months. Note his 'hard sell' was $300 off MSRP.

I feel the independent dealer system has largely failed us and they're all terrible and unfixable. If I end up buying a Tesla it will be less for the car and more for the lack of traditional dealer experiences. Or I end up buying a 3 year old car and enjoy the savings from massive depreciation.

That's a terrible experience, but there is no way that is common or the story and lawsuits would be everywhere.

> (Most years of this model had software bugs that were so bad, they could literally kill you — for example, the exhaust system could overheat, and burn the car down)

Has anyone died?

I had to sign a binding arbitration agreement to purchase it.

The most egregious bug caused seatbelts to fail to deploy, so I assume there were at least injuries.

I just checked, and I don’t think the exhaust fires injured anyone (it happened 8 times before the recall, and at that point there were zero injuries).

> We just managed to sell another flagship GM vehicle

Which one? You are talking about what sounds like serious safety issues. Which car was it so we can find out more?

we own one, can agree that its great! it's my wife's daily driver, and with my own trips in it, i can't even imagine getting another ICE when the time comes to get a new car for myself. the L mode itself is almost a new driving experience, controlling the car fully through just one pedal and trying to eke out every last drop of kinetic energy back into the battery, and making it a challenge to never use the brakes. it's nearly as fun as a manual transmission. i mentioned this before in another thread, but the most hilarious part of ownership is the maintenance schedule. it's as follows:

* every 12,500mi: rotate tires

* every 22,500mi: change cabin air filter

* every 5 years: replace brake fluid

* every 150,000mi: replace battery cooling fluid

Be careful, Tesla drivers discovered that never using the brake, particularly in areas that use salt on the roads, results in expensive corrosion. Automotive brakes haven't been designed with one-pedal driving in mind...

https://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/24/8500-new-tesla-model-s-...

Recommendation: consciously use the brakes in a firm deceleration once a week.

That wouldn't be a problem for me, the way most people drive and cut in front of me I would easily have one firm deceleration a week.

to say i don't use the brakes is a little bit of a misnomer, as i use them at stoplights in order to activate the rear brake lights for other drivers. two more bits of trivia: the brake lights activate during regen for more than .2g of deceleration, and the brake rotor metal is formulated not to rust.

I'm pretty sure taking your foot entirely off the gas pedal when in "L" mode actually activates the brake lights.

It does on the Tesla.

And anything with regen because of this:

UN Regulation on Stoplight Activation:

http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/main/wp29/wp29regs/...

Electric regenerative braking systems as defined in paragraph 2.17., which produce a retarding force upon release of the accelerator control, shall generate the signal mentioned above according to the following provisions:

<= 0.7 m/s/s The signal shall not be generated

> 0.7 m/s/s and <= 1.3 m/s/s The signal may be generated

> 1.3 m/s/s The signal shall be generated

It's made of metal, its going to corrode in some way - I don't think stainless steel has the properties you'd want in a brake rotor, either.

Well, it could be ceramic, which is what some competition cars use, and that wouldn't rust. But I doubt it.

There are <$100k cars that have had ceramic brakes as a factory option, but it's not a good option.

Ceramic brakes don't work well when they're cold, so you don't want to use them on a car where the main use case is a cold panic stop.

He said 'metal' that implies not ceramic.

Which was second-hand information, and light on details, and thus possibly mistaken. As I stated, possible, but I didn't think it likely.

If you read the article, the owner didn't go in yearly to have things inspected. One thing they do at every yearly inspection is to look at the brakes.

When I wash my cars I intentionally spray a little fresh water on the pads and rotors mostly because caked on brake dust can wear rotors unevenly or cause grinding/slipping of breaks. I've never lived where they salted the roads, but I imagine rinsing them off periodically would help, too.

Nice! Maintenance is a pretty big cost a lot of people forget.

How is the recharge situation when you are on a trip?

not as good as the supercharger network, obviously, but there are level 2's everywhere there are dealerships nowadays and there will only be more chargers as time goes on. for long trips we use my diesel 3-series.

Yeah, but are you a driving enthusiast?

very much so, yes. i have a sim racing rig

The tires need only be rotated and never replaced? Now that's impressive.

Modern tires last a lot longer than 12,500 miles. So, if they're rotating that frequently, it'd be several iterations before they need to be replaced. I usually end up replacing my tires due to age rather than wear, but I don't have a long daily commute since I work from home.

The question I have to ask: Has anyone here gotten an EV and successfully gotten a charger setup going in an apartment garage?

For where I live, I'd say we have 100-150 parking spaces, all underground. There are two spaces that have chargers, which are first-come-first-served, I don't count them.

So, the idea would be to get my own charger. I already have a safe place to put it: There is a wide-but-not-deep storage unit at the back of my parking space, with concrete behind it. I could have a charger properly mounted to the concrete wall, and I don't use the storage space, so I could keep it open when charging. The annoyance then is having to get a little electrical conduit run to the nearest place where a meter can be installed. That's likely going to be all the way across the length of the garage, and then up a level.

As for work, there are charge points on Stanford's campus, but they are not free. Assuming I take a charging slot for the entire workday, I'd be paying around $3,400 per year, for charging fees and a parking permit.

Yes, I live in Palo Alto (near you) and I convinced my apartment complex to install an EV charger: 2 chargers, and conduit for 4 more.

I'm mystified why you aren't counting the 2 chargers that your apartment complex does provide. For all I know we live at the same place. I'm happy, you're unhappy. Given the large battery in a Bolt, do you really need to charge every day?!

“Happy you’re unhappy”.

2 charging spaces that are first come first serve are probably impossible to use.

In my case, the 2 spaces are not impossible to use, I've used them. (The complex has 280 bedrooms.)

Also, when they become more contended, the capacity can be tripled. (They're waiting until it becomes needed.)

Sounds like you didn't even try.

Edit: I don't think I've ever gotten 4 downvotes on HN for anything before, but it's fair to say that this is hardly the most arguable thing I've said!

Yes, it sounds like you live not too far away. I'm either south or south-west of you.

Congratulations on doing the planning for additional capacity! From what I can tell, there were no such provisions made for future expansion of the two spots available to me.

Also, to be clear, I'm not unhappy, I'm thinking ahead. Right now I do not have a car, and I don't anticipate needing a car for some time. So this discussion is theoretical right now.

As for not needing to charge every day, no, I probably don't. But, I would prefer to not have to think about it. I can understand why people harp on battery exchange: If I was running low on gas on the way into work, there are multiple opportunities for refueling on the way in to work, at the expense of not taking the time to find the best price nearby. With an EV, my options would be more limited: Hope that a charging spot is available at work; or turn around, start charging at home, and take the bus into work. There are times when it would become kind of a Russian roulette game.

Am I being alarmist? Yup! But for me right now, I would own a car because I want more flexibility than what I get using the bus. VTA's Route 22/522 schedules & delays are already variable enough that if I HAVE to be at work by a certain time, I need to either leave much earlier, or take a Lyft. I don't want to substitute one set of stresses for another, which is what would happen if I did not have a confirmed charging point on one end of my daily commute.

Finally, to head off one set of comments: I've noted the approximate for the different commute modes available to me: By bus regularly takes 45 to 60 minutes, with the data points (actual travel times) being all over the range. By car would be more around 30 to 45 minutes. By Caltrain would be 50-60 minutes, with little variability.

Apartments are tough problems to solve. Their electrical service doesn't supply enough electricity to handle the number of chargers that are going to be desired. So they have to consider something like ChargePoint, which will intelligently manage the load, but then ChargePoint asks each resident something like $50/month just to have an account (their website says "You pay a low monthly service fee plus the cost of electricity.", but the service fee I saw quoted was ~$50/month).

I decided to head downstairs and check things out. It is a ChargePoint charger, providing 240 V service for up to two cars. It's being fed through two separate (parallel) 240 V 60 A-rated fused disconnects (Eaton Safety Switches).

What's annoying is that, although all of the conduits in the garage are run on the ceiling, the conduit from the disconnects to the charger were clearly installed after the garage was completed: There are clear signs of a trench being cut, the flexible conduit being laid, and then the void being filled in. The charging station is on the bottom level of the garage, so they couldn't have come up from a lower level.

There's also clearly no room for expansion: The cage around the disconnects leaves no additional room, and the neighboring spaces are resident spaces. So to put in more chargers, they'd have to displace some resident spots, expand the cage, probably run new overhead conduit, and do more concrete cutting. Blargh.

One good thing, though: Both charging stations were open just now! That makes me wonder if it's possible to find out past usage times, to get an idea of how I would fit in…

That's the real rub for me with limited range EV's. It's all but impossible to own one for your average street parking city dweller. I rent a garage, but it's non powered, so basically it's just a nice place to lock a vehicle and keep it out of the elements (and because even street parking is tough in my neighborhood).

I'd love to own an EV - it makes perfect sense for about 95% of the car trips I take, but I'd have zero way to charge it. Seems like people like me are almost the perfect market for these sub compact limited range vehicles, except for that.

Absolutely. I live in London, with on-street parking only. I've love an electric vehicle, but I've just bought another ICE.

I realize it's a bit of an outlier but I have a friend who lives on a sailboat. She was recently told she could no longer use shore power to charge her Volt because the fire marshal thought the charging whip she paid to install from her breaker box was "an extension cord". Unfortunately the harbor master won't challenge that decision and her charging costs have gone up considerably because now she has to charge using gasoline. I can't even imagine what she'd do if she had a Bolt instead. Relying on access to power in an apartment complex or anywhere you aren't a homeowner just sounds like a potential issue.

Note that this is the Bolt not the Volt. Even as a petrol head who owns a V8 and a Subaru STI, I really like what GM has done with this vehicle.

Really really great review from Doug DeMuro here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2ogGZXmepY

Doug has a great style - really digs deep into all the quirks and oddities of the cars he reviews.

Calling their new full-electric the Bolt after they already had the Volt was the dumbest product naming marketing fowlup since the Wii-U.

It's even worse in Europe. There the Volt is called the Ampera and the Bolt is called the Ampera-E... even though it's a completely unrelated design.

Wow...at least they sold Ampera-E to Renault. Hopefully Renault won't make the same mistake, considering they din't name their ZOE "Clio-E" (which of course would've been pretty dumb).

I believe Opel was sold to PSA, not Renault-Nissan.

This does not bode well for the Ampera-e, because PSA has a penchant for crises.

Since the Ampera was a badge engineered made in the USA car my guess is that Peugeot are not buying it. Furthermore their CEO has no grand ambitions for electric vehicles, so the Ampera is gone already.

PSA took on Chrysler many decades ago and after a while the factory that was making Chrysler cars was making the Peugeot 309 which was a roaring trade success in the UK and other markets. Eventually the factory closed after the 309 had had its run. So you can expect the same, a new family crossover will come out in Peugeot branding from the Astra factory, this will sell for a few years, have a facelift and sell on for a few more years. Then they will close the factory. It is inevitable.

Of course Peugeot will sell EVs, however, for small cars it is not hard to buy a few motors and batteries from Bosch and to stick them in a car. So they will be joining the market when all the suppliers have the off the shelf parts all worked out for them.

I ordered my Ampera-E 11 months ago. Last time I heard anything at all was 5 months ago. Sent a email to my seller couple of weeks ago - nada. Norwegian electric car forums are full of similar stories.

Now they've stopped taking new orders for Ampera-E (as of last week).

I might have to cancel and get the Hyundai Kona instead if this continues..

Heh, and I'm here complaining that Toyota Bank is four days late with my share of the insurance money on the car I was leasing that had been stolen.

Anyway I'm sorry to hear that. They really should have given you at least a reply - especially that so much time has passed.

I sure hope they won't try to make the Kona drive "like a normal car". I test drove the IONIQ hybrid and it seems that some genius thought it would be great if you hadn't had instant torque, as opposed to hybrids from Toyota.

I came here to make this comment as well. They had to know they were making an all electric vehicle when they named the Volt...

I drive a Leaf and this makes me an un-elected ambassador for EV's in general. When I'm at a charger people will randomly drive up and get out of their car and ask questions about EV's, charging, range, etc. I'm always happy to talk to to folks about my experience with an EV and in my experience there is quite obvious consumer confusion about the Bolt and Volt.

I'm also a fan of RegularCarReviews, who tends to get a better sense of the whole car rather than the details https://youtu.be/m-gDhq8VKsQ?t=37

AlexOnAutos is also extremely thorough.

Not sure if he's done the Bolt, but his Volt review is great and the reason I got one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-gDhq8VKsQ

this is the regular car review. they're more honest about the car's shortcomings and how it's really limited to just homeowners.

>> $43,905

Wow. For that much money, I'll take a Chevy pickup. Twice the interior room, a bed for storage, 4WD for the winters... They show the Bolt with a kayak on the roof, but with a truck I can take 2 kayaks (or pull a boat), still put 3 other people and a dog, a cooler, everyone's camping gear for the weekend, fishing poles, everything I'd actually need to go on kayaking trip for the weekend.

Sure, I'll have to buy gasoline, but that's a measly $1,600 a year.

Some people value reduced impact on our ailing environment over immediate convenience.

That doesn't matter if you CAN'T buy it in the first place.

How about both?

I'm waiting for an electric truck. I'll have my cake and eat it, too.

For some folks - a surprising amount in the United States - the practicality, livelihood, and sometimes necessity of a truck outshines its inefficiencies.

Some folks, yes. This is true around the world.

Unfortunately, for too many folks... pickups are a lifestyle vehicle. Like Jeeps that never go off road or bright yellow humvee's.

I'm not convinced this is entirely true. The majority of people need a truck a few times a year at most. For them, rental is a practical option. The rest of the year, an ordinary sedan or hatchback will suit their needs just fine. If this were not so, people in other first-would countries would also buy trucks as their primary vehicles, and we know that's not the case. (It helps that fuel taxes elsewhere are more realistic -- i.e. higher -- in terms of being able to pay for the infrastructure and other externalities.)

The reason people buy trucks in the U.S. is largely (a) cultural and (b) because they can afford them, both in terms of payments and fuel taxes.

While there’s definitely some truth to your point, I also know the vast majority of folks who own a truck that I know use it to pull a trailer regularly (as in multiple times a month). Renting would be an unrealistic hassle for them.

You can pull trailers with cars, provided they have enough torque. When I was a kid, my dad pulled our pop-up trailer with a 1974 Pontiac Ventura (GM 5.7L V8 engine). Just last month I regularly saw relatively large trailers being pulled by relatively small cars when I was in the UK.

I didn’t say that it wasn’t possible, for some trailers. Fifth wheels by the nature of their design will not be pulled with a car. Even something as “simple” as my dad’s ski boat wasn’t possible to be pulled behind anything but a decently beefy truck (dry weight was ~6k lbs).

Where and when I grew up, setups like this[0] were very commonly seen on the road all the time, so maybe my experience is a little different than some of you.

[0] http://forums.wakeboarder.com/files/s_rig.jpg

> 1974 Pontiac Ventura (GM 5.7L V8 engine)

FWIW, that's considered a truck engine, now. Purely from displacement.

It was back then too! :)

60's/70's cars now vs then are a totally different automobile.

Agree, I used to own a ‘76 GMC car with the same motor. Thing was a tank, hit a 14pt buck doing 70mph dead on and was able to drive away from the accident with just a dented front end, but otherwise fine.

I'm a DIYer, perhaps my view is skewed. There's always something big and bulky in the truck bed weekly, it seems.

I'm not sure other first-world countries transportation infrastructure is designed to accommodate larger, bulkier trucks everywhere, as it is in the US.

> The majority of people need a truck a few times a year at most.

There's a big grey area around the word "need". The list of things that can be done with a truck, that can't be done with a strong-ish car/van and a trailer, plus elbow grease and planning, is almost certainly tiny. The availability of a truck, though, will change (and probably simplify) a LOT of that marginal problem-space, even if it isn't strictly needed.

So I used to feel like you do until I moved to the Santa Cruz mountains. A half ton pickup is pretty much required. I have a chevy extended cab, 8 foot bed, gets used all the time for stuff that I couldn't do with a car.

In addition to that I have a chevy 3500 HD dually flatbed that gets used as well. It's an entirely different beast, I've hauled 10,080 pounds of base rock in that thing and I still had spring left.

It also gets used for patching potholes:

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/17/mountain-vigilantes-ta...

The half ton is the blue truck and the 3500 is the white truck. This is set up as a quick attack wild land fire truck (there is a 425 gallon water thank, 9HP davey fire pump with 2 hose connections, 300 feet of 1.5" hose, bunch of nozzles, shovels, etc):

http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/fire-attack/

My trucks get used pretty much daily, living up here without them makes zero sense to me. They are just tools and very much needed in this environment. Sort of like guns, I lived in San Francisco and was very anti gun, moved up here and realized that guns are just tools and sometimes you need them.

That said, I'd love to replace the trucks with electric versions. I'm a huge fan for a lot of reasons. Tesla, if you are listening, please, please give us a family of pickups. If you do just one then a half ton is gonna be the highest volume but I'd love a beefy 1 ton.

Yes, Larry, you are special. <3

Good special or snowflake special? Let's hope the former :)

Actually a more serious reply. I'm not special at all, anyone living in a rural area ends up with a pickup. I need to stock pile gas at my place for the chainsaws and the chipper and the log splitter, etc. I usually have 25 gallons when I'm "full". The gas cans leak a little, do you want that in your nice car? Nope, that's what a pickup is for.

In rural areas it's normal to get stuck. I pull people out of the ditch all the time, can your car do that?

I have to carry 4 trash cans a mile and a half up the road every week, that's where the trash gets picked up, can your car do that?

I have to haul concrete bags up here all the time, like a pallet at a time, can your car do that?

All of you folks who live on the coast and do tech work seem to have forgotten that there are a bunch of people who are farmers or whatever, who live in rural areas, their needs are different than yours. The idea that they could rent a pickup for the few times a year that they need it just shows that you have no clue what their daily life is like.

And that's why Trump got elected. Get a clue, figure out how the fly over people live and maybe have some compassion for their lot. Or not, enjoy Trump 1.0, you'll get Trump 2.0 until you figure it out.

Everyone forgets how different this country is from Sea to Shining Sea.

A lot of people in the US can live without ever needing a truck.

--and--

A lot of people in the US couldn't live without a truck.

^ This guy gets it.

> I'm not special at all, anyone living in a rural area ends up with a pickup

You are special (i.e. part of the minority). Somewhere between 60 and 80% of people live in cities/urban areas in the US. As you said yourself, a truck is a tool with uses where it is critical but there are many where it is unnecessary. The original post you replied to just said that trucks aren't needed by most people, not that they're never needed and nothing of what you've said has argued against this.

You and the person you're ranting against/accusing of lack of empathy are probably 100% in agreement.

We're old friends - it's ok :)

I had to go digging to figure out who otterly is. He's correct, we are old friends.

Some people also having a car that can be parked in many places easily. Especially in cities, you're going to have a hell of a time parking a big truck.

No problem parking my F150 in Chicago.

Chicago is 230+ sq miles, its a huge city. Parking on, say, far south side or NW side is very different than parking in hot neighborhoods or downtown. Unless you're paying for a space you're going to have issues with street parking in many areas.

A 210-250" car will absolutely present challenges street parking in many neighborhoods. My 170" car does sometimes due to average street space size. I can't imagine adding another few feet to my car and being happy with street parking experiences.

To make that more concrete, there are environmental externalities that no one is paying on gas, but whose cost is real. The first recent source I found on google [1] pegs the externalities at $3.80 per gallon of gas, which would more than double the cost of gas (in the US) if factored in.

More directly, if you drive your vehicle 100k miles at 20 MPG, that's $20,000 in environmental harm you're creating and passing on to be someone else's problem. To me, that makes electric cars (and other alternatives) seem more attractive.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomzeller/2015/03/05/study-your...

There's a $7500 federal tax credit for buying one. My state also gave me a $2500 rebate check.

There's a number of ongoing incentives at the Federal, State and dealer level. Bolts can be had for $20-25K

e.g. here in MA http://massenergywebservices.com/drivegreen/table-all.php#bo...

>$43,905

In IL we get the $7500 tax break and a $2500 break for state taxes. My real world price is closer to $33k. All EV makers are better on tax breaks to make their cars look affordable.

Also its odd for someone shopping for an SUV to settle for a pickup. They're an entirely different class of car that appeal to different market needs. I could never get away with a pickup. Its not an option.

At $35k+ with 240 miles of range, it's starting to get close but realistically not quite there yet for "mass market" adoption. I hope I'm wrong but this will likely be a minor seller.

Also re: the $7500 federal tax rebate, most people can't take full advantage because they don't owe that much and it doesn't carry over past the first year. Still a good program but not a magic wand solution.

It's good if you lease for 36mo. That 7500 is taken right out of the negotiated amount.

> $7500 federal tax rebate, most people can't take full advantage because they don't owe that much

I am pretty sure most of those who can afford to purchase a 35k+ car are making at least 40k / year and owe that much in federal taxes, unless I am not calculating something right

What I never really thought is that that‘s still a pretty dumb was to subsidize any kind of purchase. It massivly advantages the rich(er). Why do it that way?

The US has a highly regressive tax system, at least for middle class earners and up. We do everything that way.

No it doesn't. The fact that a 7k deduction doesn't help middle class people proves we don't have a regressive system.

The US middle class is relatively lightly taxed.

I think this helps the middle / poor class. Rich people lease expensive EV that would normally not sell. After 3 years rich person gets a new car and EV sells for peanuts. Just look at the cost of a used Nissan Leaf right now

It's a set amount money set aside to jump-start the market. The subsidies will end when the fund runs out and pure (if there is such a thing) market forces take over. Fossil fuels are subsidized permanently, however.

"pure market forces" won't take over until the negative externality of pollution is properly priced.

Market forces alone will never fully price in pollution, IMO. There's no incentive to do so without regulation, and even if there were, I don't see how price discovery would work. The environment is not a market participant, unfortunately.

Anyway, this is pretty far off the original question of why EVs are being subsidized via tax rebates in the US.

Early adopters help bring the costs down for everyone else.

By making the car more affordable for wealthy (but not that wealthy) people, it eventually brings the cost down for everybody.

And they get reserved parking spots at many deprtment store stoo, at least in CA.

In my area when the first wave of EV spots went in they tended to be very 'premium' spaces. I think this was a result of novelty. Recently they have been making them the 'worst' spots or at least not 'premium' spaces and I think this is a better move. It also has reduced the instances of people parking ICE cars in EV spots.

Anyone that wants an EV ultimately benefits from the credits. Take a look at the prices of used EV's (other than a Tesla).

A family making $40k/y will have a negligible/negative federal and state effective income tax rate. A single person might be somewhere around 10% or less.

Maybe you are thinking of FICA?

What kind of tax rate do you think people are paying that they owe $7500 in federal taxes making $40,000/yr?

On 40k with the standard deduction and claiming yourself, you pay just under 4k in federal taxes.

There is no way you owe $7500 in federal taxes on a $40k/year salary.

In the worst case (single or married filing separately; in this range the numbers look the same), the standard deduction is $6350 and the single personal exemption is $4050 in 2017. So your taxable income is $29,600 assuming you aren't putting any pre-tax money into retirement savings.

The 10% tax bracket for those filing statuses goes to $9325 in 2017. The 15% bracket goes to $37,950. Tax on $29,600 ends up being $3974.

To get to $7500 in tax you have to have about $47k of taxable income, and hence about $57k of gross income, for single or married-filing-separately filers.

For married filing jointly filers, you have to have about $56k of taxable income, standard deduction is $12,700, two personal exemtions is $8100, so you need at least $76,800 in gross income to owe this much.

> To get to $7500 in tax you have to have about $47k of taxable income, and hence about $57k of gross income

The OP said “most people don’t pay $7500...” which is not true since I said you have to have “at least 40K+ salary in order to afford that $35k+ car. I did not say you have to have 40k salary to pay 7500$+ in taxes

I admit I don't quite understand. What you wrote was "are making at least 40k / year and owe that much in federal taxes". My point was that you don't "owe that much in federal taxes" unless your salary is at least $57k.

I have no opinion on what the actual incomes are of people who buy $35k cars, because I don't have any data to that effect. I'd really _hope_ they all make more than $57k/year gross, but given the weird things people do with debt I'd love to see actual data on this point.

You are right, I did not phrase my opinion correctly.

if you are buying a $35K car, I sure hope you are making at least $56K.

And if not, lease it. The Bolt is leasing insanely well right now - https://leasehackr.com/blog/2017/10/16/bolt-ev-never-been-be...

That makes me sad, it would cost me €526 a month to lease it here in the Netherlands. I would take two for $138 a month :).

> if you are buying a $35K car, I sure hope you are making at least $56K.

Well, right. If _I_ am buying it, I sure hope I am too!

I tried finding some data on what people actually do, but the writing online on the topic seems to be a morass where "median" and "average" are used interchangeably, which makes all the numbers more or less useless. :(

You're not calculating it right. 40,000 - 6300 for the standard deduction - 4050 for an exemption = ~29,000. First ~9000 is taxed at 10%, next ~20,000 for this person is taxed at 15%. Total income tax that could be reduced by the $7500 rebate for this person would be ~$4000 worst case.

You don't even have to itemize (it isn't a deduction), so I think most people would be able to take full advantage of it. I would bet anyone who is in the market for a $35k+ car (or even 28.5k+) is going to be at a point where they can take full advantage of the rebate.

It's a credit yes, but it's not a refundable credit. Which means you need to owe at least that amount of tax. So for 2016 that means a single person has to earn at least $46,900 to get the full benefit (assuming no other non-refundable credits). The median US personal income for 2016 was about $31,100, so I think it's fair to say the majority of Americans can not take full advantage, although I agree with your last statement.

That number is deceptive: a married joint-filing income would be around $60k, so they would qualify if they only bought one of these.

For married-filing-jointly you need a gross income of at least $76,800 in 2017 to owe $7500 in federal taxes.

What table are you using?

According to the brackets at https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2017/10/19/irs..., and assuming the $13000 standard deduction, I work out $69350 to owe $7500.

Did you forget the $8k or so of personal exemptions?

https://taxfoundation.org/2017-tax-brackets table 2. To get to $7500 in tax you need to have (7500-1865)/.15 + 18650 = ~$56,000 of taxable income.

For married filing jointly, standard deduction (same page, table 4) is $12,700. Two personal exemptions (same page, same table) is $8,100. So the total is about $76,800.

Ok, I was using a simple tax calculator, I thought it already accounted for standard and personal deductions, but I guess not.

That's 46,900 after exemptions and deductions. 6k standard deduction & at least one 4K exemption.

I’m guessing the logic was that someone making less than $50k wouldn’t be buying a $30k vehicle...

Hence my last clause.

To take full advantage of the tax credit, you'd have to owe $7500 income tax, which would mean at least 57K if single, 67K for married filing jointly. More if high itemized deductions, or if dependents. Assuming I read the tax tables [0] and form 1040[1] instructions correctly and didn't make a dumb arithmetic error.

[0]https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf

[1]https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf

Your married number is off; I think you forgot that in that case the personal exemption and standard deduction also double...

In Massachusetts, if you do benefit from the tax rebate, the final price is $22k. For a lease it's $115 per month, with no money down after rebate:

http://massenergywebservices.com/drivegreen/table-all.php#bo...

I've confirmed other prices through this program and believe they're accurate.

I agree. We were in the market for a new car this past summer and I was really intrigued by the Bolt but had to pass on it. It's still just a bit too expensive and a bit too short on range to make it a primary vehicle. Not to mention, it's not a particularly "cool" looking car.

I'm excited to see where things are in 3 to 5 years when we're in the cycle for another vehicle. If a moderately equipped package can land in the $30k range and travel 350+ on a single charge, it will be very intriguing.

Agreed. Even if I were going to spend that much on a car, it wouldn't be this car at that price point. I got a lightly used Fiesta ST for around $15k, and I'm very happy with it and probably wouldn't even want the Bolt for the same price (even if it's more practical)

Is it is manual transmission? I heard the auto is junk, and avoided.

Yeah, they actually only make the ST in manual.

I love the idea of Electric cars and even own Tesla stock, but I think they're still a ways off from me seriously considering buying one.

Why? I drive a large Hybrid sedan. I get a bit above 600 miles on a tank of gas without thinking about it. That's a trip from NYC to Toronto with about 100 miles of driving around range left before having to think about finding a gas station...or for our European friends, Paris to Munich with 160 km to spend looking for parking. If I try for range I can easily add another 50-75 miles to that just by being mindful of my driving.

My previous car got 300-350 miles to a tank and during a normal commuting period I had to fill it up every couple of weeks. I now go a month or so between fill ups. I've gotten so used to this kind of range that I often forget to even check how much fuel I have left since I only ever have to fill it up 12-15 times a year. My "low fuel" light comes on when I have 75 miles of range left.

During city driving, the gas engine is usually off and I spend lots of time driving around on pure electric (the drive-train favors the electric motor when possible and has no gearing transmission at all).

Total fill-up time, <10 minutes. With the freakishly low U.S. gas prices and since the car takes 87 octane fuel, it's about $40 to fill up or about $500 - $600 per year or about $2,500 - $3,000 in fuel costs over a 5 year lifetime of the vehicle.

The vehicle cost me $27k loaded (plus interest blah blah) out the door, I paid cash.

TCO over 5 years for this vehicle is expected to run somewhere between $33-$35k and that includes regular maintenance, tires, oil changes (but minus insurance and taxes) or somewhere in the neighborhood of $.75/mile. I'll probably keep the car longer than that so the cost/mile gets better. The newer model of my car estimates out to around 700-750 miles per tank, so TCO figures should be adjusted accordingly.

The cost to charge a Bolt depends on local electrical rates, but the average cost in the U.S. is $.12/kWh. The cost to charge a Bolt for a year with my profile turns out to be $400-500/yr or about $2500 over 5 years.

The Bolt is a smaller car, 0-60 is similar, takes 9 hours to charge off a wall socket every 238 miles (which will be realistically less) or if I have thousands of dollars in fast charge infrastructure in place about 30 minutes to get 200 miles.

I know several electric car owners who got Leafs on the cheap, and those are pretty appealing to be honest, and they use them as commuter cars. Range isn't a problem for them typically because they just charge every night, I'm sure the same is true for Bolt owners (and Tesla owners). But I'm lazy, and probably would forget to charge it half the time, and right now I'm going 4-5 weeks between "charges" (fill-ups). In a pinch, I have no place to charge my car at work at all, or most of the other places I currently frequent. The nearest fast charger to me is a 20 minute drive, one way without traffic. If I had a Tesla, the nearest Super Charger is 30 minutes away without traffic.

So when I think about "going electric", I have to compare things and on most metrics, I have a better car than the Bolt, and on many metrics I care about a better car than a Tesla Model 3.

You don't even have to wait in line or pre-order to get my car. Just go to a local dealer and drive off the lot with one.

We're not there yet. Closer, but still maybe 7-10 years out. Modern Hybrids are the state of the art at the moment and mass consumers won't be interested in regressing.

> plus interest ...

> I paid cash.

How are you paying interest if you paid cash?

Well, I'm not, but somebody is bound to call it out for people who finance.

I get it now. Thanks. I was curious as to how that might come about.

The only problem with your analysis is that there appear to be 100s of thousands of US consumers who want a pure electric car and not a (Edit: plugin) hybrid, many more people than are interested in hybrids. So you've got a fine personal datapoint, but you don't appear to be typical of the market, or at least of a market big enough to launch a high-volume car.

Consider that houses already typically run on electricity, and people who frequently get power outages buy gas generators - they don't say "I want a pure electric house, so I won't buy a generator" if they need and can afford it.

A couple counterpoints, there's something like 11 million hybrids on the road today. I'm also somebody who would like to buy an all electric car for various reasons, but the cars just aren't there yet.

Right, I see Prius and other hybrids everywhere. If people don’t seem to be asking for hybrids that may just be because they’re totally mainstream now.

Sorry, I really meant to refer to plug-in hybrids, not mild hybrids: https://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

I totally understand that there are people who would buy a pure EV if it was cheaper, and that's not here yet.

I don't even think they have to be cheaper than current cars, they just need to get cheaper than they are, get much better range and much faster and more convenient recharge than today's electrics get.

The top of the line Model S gets around 315 miles to a charge (X's get a bit less), it was a world changer because it was an electric car that got about what a normal ICE car gets in range so there was little penalty there. Not many people need to directly drive from NYC to Toronto in a single stretch all that often.

bonus: the cars are stupid fast and have incredible amounts of storage so they're better than other cars on the market

negative: they're very expensive and recharge still takes lots of time or less time but with expensive home infrastructure (but still not gas refill time)

What makes them exciting is that for a couple of downsides (price and recharge time) you get a car that's at least as good than old fashioned ICE cars and better than them in most other areas. They represent the least compromised vision of electrics you can buy today.

The smaller electrics aren't getting near that yet...it will take a few years of battery improvements before that happens. I think lots of people want a Model 3 aspirationally hoping that it has some of the positive qualities of an S, but the reality is that they're much more compromised vehicles. Tesla's approach to dealing with this is to try to make the cars as incomparable to ICE's as possible with loads of electronic features like autoparking and autopilot and whatever and an interior that's not like anything else on the planet -- but they're the only electric car maker who really gets that. By making the Model 3 hard to compare to anything else, it makes it stand out.

The used market for EVs show rock bottom prices. Made them tempting, but I live in an apartment complex.

I largely agree with you, I think until you can see a electric with a 400 mile range with a 45 min recharge to get another 350 miles out of it, the concept of the electric car as the car for everyone doesn't pass the smell test.

>I get a bit above 600 miles on a tank of gas

>it's about $40 to fill up or about $500 - $600 per year

>the average cost in the U.S. is $.12/kWh. The cost to charge a Bolt for a year with my profile turns out to be $400-500/yr

Does not compute.

The above two figures indicate that you drive 7500-9000 miles per year. So a Bolt would cost you $250-300 per year in electricity (assuming real-world driving), not $400-500 per year.

> At $35k+ with 240 miles of range, it's starting to get close but realistically not quite there yet for "mass market" adoption.

Really? Why is that? For me and I’m sure tons of other people 250 miles is more than enough. I think it’s extremely rare I’d go 100+ in a day.

If this was from Honda or Toyota I’d probably jump at it if I needed a new car.

I’ve never had any experience with GM, and their reputation isn’t exactly stellar.

For me that's like the main use my car. I'll bike to work and often run small errands on my bike. I'll use the car to go to the mountains since that would be too far to bike (and there is a large dull valley in the way).

Totally agree. I work from home and walk or bike most of the time. Most of my car's miles are put on doing >200 mile trips. Plug-in hybrids for me until the charging infrastructure vastly expands.

The average person doesn't buy new cars. The average new car is $33,500[1], so the bolt is right there at the average price. I guess the question is how well it holds its utility as the price drops.

[1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/05/04/new-car...

I love my Bolt. I bought it in MA for $3000 off MSRP thanks to Mass Drive Green, got a $2500 rebate check from the state, and will get a $7500 federal tax credit. I was really nervous to pull the trigger and go full electric and buy a new car for the first time (always bought used) but 11,000 miles later I have no regrets.

Nice, I got my leaf through drive green for $16K after tax & fees. Nissan's 0% financing and free state-wide charging are nice bonuses if you need them.

I've been putting 1K miles / month on it, which is my historical average.

The charging at work seals the deal. For the few times I need to charge at home I think I've spent somewhere under $30 to travel 11K miles this year (o;

Short range EVs are not for everyone but if it suits your commute, they're a no-brainer. And a hell of a lot of fun to drive (o;

As a sidebar, I really wish that Blendle would exit Beta so that I could buy these extremely interesting articles as a one-off micropayment. I don't intend to get a subscription with every top news organization (NY Times, New Yorker, The Atlantic, WSJ, Economist etc), but I would be more than happy to pay $0.25-0.75 for an article like this.

I want to pay for their content, but getting locked into a subscription when I don't want to read the majority of the content in any one of these publications is foolhardy. And unlike streaming platforms like Spotify, Netflix, HBO etc these news platforms don't provide nearly the same return on investment. I listen to Spotify 15-20hrs per week, I watch Netflix for at least 6hrs / week. High quality journalism is very valuable, but certainly these publications are aware that they aren't in the same weight-class as Netflix and Spotify in terms of value to customers individually. As an aggregate, I would easily spend $10 / month consuming "high quality technology and research news and opinion" pieces.

Please, for the love of god, provide me with a sensical way to pay for your content.

Brendan Eich's Brave browser is working on solving this.

Why does Blendle have to exit beta for this to happen?

BTW, I consider $0.50 for an article to be ridiculous; that's probably 100x - 1000x how much they would make from an advertisement. But no problem, you can often find WSJ articles for free if you just google the title.

I own a chevy volt and it never felt as good as it should be. Initially it has a burning smell on gas mode. I took it to the dealership for maintenance and they said GM's official solution is to install a "carbon filter" to the venting. It has an integration with Apple CarPlay that works most of the time but has some small glitches.

It all felt like... Nokia - you know the times when you buy those smartphones expecting them to be really intelligent but they turn out to be awefully hard to use... until iPhone came along.

>expecting them to be really intelligent but they turn out to be awefully hard to use

I don't think the two attributes contradict.

I dunno, my Gen 2 Volt is the best vehicle I've ever owned, and I've owned two Subarus, VW diesel Jetta, and driven a lot of other car in my 26 years of driving. I have almost no complaints about it, and it is the first domestic car I've owned.

I sat in a Bolt while a friend drove it. It's a good car, too. I just need more cargo area. Also they're really hard to get here in Ontario.

If you buy an EV, you should be happy with its range when you buy it. Like laptops and cellphones, that will degrade as all batteries do. But also like laptops and cellphones, when you replace that battery down the road, it is unlikely you'll get an upgrade. You'll get the same range.

At least that was the case with my 2013 Leaf with its 85 mile range. I had it in mind that when it came for a new battery I'd get maybe a 10% upgrade. While the new batteries mechanically fit, they are somehow incompatible. FWIW, my 2013 is pretty good as Leafs go. Down one bar.

But if the range is 150 miles or better, I don't think that matters as much. I think buying used EVs in the future will be a thing. Just not the 2013 Leaf.

Other than that, I'm sold on EVs. I'd never buy a hybrid or gas car again.

I'm wary of comparing with laptops and cell phones, because a proper EV drivetrain will suffer much less degradation. Consumer electronics batteries are poorly cooled and prioritize daily capacity over long-term life, so they degrade much more quickly. I'm sure you know this, but I see a lot of people thinking their car battery will only last 2-3 years because that's how their cell phone is.

For what it's worth, I appear to have an outlier, but my Tesla's battery has degraded well under 1% after 2.5 years and 40,000 miles.

I thought I read, perhaps here, that Tesla over-provisions its batteries and uses software to optimize the battery "working set" to minimize perceptible range degradation.

Tesla actively cools its batteries and chose a long lasting battery chemistry. The Leaf, does not cool the battery, and the early Leaf model had a really bad chemistry.

Not sure why you got downvoted for this. Nissan and some other manufacturers seem to be cutting costs by not doing the active cooling/heating that GM and Tesla are doing, and consumers are suffering for it. I was very disappointed to see the new Leaf is still not thermally managed. Air cooled only. Probably fine for California, but in places that have deep winters and hot summers, it's a bad idea.

Yes, I would have seriously considered the new Leaf, since it is about $5k cheaper than the Model 3. It would effectively cost $18k in Colorado vs $23k for the Model 3.

It would be nice to have the Nissan service and manufacturing capability behind the product. But since it is still designed to degrade, I won't consider it.

GM has said since the Volt was in pre-production they can't imagine why someone wouldn't actively manage the heating/cooling of a battery in an EV, because GM absolutely has to deal with Michigan winters. It's a strange "benefit" to classic Detroit car culture that they live in and take for granted at least one of the temperature extremes.

I'm sure they do, I thought this video[0] was pretty interesting. He took a bunch of Tesla owner's datapoints and mapped it out. The battery will basically last you 25 years.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb_i4ihsJ1w

I don't believe they hide degradation. They do use less than the full capacity of the batteries in order to minimize degradation, though. Lithium batteries hate extremes, so if you map the official "0-100%" range to an actual range of, say, 10-90%, that will greatly prolong the life of the battery.

Even without doing that, 0% on lithium ion batteries is not actually 0%. Because once you deep discharge it you can’t recharge it again safely.

This sounds like the Volt. It is software limited to only use the "sweet spot" charge range of the battery, so that it never gets fully charged or discharged. This means that over time as the battery degrades, the user would still see the exact same range due to the system expanding the min/max allowed charge.

I wouldn't compare the Leaf, which has no thermal management system with a Bolt, which does.

The Leafs are basically designed to degrade. Tesla's and Bolts are designed to last.

GM is probably the best of the EV manufacturers for battery maintenance. Unlike Nissan, who just seems to be just giving the consumer the finger on this issue: GM's systems do active thermal management of the battery pack, and keep charge headroom to prevent the battery from fully charging or discharging.

There's people driving around on 2011/2012 Gen1 Volts with no battery degradation and very high milage.

Both fingers since I can’t upgrade to the 30 kWh because ... because of very complicated reasons that you can’t understand but trust us they’re good reasons.

There is a company in Arizona that refurbishes battery packs for the Tesla Roadster. There are 2 options, a performance pack that reduces pack weight by 350 lbs. while sacrificing 20% range. Or, a long range pack that gives you 400 miles range. Tesla even makes an upgraded range pack for the Roadster.

I have also seen upgraded battery pack options available for the 1st gen Honda Insight.

Much like internal combustion cars, aftermarket performance parts are usually only geared to more expensive or enthusiast vehicles. In time, I could see battery upgrade options being more common.

GM should be proud of the Bolt and the Volt as well; I own a Volt because it suits my usage needs much better than a pure EV.

However GM is still in the stone ages when it comes to OnStar. You get a short trial and then you are faced with 14.95 and higher per MONTH fees to access their services. Not a problem you say, don't need their navigation in a day of smart phones and the only real value is calling the authorities when you crash.

Yet the kicker is, the GM app which lets you lock/unlock, start/stop you car suddenly loses the ability to tell you your cars tire pressures and range remaining for both fuel and electric. Yep, GM gated that behind an OnStar subscription. Did not used to be, but they threw some switch recently which made the app near useless.

You can get a 1 year old Volt for about 15-17k. Best deal out there IMO.

Used Nissan Leafs are pretty cheap too. ($8k-$12k, with 25-40k miles)

Leaf is very short range isn’t it?

Yes and range decreases drastically with battery age and cold temp compared to other EVs. However, as mentioned, they are a steal if you have a short commute.

I strongly considered one as a second car. You won't be driving to Disney World with it (unless you live in Orlando...) but as a supplemental car for stuff around town when my wife and I want to be in different places at the same time, it would be just fine.

We ultimately decided that we weren't in a big hurry and we'd rather go all-out and get a Tesla Model 3, but for someone wanting to spend less, it could be a great choice.

That's a pretty big drop, any idea why it goes down so much?

Used car prices have been dropping in general. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15076441 from two months ago.

GM resale value is terrible across the board, except for Corvettes.

Different car.

You need to consider the federal & state rebates + dealer rebates. Once you do that it's inline with out of pocket costs and normal car deprecation.

you can buy a new volt and sell it for a profit. Managed to secure a new base 2017 volt for 21k 0 down 0% interest after all rebates & dealer intensives.

Can you provide details?

Fremont Chevy. Had them apply the sticker rebate on the car. They only get a few of those a month.

I also used a company rebate for the 0 down 0 interest.if you join the farmers guild you get 500$ off for 50$. And you also get a pge 500$ rebate for having an electric car.

Work also had a spreadsheet of all past volt sale prices. So negotiations were easy.

I wish they'd sell a Cadillac version (or at least a decent trim level) -- the seats are horrible. I'd happily pay $5k more for $2k of better seats. (Aftermarket upgrades are a pain.)

The ELR, Cadillac's sort of coupe-sister to the Volt took about two years after the Gen 1 Volt to show up in the market. Maybe a similar timeline plays out for a Bolt sister in the Caillac line? Though with GM talking about going mostly electric by 2023, maybe it will be a shorter wait than that.

I wonder if it makes more sense to lease vs. buy now (since self driving, electric, etc. technology is progressing quickly) -- it seems like lease discount/money factor isn't going down as quickly as it should with these cars. (I've never bought a new car, and never leased as a car, but probably will get a new EV as my next -- an S, 3, or Bolt.)

Owning is great if you keep the car for 8-12 years like I've done, but I can't imagine any EV sold today being competitive in 5-10 years, even with software upgrades.

FYI leases on these just went from like $300+ / mo with a substantial down payment to sub $150 / mo with effective 0 down in California with incentives.

I don't think WA has anything that good, but for a Californian this is a no-brainer, especially with HOV lane access until at least 1 JAN 2019.

Link?

https://leasehackr.com/blog/2017/10/16/bolt-ev-never-been-be...

This site is rarely updated unless there is a significant deal but the forum is usually popping.

Nobody here qualifies for the $2500 CVRP rebate.

Hours per week charging is better than hours per day, but still only practical for people who can run heavy wiring to a private garage. I keep wishing gas station battery swaps were happening.

I've seen people charging bolts and plug in hybrids on my street with the wire run across the sidewalk (ie. from their home to the car parked on the street out front). Its a low-traffic residential area (East Bay) and I think this should be legal as it allows many people who have homes but no driveways to own and charge EVs. Maybe there should be a special rubber wire cover to protect the cord and so people don't trip. I hope someone doesn't trip and fall, sue the owner and ruin it for everyone.

> Maybe there should be a special rubber wire cover to protect the cord and so people don't trip.

https://www.amazon.com/Wiremold-Ivory-Corduct-Floor-Protecto...

Yes, I'm aware of those, not sure if there is legislation to cover their use across residential sidewalks.

Hmm diy wiring just exposed to the elements and draped across the pavements that's just asking for some one to get an accidental electric shock

As a quick google finds that

•Electrical hazards cause more than 300 deaths and 4,000 injuries each year among the U.S. workforce.

•In the United States, 50,900 fires each year are attributed to electrical failure or malfunction, resulting in 490 deaths and 1,440 injuries

Widespread introduction of electric car charging points will obviously increase those numbers

Pollution from internal combustion engines causes more deaths.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231013...

The industry cannot even standardize a charging port between Tesla and everyone else (which really is more on Tesla for using a proprietary port nobody else is using and then trying to act like they are the victims by offering royalty free access to the patents... after the fact).

It will be a very, very long time before standardized batteries are a thing, if they ever will be. As soon as true self driving cars are a legal thing nobody will even own a car anymore, it won't make any sense.

This is less of an issue than you might think: Tesla ships adapters for the most common non-Tesla charging ports.

This is my issue also, although I suppose I represent a small fraction of the market -- I live in an urban apartment building with street parking, I won't be able to charge an EV at home until the infrastructure gets much, much better. This means I'd have to factor charging into all my trips, which messes up the user experience pretty badly.

Almost all of the US has parking minimums for apartment complexes. My apartment complex installed a charger after I pointed out how many existing residents had EVs.

That helps with the marketplace in general, of course, but it doesn't do me any good, my building was built in the 1920s. No garage at all.

The earliest apartment buildings in California that have garages date from the 1920s! You might want to check if your city has a program for creating on-street chargers.

As long as you can replace your daily needs overnight, the number of hours of charging per day doesn't matter. If you drive less than about 50 miles per day, you can do that on a standard 120V outlet. If you need more than that, you can double your charging rate with the same gauge of wiring by switching to a 240V/15A circuit, and maxing out the Bolt's 32A charger only requires a 40A circuit which isn't too bad to install for most people.

8 awg wire (max 50 amp charger, since 90C breakers don't exist in residential) is not that heavy or hard to work with.

4 awg wire (max 85 amp charger) would be heavy wiring for most folks.

You can also get 6 or 4 gauge soow or whatever and make a long cord from charge spot wherever you want. (But i don't remember what NEC has to say about this and am too lazy to look)

You don't have to get a real electrician in to do the wiring esp. at the higher Amperage's? which presumably maxes out at 240v in the USA as opposed to a 415 V in the Uk.

In my own home, I'd do this wiring myself, assuming I had panel space.

Getting an electrician can be useful for liability purposes, but 240V/85A isn't scary if you do some research on how to do it safely, minimum wire gauge, etc. ahead of time.

This is a much higher amperage than any residential circuit requires, though, and will have trouble fitting on many 150A residential service panels.

Currently the cost of this EV is about 37K dollars. That's very high even for US, right? We want more affordable ones and ones that look like glorified golf carts. Bolt looks like a good car but how much market it can get in India/Brazil is still questionable.

People in India are interested in taking up EVs if the cost is reduced thanks to the unbreathable air in the major cities.

I am curious how does one go about disposing of an electronic vehicle like this when the time comes - whether from an accident or just EOL'd? Is that included in this price? Or does one need to factor that into the TCO of the vehicle?

Given the batteries I'm guessing this requires special attention compared to a combustion engine car.

Well right now most Teslas go to salvage by a third party and some go to Tesla recycling. I assume some number just go to normal scrapyards.

It's profitable to recycle the batteries so it isn't really a problem, and isn't likely to be a problem, and there are existing paths to recycle vehicles at EOL. For instance 90% of lead-acid batteries are recycled[1]. Again though batteries are most useful simply as salvage, and it'll probably be that way for a couple decades at least. The battery in a Tesla is so sturdily built (very thick aluminum sidewalls and bottom plate, then filled with potting epoxy) that they pretty easily survive crashes that total the car. Even "dead" batteries still have significant life and storage left, and are still more efficient, cost-effective and energy-dense than ni-cad or lead acid. Right now they're mostly just used by hobbyists but I will not be surprised to see companies popping up in a few years that buy old Teslas for $5,000-$10,000 and sell stationary storage at close to $125-150/kWh. They scrap out the rest of the car, install the battery modules into racks and sell them. At those prices it will take quite a while for this to be a viable business, but once it is it'll even compete with the used car market.

Worst case Tesla batteries can be safely sent to a landfill (they contain a small amount of cobalt and nickel, but no other toxic elements), they should just be drained first. Recycling is done with a hammer mill normally, but car shredders are built to chew through two foot long cast iron blocks[2]. They would have zero trouble with a Tesla, and probably wouldn't mind if it was charged.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/teslas-closed-loop-battery-recycl...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQNttxaG1qA

This is a good answer, and I'll add that some projects are already active: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/business/gm-and-nissan-re... or https://thinkprogress.org/why-used-electric-car-batteries-co... .

My favorite anecdote I heard was that Nissan was blaming the slow development of their PowerWall-esque project for secondary battery usage on how demand for used EV car batteries currently far outstrips supply (because batteries are staying on the road longer than some early Nissan projections).

Interesting, thanks for the detailed response and the links.

I guess I imagined recycling lithium-ion was somehow problematic compared to lead-acid batteries. There's actually company called Toxco that has been specializing in recycling lithium-ion batteries for the last 25 years. They recently received from funding from the DOE to develop infrastructure for recycling EV vehicle batteries:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/414707/lithium-battery-re...

Fun fact about li ion batteries: The lithium content of an 18650 cell is just under 2% by mass. The lithium content of (evaporated) brine is higher than that! Even the lithium content of rocky lithium ore (spodumene) is around 1.35%. Right now extracting lithium from batteries is more difficult than mining it in the first place! It's just way too easy to extract, so lithium accounts for less than 1% of the price (haven't checked that lately, but it's been true even through large price surges). Hell, the total material inputs for an li-ion battery are something like $20/kWh including electricity and fuel. The price almost totally comes down to the scale and efficiency of manufacturing.

Hopefully this changes but right now the lithium containing fraction of recycled cells is just used as filler material- concrete aggregate etc. Gravel, basically. Crazy.

A related Q is how do first responders safely deal with crashes of electrical vehicles which may have a risk of electrocution at best and a full on metal fire.

Same way they deal with internal combustion engine crashes and gasoline fires and explosions: training and preparedness.

A metal fire is not the same as a petrol one much harder to put out

They make fun instructional videos of firemen dismantling perfectly good cars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFWCM6iJR_w

it's just not possible to own one of these on much of the east coast. i would have probably bought this summer but seeing how abysmal the recharging story is made me shy away.

I don't get it, if you have charging at home, what's the issue? For those rare trips where you go over 300km, just rent a cheap ICE vehicle.

Full article without paywall: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chevy-bolt-meet-the-first-p...

You can bypass the WSJ paywall by tweeting a link to the article and clicking on the link from Twitter. They check the Referer header.

Changed to that from https://www.wsj.com/articles/chevy-bolt-meet-the-first-pract.... Thanks!

Can we please stop calling hybrid vehicles "electric cars"?

This is also leading to ridiculous marketing tricks by carmakers where they only make the tiniest amount of changes to "technically" be able to call their cars an "electric car" while common sense-wise being as far away from an all-electric car as possible. This means minimal changes to their own cars while claiming they've "adopted the wave of the future."

So everyone -- especially the media -- please stop calling hybrid cars electric vehicles. You're not doing the electric car future any favors.

You appear to be confusing the Chevy Volt (hybrid) with the Chevy Bolt (all-electric).

The bolt is an all electric car not a hybrid.

Other than virtue signalling, what's the point of this car? I can get a Honda Fit for half the price.

The Fit will have twice the range on a 5 minute fillup, instead of needing an all night charge. This means I can be way more casual. This thing seems more like a pet that I have to assiduously care for each and every day just to keep it going.

And what's the range of this EV after 5 years of use? In the middle of the winter?

It just doesn't seem very practical. With that Fit, I can hop in the car and drive out to the mountains and do some hiking any time I want. I don't have to specially charge it, timing my departure at peak charge.

The Bolt is quieter, rides better, and has vastly better performance compared to the Fit. And the range quoted is pessimistic if it's anything like my Volt.

It's not like it's being sold as the perfect car for everyone, but it's also not like the Bolt is a strictly worse Honda Fit for virtue signaling.

First of all, a use case might include someone who needs a local commuter and grocery getter. Not everyone has 2 hour commutes. They might also be pondering what happens if gas price ever reflects its true cost like it does in Europe.

Second, it's more than a virtue signal, for some. It's a commitment to make a contribution where they can, whether anyone else knows or not.

95% of trips made in cars are under 30 miles [1]. Even fairly low-ranged electric cars are perfect here. When you need to go on a long trip, renting a gas-powered car is a much more economic, and environmentally-friendly, alternative.

[1] http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1071688_95-of-all-trips-...

If you don't have a network of fast superchargers, then your EV is automatically useless for road trips. Tesla is the only company that has built out this network. No other EV should be taken seriously unless they've built out theirs.

But I want another solely for driving around town. The city I live in is barely 15 kilometres (about 10 miles) across. Any of the currently available EVs would suit my needs.

If I want to go out of town I'll take my turbo diesel camper.

So you get to feel all virtuous but don't mind blasting out Nox particulates which is a major health hazard

I'm sure they will accept your money all the same.

I did a 315 mile road trip in my Bolt over the summer. I stopped at a Dunkin Donuts with a DC Fast charger for a half hour, ate some mediocre baked goods, then finished my journey. The supercharger network is great, for sure, and that's part of what you get for the premium Tesla price, but road trips are totally possible in less expensive electric vehicles. I'm not a cross-country road trip type of person, so the Bolt's range and charging situation works for me.

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