the 2017 Chevrolet Volt is a milestone among electric vehicles and why is it a
milestone well it's the price for your 228 miles of range on a charge it costs
about thirty seven thousand five hundred dollars with destination before a $7,500
federal tax credit before the bolt for that amount of range you would have to
spend typically close to a hundred thousand dollars for a Tesla the driving
experience in the bolt is actually terrific like most electric vehicles the
bulk evie is pretty responsive actually zero
to sixty is claimed to be below 6.5 seconds that's really good it's better
than the lead not quite as crazy as some of the Tesla's but still really
responsive nice feel the handling also really good having the battery pack down
low with all of its weight it really helps keep the center of gravity low and
keeps the car cornering flat the tires are the weak link here they aren't
terrible as efficient tires go but they do tend to give up grip and start
squealing pretty easily one thing I'm not wild about is the ride quality I'm
not saying it's bad but it's a little firm the interior is really nicely
appointed we are in a premier which is the higher trim level but I have to say
the LT which I've also experienced is also nice good quality materials cloth
seats but a similar color palette nicely done
now one of the things I like about the car is the instrument panel gives you an
estimated range of how much distance you can travel based on your current state
of charge but not just the one number it also gives you a maximum which is higher
in a minimum which is lower and this just emphasizes that your range will
vary with how you drive where you drive whether you're using cabin heat which
sucks a lot of electricity air conditioning also pull some juice
so you get the middle number here based on how you've been driving recently
and this does a pretty good job of estimating how much range you have if
you drive a little bit more aggressively a little bit of a little green line will
inch down on the bottom part on the side and show you that you're trending less
efficient and if you're driving you know with a light foot and be more efficient
that bar will go upward and show you that you're trending a little bit more
efficient so at least you're always mindful of how efficiently you're
driving and how it's affecting your range another great feature is the
optional full-time rear-view camera which appears in the rearview mirror
like right now it's a mirror camera and what that does is it eliminates any of
the obstructions behind you like the pillars anyone in the backseat or
anything in your cargo area it also gives a wider review like right now I
don't see the truck next to me there I do on the camera there are a few things
I don't like about the bolts primarily the seat several of our people have been
complaining about the comfort they designed the seats in a different way to
make them thinner and produce more interior room but I feel like the side
bolsters on the bottom cushion are very tight I keep feeling like maybe I left
something in my back pocket I don't say I think this is something they need to
work on for the next model year another thing I'm not wild about is it's not
always really easy to see a traffic signal because the roof comes out pretty
far forward similar to problem we've noted in the bolt and on the other hand
this is high enough that I get summoned through the side window and for whatever
reason the visors don't extend even though they do on a lot of vehicles
these days something else we're not wild about it has an optional 360-degree
camera and backup camera and for some reason the resolution is quite poor it
looks downright blurry and we have cleaned the cameras we made sure they're
not just dirty and the quality is just not what you find on a lot of cars these
days and not as good as the full time rear view camera in the rear view mirror
the back seat is another area where the bolt has an advantage over the leaf even
though the car is one foot shorter from bumper to bumper the cabin is larger a
couple cubic feet and has six foot tall guy I got plenty of room back here a lot
of headroom a lot of legroom actually if they wanted to make the seats a little
bit thicker to make them a little more comfortable I'd be fine with that now
the cargo area shows that there's been some compromise to make more room for
the passengers but it's not quite as bad as it looked at first because this panel
comes out drops down so the height is pretty good overall behind the back seat
the volume isn't as good as the Nissan Leaf but once you remove the shade here
and lower the seats the maximum cargo volume is a lot closer and here you see
the value of having this panel that can go upward it gives you a continuous
cargo floor and some hidden storage underneath that brings us to an
important aspect which is electric cars need to be charged and one way they can
be charged is with a supplied cable for charging the bolt has a standard
connection called je 1772 looks like this on one end it's used by all V's
except Tesla and it goes in here now this is the one that plugs into your
household outlet 120 volt this will add three and a half to five miles of range
for every hour of charging we got three and a half miles per every hour that is
not fast enough so you're going to need what's called level two 240 volts that
looks a little bit more like this typically it's mounted to the wall you
need to have it installed professionally and what it gives you is up to 25 miles
of range for every hour of charging so clearly even if you run this thing down
to practically nothing overnight it'll fill it up to 228 miles of range now you
also have the option to quick charges if you pay for the option
750 bucks extra DC fast charging now is in the form of a combination connection
pcs combo connection system where instead of a separate port like the
lease has called Chatham oh this one is actually just integrated now when you
connect that you can charge at seventy to ninety miles of range in 30 minutes
but you're not going to have DC fast charging at home you've got to do that
in public and in some cases it'll cost you now bears noting that Tesla doesn't
require this hardware they just need an outlet and the level two hardware will
cost you 750 bucks roughly and then whatever cost to install to get 240
volts to your garage or charging area which could be a hundred bucks it could
be ten thousand it depends on how far away your service panel is now some
municipalities or States will rebate the cost or part of the cost of the hardware
of the installation so once you make that initial outlay and by the car by
our calculations you're paying about half as much to drive this car per mile
as you would if you had say a 35 mile per gallon gas powered car and that's
based on pretty low gas prices as we shoot this definitely a milestone car
definitely a really good price at this point as v's go this is the first one
that make it seem like it really is something that can appeal beyond
environmentalist to people that want to save a little bit of money in the long
run
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