Chevrolet Bolt & Bolt EUV

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As spotted by https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/2023-available-now.45352/#post-751635, that dealer is BONKERS! They are asking for a $28K markup on a '23 Bolt EUV!

See below:
https://www.chevyslo.com/new-vehicles/bolt-euv/?_dFR%5Bmake%5D%5B0%5D=Chevrolet&_dFR%5Bmodel%5D%5B0%5D=Bolt%2520EUV&_dFR%5Btype%5D%5B0%5D=New&_dFR%5Btype%5D%5B1%5D=CTP&_dFR%5Btype%5D%5B2%5D=Demo&_paymentType=our_price
https://www.chevyslo.com/inventory/new-2023-chevrolet-bolt-euv-lt-front-wheel-drive-suv-1g1fy6s03p4103198/
https://www.chevyslo.com/inventory/new-2023-chevrolet-bolt-euv-lt-front-wheel-drive-suv-1g1fy6s01p4103202/
 
First thing I asked was if they were selling Bolts over MSRP - a Nissan dealer was charging $5,000 over list and I walked out. The Chevy dealer where I placed my order was not overcharging.
 
https://www.yahoo.com/now/gm-boost-ev-chevrolet-bolt-171558251.html
"GM will boost Bolt production for global markets to more than 70,000 in 2023 from about 44,000 vehicles this year, it said on Monday. Bolt sales in 2021 hit a record annual high of 24,828 vehicles."
 
https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/third-quarter-2022-battery-replacement-reports-released.46596/ has a pointer to US progress on pack replacements to remedy the possible battery fire recall.

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2021/RCLQRT-21V560-1925.PDF covers '17 to '19.
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2021/RCLQRT-21V650-5368.PDF covers recalled '20 to '22. Not all '22 were recalled since there was a special Nov 2021 batch and once GM resumed Bolt production after the battery production issues were resolved, they were still '22 EV and EUV but not subject to this recall (GM's number N212345940 or NHTSA's number 21V650000).

I don't know of equivalent stats for non-US recalled Bolts.
 
Rented a 2022 Bolt EUV Premier on Turo from the 16th-19th for a trip up to Yosemite Valley, so here\'s a short review. I can provide detailed energy use/charging info should anyone ask for it. I started from home at a bit lower SoC than I'd like, 75% instead of 90% or so. I considered stopping somewhere short of Buck Meadows (127.4 miles on the odo from home) to charge as I was going to be below my preferred 20% reserve on arrival, but decided to push it as I knew I could make it.

The EUV drove much like the 2020 Bolt I rented a couple of years back, which is to say it handled very well and was fast, but although I didn't get to take it on any this trip, I suspect that despite its somewhat longer wheelbase the ride on dirt roads will, like the Bolt, be very bad owing to its firm suspension.

Took my usual route from the Bay Area to Yosemite, i.e. 580-205-5-120-99-120, but instead of turning left at Crane Flat onto Tioga Road to go over to the east side I continued on Big Oak Flat road down into Yosemite Valley, Tioga Road being closed due to snow beyond Crane Flat. I arrived at Buck Meadows EA station at 10% and charged there as usual, starting at 50kW, getting a max. rate of 53 kW and dropping down to about 48kW right before the charge ended at about 53%, temp 61 deg. The car doesn't have a SoC % readout, just a charge bar graph, which is probably adequate for the typical buyer but not for us nerds. I had the charge set to stop at 55%, but as in other cases of FC-ing on this trip it stopped a couple of % short per the charger display. Since I knew I had free L2 charging in the Valley courtesy of Rivian - Adopt-a-charger et al, I didn't bother to FC to 80-90%, just made sure I had enough to get back to Buck Meadows in case I couldn't charge in the Valley.


Vis.

Mostly good to decent, although the rear view is a bit constricted by the outboard headrests. One note is that even with the driver's seat raised all the way up the front fenders were invisible, so maneuvering in tight quarters was a bit iffy. The forward camera and 360 overhead view in this car helped, but I don't want to be dependent on them.


Controls.

Generally good to excellent - this car has physical HVAC controls, hallelujah! OTOH, apparently a temp sensor automatically kicked the seat and steering wheel heater and front or maybe it was rear defroster on every time I re-started the car on this trip at colder temps, and I needed to remember to shut them off when I didn't need them. Not sure if there's some setting that would prevent that. Auto headlights are the default position, with the control a little rotary switch left of the wheel on the dash for some reason, instead of on a stalk.


Interior lighting.

Reading lights in the front were good. As this car was a Premier with the sunroof it didn't have a light in/over the rear seat, so I couldn't check that out. Like the Bolt it has a single cargo area light mounted low on the left wall of the cargo area, and it's as useless as the Bolt's when you've got stuff back there.


Sleeping.

I didn't sleep in it, as much as I'd suspected I found that even with the front seats slid/tilted all the way forward a 6' pad was about 2-3" too long to fit fully extended. However, I could have put my head on the center armrest between the seats if I had been using a closed cell pad instead of my Thermarest, but would need to roll or fold up a couple of inches at the foot to make it fit. You'd also need to use something like a cooler, maybe with a pillow or two on top, on the rear floor to provide neck & shoulder support between the top of the folded rear seat and the armrest.


Door locks.

Unlike one BEV (cough - ID.4) I'd recently rented which had no indication at all, the EUV had pop-up indicator buttons on all four doors showing at a glance from in or outside whether or not they were locked or unlocked. May seem trivial until you drive a car with absolutely no visual indication of door locked/unlocked status, bar a light flash if you use the remote.

This car had a smart key, so you could unlock the doors by just approaching it within 3 feet and pushing the button on the handle. A minor convenience.


Cargo area dimensions.

I think it may be a bit bigger than the Bolt's in usable area, but it's definitely too short for full-size backpacks to fit long-ways with the rear seats up, 22.5" at the base of the rear seat at the corners to the rear, and 25" in the center. For comparison, my 6' self has an internal frame pack whose minimum length is 28" (you have to remove stuff from the upper part of the pack so the top flap/pockets don't extend it further), and my external frame pack with a 1974 Camp Trails Astral Cruiser frame is a minimum of 31" long ditto. For comparison, minimum length in the 2022 Niro at the base of the seat is 28.5"/30", and the 2023 is a couple of inches longer overall, although I'll have to see how much of that's in the cargo area. The other BEVs I've rented this year were one size class up, and all offered 35" or more of cargo length.

Minimum width is about 39.25" between the wheel wells, max. further up is about 45" (2022 Niro 41.5"/50"). From the base of the seat to the underside of the rigid, removable cargo cover is 14", 17.25" to the top of the rear seat (Niro 18" to top of seat, no cover in the one I rented). Rigid cargo covers in this and other cars have really made me appreciate the extendable, flexible covers in the Subarus I've had, as well as a few other cars I've tried. Under the flush cargo floor there's a pretty good storage area maybe 4-6" deep with a flat floor, and then under that is another storage area occupied by I forget what. I put both my collapsible hiking and ski poles cross-ways along with my laptop in the upper area, along with the portable EVSE & fix-a-flat kit that were already there, and there was room for considerably more.


Driving.

I like the combination of D/B + regen paddle, but I noticed that 'D' in the EUV doesn't offer a real coasting mode, unlike the Level 0 regen setting of the Korean BEVs I've rented recently. 'D' in the EUV feels more like 4th or even 3rd gear in a manual transmission car, and I saw regen levels up to 16kW with my foot off the accelerator in 'D'. Level 0 in the Kias/Hyundai felt like true coasting, or at worst an overdrive gear. So I couldn't maximize coast and regen range in this car as much as I could in those. Most people probably won't care.


Seats.

Given my build I didn't expect and didn't have a problem with the earlier Bolt driver's seat, and didn't have a problem with this one either, which I believe is the newer design. In fact, it seemed to be instantly comfortable for me. By comparison, I never managed to get completely comfortable in the ID.4 Pro S' seat. Understand, I wasn't uncomfortable in it, but I never found a position where it felt completely natural, i.e. I'd simply forget it.

The EUV had lots of headroom in front despite the sunroof cover, and unusually for me I forgot to do the 'sit behind myself' test, so can't speak to rear seat leg/headroom, although I don't remember either being an issue in the short time I was back there.


ACC.

There are three following distance settings for the ACC: Far; Middle, Medium or maybe Normal, I forget; and Near. As 'Far' only allowed about a 2 second follow distance I had no desire to use either of the other two settings, having been raised to consider 2 seconds a minimum and to provide 3 seconds or more whenever possible, which the max. follow distance settings in the Korean cars allow.


Charging.

As most know, DC FC speed is this and the Bolt's biggest shortcoming. Although it was charging about 20kW slower than the 2022 Niro EV with a 64 kWh battery I had used on this trip once before, they took about the same time to charge between 40-50%; actually, the EUV took 1 minute less, 7 vice 8 minutes despite or perhaps because the ambient temp was 61 instead of the 75 deg. while the Niro was charging. Unfortunately that was the only SoC range where the two cars' charging overlapped, so I wasn't able to compare typical 20-80 or 90% FC rates. Put it this way, either will be very slooooow if you're in a hurry. One thing I like about the Bolt & EUV is the permanently attached, flip down cover for the DCFC pins along with a built-in J1772 cover on the inside of the charge port. By comparison, the Korean cars have a loose DC cover held to the car by a plastic tether, in addition to a similar, separate J1772 cover/tether. The latter setup just feels kind of cheap, as well as unnecessary.


Summing up, it's a nice car for a daily driver or for someone who doesn't need to carry lots of cargo seats-up regularly, but as I'd suspected it's just a few inches too short to meet my cargo/sleeping needs, plus there's the big fail of DCFC speeds. But you can't beat range @ price currently, except for the Bolt. I have a friend's wife who wants to replace her '98 RAV4 with a BEV and wants to sit high, so I've been steering her towards the Bolt or EUV as they meet her needs pretty well. The Niro, Kona and LEAF are too low (summers are also hot in their Bay Area micro-climate, another reason I don't recommend the LEAF for her), and everything else is a lot bigger than she needs.
 
Alex on Autos had a nice review of the EUV. His testing showed it to be the most efficient EV he had driven for any period of time, and certainly an amazing value

https://youtu.be/TQHXbBZsFlk
 
Yeah, good job by GM on this one. In fact, my dad wants to replace his 2013 10-bar Leaf since the range is iffy in the winter. I recommended a Bolt for him. The big question is how he fits in it but on paper the Bolt looks like a good product.
 
goldbrick said:
Yeah, good job by GM on this one. In fact, my dad wants to replace his 2013 10-bar Leaf since the range is iffy in the winter. I recommended a Bolt for him. The big question is how he fits in it but on paper the Bolt looks like a good product.

How big's your dad? I'm a slim build 6'/175 +-5 lb., and I fit no problem with room to spare both legs and height. The issue in the past has been seats that weren't well designed for the heavy and/or broad of beam, but they've been re-designed; still, check. Like Alex I consider both the Bolt and EUV good cars as long as you don't take frequent road trips beyond 1 QC each way, and don't mind waiting a bit longer to finish that QC. In short, fine for out and back weekend trips with no more than a stop one or both ways to eat and FC, but unsuitable if you need to cross one or more western states.

The biggest drawback for me aside from the slow FC rate is the lack of a heat-pump, as I'm an X-C skier. But if your dad's using a 10-bar 24 or 30kWh LEAF in winter and the range's only 'iffy', it doesn't sound like the Bolt or EUV's winter range will be an issue.
 
Conflicting on trading in my 2022 Leaf SV Plus because the Bolts price range is similiar but with better overall features especially Wireless charging & carplay, seats folded down cargo space...
But what disturbs me is the recalls over the past few years that depreciates its worth whereas Nissan Leaf I haven't read many issues except for Chademo availability and passive cooling battery...

Perhaps next year after the prices go down, Bolt EV top trim... Test-driving mostly for fun and experience
 
If you qualify, Bolt EV and EUV bought new and placed in service on or after 4/18/23 also qualify for up to $7500 Federal tax credit: https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/tax2023.shtml.

GM to end production of electric Chevy Bolt, its first mass-market EV, later this year
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/25/gm-bolt-ev-production-to-end-later-this-year.html

Thread at https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/bolt-ev-euv-will-end-production-by-end-of-year.49906/.
 
GM pulls the plug on the Bolt EV!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/com...n&cvid=56cd8b271c9442e5a166277478cc5fa0&ei=31

[...] the Bolt’s sales eventually were dwarfed by Tesla’s fast rise and led to a $1.8 billion recall in 2021 of all of the roughly 142,000 EVs it had sold to replace their lithium-ion battery packs after reports of fires.

Last year, GM cut the Bolt’s base price by about $6,000, a move executives said was aimed at spurring EV adoption among entry-level buyers.

[me] Apparently the price cut wasn't enough. :lol:
 
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