Here's Why the Chevy Bolt is the Uncool Electric Car

this is a brand-new Chevy bolt that's bolt with a be like boy band and not volt I clarify this because some people even some car enthusiasts have no idea that this thing exists even though on paper it's amazing it's a brand new electric car that will do 238 miles between charges that's twice the range of its mainstream electric rivals like the Nissan Leaf and the Ford Focus Electric in that Mitsubishi that looks like an egg-shaped golf cart more importantly the bolt isn't really all that expensive compared to rivals it starts at just thirty seven thousand five hundred dollars or just thirty thousand dollars after the federal tax incentive 37 five to go 238 miles those numbers are unrivaled in the car industry except for the new Tesla Model 3 which will reportedly go 220 miles for $35,000 those are pretty similar numbers and yet the Tesla Model 3 is sold out for years people are obsessing over a Tesla fans are retweeting every time Elon Musk's sneezes whereas the bolt isn't selling most people haven't heard of it and it's just not cool today I'm gonna find out why that is before I get started here are some facts to back up my theory of the Volt's uncool necedrol a recently announced that they are idling the plant that makes the bolt because inventories are just too high how high exactly right now list on Auto Trader there are three thousand five hundred and ninety nine bolts for sale across the country $35.99 you know how many Tesla Model 3 s there are for sale an auditor zero admittedly the Model 3 isn't quite out just yet but the point remains the bolt has giant inventories whereas for the Model 3 people were lining up for weeks ahead of time in order to give Tesla a $1000 interest-free loan so that they could maybe have the chance to have a model 3 sometime in the next couple of years so today I'm gonna try to figure out what the bolt doesn't have I borrowed this bolt from a viewer here in New Jersey and I'm going to show you all of its cool quarks and interesting features and then I'm gonna take it out on the road and see how this thing drives and at the end I'm gonna give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the bolt and the bolt experience click the link below to go to autotrader.com slash oversteer now on to the quirks now this car has a lot of interesting quirks and features so get ready I'll start with the first thing you notice the second you climb inside and that's the gear lever for some reason electric and hybrid cars just have to have a bizarre gear lever and the bolt is no different now when you first start the car it's in park and that makes sense that's fine but when you want to put it in reverse you have to push a little button on the side of the gear lever and then push it up and to the left to get it into reverse when you want to put it into drive you push the same button then pull it down and then you're in Drive and when you put it in drive a previously unseen L for low range appears on the gear lever gives you kind of a futuristic look when you want to go back to park you don't push it anywhere to go into Park instead you just push the little button at the top of the gear lever that says P and that puts you in park next up I want to talk about the bolts center screen now this is a giant center screen by modern car standards although not quite up to the level of Tesla but it contains an enormous amount of stop right now I want to show you some of the weird things that I found while I was going through this screen the most interesting quirk is that there is a setting in this screen for literally every function on this car for example you can alert it to tell you if your charge cord has been stolen you're charging up your cord gets stolen and it send you a note hey by the way someone just stole your charge cord but that isn't my favorite weird setting my favorite weird setting is the chime of volume you can adjust the chime volume up and down in most cars it's like low or high in this car it's arranged with a two digit number and the lowest setting is 24 and the highest setting is 38 so there's a 14 number range in there I don't know why it's not just 1 to 14 I don't know why they chose 14 numbers but you can go from 24 to 38 with your charm volume I personally like my chime volume it's thirty to thirty if I'm trying to create kind of a low-key night on the town atmosphere next up the giant screen shows all of your energy usage which is common in most electric and hybrid cars but this one really gets in-depth to the point where I don't even want to get into all this stuff the one cool thing is it gives you a score how will your doing compared to how you could be doing or I've been in the past my score is not very high and then here's a feature that every car should have there's a setting for maximum startup volume that's for the radio so when you get in the last person who drove what was blaring the music there's a maximum level the radio will start at so even if last person handed on 87 you can control it so that it won't start higher than 25 so when you get in the car on Monday morning at 7 a.m. after it's been driven on the weekend your eardrums aren't blown out by crazy electronic music from those darn kids and speaking of those darn kids this card even has a teen driver function so that when you give your car over to your teen driver you can limit stuff like the stereo volume and the speed it requires the inputting of a pin so your teen can't go in there and change it another cool thing this car has a rear seat reminder feature basically it can tell if before you get in and drive you open the rear seat to put something back there presumably a child's seat and that way if you get out without opening the rear door it reminds you that hey you might want to look back there so you don't forget your kid in the back of the car that is a really good idea slightly less well executed is the option to change the language it says language so you can change language then in parenthesis it also says language so you can change your language or your language in General Motors and one of my favorite bolts quarks is the brake lights now first off just the appearance of the brake lights when they're on is pretty cool kind of futuristic looking but the most interesting thing about the brake lights is that they're mounted on the rear hatchback now in the United States brake lights and headlights cannot legally be mounted on a piece of movable bodywork in other words a hatchback or a hood you can't put your brake lights there because if your hood is up or your hatchbacks up nobody can see them but Chevy figured out an interesting way around that that's also used by a couple of other cars namely when you open the hatchback watch down here open it up the brake lights instantly shift suddenly they're no longer in the hatchback they're down in the bumper which is a fixed piece of bodywork when you close the hatch once again the brake lights switch right back to where they were before it's an interesting solution to kind of a weird problem because of federal regulations now interestingly the turn signals fall under the same federal regulation they also can't be on a moving piece of bodywork Chevy could have done the same thing with the turn signals put one set in the tailgate and then another second redundant set in the bumper in case the tailgate ever opened but they just say you're nass screw it and so there's only one set of turn signals in the bumper on a fixed piece of bodywork where they don't have to worry about that regulation another interesting quirk about this car check out the situation back here with the reversing camera now like most cars the backup camera and this one is mounted on the tailgate right above the license plate and there are two of them one is a wide-angle camera just for the regular reversing camera and the other one is for the 360-degree camera the third thing back there that would be the washer jet for the cameras in case they get grimy or dirty there is a separate washer that will squirt fluid on to them so that they can stay clean up I've reviewed a lot of cars including a lot of really expensive cars and I've never seen that feature before but I admit it is pretty cool send someone back another interesting feature this car has like a two-stage cargo area you have the normal cargo a which is what most people see but then if you lift this up there's a second cargo area underneath the floor so you can hide stuff from anybody who hasn't seen this video another interesting feature in this car take a look at these seats you notice something weird how about the fact that the outside of the seats is white and the inside is grey the seats are asymmetrically colored I'm not exactly sure why they did that but it gives it kind of a cool look it looks like the whole interior is rimmed in white or as the center is gray to match the center console bits and pieces in the car another interesting quirk of the infotainment system is a feature called hilltop reserve now hilltop reserve sounds like the kind of place I'd try to shoot one of these videos and then get kicked out by a guy driving a Chevy Silverado you can't fill them at Hilltop reserve but actually it's kind of a neat feature in this car if you set hilltop reserve 2 on it only charges the car to 90% and that way if for example you live at the top of a hill you can use regenerative braking to get the last 100 percent of charge when you drive to work or drive wherever you're going the theory being that that way you don't have to waste any of the energy created by regenerative braking they've really thought of everything now one of the main reasons I suspect a lot of Tesla owners will claim that they didn't buy a bolt is because it doesn't have all the technology that you'll find on a Tesla but actually you'd be surprised how much technology is in this car for example in addition to the regular backup camera there is a 360-degree camera there's also a lane keep assist feature that will steer you back into your lane and lane departure warning to know if you're starting to get out of your lane there's a feature that measures your following distance in the car in front of you and - your little green yellow red depending on how far you are I've never seen that before and it's kind of cool of course the car will beep at you like crazy if you get too close to a car in front of you so that forward collision warning and automatic forward collision braking it has a blind spot in monitoring system to let you know if someone is in your blind spot it has automatic high-beam so that you don't have to adjust them when you're on a dark road it'll turn them on and off for you when cars are coming in back it has heated rear seats in the front and has a heated steering wheel which is nice and one of my favorite bolt party tricks is the fact that it has a remote ignition so that you can start it before you get in in the morning the weird thing is I don't know how you know that it has started it's an electric car so doesn't make any noise but the benefit is it can run the heater before you climb in sides of the cars nice and warm when you want to get in ok I was so curious about that one I had to figure out how it worked how do you remote start an electric car well turns out press the lock button and then you hold down the remote Start button until the lights come on as they just have the car itself doesn't remote start but the climate control does turn on right now the air conditioning is blowing so it is nice and cool on this hot day when I get in my car mmm then I simply push the power button and I'm ready to go so this car has a lot of high-tech features and some cool little quirks that make it kind of interesting but like all cars there are a few drawbacks one of them is the seats they're surprisingly narrow they don't warn me about this but they're narrower than I expected I can barely get all of me on them and I'm not exactly a large person also on the subject of the seats how about the fact that this is the ultra high level bolt with every feature an option and it doesn't have power seats they can do a hilltop reserve mode but I can't put power seats in the thing it seems a little bit strange and then there's probably my least favorite thing in this car something that most people probably would never notice but I spend a lot of time in cars and I notice stuff like this when you roll down the window on the driver's side of the passenger side you can see the door panel sort of expand to allow for the window to come into it it's something that most bolt owners probably will never notice and you probably won't notice it if you have one but I think it makes the car feel just a little bit cheaper inside than it should so the bolt has some cool stuff and it has some unusual stuff but how does it drive time to get it out on the road and find out I'm actually kind of excited about this I was excited when this car was announced and they said they could get 240 miles for 35 grand I was like I don't know and then they came out with it and they got turned 40 miles for 35 grants a pretty good deal the first thing I noticed with this car it's quiet obviously all these electric cars between the fact that there's no engine noise the road noise is pretty muted and there's not a lot of wind rush coming in and I'm going about 40 I love the center gauge cluster it's so funny because General Motors when I grew up General Motors made the worst days clusters they were just all terrible for the worst fonts and they just were so ugly compared to the Europeans and and you could just you could just look at them and say well this is one of the many reasons why General Motors can't make good cars but this one is now like ultra modern high-tech it looks awesome there are a few blank switches there's some plastic but that's also true in the test list all right now floor it here Wow trip the tires whoa that is actually really quick I can't believe that I say these on the road no Mike oh it's just a little egg-shaped electric car like the leaf it does service in 11 seconds well no this does your 60 in 6.5 seconds which is like what a WRX was a few years ago yeah I grant you it's no like Model S Model X but this isn't a slow car alright here we go I guess I got some space oh then it holds it actually really kind of move it's more of a novelty thing though of course because at the end of the day this car has a higher center of gravity and it's not gonna it just won't handle and hold the road like you know some of these like a Tesla but also other cars that do 0 to 60 and 6.5 I like on the range meter that it shows me my potential maximum range and my potential minimum range that's a that's a really good idea it also gives me what it's estimate is which is 215 but it says it could go as much as 253 if I behave myself or if I keep doing those those floor or foot on the floor things it'll be 176 the visibility in this car is really good I think one of the problems that people have with this car is that it has sort of this minivan demeanor to it in the sense that the front windshield serve just goes and goes and goes like in a Honda Odyssey or whatever and so it kind of feels like a mini man especially the driving position and I get that but the benefit of that is that the visibility is excellent in every direction you can really see everything the owner of this car has is married he has a kid and it is a family car for him and so it's usable in that sense too I mean I don't think it could swallow three kids and you know parents and strollers and all that stuff but as a for a small family it works handling is is fine it's especially fine for a sort of a tall hatchback like Kia Soul doesn't handle this well in the end this car is really really really competent and I'm not just saying that I really think this is like a well-put-together car I think it's got a cool interior it's got a lot of tech it's quick it's fun I like the cool screens it's comfortable inside good visibility I mean this is a really good effort in an electric car and I can go 238 miles according to EPA query the car more like torn seventy miles if I really keep my foot out of it so that's the Chevy bolt it's a neat car with some amazing numbers it's range is incredible especially considering its price point it has a lot of cool features and new technology that drives reasonably well and it's pretty fast which brings us back to our main point why isn't this car cool what is holding the bolt back from achieving the celebrity status that the Tesla Model 3 has one could argue that styling plays a role the bolt looks more like a standard hatchback or maybe even a minivan whereas the model 3 looks more futuristic fine model 3 fans will probably also point to performance but get this the bolt does your to 60 in 6.5 seconds that's really impressive and it's only 0.9 seconds off the model 3 is zero to 60 of 5.6 seconds for context that egg-shaped Mitsubishi Electric car does zero to 60 in 13 seconds and a normal car like for example a Honda Civic does it in just under 8 so this thing isn't really all that slow but nonetheless while I haven't driven a Model 3 I admit the bolt is a little bit slower and it probably doesn't corner as well fine I'll give the model 3 that - ok but what else the Chevy Volt has a longer range than the base level Tesla Model 3 with dealer discounts it's definitely cheaper it has a lot of cool technology and new features and most importantly it's available now today you could buy one of these today instead of forking over a thousand dollars just so you can tell your friends that yes you drive a Dodge Neon now but in two years really you're gonna have that cool Tesla that you've been hearing about admittedly I think the model 3 is cool - really I do and I can't wait to drive one but I think the truth is we all know why the model 3 has been so hyped and the Bolton has fallen flat and that is right here the simple truth is that Chevy just isn't as cool as Tesla and while a lot of Tesla owners claim that they're doing it for the environment and they want the electric car to save the planet the truth is that I think a lot of them just want the hot new car from the cool new car company which is fine but if you want an electric car with great numbers and a reasonable price that's available right now and you don't want to wait for your car to be delivered in Tesla Standard Time here's your alternative now it's time for the Doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling where the bold is fine it has some cool details but it's not exactly thrilling so it gets a 5 out of 10 acceleration to bolt does 0 to 60 in 6.5 seconds strong for an electric car but not for the Dougs score where it gets a 3 out of 10 handling the bolt is fine but not exceptional especially in the company of the cars I've tested so it gets a 4 out of 10 cool factor is debatable as always but right now this is still a cool new car at least I think so so it gets a 6 out of 10 finally importance this is clearly a significant car for General Motors an important vehicle in their lineup and for their future as electric cars start to become more common it gets a 7 out of 10 that brings the total weekend score just 25 out of 50 which makes sense this isn't much of a car you want to drive on the weekends as for the daily score I suspect things will be a bit different starting with features the bolt does well it's nicely equipped with a lot of desirable modern tech but it's missing some stuff too so it gets a 7 out of 10 luxury measures comfort and the bolt is fine not great but not horrible just about average so it gets a 5 out of 10 quality measures materials and reliability materials are decent maybe just a bit above average but reliability is unknown and there's always a fear about buying a car especially a car like this with a new powertrain so early in its model run so it's a 5 out of 10 for practicality the boasts fifty six point six cubic feet of cargo volume would give it an 8 but this category also factors in gas mileage and that easily bumps up the bolt to a 9 out of 10 note I've also revised a few other cars practicality scores to keep the Doug score consistent finally for value the bolts pricing is strong especially since Chevy dealers are probably offering some great deals due to excess inventory it gets an 8 out of 10 bringing the total daily score to 34 out of 50 right near the top that makes sense is this is more of a daily car than most of the stuff that I test add it all up and the bolts Doug score is fifty nine out of 100 it's a good solid car excellent effort it may not be as cool as a Tesla but if you want an electric car this really should be near at the top of your shopping list

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 3,097,350

Rating: 4.7847252 out of 5

Keywords: chevy bolt, chevrolet bolt, bolt electric car, bolt, chevy ev, chevy volt, volt bolt, chevy volt bolt, chevrolet ev, chevrolet electric, chevy electric car, doug demuro, demuro, tesla model 3, model 3, tesla

Id: d2ogGZXmepY

Length: 18min 53sec (1133 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 31 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/gamblekat]

Calling it the 'Bolt' was a huge mistake. They hyped the fuck out of the Volt for years, then gave the fully-electric version a confusingly similar name and zero advertising. How many people even know that it exists?

[u/itsbranden97]

I actually really like it, I didn't really know anything about the bolt previously. I'm not a huge fan of the styling but I could learn to live with it.

[u/Dudebythepool]

I actually really like it it's practical and gives you the freedom to put a nice gas guzzler in the garage for weekend driving.

Also when these hit the used market in the low 20k range I'll pick one up.

Also shout out to the bolt forums where some dealer guy was claiming these will stay in the 30k range after 3 years like a tesla like really

[u/FireflyOD]

I actually think it's a good looking car, not 'pretty' but for sure above average especially for a EV. That blue looks great on it imo.

Compared to photos I've seen of the Model 3, the Bolt is better just because it has a normal interior. Tesla screwed up with the one single iPad glued to the dash to be used for everything.

[u/ProfitOfRegret]

I spy a Subaru Baja!

/u/doug-demuro when are you going to get your hands on one of those?

[u/killgore755]

I'm alittle early for a change so I'll ask others; how many of you guys just watch Doug's videos for the quirks and stop watching when he gets to the drive?

For me personally I don't think you can get a feel for a cars handling, speed, ect watching someone else record their face while they drive. No hate to Doug though I love the guy, just saying my main reason for watching is seeing him go around the car and show us things.

[u/binns88]

Pleasantly suprised. Seems a good all round package for a daily driver, with a bit of poke too. Looking at this as a normal hatchback from a mainstreem manufacturer the future may not be so bad.

[u/thevtdiablo]

hey /u/doug-demuro, random question, but have you ever considered/thought about reviewing a Porsche 911 Speedster? I just think it's such an abnormal car that I never see, it fits the bill for one of your car reviews.

[u/homelessscootaloo]

I think the Bolt is currently the best one available and would have bought one if I had a garage.