Should We Buy A Used Chevy Bolt EV? Under $25k EV Buyers Guide - Ep. 1

all right hello everyone welcome to out of spec reviews I'm Max and well this is a follow-up from that video you might have seen a few weeks ago where Kyle and I were talking about buying a sub 25 000 cheap used electric vehicle it's happening and we listen to your comments the first one we're looking at is the Chevy Bolt the elephant in the room here when it comes to a cheap depreciated used electric car well the Chevy bolt is an obvious deal it is a lot of range 259 miles of eps to make a range on the newest ones uh on this specific one 237 for not a lot of money so this specific one we actually found a dealer locally who we told them what we're doing we just said hey look we want to look at one of your used bolts so here we have a 2019 LT Chevy bolt it's just the EV because they didn't have the euv version at this point but um if we come in closer we can kind of see that you know this is your Chevy bolt it is not the world's prettiest vehicle in my opinion it is obviously not the world's most technologically advanced vehicle but you guys have spoken and we listened and you can't argue with the numbers what you're looking at for this specific one is they're asking somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty six thousand dollars so if we were to buy it we'd have to talk them down a bit that said I think that's pretty doable not just for us because we're a YouTube channel but for you too because guess what the new Chevy bolt because of that whole battery fire situation with LG chem has been discounted and new models for the very base ones start at twenty six thousand dollars for a new one so I think it's pretty reasonable to expect a 2019 used one with a little bit of mileage on it to be cheaper so I think that's quite doable to get at under twenty five thousand dollars now to recap why is under twenty five thousand dollars so important well that's because that is the number the price cap on the new tax credit going into effect into 2023 meaning that if you buy a used EV made at least two years ago or older you can get up to four thousand dollars back off that purchase basically taken off the purchase price which makes use EVS even uh more of a value option which is nice to see in this market where honestly cars haven't been depreciating that much and so it's good to see examples like the Chevy bolt where even if it's for somewhat unfortunate reasons it's now depreciated and those reasons I have high confidence are um good reasons I think you know yes there were the LG cam battery fire situation there was a recall GM's taking care of customers they replace the battery this one has one of the new batteries in it so as far as we know that issue is solved now if there's fires again well I'm sure Chevy will be in some trouble but right now they're focused on ultium so it seems like they've kind of fixed things up with the bolt and here we have it so let's just kind of walk around the car give a quick tour of it so like I said it's bolt EV it is not bolt euv meaning this is the hatchback style uh that said the very new bolt UVS that are marginally more expensive they're SUV styling I think they have like marginally higher ground clearance they're a bit larger a little bit more space they're still front-wheel drive so let's talk mechanics this vehicle is a front-wheel drive hatchback it is running a motor on its front axle that is giving you 200 horsepower or about 266 pound-feet of torque now that might not sound impressive compared to cars we've been looking at recently like of course the well Kyle's rivian or the Lucid air that we've been testing but keep in mind this is an economy hatchback and that gets us 0 to 60 and well under seven seconds faster than uh maybe be some compact Mercedes electric SUVs so that is really cool to see it's actually comparable to my Mini Cooper I think maybe just a hair slower but we'll see in the driving portion of this video where we test drive it now we're not going to buy anything yet we're going to look at several other used EVS keep stay tuned to this series because we're going to be looking at the other names in the room your Nissan Leafs your i3s Etc on the note of the leaf by the way one other thing about the bolt since we're talking mechanics this one has the 60 kilowatt hour battery so that's giving it 237 miles of EPA rated range now that battery pack is liquid cooled so LG chem issues aside now that it's replaced and new let's assume nothing bad happens with it it's liquid cooled you're going to see less degradation that means than something like a Nissan Leaf which is an air-cooled battery so that's awesome to see now one thing I should note about the bolt if we kind of go around is that uh I can show you the charging door here right on the topic of charging that's another downside with the bolt in my opinion so the bolt does have DC fast charging this is a 2019 model like I said it was introduced in the 2017 model year and they didn't change it much uh but here's the downside so DC fast charging the peak rate was only ever about 50 to 55 kilowatts Peak charging rate so this is not a fast charger by any means it wasn't when it came out and nowadays next to let's say Mass Market 800 volt Vehicles like the egmp stuff Hyundai ionic 5 Etc it's really out of classed that's why I think part of why GM had to price cut it so not only do you have a slow DC rate this model has an onboard level 2 charger for AC like at your house charger limited to 7.2 kilowatts not even 11 kilowatts I think that was upgraded in the later model years so not particularly faster charge no matter which way you're charging but they do have an onboard charger so if we do end up buying the bolt I don't have an evic at my house I'm actually going to be relying on DC fast charging but if you were to really live with a bolt it might be a nice idea to have level two you're not going to see fast speeds but it's got the level two it's got level three of course so some of the EVS we're going to look at in this series might not necessarily have had DC fast charging so it's nice at least that the bolt offered it so we can see if we kind of keep going around the vehicle uh here on the window that uh there's just some information this is of course a dealer vehicle 2019 and let's go back around the back and this is one reason I like the bolt it's probably a reason you guys like the bolt it's a hatchback and as someone who drives a two-door mini cooper hatchback I can just tell you hatchbacks are amazing and that's still the case here because you get a lot of room you get a surprising amount of storage capacity it's basically 17 cubic feet with the rear seats but if you fold those down you're getting 57 cubic feet of storage capacity so that was good when it came out it's still good now because this was built from the ground up to be an EV I think it's always been a very practical vehicle and I should add a personal note my grandma actually drives I think the debut model year the 2017 bolt she's had it uh she's had at least then she bought at the lease and since she's had it she's loved it at the time she was looking at you know a cheap EV and there weren't many options on the market like there are now uh there still aren't that many cheap options the choice for her was this or a base model 3 and a base model 3 still would have been much more expensive and let's face it that's a rear wheel drive sedan that's not exactly a grandma spec vehicle this hatchback is very practical in that regard and if I open the back door you can see that uh the load floor or not the load floor as I mean the passenger floor it's flat it's fully flat there so it might be kind of dark to see on camera but I think it's really cool that they basically provided you with that flat floor they packaged the battery really well because this was never an ice vehicle it's always been an EV so that's kind of just a walk around overview of the boat we have it now Jordan and I are gonna drive it and we're just going to give you some quick impressions of it uh and like I said we're not buying anything yet we're at Fowler Chevrolet here in Broomfield Colorado and I'm sure they're going to want us to move soon but we're just looking at several EVS in this series thank you guys by the way Fowler Chevrolet for letting us use this bolt this might be one of the vehicles we buy but we have a couple more to look at in this series before we choose so let's drive the bolt see how it is uh before we move on to the future episodes of this series but yeah driving Impressions let's do it starting up the Chevy bolt which has a power button not every EV does especially some of these new ones like the Volvos don't but I don't know what do you think of having a power button in an EV Jordan I think we should go away from that just driving this Mercedes SUV around it has a power button also yeah and Tesla doesn't have to do that either right you just get in id4 same thing just get in and go yeah that's the way it should be anyhow one positive in this interior you do have just a normal uh prnd selector so that's really nice and also on the prnd selector there's an L for regenerative braking so bolt enthusiasts you know this wouldn't be a nerdy EV if it didn't have a one pedal mode even as an early EV and this one certainly does so that's great and because we are nerds why don't we just go into that high regen mode um yep it's one pedal driving it's capable of it so recuperation is there uh we're just driving around the deal or just test driving today avoiding the world's largest pothole I think that could eat your Miata probably yeah bottom out love we love Colorado Department of Transportation and how they maintain their roads all right Max for stopping let's see what this thing can do all right oh basically some Wheels spin there got some wheel spin on our Michelin energy saver 215 tires my Miata has wider tires than this yeah however they aren't energy efficient and they're giving us actually it's estimating right now 279 miles of range so that's kind of I guess they because when GM replaced the batteries they probably put in the bigger 66 kilowatt hour pass oh that's right yeah as opposed to the 60 that this launched wet so that's another plus of you know LG and GM's problem being a win for customers once you know they took care of you on something I'm liking here is uh I hope you can see it on the GoPro this gauge cluster is very simple right now for some reason it's showing our tire pressure but of course we can show trip odometer speed whatever a note on charging like we mentioned that earlier a segment of the video this is not a great charging story for an EV but if you're not an egghead nerd like us you probably don't care right you're charging at your house overnight it's a liquid cool battery pack so you're not going to see major degradation even if you were to leave it outside for years on end so that's great and yeah in terms of like that ex okay I gotta say on these tires it's way too easy to get some wheel spin I don't think that's a fault of the drivetrain this this is actually is fairly aggressive from a stop in terms of giving you that power and yes once you get the 30 and 40 the limits of that 200 horsepower motor definitely present themselves but the fact that I can basically just do wheel spins on my climate saving my energy saving low rolling resistance Visual and tires is just hilarious so if you're a want to be a drift god well front wheel drive Chevy bolt honestly maybe not the world's worst Choice yeah it's not that low of horsepower when you compare it to like a model 3 sure it's less power and torque but when you compare it to other things we deem as hot hatchbacks it's hot hatchback territory as far as power so I don't think that's a thing to really complain about yeah and I haven't touched the brakes once so in this low setting the regenerative braking is really doing its job and there's paddles on the steering wheel way before Hyundai and Kia were doing those on all their cars to actually let you really like up the aggression of that region in real time so I think this is a very one pedal driving friendly car now one thing to note with an older Bolt versus a new one this doesn't have adaptive cruise control even in the maxed out package so you are sacrificing that versus a new one because a lot of people are comparing new Bolt versus old bolt including our friend Dominic Yoni who many of you guys may know from inside EVS he is literally in this debate right now I think he's leaning towards new but the price is fairly close you can definitely undercut the new bolt with the older bolt pricing but then what are you sacrificing in this case it's the driver assistance now to get a new bolt specked with super Crews then you're up in the price even more so then that disparity increases yeah and I would say that's really the only functional thing right it's that fancier driver assistance Tech and of course the new styling if that speaks to you more they kind of face lifted it but like functionally you know for us egg heads nerds numbers guys this is the same car basically like right we're getting that 274 miles of estimated range uh we're getting uh still very similar mechanic they haven't they never change the motor setup on this car they never like you know gave it a limited slip differential option or Torque vectoring none of that like this is the bolt just been the bolt the mph the noise vibration harshness is not bad at all the material feels are fine like it's obviously fine it's economy yeah but they kind of took similar to the Ford Maverick approach with some of this like interesting plastic it's not just boring crappy plastic it's not at all yeah like the new Mazda or Honda products which I think are kind of right like they're upping the game they're kind of going at luxury space this is nowhere near that but like you said it's interesting like it's kind of a cool design I don't know there's cool patterns going on in here yeah it's fine and the seats are two-tone I mean there's there's cool things about that and obviously when you're looking at used vehicles the options may change that you're not going to find everything with the same amount of options and but that is one way to kind of get a better deal sometimes because the options aren't as expensive as they would be on a new vehicle because they're just kind of lumped into the price which may adjust the price a little bit but if you're looking at a use vehicle try to find one with some of the options you may not look for in a new vehicle because of the price and I like that I think Chevy always cut the options on the bolt simple like if you got a well outfitted one like this one is just an LT package but it has the climate has heated seats there's a heated steering wheel you know so this does have the premium package which is cool heated steering wheel with a print package you've got car play and Android auto I think standard on basically all the bolts that have been made which is really smart I think it's a great approach because this is not an OS to write home about this it's not the most responsive in the world but like we've been saying it's simple it's easy you really don't have that many options here this is a great EV for both you know the Eggheads and Eevee nerds Among Us who want the best bang for the buck and just for people who don't even know what an EV is and just let's say you want to save Grandma some money this is a car for her I recommended this to my grandma when it was new and she still likes hers yeah the beauty of Bolt is they never really focused on trying to be as like a spec killer or or have these fancy features in some ways that makes this it's always been a less desirable vehicle for those reasons but that's those are the same things that's made it an affordable vehicle now I have to say turning radius is fine it's just average for a small car but it is a small car so if you were coming out of let's say your old RAV4 this is probably going to feel pretty nipple yeah yeah and then again this little tire has been at 30 miles I'm not even in the uh sport mode which let's just enable that there we go oh so that's just changing my throttle sensitivity it's electronic steering of course I maybe it firmed that up a bit I don't think so I think it's just changing the accelerator feel uh but yeah and yeah like Jordan was saying you know this it won't be a road trip King it never it's not a Tesla doesn't have super charging it never had the fast CCS DC charging but it didn't need any of that uh plenty of people have been happy with this uh this just wouldn't be a cross-country vehicle but if you were making a high like you could do a day trip where you were going let's say within 100 mile radius come terribly in this car and pack you know three of your close friends and their gear probably and there's a decent amount of space at the hatchback yeah so how do you feel overall as a price point versus the car uh price point versus the car you know this is the first one in the series that we're looking at right so to come are some of the other options here but right off the bat I see why everyone was commenting check out the bolt you know I of course I knew about the bolt but driving it again reminding myself how it feels I am just yeah I'm happy with it it's one of the prominent players in the used Market you know you see a lot of Leafs a lot of bolts yeah other cars that were deemed kind of California compliance cars are still existing and they're still at a cheaper price but they're less common because they made far fewer of them they've made a lot of bolts in the last five model years and that's what we probably will see more and more of on the used Market yes uh just this has been a used King in a used Market that has been so wacky these last few years it's nice to see the ball uh depreciating somewhat from what it was already a pretty attractive price at the time and of course you know Colorado if this is let's say hypothetically it'd be anti-climactic but let's say this is harder that we choose and that Kyle buys this and this is what I'm driving for a few months in the Colorado winter there's going to be some questions right like these energy saver tires might have to make a trip to Costco get some winners uh and uh see how it holds up you know of course all-wheel drive was never offered on this that's a very Colorado thing there's no heat pump so even though it's good range what's that gonna hold up with in the cold what how much will the climate affect that if I have heat on so that those are open questions yeah a lot of things Jermaine answered but that's the whole point of this series is buying a car and seeing what it's like to really live with it current consumption 2.7 miles a kilowatt hour I've been driving normally with a few of those launches uh it's all Jordan's fault he spurred me on uh but yeah you know it's been a reasonably efficient because it's the bowl thank you everybody for watching the first part of this series and let us know the next obvious pick we find yes we looked at what we did it we listened to you and you know this might be what we end up with uh you might be fine with it I mean yeah yeah I don't know it's that said of course the e-golf excites the dynamic card nerd and me who likes Volkswagens that I3 excites the technologist in me who likes that that's carbon fiber and rear-wheel drive and all that so like this is not an exciting car but uh as are like it's a control like a science in scientific terms this is a control and it's a pretty darn good one okay now that we've driven the bolt it's time for a little bit of buyer's advice when you're actually looking for a used one which we ourselves might be but just some quick advice for you know y'all who might be in the market yourselves so things to know about the bolt EV well I would recommend looking at 2021 or older ones for the best depreciation especially on that used market so the new price of a bolt is just under 26 000 so keep that in mind because currently the used Market will get to that later in this video looking at some other bolts hasn't exactly adjusted to that and it's should because a used car should be cheaper than a new car so keep that in mind and in terms of trims for both you probably want to be looking at LT because the standard equipment was pretty good there's standard car play that same motor same battery capacity 60 kilowatt hours now upgrade it to 66 courtesy of that GM recall which I think is a huge benefit to anyone buying a bolt it means they're going to realize that higher range and you have a new battery warranty and don't be afraid of necessarily buying a high mileage bolt because from what I could find there's not that many known issues with them of course yes you'll have your standard tire wear the interior and the seats can of course be worn down over time but in terms of the mechanics of the car pretty solid aside from of course that original fire issue with the battery pack which is being replaced courtesy of Chevy so once you get your new battery pack you have a new warranty it honestly makes it a super compelling value proposition either you used or new the new ones supposedly are fixed and all have that larger battery pack but if you're buying used well you can still get that tax credit in 2023 and you're getting a new battery pack with a new warranty in terms of trims the new ones come in either an 1lt or a 2LT trim the old ones came in either LT or Premiere trims and most of the differences are things you would expect in a kind of cost upgrade you basically get nicer leather seats but hey if you're vegan maybe you prefer the base model there's some other things like an upgradable audio system there are optional driver assistance Technologies like there's just a parking camera with the driver assistance pack and there's a comfort and convenience one that has a heated steering wheel and heated seats now being in Colorado I think that the one if we go with a bolt the one we go with will probably have to have that comfort and convenience one because the heated seats heated steering wheel those are important here and if we do go with that will of course let you know how range is because the bolt was never offered with a heat pump the new ones still don't have one but yeah Big benefits towards all the new bolts having that big upgraded 66 kilowatt hour battery pack that is awesome to see but that's basically the buyer's advice it's pretty simple you should just uh probably get an LT trim if you need the heated seats and heated steering wheel for a climate option that in if you really want leather you can get a Premiere but those are of course you know they were four grand more expensive originally they're still more expensive now in the used market so I would just consider looking at that LT trim if you're like me and you just need car play well that's standard on all the bolts however there was a DC fast charging option on the bolt especially early bolts it became standardized later on but some early bolts might not necessarily have DC fast charging and other markets like Canada this was standard in the US it wasn't and was actually a 750 option package so if you before you buy your used bolt make sure it has that two-prong extra add-on connector for DC fast charging because it might not necessarily have it also you will need to provide your own level 2 charger it comes with a 120 volt uh you know three prong outlet but it doesn't have the 240 volt Outlet included with the car so that is an extra cost you need to consider looking at the used market for bolts beyond our area Beyond this just a specific dealer with the bolt we looked at kind of seeing if we can find basically a better value because of course we'll get a rivian we can tow anything uh we can go across country so let's see if we can get a better deal on the bolt so what I'm doing is using our ZIP code for a Chevy bolt within a let's say 500 mile radius our Max price here is of course 25 000 so with those dialed in let's just search and I'm looking at bolt EV if Bolt EV pops up great but because that's more recent I'm predicting it's going to be more expensive offensive and we're trying to stay on a budget here so I'm seeing some premieres right off the bat through carvana I'm also seeing a dealer LT vehicle so LT That Base spec still pretty good it's 2017 and it's got some miles on it so it's twenty four thousand dollars even at its asked price but considering the new bolts are being asked for uh just under twenty six thousand dollars I think there's room to go down on this one high mileage not necessarily something to worry about 36 000 miles on a 2017 model year vehicle is actually not a lot either so I wouldn't say that this is a crazy bad deal but I would definitely get it closer to the 20 grand than that 24 Grand it's sitting at now looking at carvana we can see there are some better deals to be had the premier trims so those are still under 25 000 there's an LT here with also really not that many miles on it um for just under 23 000 we can also see pending sales and of course pending sales aren't going to be useful for ones we can buy or uh right now but it kind of shows you where the market is and it shows you that generally um for higher mileage uh debut model year 2017 2018 volts well people are paying uh just over 20 grand so not that much money in the grand scheme of things especially when you consider that until recently the used Market hadn't adjusted that much it's slowly starting to adjust and it still hasn't entirely so keep an eye on that the one package you probably will want to look for you want to make sure the bolt has is that DC fast charging most North American bolts do there's some however that don't so do look like let's look on this carvana one this is a 2017 uh one purchase in progress here so we can't buy it but let's just look at the specs to see uh make sure that this one has DC fast charging on it so there is that open recall that's of course the battery the big benefit of these used bolts is you're basically getting a new battery pack and it's the new large capacity 66 kilowatt hour one so used or new the reason I'm equating these so much is because it's really uh you like the battery is the most expensive component by far on an electric vehicle especially one like the bolt which had a pretty big battery capacity for what it was so when you consider that you're getting a new battery with a new warranty even on used ones that's why this car is looking like such a deal and you know that's just incredibly compelling so a carvana interface here I'm not a huge fan of we can look at the photos here though and there should be an easy way to look at the charging door oh yep it has that uh orange cover over the CCS board so it does have those extra two pins for DC fast charging great to confirm that so good to see that of course carplay those Tech features they're all standard this is not leather seats because it's LT but I don't care about that the one thing I might look for in a Colorado climate would be heated seats the climate package basically with the heated seats and heated steering wheel and uh let's see if this actually has that we can just easily look through the pictures here actually let me go back to this steering wheel Yep this is a heated steering wheel so great this could be a Colorado spec bolt so good to see that you know well under that twenty five thousand dollar cap you're still able to get bolts for quite cheap man that's quite a good deal with that price cut that GM did and those new batteries under warranty I see why the bolt is a good deal so strong Contender on the short list but of course there are more cheap used EVS to look at later in this series which I will be doing along with Jordan Kyle whoever can kind of tag along but we've got more to look at stay tuned to that thank you for watching out of spec reviews I've been Max

Channel: Out of Spec Reviews

Views: 43,369

Keywords: Car, Review, Acceleration, Braking, POV, Handling, Test, VS, Comparison, Interior, Exterior, Supercar, Hypercar, Sedan, SUV, CUV, TFL, Redline Reviews, Motor1, sports car

Id: s0XP532_3XM

Length: 26min 50sec (1610 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 21 2022