Silverfox

Well.. today I took my 2011 2LT into my Chevy dealer to have the cooling system serviced and adjust the rear brakes and hand brake cable.

Because they said I would have to leave it for at least a couple hours they offered me a loaner car @ No Charge.

That's great so I said Yes.....

To my surprise they brought up a Brand New 2017 BOLT EV.

What ????? I have never driven an Electric car and I said you better give me some good instructions or I will pass....

They gave me the "Basics" and off I went to have lunch and secretly test drive this thing.

It was priced on the sticker @ $38,300 UHG!!

I would not buy one but I can tell you in the Sport Mode it is a BULLET!!!

The power curve is quick, constant, and smooth all the way to 70MPH where I let off as the speed limit was 55mph.

It was totally responsive at any starting speed.

In one test starting @ 40mph it spun the tires with just short of Full Throttle.

I wish I could have run it against a GM upgraded HHR SS just to see how it compared.

THAT WAS FUN.....

I am impressed with my first EV drive.

Silverfox

Oldblue

We’ve considered an EV, but our long trips in the spring , summer and fall would be over the range of the battery, so we’ll stick to the HHR for now.
Thanks for the write up, I’m tempted to test drive a Bolt.

Silverfox

Blue,

I think you would be impressed with the Power and overall smooth performance.

I found myself itching to challenge anything that I knew had some muscle.

When they saw me quickly run up to them and pause they all backed off testing me.

I have never run An upgraded HHR SS so I may be over estimating this BOLTS performance but it sure feels perky to me.
It really seems strange to have that much acceleration with no noise.
Just quick and quiet.

The one thing I didn't care for was the Automatic Trans. Shifter. Crappy design.

The only thing unusual I noticed was a minor "wine" just before you come to a stop.
Must be an EV thing.

Now if it just looked like my HHR.

The Bolt body does nothing for me and the inside layout sucks.
It is overpriced except for the power plant.

Silverfox

T 20

This article about electric cars is an eye opener.

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A Canadian Comments On Electric Powered Vehicles For USA People
IT WOULD SEEM THAT IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO MAINTAIN YOUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE!

Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile has never been discussed. All you ever hear is the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity.

Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power cars, yet it is being shoved down your throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.

A British Columbia Hydro executive supposedly said: If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, you have to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On a small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a Tesla. If even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.

This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Your residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as your genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are you being urged to buy these things and replace your reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but you will also have to renovate your entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until you're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS!' and a shrug.

A man named Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes, "For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine." Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.

It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.

According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned. If you pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.

The gasoline powered car costs about $20,000 while the Volt costs $46,000-plus. It looks like the "Greenies" in the American Government want loyal Americans NOT to do the math, but simply pay three times as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country. Say What?

celblazer

Here in NJ we pay $0.1712 per kwh. Where did that $1.16 per kwh come from? That's insane. If I paid that in electricity I'd use almost $50 a day. LOL

Oldblue

We have the Volt and Bolt up here, and Tesla’s amongst others.
I was commenting on the Bolt , not our tax system for our roadways.

aradmahogany

Whoever wrote that article misread and mistyped the KWH cost, and based theri whole article and point around it. . Still, for a getting around town car electric vehicles do great, but for long trips and appeasing the truly FAST out there they arent up to snuff yet. I bet a ten year old HHR SS bone stock would take it in the half mile, probably even the quarter. The bolt you drove FEELS fast, but is a full second slower to 60 then a stock HHR SS. The instant torque of the electric motor makes your butt dyno feel like your in the Millennium Falcon.

solman98

That not the way it works.....

For starters, although the Chevy Volt stores 16 kwh of energy in its battery pack, it actually uses only 9.6 kwh for propulsion and about another 3-4 kwh during the charging process, so recharging the Volt’s battery does not typically require a full 16 kwh of electricity. As Car and Driver found during their Volt road tests: “In our experience, using only standard-household 120-volt power, it took about 13.4 kwh of electricity to replenish the Volt’s 9 kWh of usable energy

The figures given for the Chevy Volt above are calculated using a price of $1.16 per kwh (kilowatt hour) of electricity. Although electricity costs vary from place to place, nowhere in the United States is the average residential
retail price of electricity anywhere close to $1.16 per kwh. The average consumer price for electricity in the United States in December 2011 was only $0.127 per kwh. Using that average price as a baseline and factoring in the proper amount of battery charging time (while maintaining a worst-case scenario mileage assumption), the quoted figures work out as follows:

13.4 kwh x $0.127 per kwh = $1.70 to charge the battery.

$1.70 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.07 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery.

The Volt is a small car, it's not really designed for long travel. It would be difficult to make a week long family trip in it. But as a commuter car, many hardly have to use gas. But the backup "generator" is an option if you need to make a trip in it. Bonus is, you can turn off the electric portion while on the highway, and turn it back on when you get back in town, where the electric power will save again.

And now with the Bolt and others going 200 miles plus.

firemangeorge

Bolt's top speed is listed as 91mph. So yes, a stock SS should be able to take it in the 1/4 mile.
At 91mph I'm just shifting from 3rd to 4th in my SS.