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| After my drama with the Model Y earlier this year I wanted another EV and we actually needed another runaround vehicle.
Ended up going the super cheap route with a 2022 Chevy Bolt EUV.
I’ve had it a month now and I wish I had not bought it. Right now as I’m sitting in it my last 77.5 miles show 2.1 miles per kWh which is about 476 Wh per mile.
In similar conditions driving in a similar way I think the MY LR we had before would have been around 375 Wh/mile or 2.7 miles per kWh.
So the Bolt has less room, is not AWD, has way less performance and still uses maybe 25% more energy.
I knew going in that the Bolt only charges at 50 kW max and has way less range than competitive EV’s but those were sacrifices I was willing to make since it was going to just be a local run-around car rather than a road trip car but those are extra downfalls.
The app for controlling the Bolt borders on useless. Setting charge schedules or initiating charging off of the schedule or controlling the HVAC to pre-warm the vehicle and many other things are just not an option with the Bolt or at least are seriously limited compared to the Tesla.
With the Bolt to have any remote functionality at all you have to subscribe to OnStar. I’m on the 3 month trial but eventually they’re going to start charging me. With the Tesla as long as you can connect the Tesla to your WiFi you can do a LOT without any subscription.
The only place I would want to own a Bolt would be the Southern USA (somewhere that it’s not often below 40° F due to the resistive heating instead of the heat pump in better EVs) and where you rarely travel faster than 55 mph. I think a lot of the lack of efficiency on the Bolt comes from poor aerodynamics compared to the Tesla but maybe the drivetrain is less efficient as well.
There are two things the Bolt is better at than the Tesla.
It does great on muddy roads as long as ground clearance is not an issue. By “does great” I mean if you disable traction control (one button push) it does exactly what you want it to do. No surprised from an over-reactive traction control system trying to dumb down the driving experience for the driver. I could not say this about the Tesla. I also did test panic stops on unusual road surfaces and it responded decent so it does have that going for it… | |
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22 Chevy Bolt vs 23 Tesla Model Y
