‘Chevy Bolt Turned Me Into an Electric Car Believer’

It’s the practical, affordable electric vehicle consumers have been waiting for.

Driving the Bolt feels simultaneously transformative and prosaic. At first, you can’t help but think you’re in a car somehow delivered from the future. I became convinced that EVs are primed to explode in popularity, especially once people realize how much fun they can be to drive. Unlike in a gas-powered car, an all-eletric delivers power the instant you ask for it. The Bolt is like a zippy sports car in economical suiting. And, as with hybrids before it, you start to make a game out of recharging the battery via the Bolt’s regenerative breaking feature that converts some energy into useable electricity.

But after a while, all that world-changing mumbo-jumbo fades into the background. Once you get a feel for it, the Bolt drives like your typical sporty crossover. (One difference: There’s no engine shudder at high speeds, making it easy to absent-mindedly hit the upper 80s in a 55-mile-per-hour zone.) It’s a smooth ride, it’s unexpectedly roomy, and its infotainment system works well with your smartphone.

The Bolt isn’t a head-turner from the outside. That’s not to say it’s ugly, but rather there’s nothing about it that screams “I’m from the future,” a design pitfall that afflicts many electric and even hybrid vehicles. (It looks nothing like, say, GM’s vision for its ground-breaking Volt concept from a few years back.) That, says lead designer Stuart Norris, was an intentional choice: “We very conscious of not wanting to make the car look like a science fair project, which I think many other electrified entries have a tendency to do.”

As accomplished as the Bolt is, it may not be an ideal choice for everybody—the case for any of the currently available EVs, no matter the nameplate. I couldn’t exactly throw an extension cable down to the street from my fourth-floor Brooklyn apartment, for instance. Battery performance can be severely impacted by extreme temperatures, so the Bolt might be fine in San Diego, but less capable in Buffalo. Even with 200-plus miles of advertised range, road trips will require some logistical planning and, probably, compromises…

Source: 2017 Chevy Chevrolet Bolt Electric Vehicle EV Review | Time.com