GM Cutting Prices on Chevy Bolt

The Chevy Bolt’s limitations are:

  1. 259 mile range. That’s an approximate figure, and could be ~20% lower (or maybe even a bit more) in the winter.

  2. Fast recharge isn’t all that fast. The Bolt uses the relatively widespread CCS fast-charging standard, but it only accepts a max of 55 KW, and that reduces as the battery fills up. In real world use you might aim to charge from about 20% full to about 80% full during a rest stop, and you can expect that to take around an hour. If you can drop down to 10% without fear of running out of juice, then a 10% to 60% charge would be substantially faster. At any rate, you can see this isn’t the car for cross country trips, but should be fine for regional trips.

  3. It’s a compact car … a very well designed compact car from a utilitarian POV, excellent interior space for its size, but it’s not big.

There is also the Bolt EUV now available, which is a 6.3" longer version of the Bolt, costs a bit more and has 250 mile range.

The Bolt has previously been considered a reliable car by Consumer Reports, but the 2019 and 2021 models now have a ‘much below average’ 1/5 rating for reliability based on their owner surveys, so the 2022 model has a predicted ‘worse than average’ 2/5 reliability rating and it lost its status as a recommended car by them.

Pros: Extremely affordable to operate, great utilitarian vehicle, good acceleration, decent handling, decently fun to drive, pretty much the most affordable EV available new.

Older models were dinged for uncomfortable seats, though not all people felt that way. Newer models much improved on that.

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