Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Driving the Chevy Bolt: An affordable electric car for everyone — CES 2016”.
Hey it’s Chris from the verge and I’m standing in front of the Chevrolet bolt Evy. Now this is a very, very important vehicle for GM. They first announced it as a concept last year at the Detroit Auto Show. So it’s been about one full year between concept and prototype. This car is camouflaged, obviously, when GM unveils it at CES we’re going to see the whole car, but for our test drive here today. It isn’t quite final. Now, let’s talk a bit about this car in the specs they’re saying under $ 30,000 for this car after tax rebates and it’s a practical evie can do over 200 miles on range.
They’Re also saying about 7 seconds for a 0 to 60 run a little bit under that which is not terrible. It’S not a performance car, but it could be worse so anyway, let’s take a test drive. This is the very first lap in the bolt that I’m doing it’s definitely a relaxed steering ratio like it. It’S. I think that this car is probably designed a little bit more for comfort than it is for performance, but it’s not a slouch. I mean it.
You know, I feel, I’m only pushing the accelerator like ten percent. I think that if I yeah i mean the thing can move, I feel totally comfortable going around this pretty tight test track and if you mash the accelerator you can get, you know you can put a smile on your face. This is awesome.
The fact that it’s on full time is very interesting is normally with these electronic rearview mirrors. I feel like they’re only on in Reverse, so to have it on full time is kind of novel. The bolt is obviously not a Model S competitor.
It’S not designed to be, if anything, it’s a little bit more comparable to BMWs i3, which I’ve driven. You can watch my video drive of that car, but the difference is that the i3 was not designed to be a long-range Eevee. If you’re super lucky, you could probably get 90 or hundred miles out of it. This is a true Eevee that GM is saying will get over 200 miles between charges, which makes it practical. As far as I’m concerned, the entertainment system for the bolt is all new and it’s unique to the Volt, which is interesting they’re, not at least right now putting this system in any other car thinking back to like the original Chevy Volt. There’S a lot of room for improvement.
They’Ve obviously made it here. The display is huge. It’S a 10.2 inch displays like physically larger than my entire hand, and you can see how this works here.
There are different boxes, these are all widgets and these are configurable. You can have different widgets in different places and you can configure the location, those widgets. By hitting this edit button, you can choose different layouts standard layout.
There you go and you can see the radio is bigger now and any of these widgets. You can click this make fullscreen icon and pops up fullscreen. So after several laps, many laps with the bolt here at Chevy’s, tent outside Las Vegas Convention Center, I’m not carsick. Quite often when I’m on a track with a high performance car, I make myself carsick. This isn’t a high-performance car and it’s not an exciting car in that sense of the word.
But it’s exciting for different reasons. Right. It’S the first affordable high range, EB hit the market or will very likely be assuming that GM makes its launch target of the end of 2016, and I think that it still can be very fun for the driver. In many ways, the infotainment system is legitimately one of the better ones that I’ve used.
The car on the road still feels fast is just not lightning quick. There is a sense of evenness to it where, when you hit the accelerator, the acceleration is instantaneous. I need a lot more time with it to be able to say it’s any good, but my first impression is positive, so we’ll see you later this year, hopefully we’ll have a full review up before the car is actually on the road.
I’M Chris Sigler with The Verge, keep it locked. We’Re gon na have a lot more from CES this week, obviously, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube page at the Virg .