Chevrolet to Boost Bolt EV Production by 20% to Meet Demand

Its still a net positive.

Just like parking your car and taking a diesel powered bus is a net positive.

Also many of us live in places where the electricity we are using does not in anyway come from fossil fuels. The Canadian province I live in produces far more hyro-electricity then we need... we sell the excess to our friends to the south.
The problem is we have really dumb fish in the US so we can't have hydro electricity anymore according to environmentalists maybe the fish are smarter in Canada or they just designed their hydro electricity smarter. It totally couldn't be them looking the other way eh. The bolt looks much like a Civic hatchback or VW Golf among other similar vehicles including Ford Focus. I mean I don't get the complaint really they are just as ugly. The mileage is good overall and the price is way more reasonable for a EV. Plus finding replacement parts will be much easier and cheaper for a Chevy than a Tesla.

It isn't ugly, but god damn is it small. What's wrong with making a full size EV?
Weight and cost of ownership are probably the reason they made it small. Why the complaint though a Golf, Focus, or Civic hatchback are all very similar.
 
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Feh. I'm sticking to my Priuses (or is the plural Prii? Sounds phallic) for the foreseeable future.
450+ miles range, 43+ as-driven MPG, and no worries about finding a "recharging station."

And I'll stick with my Camry Hybrid. Lifetime 35+ MPG with mostly city rush hour driving with a short commute.

I still find it very odd that plugin hybrids are not selling very well compaired to the pure EV version. In what bazaro land does the bolt outsell the volt to the point of plans of discontinuing the volt?

The purist want a pure electric, in spite of the limitations.
For the more thrifty Hybrid people, the larger battery pack adds too much to the price, and the payback takes too long.

Also, in places like California with high electricity prices, it costs about the same to charge a car as it costs fill it with gas.
Unless you invest in a separate meter with a special nighttime charging rate.
Only way to justify the installation of a 2nd meter and 220v charging port is if you go full electric.

I do like the idea of a plugin hybrid, but the numbers just don't work for me.
 
The volt overall has a lower eMPG rating. Once you run the battery out it sucks mpg wise. It does worse than a cruz and it's the exact same body frame.

That's the problem with carrying around all that extra battery weight.
 
By that logic, we shouldn't have public bathrooms either. All they are doing is shifting all the piss and shit people produce into a single easily managed point, terrible huh? We should probably shut them down, and just let everyone crap anywhere any time.

Sounds like modern day San Francisco :eek:
 
Who uses a gas lawnmower for such a small lawn? You spend more time starting and maintaining the damn thing than mowing with it.
I've been using corded electric mowers for years: light, quiet, convenient, and very little maintenance.

I have a battery powered lawnmower for my small lot. The AQMD (Air quality management district) had a deal several years ago, where you could turn in a working gas lawn mower and get a battery or electric plugin mower for half price. Traded in the old gas mower someone gave my years before (that was falling apart) for a nice expensive battery mover. :D
It's a little heavy, but my lot is flat, and I can mow it in less than 15 minutes without worrying about running over the extension cord.
Still on the original battery, and it still lasts long enough that I could mow the lawn twice on a charge.
 
Can you point me to a source where this claim is supported? I'm genuinely interested as it seems counter intuitive....especially since my Aunt committed suicide by breathing her car exhaust in an enclosed garage.

To answer both questions
Cars produce carbon monoxide when there isn't enough fresh air with O2 to control the burn process. Running in a garage will consume the free O2
 
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Doug DeMuro (a YouTube car review internet guy) is usually pretty rough on cheap American cars but seemed to like the Bolt.


I like the way this guy reviews some of his vehicles. Although, when it comes to a car I rate Reliability > Comfort > the ability to stash multiple bodies in the trunk > everything else.
 
Zero emissions my ass. Most of the electricity generated in the world is from fossil fuel, not "renewables". So all you are doing with an EV is shifting the emissions from your vehicle to the power plant.

The majority of new ones which are renewable.
 
Zero emissions my ass. Most of the electricity generated in the world is from fossil fuel, not "renewables". So all you are doing with an EV is shifting the emissions from your vehicle to the power plant.
That's an age old excuse, which has been debunked a thousands times over, so here goes 1001th time:

It's much easier to handle emissions in a localized power plant, than with a million individual exhausts polluting city centres.

So even if all of the electricity is created from fossil sources it's still more environmentally friendly than gas guzzlers.
 
That's an age old excuse, which has been debunked a thousands times over, so here goes 1001th time:

It's much easier to handle emissions in a localized power plant, than with a million individual exhausts polluting city centres.

So even if all of the electricity is created from fossil sources it's still more environmentally friendly than gas guzzlers.

And what you are speaking is not the truth. I stated for 100 times why power plants are much worse.
 
Weight and cost of ownership are probably the reason they made it small. Why the complaint though a Golf, Focus, or Civic hatchback are all very similar.
I don't own any of those cars, and I'm also 6'4". Also, Tesla found a way to make it work for the Model 3.
 
And what you are speaking is not the truth. I stated for 100 times why power plants are much worse.
Based on what, your feelings?

  1. Power plants are farther away from where people live, so it doesn't affect them directly.
  2. Power plants have state of the art filtering and recirculation / capture systems for emissions. (at least in western countries) You can do much better in an industrial scale, than what you can put in a car, that has to be the cheapest possible by design.
Yes, not all power plants have state of the art filtering installed especially in the 3rd world. But the solution to that problem is not : Let's keep burning fuel in the first world.
 
Boosting production only 20 percent? Demand is easily enough to absorb 200 percent at least, much more if you factor worldwide demand. This is not enough GM, you can do better.

And I'll stick with my Camry Hybrid. Lifetime 35+ MPG with mostly city rush hour driving with a short commute.

Also, in places like California with high electricity prices, it costs about the same to charge a car as it costs fill it with gas.
Unless you invest in a separate meter with a special nighttime charging rate.
Only way to justify the installation of a 2nd meter and 220v charging port is if you go full electric.

I do like the idea of a plugin hybrid, but the numbers just don't work for me.

I dunno, we live in Cali and by our spreadsheet estimates we're gonna be saving at least $1000 per year with an EV.

We pay around 24 cents per kwh, the gas is around $3.55. We'd save more but we just don't travel much outside of weekend trips, it's mostly commuting back and forth to work. Compared to our replacement vehicle the refueling cost is down about 75 percent.

It's not the best return on investment compare to some other states, that for sure, but it's still a good savings and much more convenient in some other ways - for example never having to see the Gas station or worry about smog testing again, little things that add up.

You can plug your own numbers in here for a rough estimate of your specific use case and see if makes sense for you:
https://teslanomics.co/tesla-model-3-fuel-savings-calculator/
 
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Doesn't seem too surprising to me. One of the few electric cars that gets over 200 miles on a budget. It's a relatively simple design, I like it.

Exactly. If you want an EV that can go over 200 miles, you want it now, and you don't want to pay $80,000, the Bolt is the only option. (Disclaimer: I own an i3. Would have preferred a Mercedes B250e, but lack of quick-charge was a dealbreaker. My i3 also has the range extender, which makes it even more road-trippable.)
 
Unfortunately, most people.

They have new options for battery powered ones now though. EGO makes a 56v one that I personally have seen chew through foot tall grass for around $500, lasts an hour and takes an hour to charge.

I have the Lowes' home-brand 80v battery mower. Can do foot tall grass no problem, mows for about 45 minutes, takes about 30 minutes to charge, and comes with two batteries.
 
Boosting production only 20 percent? Demand is easily enough to absorb 200 percent at least, much more if you factor worldwide demand. This is not enough GM, you can do better.

I dunno, we live in Cali and by our spreadsheet estimates we're gonna be saving at least $1000 per year with an EV.

We pay around 24 cents per kwh, the gas is around $3.55. We'd save more but we just don't travel much outside of weekend trips, it's mostly commuting back and forth to work. Compared to our replacement vehicle the refueling cost is down about 75 percent.

Did you compare your electric to a similar sized gas car, or to a Hybrid?
My Hybrid Camry gets twice the mileage of my previous 4 cyl Camry since I mainly do city driving.
Also, most the incremental electrical costs to charge a car would be 35 cent/kwh depending on how much we use for other stuff.

I've used other calculators out there that are more detailed, and come out with around $625/year for gas for my hybrid (currently at $3.259/gal), and about $570/year for electricity on a Nissan leaf.
If I where to switch to a Prius (similar size to the Leaf), my fuel costs would be less than the Leaf.
Since I only drive around 6,000 mile/year, the higher costs of an electric car means I would never break even, even if I was able to charge it for free half the time.

For the extra $55/year, I'd rather have the larger car, a spare tire, and 650+ mile range.
Just to many limitations with current electrical cars.
 
Tiny average performing EV with average lifespan and just average for an extremely above average/luxury price. I guess it's nice to see the demand (if if exists), but you might do better elsewhere. IMHO Chevy is intentionally pricing these high (very) because they really want you to buy more of their non-eco friendly SUVs (and larger). IMHO, these are artificially marked up (way marked up) and the "demand" is a hoax in this case. GM and Ford are not your friends, they just aren't.
 
Interesting. Seems like only recently we were getting reports of excess Bolt inventory sitting unsold in the U.S.

I guess sales have taken off?

Still I just couldn't. I want a 200+ mile electric vehicle, but not something that looks like a Honda Fit.
 
And what you are speaking is not the truth. I stated for 100 times why power plants are much worse.
Except now you're running your car off a mix or w.e you live near, hydro electric, nuclear, wind, solar, coal, gas etc, it's also been shifting more to using renewables in the past couple years let alone the shift away from coal into natural gas which if you want to look at it in terms of forms of harmful emissions (smog/greenhouse) does already perform better than coal per kilowatt hour. You're also being very negligent to the long term efficiencies between a power plant filternation system and a cars, there's a reason why smog tests are a thing.
 
We have 2 Prius. Absolutely love them both. The 09' still gets around 45mpg on average. The only downside is the boat ride feeling.

I'd love to get Tesla. Uhh, maybe one day..
 
Did you compare your electric to a similar sized gas car, or to a Hybrid?
My Hybrid Camry gets twice the mileage of my previous 4 cyl Camry since I mainly do city driving.
Also, most the incremental electrical costs to charge a car would be 35 cent/kwh depending on how much we use for other stuff.

I've used other calculators out there that are more detailed, and come out with around $625/year for gas for my hybrid (currently at $3.259/gal), and about $570/year for electricity on a Nissan leaf.

Yeah if you already have a high efficiency vehicle and don't travel much then your use case may be less of a factor outside of some maintenance related perks. In our case we were switching from a Jeep Wrangler, it's not an efficient vehicle, around 20mpg, and that sucks more when it sits idling in traffic for half an hour.

I think we were spending around ~$150/month on gas, the EV was going to cut that down to around $45 for our regular use cases.

I think we're "mostly" but no completely past our college adventurer phase so were going to move to something more practical for city life, we're also big on techie stuff so wanna try new things when budget permits.

So we decided on a Model 3, probably the base model but there's temptation go for a bigger loan and snag the performance one, it's looking sweet so we're alternating between responsible and adventurous at the moment lol:


The new Nissan Leaf and Chevy Bolt were some of our other shopping considerations.

If I where to switch to a Prius (similar size to the Leaf), my fuel costs would be less than the Leaf.
Since I only drive around 6,000 mile/year, the higher costs of an electric car means I would never break even, even if I was able to charge it for free half the time.

For the extra $55/year, I'd rather have the larger car, a spare tire, and 650+ mile range.
Just to many limitations with current electrical cars.

Yeah a Prius is not bad for that either, gets a bad rep but I took an Uber ride in one many times and was pretty impressed with the package. It wasn't exactly a performance beast but good enough and a solid city commuter for sure.
 
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Feh. I'm sticking to my Priuses (or is the plural Prii? Sounds phallic) for the foreseeable future.
450+ miles range, 43+ as-driven MPG, and no worries about finding a "recharging station."

How about a Nissan Altima that can do 42+ mpg and it doesn't need electricity just plain old gas. Who needs a Hybrid. LOL.
 
Who needs a Hybrid. LOL.
Buying a Prius hardly ever makes economic sense unless you're a taxi driver.
But I like how the Prius drives-- there's no clunks or surging from transmission shifts.

Like most people, the economics of owning a car are a secondary consideration (if not tertiary) when buying a new one. After all, unless your old car is totalled, it rarely makes economic sense to replace it.

We traded our PowerStroke F250 for our second Prius (a Prius V to complement our regular one) because we didn't need the F250 anymore (no longer had trailers that needed towing) and it didn't fit in the garage. That latter is pretty important in some locales that see extreme temperatures. But still, the F250 was paid for, the insurance on it had gone down (it was 15 years old), the truck was in great shape, and it was only being driven a few thousand miles a year. We're never going to save enough with the second Prius to recover the $30K+ cost of acquiring it.

If we'd just looked at the raw economics, we'd have just sold the F250 and lived with only one Prius.
I work from home, and my spouse doesn't work, so it's certainly an option. But the incremental utility of having two cars was something we wanted, and we could afford it, so why not?
 
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Ill stick to my G8. V8 power, rear wheel drive, sounds good, tons of space, burns gas. Until I can take a 1200 mile road trip in an EV without delays, I don't understand how it is of any benefit over a gasoline or diesel vehicle. With EV's, the "pollution" is just offset to the battery materials and power plant generation. Just because nothing is coming out a tailpipe doesn't mean it's a green solution.
 
How about a Nissan Altima that can do 42+ mpg and it doesn't need electricity just plain old gas. Who needs a Hybrid. LOL.

You mean the Altima that's rated at 27/38 MPG?

You might get 42 on the highway if traffic is light and you keep the speed down.
However, when you are in city traffic during rush hour, and you spend half the time sitting at lights, you'll be lucky to get 22 MPG.
 
Buying a Prius hardly ever makes economic sense unless you're a taxi driver.
But I like how the Prius drives-- there's no clunks or surging from transmission shifts.

Like most people, the economics of owning a car are a secondary consideration (if not tertiary) when buying a new one. After all, unless your old car is totalled, it rarely makes economic sense to replace it.

I'm at the same point with the wife's Mini Van. Really don't need something that can haul 8 people, as the last kid's off to college next year.
It's 12 years old and paid for a long time ago. Insurance is cheap and registration is cheap for California.
Mileage isn't great, but the wife doesn't work, and only puts a couple thousand miles a year on it.
It does come in handy about once a year to haul stuff, but a small SUV or hatchback would cover most of that.

Still, unless something happens to it, just doesn't make sense to pay $30k for a new car, and hundreds more in insurance and registration every year.
Better off putting that money towards college tuition.
 
That's an age old excuse, which has been debunked a thousands times over, so here goes 1001th time:

It's much easier to handle emissions in a localized power plant, than with a million individual exhausts polluting city centres.

So even if all of the electricity is created from fossil sources it's still more environmentally friendly than gas guzzlers.
An age old excuse for what, not buying one? I didn't say anything about that. What I said was that they were not zero emissions vehicles unless you charge them off of 100% renewable sources. Depending on the situation, they may indeed have lower emissions attributable to them, I don't really know and I don't want to get into a discussion of it. My point was that pushing EVs as "zero emission" vehicles in order to win over environmentally concerned (green) consumers is very deceptive. In fact, I would call it a lie.
 
Alright let's argue a simple point: A Bolt/Tesla being a zero emissions vehicle from the simple fact that the product itself produces no pollution. I can sit in the garage for hours with it running and not die of CO poisoning. If such cars were truly embraced in densely populated areas we would quickly see marked improvements in local air quality alongside the highway and in city areas. Is that a bad thing? Or thinking to the future, of a better designed electrical grid with most everyone charging at night, with the option and bonus of having the grid backed by a distributed system of batteries from everyone's cars. You said you wanted to keep the argument simple: an EV itself produces zero emissions getting you from A to B.

Until the US gets it's shit together and upgrades his aging electrical network and (fully) embraces solar/wind/battery tech, anything that uses electricity falls under your rant category of not being "zero emissions". Your fridge, your computer, the high powered vibrator your significant other might use that plugs into the wall? Would have an "emissions" cost associated with it, I get it. Hell, I could hook up a pedal powered generator and work up a sweat to store some juice to run a laptop/vibrator/whatever, and it would still have "emissions" from the CO2 I exhaled. That doesn't mean I should say "screw it" and just unpack a diesel generator to do the work for me locally.

You are assigning the global variable of "emissions" to a local variable of "zero emission". Nobody is fooled or tricked into thinking these cars run on happy thoughts and fluffy clouds, they run on electricity pure and simple. Economies of scale still mean it's cheaper/cleaner/easier in the long run to run EVs
It doesn't matter to most of the people that care about "zero emissions" if the thing produces emissions directly or not. Hell, they care about "food miles" because of the indirect emissions related to shipping food large distances. And you are wrong - there are a lot of people that will be fooled by the zero emissions claim because they don't think too deeply about these things they just say "Hey, look, zero emissions! I'm saving the planet!" In may cases it may be willful ignorance since they care more about how they feel about something over unbending reality.
 
You mean the Altima that's rated at 27/38 MPG?

You might get 42 on the highway if traffic is light and you keep the speed down.
However, when you are in city traffic during rush hour, and you spend half the time sitting at lights, you'll be lucky to get 22 MPG.

Coming from someone who has never owned one yourself. LOL. We owned several. We consistently got 36 mpg in mixed driving with our 2013 Altima. It never saw below 30 mpg in it's whole life we had it (4 years).

Heck, our 2017 Nissan Rogue that replaced it gets 28 mpg-32mpg average.

Here is a new 2018 Altima.

http://www.fuelly.com/car/nissan/altima/2018/crowkiller1/775481

36 Average and 47 best!
 
Coming from someone who has never owned one yourself. LOL. We owned several. We consistently got 36 mpg in mixed driving with our 2013 Altima. It never saw below 30 mpg in it's whole life we had it (4 years).

Heck, our 2017 Nissan Rogue that replaced it gets 28 mpg-32mpg average.

Here is a new 2018 Altima.

http://www.fuelly.com/car/nissan/altima/2018/crowkiller1/775481

36 Average and 47 best!

You're wrong, I have drove one when I rented it on a trip.

Problem is that your idea of mixed driving is completely different from my reality of mostly city driving in Sothern California, with heavy traffic and long lights.
My short 6 mile commute also make the mileage worse, since the car is barely warmed up by the time I'm at work.

My pervious car was a 2002 Camry 4cyl.
http://www.fuelly.com/car/toyota/camry/2002?engineconfig_id=11&bodytype_id=&submodel_id=

Looking on Fuelly.com the average is 26 mpg, with a max average of 36 mpg.
My average (at least the last few years when I was driving the same short commute) was 18 mpg.

Best trip I remember was a 50 mile trip, almost all highway. Due to traffic, I was driving around 50 mph most the time. I got 40 mpg that trip, so there wasn't a problem with the car.

When I 1st got the car, I had a much longer commute, mostly on the freeway. Even with rush hour traffic, I still average in the upper 20's. Same car.


With my Hybrid Camry I went from 18 to 36 mpg, basically double the mileage. Same size car, same commute. I've seen single trip mileage over 50 mpg when we where in slower freeway traffic.
 
Did you compare your electric to a similar sized gas car, or to a Hybrid?
My Hybrid Camry gets twice the mileage of my previous 4 cyl Camry since I mainly do city driving.
Also, most the incremental electrical costs to charge a car would be 35 cent/kwh depending on how much we use for other stuff.

I've used other calculators out there that are more detailed, and come out with around $625/year for gas for my hybrid (currently at $3.259/gal), and about $570/year for electricity on a Nissan leaf.
If I where to switch to a Prius (similar size to the Leaf), my fuel costs would be less than the Leaf.
Since I only drive around 6,000 mile/year, the higher costs of an electric car means I would never break even, even if I was able to charge it for free half the time.

For the extra $55/year, I'd rather have the larger car, a spare tire, and 650+ mile range.
Just to many limitations with current electrical cars.


Where do you live that you pay 35c/kwh? That's nuts!

Costs here in MA are among the highest in the country, and they are only just over 20c / Kwh, total between generation, distribution, taxes and fees.
 
I am not wrong, I owned the vehicles.

City is not mixed. Mixed is 50/50. Our Altima saw 60 Hw / 40 city and drove around 60 miles a day. My current car is a 2000 Camry and I only get 19-21 mpg since I only live 3 miles from work. So I am like you with it.

You're wrong, I have drove one when I rented it on a trip.

Problem is that your idea of mixed driving is completely different from my reality of mostly city driving in Sothern California, with heavy traffic and long lights.
My short 6 mile commute also make the mileage worse, since the car is barely warmed up by the time I'm at work.

My pervious car was a 2002 Camry 4cyl.
http://www.fuelly.com/car/toyota/camry/2002?engineconfig_id=11&bodytype_id=&submodel_id=

Looking on Fuelly.com the average is 26 mpg, with a max average of 36 mpg.
My average (at least the last few years when I was driving the same short commute) was 18 mpg.

Best trip I remember was a 50 mile trip, almost all highway. Due to traffic, I was driving around 50 mph most the time. I got 40 mpg that trip, so there wasn't a problem with the car.

When I 1st got the car, I had a much longer commute, mostly on the freeway. Even with rush hour traffic, I still average in the upper 20's. Same car.


With my Hybrid Camry I went from 18 to 36 mpg, basically double the mileage. Same size car, same commute. I've seen single trip mileage over 50 mpg when we where in slower freeway traffic.
 
Where do you live that you pay 35c/kwh? That's nuts!

Costs here in MA are among the highest in the country, and they are only just over 20c / Kwh, total between generation, distribution, taxes and fees.

We are not just among the highest, we ARE the highest here in Southern California. (n)

We have a tiered pricing structure.
Starts at 18 cent for the 1st 268 kWh, jumps to 25 cents for the next tier (up to 1072 kWh), and finally 35 cents for anything over that.

Years ago when I was single, and had a small condo near the beach without air conditioning, it wasn't difficult to stay in the 1st tier.

However, with a larger home and wife and kid, we usually run around 500 kWh.
Once Summer hits, and the air conditioner runs most the day, it's easy to hit the 1072 kWh tier, and then the price goes up to 35 cents per kWh.

That's why I say an electric car would cost me 35 cent/kwh to charge, since any power it draws would be on top of what I already use.
 
I am not wrong, I owned the vehicles.

City is not mixed. Mixed is 50/50. Our Altima saw 60 Hw / 40 city and drove around 60 miles a day. My current car is a 2000 Camry and I only get 19-21 mpg since I only live 3 miles from work. So I am like you with it.

All I'm saying is that if you drove your Altima 3 miles to work like you do now, you would have seen much lower mileage.
 
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