Boltage: Day Four

Yesterday's main event was hitting the century mark on the odometer. It flipped to three digits while I was putting the Bolt through some paces on a nearby back road.

The mileage was of course not as significant as this driving test. And it produced better results than I frankly expected.

I didn't push the car very hard (I will save that level of testing for driving it alone), but if I anticipated the car leaning and plowing into turns, at least a little, I guess wrongly. The Bolt may be heavy for its size (toting around nearly a half a ton of batteries, it should be), but the car feels practically airy maneuvering through turns. 

Partly this may be the affect of somewhat light steering. If that's the case, then I can take back some of my initial criticism of this feature of the car. If Chevy wanted the car to "feel" small in driving, the trick works, mostly.

Where the car feels less diminutive is from the driving position. Coming from the skateboard Mini Cooper, the Bolt is practically SUV-like. The acres of glass from the front seats forward only adds to the sensation. 

It isn't unpleasant by any means, and many will love that feature right from the start, but this is another adjustment for me. The result of the high perch also means, as a glance to the speedometer confirms, that you are probably driving faster than you think. 

Having lived with the car for few days, I am now prepared to make a few aesthetic judgments. Take all them with a suitable dose of sodium.

The exterior design, as many have already noted already, is pure Chevy. Allowing themselves the freedom to eliminate the vestigial grille would have made so much design sense. 

They didn't go there, so I assume it's a corporate commandment that any car produced by the company must incorporate the trademark mustache and goatee on the front elevation. So there it is, expressed in plastic. It isn't deeply offensive, just needlessly faux.

The aluminum wheels are another needlessly busy element. Chevy calls all those wrinkles and the arbitrary chrome details "expressive." Expressive of what, exactly, other than excess? 

For the exterior I give Chevy an overall grade of "C" (for reference, I award the Mini Cooper an "A-" and the BMW a "B.") Yes, I know the car isn't European. I will get over it. The statement the car makes isn't in how it looks, but what it is. That's my story, and I am sticking to it.

The interior treatment is more pleasing. Some have called it too plastic. I see the point, but I don't entirely agree. The interior decorating on the Bolt may verge on the Spartan, but that's just fine with me. Personally I don't expect a tooled leather or burled walnut dashboard on my cars, and those materials would be laughably out of place on the Bolt anyway. 

Most of the visual focus on the interior is on the displays in any case. They are sharp, bright, and properly located. The displays are a big part of the Bolt driving experience and I expect to say a lot more about them in a future report.

Chevy includes lots of deep pockets on the doors and between the seats where you can lose stuff you that you probably should not even be leaving in your car. I can look forward to many happy days of cleaning them out.

Bolting through the New Year's holiday gave me an opportunity to post daily. The start of the work week means less time for such pursuits, but I will keep it going as time permits. If you have any specific questions or areas you'd like me to cover, let me know in the comments.

Speaking of which, this blog seem to have been discovered by an EV board in Norway. So a special hello and "takk for lesing" to all my readers in Norway!