GM should just bring back the Chevy Volt
GM should just bring back the Chevy Volt
General Motors’ shift from an internal combustion engine-producing company to one that makes electric motors is sputtering. EV sales are up, but growing slower than expected. The company’s next-generation Ultium platform, in particular, isn’t meeting expectations. GM’s new electric trucks and SUVs seem perennially delayed — or full of buggy software.
I think I have an easy solution to a lot of these problems: bring back the Chevy Volt.
Remember the Volt, GM’s scrappy Toyota Prius fighter from the mid-2010s? The company was lauded when it first came out in 2010 as a prescient bet on vehicles with electric powertrains. And it was undeniably a very good hybrid. The first-generation model got 36 miles of electric range before the gas kicked in, while later versions would get a whopping 53 miles of electric range.
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Was a fan of the Volt when it first came out, but since buying a Bolt a year ago, I'm a full electric convert. Unless you do a lot of road trips, I think a pure EV would be better for most whose daily drive is usually <100mi (for the 1-2 big trips we do, a rental works better anyway). A big draw for going fully electric was practically no maintenance, zero trips to the gas station, and more cost effective to charge (we have solar). A PHEV still has to contend with some of these.
The other benefits were just icing on the cake, such as one-pedal driving, no noxious emissions, and federal/state incentives (tax credits, carpool lane access, discounted tolls, utilities rebates, etc.)
But I can still see the appeal especially if one doesn't have easy access to a L2 charger.
Plug in hybrid is going to be my next car. We live 100 from the closest EV charger. I’ll of course put a charger in at my house, but even the closest Walmart is a 30 mile drive one way.
I cannot justify an electric vehicle right now purely because I’m going to rely on only my house to keep my car charged. The day we get a L2 charger anywhere within a 10 minute drive of my house, I’d love to make the switch.
Honestly, it sounds like you do a lot of driving and a full-electric car would save you a lot! I can understand not wanting to put all your eggs in one basket charging at home, but if you also have an ICE car you won't be totally stuck by an extended power outage or whatever. Give full-BEV some thought. Eventually you realize you don't need to charge anywhere but home, aside from road trips and rare power outages. The only times I use public charging within 50 miles from home is when it's free (who am I to turn down free juice?) Plus, as far as power outages go, an EV is an asset: my car doesn't support vehicle-to-load (V2L) or anything, but I have an inverter I can plug into the 12-volt battery that can run a fridge for a few days or so.
Fwiw, after two months of owning an EV, with a L2 charger at home, I’ve used an outside charger only once, and it was 110 miles away. I also converted to an induction stove this year, so the stove circuit cost about the same as the charger circuit (plus the charger was $500) … both are 50a
So far, the range thing is a real issue. My car supposedly has a 330 mile range under ideal conditions, but they never are. In the cold, with pre-heating and a loaded up car, and my son the speed-demon driving, 110 miles was 52% of the battery. If you do consider an EV and live where there is winter, my experience is to expect only 2/3 the advertised range
Which is my concern. In the middle of nowhere where I’m at we regularly go to that city with a charger 100 miles away. It’s where hardware stores, furniture stores, cheaper groceries, clothing stores and pretty much anything else you can’t buy at a gas station are. If we go in the winter, unless we go to the mall where the charger is and deliberately walk around every. Single. Time. We won’t have the range to go to that city and drive to every store we would usually go to.
Yeah, I’ve been living in an urban area long enough to forget what that’s like. Certainly it’s tougher where things are spread out more.
If you get a EV that has 200 or so miles of range and having a home L2 charger is a game changer, you don't need public charges only on a road trip. Let's take the Kia EV6 will go from 18% to 80 percent around twenty minutes, so when you plug in on a fast DC charger you're pretty close to 200 or so miles into the road trip. You'll only need two 20 minute charges for 400 miles. That's not a big deal however a Chevy Bolt would take a hour and 20 min from twenty percent to eighty percent so a Chevy bolt isn't an attractive road trip car but a great City car.