Chevy Bolt - 200 mile range for $30k base price (after incentive)

[wycolo]

> Tesla's inability to sell in certain states is the result of state laws, not GM. As a business, they have every right to fight for a level playing field. GM would likely welcome the ability to open their own company owned stores in the prohibited states. [X Yes]

TM plays in a different field since it does not issue franchises. GM, having established franchises, cannot run company stores. This is true for most States.
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[RobStark]

The Bolt's not going to be an econobox, unless your definition of econobox is "any car without adaptive cruise".

Wheelbase 2,601 mm (102.4 in)
Length 4,166 mm (164.0 in)
Width 1,765 mm (69.5 in)
Height 1,595 mm (62.8 in)

Shoulder room (first row) (in / mm):54.6 / 1387
Shoulder room (second row) (in / mm):52.8 /
Hip room (first row) (in / mm):51.6 / 1310
Hip room (second row) (in / mm):50.8 / 290

Super thin upright seats to create just adequate leg room.

Michelin Energy Saver Tires

 

[wdolson]

There have been rumors the Bolt was built on the GM Gamma platform used for the Sonic and the Spark, but apparently GM has said recently the Bolt is an all new platform.

I don't know what the Bolt's interior space is (which is how the EPA measures size), but since it's very tall, it will probably be a bit larger than it would be on some other measures, however going by the Highway Loss Data Institute ratings, "Small" cars have a wheelbase less than 105 inches and a length less than 180 inches. By the NHTSA categorizing, it's a "Heavy" car.

The Bolt is essentially a fairly small car compared to even the Model 3 which will probably be classified as a Large car by the EPA and has dimensions around those of many mid-sized cars on the road today.

There are some decent sized hybrids on the road, but all pure EVs except Teslas and some factory conversions of ICE vehicles (like the Rav4 EV) are pretty small. By conversion I don't mean aftermarket conversion, but a vehicle designed to be an ICE that was offered up as an EV option to be a compliance car.

 

[techmaven]

Thanks. Clear explanation. So Model 3's efficiency at high speed is due to less drag. Anyone has a guess on where the Bolt's efficiency comes from at low speed? Lower weight than a model 3? Better drivetrain? Different tires?

My guess is better power electronics, especially the on board charger and maybe stronger regen as compared to, say, the Leaf. EPA MPGe is measured from the wall socket, so the charger and the power electronics play a role. Compared to a Model S, probably mostly weight, and some regen. That might be why we are getting stronger regen in version 8 firmware. Idaho National Labs data shows the AC round trip efficiency of various EVs and the charger is the one of the biggest efficiency losses.

 

[Breezy]

There have been rumors the Bolt was built on the GM Gamma platform used for the Sonic and the Spark, but apparently GM has said recently the Bolt is an all new platform.

The full story appears to be that they started with Gamma 2, but ended up changing everything anyway. So the Bolt is on a new platform with a designation that starts "G2," but shares nothing with other Gamma 2 cars.

UPDATE: After this article published, GM's Kevin Kelly gave us the following statement that appears to explain the discrepancy: "The Bolt EV program originated on the Gamma architecture, but then grew into its own architecture—even as it maintained the G2 code."

Chevy Bolt EV not on shared architecture, but platform name secret, GM says

Everyone here should be happy with this explanation, since it means we can all be right.

 

[McRat]

No, the Bolt was clean sheet. It's not an ICE-based car (shiit look at the FREAKING HOOD, seriously), and repeating it forever will not change that. They MIGHT make ICE or Hybrid cars using the Bolt EV chassis, but that's a whole different subject.

The Bolt economy numbers aren't from Area 51. They are an improvement over the last effort, that's all. It was expected. All you had to do was extrapolate the Volt G1, G2, and Spark G1, G2, to see that 200 miles of range with 60kWh was wrong.

And the real comedy of .32 Cd being dirty? Our old 2002 Z06 is only .31 Cd and it gets an honest 29-30 mpg hwy driving 500 miles to Las Vegas and back through the mountains at 70 mph on cruise control. We did an article on the car and one of the sections was mileage. Better than many 4 cylinder cars that year. For those who don't know, the 02 Corvette Z06 is a 2v V8 with a huge cam in it to bump the power from 350hp to 405hp. Either the engine is wildly efficient, or the aero number is misleading.

 

[wycolo]

Las Vegas, NV is at 2000 ft elevation so you have to derate unless other cars are on the same route.
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[McRat]

Las Vegas, NV is at 2000 ft elevation so you have to derate unless other cars are on the same route.
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Round trip. Mountains and high deserts.

 

[McRat]

Probably the Mass Media of Not Car Folk got confused because they have no idea how powertrain development is done.

It is done concurrently with chassis design. So the Bolt's powertrain was inside another chassis at first like all car makers do.

 

[techmaven]

And the real comedy of .32 Cd being dirty? Our old 2002 Z06 is only .31 Cd and it gets an honest 29-30 mpg hwy driving 500 miles to Las Vegas and back through the mountains at 70 mph on cruise control. We did an article on the car and one of the sections was mileage. Better than many 4 cylinder cars that year. For those who don't know, the 02 Corvette Z06 is a 2v V8 with a huge cam in it to bump the power from 350hp to 405hp. Either the engine is wildly efficient, or the aero number is misleading.

You need to factor in frontal area. CdA or drag area is drag coefficient x frontal area. The Bolt, according to GM is 8.05 sq ft in drag area. According to this article:

1959 Chevrolet Corvette: All American Sports Car

The CdA of your generation of Corvette is just under 7 sq ft, or 15% better than the Bolt. The CdA of the Model S is 6.2 sq ft, as is the Prius. I expect that the Model 3's CdA is in the low 5's.

Again, this might not show up as well on EPA testing due to the limitations of the test procedures. But it will show up in real life in making DCFC jumps at highway speeds.

 

[McRat]

You need to factor in frontal area. CdA or drag area is drag coefficient x frontal area. The Bolt, according to GM is 8.05 sq ft in drag area. According to this article:

1959 Chevrolet Corvette: All American Sports Car

The CdA of your generation of Corvette is just under 7 sq ft, or 15% better than the Bolt. The CdA of the Model S is 6.2 sq ft, as is the Prius. I expect that the Model 3's CdA is in the low 5's.

Again, this might not show up as well on EPA testing due to the limitations of the test procedures. But it will show up in real life in making DCFC jumps at highway speeds.

We will certainly see. I have a 2000 Insight that I was converting to an EV. That's 5 sqft. You would have to look at one and get inside one to appreciate how small a 5 sqft CdA car is, and what sacrifices were necessary. I stopped the project when another team used the early Insight body for a Land Speed Record platform, and it lifted, spun and rolled at under 200mph at El Mirage. Naw, I already nearly bit it at over 200, and once is enough.

5 adults, no wheel skirts, large dia tires as as slippery as 2 seat Insight with skirts and tiny narrow tires? I will believe it when I see it.

Small narrow tires make a world of difference in aero. In land speed racing, we use very narrow tires. Dia is dictated by the body which you cannot alter for Production classes. The Model 3 on display uses fashionable low profile, large dia, wide tires. That alone will forbid 5.

 

[techmaven]

We will certainly see. I have a 2000 Insight that I was converting to an EV. That's 5 sqft. You would have to look at one and get inside one t o appreciate how small a 5 sqft CdA car is, and what sacrifices were necessary. I stopped the project when another team used the early Insight body for a Land Speed Record platform, and it lifted, spun and rolled at under 200mph at El Mirage. Naw, I already nearly bit it at over 200, and once is enough.

5 adults, no wheel skirts, large dia tires as as slippery as 2 seat Insight with skirts and tiny narrow tires? I will believe it when I see it.

Small narrow tires make a world of difference in aero. In land speed racing, we use very narrow tires. Dia is dictated by the body which you cannot alter for Production classes. The Model 3 on display uses fashionable low profile, large dia, wide tires. That alone will forbid 5.

Well, the Insight has a Cd of 0.25, or worse than a Model S. I've always marveled at aerodynamics and what people can achieve. Take the Nissan GT-R for instance. You would not think that this car can achieve 0.27 Cd:

The PDF on the bottom of this page helps explain how:
gtraero

It's drag area is around the same as the Model S... about 6.1 or 6.2 sq ft. If Tesla is able to improve on the 0.24 drag coefficient of the Model S to 0.23 on the Model 3, and have the same frontal area as a Mercedes CLA at 23.2 sq ft, the resulting CdA would be 5.33 sq ft. They're aiming for 0.21. At 0.22, it would be 5.1 sq ft.

 

[Breezy]

No, the Bolt was clean sheet. It's not an ICE-based car

I know. What GM says doesn't contradict that. They may have started with Gamma 2, but at some point they ending up throwing out that idea and going with a completely new design keeping only the "G2" in the name. In the end there are no parts in common (other than switches in the cabin, etc., which are common among a large number of GM cars).

It is by no means just a conversion of an ICE car or a "$37.5k Sonic."

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Bolt may not be an econobox, but lets keep it real: it looks like a Honda Fit.

Now I love the Honda Fit. It's small on the outside and cavernous on the inside, and it will carry and haul things about as well as a compact CUV, but it's a budget car. Most anyone willing to drop 30k on a car is not going to want to project the image of an econobox buyer. A car is in many ways not much different than clothing in what it communicates about one's status. GM will probably be able to sell Bolts to young green urbanites, but I don't see that it will gain much traction in mainstream America. If GM makes an Equinox-like EV with decent range at that price, it would have much more appeal.

Mainstream American car buyers clearly don't care much about looks. Lots of boring-looking cars are sold in large numbers.

But GM doesn't even need mainstream America to max out Bolt production. If they were trying to sell 500k per year then it might matter. But it's the first affordable long-range BEV, it'll get HOV stickers, it'll be way more reliable than a Model S or X, it'll be available soon and it'll be more than peppy enough to excite the vast majority of drivers. 13k Priuses (regular + c + v) were sold last month. 3,000 Mini Coopers and 1,000 Countrymans. And Tesla has hundreds of thousands of reservations for the Model 3, and GM only needs a slice to switch to a lease rather than wait.

Plus, they'll have the Ampera-e in the Land of the Hatchbacks to take up slack.

 

[McRat]

Well, the Insight has a Cd of 0.25, or worse than a Model S. I've always marveled at aerodynamics and what people can achieve. Take the Nissan GT-R for instance. You would not think that this car can achieve 0.27 Cd:

The PDF on the bottom of this page helps explain how:
gtraero

It's drag area is around the same as the Model S... about 6.1 or 6.2 sq ft. If Tesla is able to improve on the 0.24 drag coefficient of the Model S to 0.23 on the Model 3, and have the same frontal area as a Mercedes CLA at 23.2 sq ft, the resulting CdA would be 5.33 sq ft. They're aiming for 0.21. At 0.22, it would be 5.1 sq ft.

It's really puzzling why with it's DOHC 6 cylinder turbo engine, it gets far worse highway mileage than a pushrod V8 with worse aero. I selected both as automatics.

Compare Side-by-Side

32% better highway economy? For real? Against a pushrod V8 with a slushbox and worse aero? The Nissan even makes more CO2 cruising.

In an expert driver's hands, the base Vette will thump the AWD Godzilla unless the course has long enough straights to touch 175 mph or higher. Heck a freaking 2015 Z/28 Camaro put seconds on Godzilla at Willow, IIRC. The Camaro is VERY dirty.

Honestly? I believe Nissan exaggerates a lot, and Chevrolet sandbags a lot.

 

[trils0n]

@techmaven did you use Drag Queens: Aerodynamics Compared - Feature for your Model S drag numbers?

When working through all the numbers in that article I noticed they list Model S as 6.2. However given their 2 measurements of 25.2 frontal area x .24 Cd I get 6.048 so isn't that 6.05?

All the other numbers check out, with some rounding.

So conservative estimate, even if Model 3 has same frontal area as Model S (it won't, it is narrower) and they achieve .23 Cd: 25.2 x .23 = ~5.8 sq ft for drag area

Honestly? I believe Nissan exaggerates a lot, and Chevrolet sandbags a lot.

There are supposedly differences between each wind tunnel/manufacturer in how aero is measured. Hard to compare numbers from different manufacturers, unless you get a 3rd party to measure the cars all in the same location.

(The numbers I've used for my calculations all come from Car and Driver in the link above, all done at the same wind tunnel, so that provides some correction for the difference between companies. The Cd in the article matches what Tesla claimed, unsure how C&D numbers compare to other manufacturer claims)

 

[X Yes?]

Mainstream American car buyers clearly don't care much about looks. Lots of boring-looking cars are sold in large numbers.

Very true. Even very ugly cars are best sellers. See: Prius

 

[Jeff N]

The Cd in the article matches what Tesla claimed, unsure how C&D numbers compare to other manufacturer claims)

The Cd measured by C&D also matched GM's Volt number which might imply that the article results can reasonably be compared to GM's Bolt numbers. The only manufacturer's claim that didn't match the C&D testing was the Nissan LEAF which Nissan says is .28 but C&D found it was .32.

 

[McRat]

Mainstream American car buyers clearly don't care much about looks. Lots of boring-looking cars are sold in large numbers.

But GM doesn't even need mainstream America to max out Bolt production. If they were trying to sell 500k per year then it might matter. But it's the first affordable long-range BEV, it'll get HOV stickers, it'll be way more reliable than a Model S or X, it'll be available soon and it'll be more than peppy enough to excite the vast majority of drivers. 13k Priuses (regular + c + v) were sold last month. 3,000 Mini Coopers and 1,000 Countrymans. And Tesla has hundreds of thousands of reservations for the Model 3, and GM only needs a slice to switch to a lease rather than wait.

Plus, they'll have the Ampera-e in the Land of the Hatchbacks to take up slack.

Through my eyes, I like the GM "edgy" style more. Nobody thought you could get good MPG with sharp edge designs until Cadillac started to producing cars with sharp edges. Most the GM's are Edgy now, and other brands are starting to add edges to their designs.

The rest of the brands sedans all look like suppositories to me. All of them are old Ford Tauruses, the first "easy insertion" style mass production car.

 

[stopcrazypp]

The full story appears to be that they started with Gamma 2, but ended up changing everything anyway. So the Bolt is on a new platform with a designation that starts "G2," but shares nothing with other Gamma 2 cars.

UPDATE: After this article published, GM's Kevin Kelly gave us the following statement that appears to explain the discrepancy: "The Bolt EV program originated on the Gamma architecture, but then grew into its own architecture—even as it maintained the G2 code."

Chevy Bolt EV not on shared architecture, but platform name secret, GM says

Everyone here should be happy with this explanation, since it means we can all be right.

So basically this is exactly like the Leaf. The Leaf was designed based on the B0 platform (used for Versa/Cube), but was extensively modified such that there is little to no part sharing. I agree it strikes a middle ground between the two arguments.

No, the Bolt was clean sheet. It's not an ICE-based car (shiit look at the FREAKING HOOD, seriously), and repeating it forever will not change that. They MIGHT make ICE or Hybrid cars using the Bolt EV chassis, but that's a whole different subject.

The Bolt economy numbers aren't from Area 51. They are an improvement over the last effort, that's all. It was expected. All you had to do was extrapolate the Volt G1, G2, and Spark G1, G2, to see that 200 miles of range with 60kWh was wrong.

And the real comedy of .32 Cd being dirty? Our old 2002 Z06 is only .31 Cd and it gets an honest 29-30 mpg hwy driving 500 miles to Las Vegas and back through the mountains at 70 mph on cruise control. We did an article on the car and one of the sections was mileage. Better than many 4 cylinder cars that year. For those who don't know, the 02 Corvette Z06 is a 2v V8 with a huge cam in it to bump the power from 350hp to 405hp. Either the engine is wildly efficient, or the aero number is misleading.

Based on the latest clarification from GM posted above, it is as about as "clean sheet" as the Leaf was. Perhaps you define the Leaf as clean sheet, but I don't. It's not platform sharing (unless the next gen Trax/Encore carries over some elements), but it's not clean sheet either. Personally I count clean sheet as a platform that was not based on any previous (Model S/X platform or i3 platform qualifies).

The proper term would be a dedicated platform, but one designed based on a previous one.