We were impressed with the Bolt, as a car, as an electric car, and as a mobility concept. In many ways, it is GM's post-bankruptcy masterpiece, a real feather in the cap of CEO Mary Barra and her executive team, who took what the company had achieved with its ill-fated EV-1 back in the 1990s and turned it up to 11.
I also flat-out loved driving it. I blasted in and out of New York City twice, rocketed around the streets of Gotham darting through traffic, and cruised along the highways of New Jersey. I also enjoyed just driving it around the quiet, leafy streets of the suburb where I live.
The steering is quick and responsive, and the handling is sharp enough to provide the confidence you need when surfing that sweet EV torque.
The single-pedal mode is also very cool — I dug not using the brakes at all for extended excursions in my town. After a bit of practice, you get into a kind of Zen state with it.
Not a single person asked me about the car, and that can be chalked up to the ho-hum design. But I didn't care. I was loving' it. Plain and simple, the Bolt is fun. And it emits not one ounce of tailpipe greenhouse gas. Chevy says it will save you $4,250 on gas over five years, while costing $550 per year to keep charged.
That comes out to approximately $45 per month in electricity, but if you aren't using the Bolt for daily commuting, you could spend less than that. In fact, that's where I think some real game-changing potential comes into play. A few years back, I looked at leasing a Honda FitEV, which had about 80 miles of battery range. But it just wasn't enough. With the Bolt's 200-plus miles, you can forget about constantly finding electricity and relax. This will encourage far more people to check out the vehicle.
GM has outfitted the Bolt with a host of driver-assist-and-safety features, including a lane-keeping assist, a forward-collision alert, a blind-spot alert, and a cross-traffic alert. You're surrounded by airbags, and the Bolt's stability control makes for a secure ride. It gives up nothing on this front. And if anything does go wrong, you have OnStar to summon backup.