Aiming To Beat Tesla's "3", Chevy Tests and Teases a Cheaper 200-Mile Electric Car 249
PC Magazine is one of many to note Chevrolet's upcoming effort to beat Tesla's Model 3 to market with a car that is "affordable" (a lot more affordable than the Model S) but which tops the 200-mile range that right now only Tesla beats in a widely available pure electric car. The Model 3 is expected to feature many of the features of the currently Tesla S variants, but in a smaller package and with a much lower price tag. The linked article features GM-supplied video of Chevy's all-elecric bolt, about which it says The car maker doesn't reveal much beyond what we already know: 200-plus-mile range and a starting price tag of $30,000. The video shows various Chevy engineers putting the camouflage-wrapped Bolt EV through its paces—climbing hills, accelerating, and coming to a stop, as well as enduring extreme heat and charging.
diluting the market (Score:5, Interesting)
Like most low end Chevy vehicles it'll probably be a complete shame and do the meaning of the word 'electric', that Tesla has worked so hard to craft prestige into, a disservice. 200 miles isn't enough. People will walk away from electric like they walked away from Atari going 'huh, video games are dumb'.
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Ah yes, a vehicle designed by GM, to require frequent maintenance, and to rust out in northern area in 5 years, all to keep the replacement parts and dealer system alive.
Tesla wants to eliminate that entire costly tier, a tier that was required by gas cars that wore fast and needed adjustment and complex transmissions etc.
What does an electric car need of a transmission. A differential can be needed, but Tesla might craft a car with 2 rear motors or 4 motors for 4 wheel drive - all direct drive = zero tran
Re:diluting the market (Score:5)
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Well, you could just unplug the batteries....
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Re: Onstar - I thought that was free for year one and then stopped unless you paid a monthly fee. The Tesla is also accessible over the wir - WiFi or Cell++ I do not know.
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The service is not active but it's still an active cell phone registering itself with towers. Bet ya a warrant will get ya tracking data hell even a live audio feed.
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you may be right, it needs to be fully off
Re:diluting the market (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh. My 2000 GMC 3/4 ton pickup would like to run you over. Still runs fine, only mild rust despite spending 14 years in a 'precipitating marine environment. Yep, it's had various bits replaced but that's how a piece of equipment runs for 20 years.
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3/4 trucks have thicker steel - last longer than the lighter ones.
Still 14 years = a good run.
Re:diluting the market (Score:4, Interesting)
Now of course your comment touches on the future of electric vehicles, keeping in mind the electronic companies hiding in the background behind Tesla Motors testing the waters based upon Tesla Motors Experience.
Forget Chevy, Ford, GMH, the new motor builders or road appliance manufacturers will be the electronics companies. Some mergers, some acquisitions and of course Korea's unique vertical integration of manufacturers mean they are already there.
So say Sony and Panasonic motors, with a largely electronic vehicle, running FOSS but with content management as an extension to the Big Screen Computer, the Tablet remote, the mobile phone and of course the ultimate mobile (also all the other home appliances), the car or more a utility vehicle with greater emphasis on function, the all electric compact SUV, in the city or out in the country on a picnic and still providing access to shared content and helping to create new content.
That better battery is drawing a huge amount of focus, lighter with greater capacity and low manufacturing cost, the current technological holy grail in so many areas, cars, mobile devices, home energy generation and storage. With that level of focus the better battery is likely not that far off and it puts current automotive manufacturers under serious threat as well as of course the fossil fuelers.
Re:diluting the market (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably 2 electric motors is enough, one for the front axle and one for the rear axle. You don't really want to put the motors out on the wheels because the weight of them interferes with the suspension's action and makes it less reactive to bumps in the road.
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avoiding unsprung weight is good.
I want zero mechanical complexity = no differential and 2 inboard front motors and two inboard rear motors for 4WD
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As someone who arranged the lease on a VW eGolf today, 100 or 200 miles is plenty. As a commuter vehicle that's all you need.
That said, I did still lease it, because 1) the battery will probably be getting crappy in 3 years, and 2) the tech will be *oh so much* better in 3 years time (heck, hopefully I'll be able to lease a model 3 by then).
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I'm curious...
What is your payment, what was your downpayment, and what is the buyout at the end?
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I agree with this. People shouldn't discount electric cars based on the fact that they may want to drive far a couple times a year. Especially with so many people owning two cars. Even 100 miles should be plenty for commuting. If you're spending more time than that in a car every day, I wouldn't want to be you. That's way too much time wasting away in a car.
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As someone who arranged the lease on a VW eGolf today, 100 or 200 miles is plenty. As a commuter vehicle that's all you need.
As a commuter vehicle, even the Renault Twizy [wikipedia.org] would serve my purpose. The problem is that with depreciation, insurance, parking and all those other costs it's not worth having two cars and having to pick up a rental every time I do something outside the commuter box is hassle, though it'd probably make economic sense. My ICE car covers 100% of my needs, except when it's so far that I'm flying. Somehow the cost/benefit - or rather saving/benefit isn't very compelling.
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The cost of battery is proportional to range but the the mileage at which the battery needs replacement is not proportional to range. This means that higher the range, higher the cost of battery replacement per mile. In fact, for Tesla equivalent car, the cost of battery replacement will likely exceed the amount it will save on gas. For Nissan leaf, it will be break even. At current battery price, even 200 is too much. For mass production profitable car without government subsidy, the cost of battery replac
Re:diluting the market (Score:5, Insightful)
It is frigging ugly in that paint job.
You are SUPPOSED to think it is ugly, you are NOT SUPPOSED to appreciate what it looks like. This is standard procedure for an unreleased automobile. They don't want the public to get expectations about what it's going to look like. They don't want the auto press to splash pictures of it on their magazines and web sites. The exterior design is not yet complete, they paint it like that on purpose. The design may change and they don't want to disappoint people who were expecting what they saw.
Re:diluting the market (Score:5, Informative)
The paint job is a specifically designed camo paint to destroy lines and hide the actual look of the car (among other things).
http://www.autoblog.com/2014/11/07/how-and-why-automakers-work-hard-to-camouflage-their-cars/
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This is a form of camouflage known as "dazzle [wikipedia.org]", and it's designed to break up the shape of the object rather than necessarily hiding it from view.
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You're a complete idiot that doesn't understand what concept car camouflage is.
Re: diluting the market (Score:2, Funny)
You're a complete idiot with no idea of topology. How could we possibly both have our lips tightly clamped around Elon's cock unless one of us was contained wholly within the other in a sort of coaxial lip-cock arrangement?
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Crash of 1983 (Score:2)
There was less curation in the market back then, and by 1983, retail shelves were full of poorly balanced games. In addition, some distributors were doing sleazy business deals where they'd offer a money-back guarantee for returned games but then go bankrupt in order not to have to honor the contract. These led up to the North American video game recession of 1983-1984, which is why consoles to this day have lockout chips.
Bogus milestone (Score:3)
which tops the 200-mile range
Sounds to me like Chevy is picking a range that they can beat, rather than competing with the Tesla. I have a friend with one and it's range is a little better than 280 miles on a full charge. And believe me, on a long trip that difference is critical. He's done several trips (and I've been on one with him) where a 200 mile range just wouldn't have cut it. But if you can't match the Tesla's range, I guess the next best thing is to pick a lower number and call the Tesla's range "over" that so that you can claim to be over that new lower number too.
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which tops the 200-mile range
Sounds to me like Chevy is picking a range that they can beat, rather than competing with the Tesla.
Model S base = $69K
Bolt base = $30K
That's not really a fair comparison. On top of that, the 200 mile marker was set by Musk when he announced that the Model 3 will have "over 200 miles range in the real world." Musk also stated that "anything below 200 miles isn't a passing grade." So why is Chevy's use of 200 miles arbitrary and Tesla's use proper? For the record, I have Nissan Leaf which I lease in anticipation of getting a Tesla Model 3 or X when the lease is up, so I'm not a Tesla hate or Chevy fanboy.
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I've been saying for years now that unless there's an order of magnitude breakthrough in battery charging technology, using an electric car on a long trip is going to remain stupid. It's telling that the solution closest to working thus far (that doesn't involve stopping for 30+ minutes every 2.5 hours) is swapping the battery pack (all 1200 p
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Still too expensive (Score:2)
We need something that is much cheaper than the Tesla Model 3, Nissan Leaf, Smart EV or Chevrolet Bolt.
The first company which can make a 10000$ electric car (and that is road-legal in all countries) will dominate the market.
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The first company which can make a 10000$ electric car (and that is road-legal in all countries) will dominate the market.
You mean how like Commodore dominates today's computer market because they were the first ones to introduce an inexpensive personal computer?
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If you mean the Commodore PET, then the Apple II beat that by a few months, and indeed Apple does pretty much dominate the market now.
Maybe you mean the VIC-20, but then that's picking an arbitrary definition of "inexpensive". The Atari 400 for example was cheap and earlier, though not quite as cheap as the VIC-20.
Anyhow, that's a bit by the by as Atari isn't in business any more either. Other than Apple very few computer manufacturers from that era do still exist.
If the analogy was a predictor (and they ne
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Slightly snarky but true: a lot of cities have special provisions for cars/vehicles that don't exceed 35mph and are banned from highways. They look like overgrown golf carts. There's a taxi service here in Dallas that operates a fleet of electric golf carts that seat between six and nine people, and a couple of bars in the Clear Lake (distant costal suburb of Houston) that operate a private (and free) electric car taxi service.
With a battery pack cosing about $7000 still, I don't think you can expec
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Jackies Brickhouse. I guess they're technically in Kemah but there's about 10 cities that wrap around Clear Lake. And yes technically it's not coastal, thanks for being a fucking pedant about that. I sail offshore a couple times a year I'm aware, but for 99% of america, as far as they know, Houston is a port city on the coast of Texas so I just roll with it. Sorry to get your panties in a wad.
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you cant buy a crapbox with no options for 10K anymore.
2015 Chevrolet Spark base model is $12,270, not too far off. Indeed a crapbox, though.
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I'm imagining a crash test between a Bolt and a Tesla, they would need a broom to clean up what's left of the Bolt.
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The first company which can make a 10000$ electric car (and that is road-legal in all countries) will dominate the market.
The GEM car guys [cnn.com] will be happy to know that their market domination is imminent :^)
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He said a car, not a golf cart.
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You want a price point of $10k, which is tough to meet even with a traditional gasoline vehicle, some sacrifices must be made.
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Hopefully, that will cause GM to fail, as it's GM that caused it. GM deliberately lobbied for rules that were different from foreign markets to make it harder for foreign entrance into the US. That level of isolation and insulation was to prevent others from entering. But since Toyota became a larg
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The Ranger is no longer made in, or sold in the USA. The rules that made Ford stop it were initially put in place to stop the Tacoma, and done with full Ford approval and support.
Yes, I'm aware that after Ford lobbied for the rules, they were later modified to something Ford didn't want. But if Ford had opposed the rules in the first place, and hadn't lobbied themselves into a corner, then they'd be able to
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Hopefully, that will cause GM to fail...
I hope this makes GM fail.
Where have you been? GM is too big to fail.
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And that's why there are no longer foreign cars sold in the US.
The Ranger's not sold in the US because Ford closed the Minnesota plant where they built them and decided not to sell them in the US and the market for small pickups has tanked. Has nothing to do with "rules".
http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2... [pickuptrucks.com]
http://www.fool.com/investing/... [fool.com]
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The Tacoma is not seeing a sales drop. Ford has just decided to sell the Ranger as a full-sized truck in foreign markets. If the segment was dead, they wouldn't be making them for the global market, and the Tacoma wouldn't still be going strong.
The difficulty in making the Ranger for the US and global is what killed it (that and the rules for CAFE that the US makers helped make that punish the larger vehicles that don't make the GVWR cutoff, which is what helped seal th
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I always figured that pickups in the US was an entirely screwed up market anyways.
Look at an old pickup truck - full size bed and a regular cab. It was a great vehicle for its intended purpose - hauling supplies and gear. The bed was long enough (8') and wide enough (4' between the wheel wells) fo
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Because they are about a lifestyle, they no longer function like a truck.
Only if you define hauling 4x8 sheets as the purpose. In my area they're used more for hauling trailers, firewood, trash, and numerous other things that are more flexible in their dimensions.
If I need to haul 4x8 sheets, I'll just load them into my trailer.
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And that's why there are no longer foreign cars sold in the US.
Harder doesn't equal impossible, and the rule variances DO limit which models foreign makers chose to import.
test and tease (Score:2)
Bolt will be cheaper than the average car (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/05/04/new-car-transaction-price-3-kbb-kelley-blue-book/26690191/
"The estimated average transaction price of a new car or truck sold in the U.S. in April was $33,560"
Stop bitching about "expensive" electric cars. These new models from Chevy and Tesla are pretty much the same price as the old fashioned gasoline burning, fume belching models.
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Stop bitching about "expensive" electric cars.
This appears to be a similar size to, or smaller than, a Honda Civic, and costs twice as much without the thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money being thrown at subsidies. So, yes, it's a damn expensive car.
It's also a damn stupid name, since my first web search found numerous page on Chevrolet wheel bolt patterns before it actually found anything about the car.
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It's also a damn stupid name, since my first web search found numerous page on Chevrolet wheel bolt patterns before it actually found anything about the car.
Of course that will change by the time it's a production car, thanks to how pagerank works.
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"The estimated average transaction price of a new car or truck sold in the U.S. in April was $33,560"
Stop bitching about "expensive" electric cars. These new models from Chevy and Tesla are pretty much the same price as the old fashioned gasoline burning, fume belching models.
Ahh, statistics can be fun!
$33K buys you a LOT of car these days, with a lot of features, including NO range anxiety!
Even at $33K, none of the electrics in that price range compare, which is why they are less than 1% of total US sales of vehicles.
The fact is, the world isn't beating a path to their door, they cost too much and have too many compromises. Sure, hippies and extreme liberals will buy them, but they won't gain mass acceptance until the price comes down and the drawbacks go away.
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$33K buys you a LOT of car these days, with a lot of features, including NO range anxiety!
I'm not saying that it breaks even, but a $33k gasoline vehicle is going to be more expensive in the end than a $33k EV. It's when getting an EV is a $3k option over the gasoline 'equivalent' that it very much starts looking cheaper.
As I mentioned elsewhere, right now EV and hybrid buyers are overwhelmingly multi-car households. If they need the range, they take the other vehicle. Meanwhile they have one that doesn't need oil changes, visits to the gas station, don't smell, etc...
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This is very useless statistic. Let's say one woman buys 80k car, two guys buy 10k cars so average price is 33k.
Why not instead let's say that the US public buys seven MILLION cars every year, so your analogy is even more useless.
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Why not instead let's say that the US public buys seven MILLION cars every year, so your analogy is even more useless.
And that is still useless, since the US public bought 16.5 million cars and light trucks in 2014.
GM has a solid line right now.. too solid (Score:3)
GM has too many cars, but many of the cars they have are good and sellling well. Having many models is a winning strategy for BMW, which builds the many models out of pieces of other models; and it's going to be an even better strategy for them going forwards if they adopt the i3's construction methods for more of their low-production vehicles. Using their particular method of using carbon fiber is less expensive than typical processes (it saves less weight too, but still saves most of it) but eliminates most of the tooling costs. For limited production runs (like the i3) eliminating the tooling needed to stamp sheet metal panels saves hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Right now, Chevy has the Cruze, Sonic, Spark, Impala, and Malibu cars at a time when car sales are declining and crossover sales continue to rise. That is probably too many cars for a struggling (if venerable) marque to sustain while also marketing the Bolt and the Volt (ugh.)
With that said, the Bolt and the Volt are two of the most interesting cars on or near the road at the moment — not from an enthusiast standpoint, but from a sales standpoint. "Everybody" is interested in high-mileage EVs for low money, and the Volt is the hybrid of the hour. But Chevy's model strategy still seems a little confused.
This is basically what the Volt should have been (Score:2)
This is basically what the Volt should have been.
Even though the Volt degraded into a disappointing electromotive hybrid with engine assistance while still being far in advance of the Toyota HSG, it took least one billion dollars of research before GM went bankrupt. Hopefully, GM can recoup some of those lost dollars with the Bolt and give us the electric vehicle we were promised with the Volt, but this time, it will have no petroleum engine.
My own two cents (Score:2)
For me, if I can get 200 miles per tank out of a conventional car, that is no problem whatsoever. I'd like it to be more, but 200 is honestly fine for me. I don't speak for everyone else but my suspicions is that for most people, they could live with having to refill their car with gasoline every 200 miles.
200 miles for an electric vehicle, specifically an electric-only vehicle... well it's just not the same. It sounds the same but it really isn't. When you have a c
2.5). ??? (Score:2)
2.5). ???
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2.5) Free Bitcoins and Dogecoins (see my signature)
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I like what Musk is doing. But this just smacks of something akin to Apple's reality distortion field. The article is ostensibly about the Chevy Bolt EV. But it spends half the text talking about the Tesla Model 3 without actually saying anything new about it.
Re:Oblig. Musk stroking (Score:4, Insightful)
People that believe in Apple's reality distortion field are the kind of people that fall for perpetual motion machines.
If Apple didn't actually deliver devices that people love, they wouldn't be able to continue to be the most popular brand of smartphones whilst charging a significant premium.
The so called RDF Is a simply a trustworthy brand. A brand is a promise of quality, and even though they aren't perfect, they do deliver better quality than any other manufacturer. They deliver on their promise. They beat all other companies in customer satisfaction surveys year in year out.
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ask yourself in what way Bolt can compete with BMW?
I tell you what, if you ever, in your entire life, see a BMW with Vermont plates driving at less than 30 mph over the speed limit, you will know that the world is coming to an end. It's not hard to compete with a brand that brands you as an asswipe driver.
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It's not just Vermont.
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I visited Burlington in May and I have to agree that there is a very special kind of BMW driver in Vermont.
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The problem with this is??? Time is the primary finite resource stop wasting it.
Re:Bolt is a 20k car (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no way it can compete with Tesla M3 on equal ground.
Sure they can, they have about 100x the manufacturing capability of Tesla. They have dealers and showrooms and distribution already set up all over the planet. If the market takes off they are MUCH better positioned to get cars made and distributed and sold and supported than a company with basically no distribution network and no dealers.
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They have dealers and showrooms and distribution already set up all over the planet. If the market takes off they are MUCH better positioned to get cars made and distributed and sold and supported than a company with basically no distribution network and no dealers.
Well, maybe. On the other hand, given how much people hate car dealerships [time.com], I'm not sure having a big network of dealerships (and forcing anyone who wants to buy your product to haggle with them) is necessarily such a big advantage anymore.
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Given the EV1s apparently cost over $100k each, everyone who leased one for a fraction of its value sure should have loved it.
This looks like just another sucky electric car that costs more than a Civic and all the fuel the Civic will ever burn.
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The Bolt looks like a car that is made to compete against the Mitsubishi i-MiEV. This is a great commute vehicle for an urban setting where you spend most of your time sitting at 0 RPM at lights or in traffic. But for something that might attract Tesla owners? That is like asking Corvette owners to buy a Sentra SE-R, or a Type R Civic.
Here is my dumb question: What is wrong with the Chevy Volt that the Bolt even needs to exist in the first place?
The current Volt is a completely electric car. Plug it in
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However, having the gasoline engine means no range anxiety, so while the Leaf and the Tesla owner are back at home switching cars, the Volt is on the highway for a long trip.
The gasoline engine adds a lot of weight, complexity, and cost. If eliminating it can take a Volt's ~30 miles of range up to 100 miles without increasing the cost by substituting a bigger battery instead of the engine, while you still can't take it on a highway trip, that's 3 times the range for pure electric(IE avoiding the cost of gasoline) for running around town.
Besides, the vast majority of EV buyers are multiple car homes - they're not taking the volt on a road trip, they're taking something even mor
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Most people want a car that looks fun and interesting
Yeah whatever, I have a dented fender on purpose. People see it and they just give me the right of way. I'll take that over a shiny "fun" car any day.
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It does seem like Tesla Motors is the only company that believes an electric car should look like a "normal full-size car," rather than some dinky ugly econo-box. I guess this is the result of the company not having any ulterior motives or competing product lines, so they're actually motivated to do the best job they possibly can.
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It does seem like Tesla Motors is the only company that believes an electric car should look like a "normal full-size car,"
They don't have any other models to fall back on, so they are forced to "conservatively" design a car that is visually "acceptable" to just about everyone.
The big automakers have much more freedom to experiment with different designs. And you know what? You are not the arbiter of fashion in the automotive world. It's the consumers that decide what is "good looking". Some cars look ugly and yet they sell well. De gustibus non est disputandem. The sales figures will tell you what "looks good".
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It does seem like Tesla Motors is the only company that believes an electric car should look like a "normal full-size car,"
They don't have any other models to fall back on, so they are forced to "conservatively" design a car that is visually "acceptable" to just about everyone.
The big automakers have much more freedom to experiment with different designs>
The big automakers aren't "experimenting". Making an electric power-plant that fits their performance and mileage needs to compete is difficult so they're using the easiest target to get there -- a chassis that's the lightest and chintziest possible while still meeting safety requirements.
Look at the body style of that car, and compare to a Toyota Prius -- not a huge difference in vehicle body style.
Look at that car and compare to econoboxes of old (Ford Feista) -- still a hatchback box. Just has before.
Whe
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There's one other - VW. The eGolf looks basically exactly like a normal golf (with the exception of the front grill being filled in to aid aerodynamics).
And yes, this is exactly the reason that I just leased a new eGolf, and not any of the other electric options.
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Teslas won't get "fun and interesting" until they get cheap enough in a few years to start getting in the hands of the tuners.
Personally, I'm going to lower mine all around, give it some pneumatics and hang some big exhaust pipes off the back. Then, I'm going to get a recording of a 1969 Plymouth Super Bee and pipe it though
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You do know that you can get it with variable height and air suspension right from the factory, right?
It was on the news here - After an accident Tesla disabled their cars from running so low on the highway to improve resistance against ground debris. Cost some energy efficiency. After they distributed shields, that was re-enabled.
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You need to grow up. A car is to transport you from A to B. If you do a lot of driving then things like power, interior comfort and equipment become important. But exterior looks? You can't even see it when you're driving. You only see it for the few seconds when you're walking towards it to get in.
If you're buying for the looks, you're buying it to show off, because you have an inferiority complex. And a small dick.
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Don't you have a fucking spellchecker?
I prefer a spellchecker that can keep it in its pants
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That thing got beat with the nasty end of the ugly stick. I predict they won't sell many just because it's soooo damn ugly, no matter what the underpinnings might be or what kind of range it gets.
You DO understand that the Bolt is just a Chevrolet Spark with an electric drivetrain? Look at the pictures.
And then realize that the identical-looking gasoline powered Spark is actually selling well:
http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2015/05/01/chevy-spark-ev-price-cut-appears-to-have-worked-as-april-sales-surge/
so much for "no matter what the underpinnings might be"
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I rented a gasoline powered Chevy Spark a year ago. It's one of the worst cars I've ever driven. The seats felt damned uncomfortable (even though there was plenty of room for me), the dashboard was a clusterfuck to put it mildly and I knew when I was going 65 on the freeway because I knew damned sure I didn't want to go any faster in the thing. It just felt unstable. It was worse than the car I had in college, and it was an under-powered piece of crap from the early 1980s. I hear the Spark EV is a lot bette
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and I knew when I was going 65 on the freeway because I knew damned sure I didn't want to go any faster in the thing.
rotfl that was my experience, too......going up the on-ramp, accelerator floored, and not going any faster.......
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so much for "no matter what the underpinnings might be"
Chevrolet Spark: MSRP $13k to $17k, according to Chevrolet's web site.
Chevrolet Bolt: MSRP $37,500 minus $7,500 of taxpayer subsidies, according to these articles.
That extra $13k-17k buys a lot of gas.
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It's more similar to the Sonic, but it's not exactly the same. I'd withhold judgment until I could test drive one, or had at least read independent reviews.
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That's the concept car, not the test car. Concept cars almost never make it to production looking like they did at the initial roll-out. Even with the camouflage, it's obvious that the body has undergone some major design changes including a lower angle from the front of the hood to the peak of the roof. The grill is also different, and the windows have a slightly different shape.
GM doesn't put the money into these things to fail. Designing a new car costs tens of millions of dollars. GM is still behin
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That's the concept car, not the test car. Concept cars almost never make it to production looking like they did at the initial roll-out.
You're right. If sports car concepts are any indication, it will be even less attractive in the production version.
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The same thing happened with the Volt when the look everyone loved turned out to perform poorly in the wind tunnel. They've since cleaned up the look a little, but it still doesn't look nearly as cool as the concept car did.
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In Bob Lutz's book, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters, he discussed the inception of the Chevy Volt, how it progressed through design concepts, was unveiled to the world in 2007 to widespread acclaim over its look (but with very mixed responses to its then-new lithium-ion battery design, something Toyota called "dangerous"), and then when the production version was rolled out was called ugly and dismissed by many. The problem is that what looks great in design can fail miserably when it gets into the wind tunnel.