The 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV is the Best Deal in Electric Cars!

– All right, so pretty much since the beginning of this electrical revolution of cars, we’ve all sora thought about and we all kinda wanted a $25,000 high quality EV experience and we’ve, for many reasons, not gotten that yet, and that might not happen for a real long time. But right under our noses this entire time, right at our fingertips, has been, well, the most affordable electric car that I think you can reasonably recommend, and that’s the Chevy Bolt, and it’s right here. I’ve never actually gotten to live with one until this video. This is the Chevy Bolt and it’s the EUV version, so it’s a little bit taller and a little bit longer. And this is the first time I’ve gotten to check it out.

It’s called the EUV. That stands for Electric Utility Vehicle. That’s what we’re working with here. And it’s got this sweet red on black trim too which is a little bit of an option, but I’ll take it. This is also the first Auto Focus video I’m shooting on the Pixel 7 Pro.

Let’s see how it goes. So my very first impressions of this guy have actually been very positive, and we’re working with, let me just give you the basics right off the top. So it starts at around $32,000, all right? And for a $32,000 GM vehicle, you’re not expecting the highest quality materials on planet Earth. But what I have noticed is, and you’ll see this once we get inside, a lot of the just the straight up list of features that you actually get is very good.

It’s really well equipped. So first of all, the basic specs are about a 200 horsepower powertrain.

It’s front-wheel drive, and it’s gonna get you about 240 miles of range, realistically about 220 miles of range driving normally. You can see it’s got that hatchback shape, it’s got these smaller wheels. It’s an EUV SUV crossover hybrid type thing, not an unreasonable shape, but this is what the Bolt EUV looks like.

There’s also plenty of badging, like they are not afraid to put Bolt EUV on it. And with the Redline package, it’s red and black, which is nice. It’s got the red and black stripe there going on, also up at the front wheel and right on this mirror here.

I don’t mind that. But yeah, Bolt EUV.

For under $40,000, what should you do well in an electric car? Well, the range, I think, is a good place to start. 250 miles, 220 to 250 is nice. It doesn’t have a front trunk, but it does have a good amount of storage, which I’ll get to in a second. And then just the list of features is very well equipped for this price.

Again, you’re not expecting, I’m gonna get to the interior, but you’re not expecting amazing leathers and massaging seats and all this. It’s an economy car, but this is a very well-equipped economy car, and I think this spec we’re looking at right here is about $36,000. Probably the biggest place that it’s lacking compared to it’s slightly more expensive competitors is fast charging. It does fast charge, but I believe it’s actually topping out at 50 kilowatts, which is not the fastest fast charging in the world. So if I was doing a road trip, that’s gonna take you closer to half an hour to go from 10 to 80% instead of the quicker 15 minute-type bursts.

So it’ll keep you waiting longer if you’re doing trips like that. But other than that, let’s just get into all the things I think it does well ’cause there’s a long list. So first of all, storage. So I said there is no front trunk which is kind of unfortunate if you’re expecting one, but if you pull up that assisted lift gate, you’ll see there’s a decent amount of space. It actually doesn’t look like much right now behind the back seats, but the seats can all go down, and then there is, of course, a sub-trunk underneath.

You can probably just take this out if you want to entirely, but that’s a good amount of grocery space, things you don’t want to slide around underneath here. And then you can just pop that down, cover it, and you’re good. So storage is actually a pretty solid amount on this car. And then, you know, I’m just gonna say it, I think the design is a plus point. It’s not a huge plus point.

This isn’t some beautiful, sexy sports car or anything, but it’s not bad. You’ve got this grille front that kinda reminds me of the Mustang Mach-E. Shout-out to the golden hour. The blacked out Chevy badge hides the cameras pretty well. You don’t need much of a grille there.

There’s your vents. And it does some quirky things with the lights. So I’ll hit that unlock button, and it does play a sort of an animation, but basically, what I’ve noticed is that the character that the Bolt has with these lights is both at the front and the back, there’s two sets of lights.

There are the running lights and the blinkers, which are in one spot, and then there’s the actual headlights, which are underneath. And that’s also true about the back.

Hold on. Look at this. So this is the back. Look. You’d think just driving behind this car that that, that and that are your brake lights, but no, that is your actual brake lights.

These are just your ambient lights that are on while you’re driving. So that’s kind of, I dunno, a quirky thing about this car. But it’s got some character. I like that it has that. Let me look on the inside though.

So this is the interior of the Chevy Bolt 2023. Now, like I said, we’re not expecting super high quality leather and Alcantara and all sorts of crazy things like that. So this is gonna have what I would call a normal interior at this price.

– It’s got plastic everywhere. It’s got faux leather with things that look like stitching, but it’s just normal-looking car interior.

That’s fine, plenty of plastic and fabrics. But what I’m gonna say again is this is a very well-equipped car. At no point when I was driving this car or living with this car did I ever feel like I was missing anything. It had a lot of equivalent experiences to what a Tesla Model 3 or a Model S today has. I daily drive a Model S still today.

And pretty much everything that I’m used to in those cars is in some form in this car. Stay with me. So put on the brake. Push button start over to the right here. You’ve got a screen behind the steering wheel and a screen over here, which is your touchscreen, which has all your infotainment.

Steering wheel and some normal stalks. In GM cars, we’re seeing this paddle here for extra regen just to pull that and get that extra braking, which is cool to have. But then you’ve got your controls down here. This is a one pedal driving button to turn on or off that full-on one pedal driving regen, which is cool.

Your parking brake, your drive, neutral, reverse and park, and also, just a little, I don’t know, you could put some change in there.

I don’t know why these buttons are shoved up here and so huge. This is your sport mode your lane guide assist, and also, your traction control off button is absolutely gigantic, which is hilarious, but it is what it is.

You have your storage in between the seats here, which is nice to have, just a plastic container. Two cup holders. This is the Insta360.

Oh, I should probably mention. Shout-out to Insta360 for sponsoring today’s video. I’m using this X3 here to show off a couple certain shots you’ll see in this video that I normally wouldn’t get with the smartphones. So learn more about that camera at the end of the video, and also, you can click the link below to see their holiday offer, but we’ll get back to that. But you can see there’s also a wireless charger up here, which I always like to check.

Yes, does support and charge huge phones. That is an iPhone 14 Pro Max, and there you go, it’s charging.

It also worked with the Pixel 7 Pro. Big phones will work here. So then this car has heated and ventilated front seats, heated rear seats, a sunroof that opens and closes, and has a shade that you can stop at any point.

Obviously, the seats are adjustable, power adjustable. And then you come down here to the front. There’s a heated steering wheel, and then there’s this whole Android Auto or Apple CarPlay situation. Both of them are supported. I happen to have an Android phone connected right now.

But this works pretty smoothly and fluidly in a way that I like to see, although I’m mostly spending my time in Android Auto. Although I wanna mention over here these knobs right here, this is a volume knob, which is cool.

I like being able to just quickly change the volume with a physical knob. But there’s another knob here. That’s just to change your point select, just to move around as if you don’t have a touchscreen right here.

So if you wanted to, for some reason, use this knob to select things, you could do that too. I don’t know. Blind buttons up here though, cool. This Bolt already even has something that my Tesla Model S Plaid just got with a software update, which is this leaf right here.

When you hit the leaf, it shows you a breakdown of how you’ve been driving and what different parts of the car are using the most energy while you’re driving, so you’re driving technique, which is how much you’re accelerating quickly, and how many miles it’s taken away based on what you’re expecting, how much the terrain, your altitude going up and down hills, outside temperature, and HVAC, and all those things.

And also while you’re driving, it’ll show a live preview of whether you’re using regen or not or taking energy out of the battery. All this stuff happens. It’s not the most beautiful graphic in the world. It’s definitely not an expensive-looking system as you just interact with the software, but it’s here. It’s not missing, and that’s the point, and I’m glad that it’s just here for me to check out.

Also, every time you finish a drive, it gives you this little view of how your drive was and what sort of stuff used up the most energy during your drive.

You wondering about the backseat? All right, let’s check out the backseat. I know you’re probably thinking this is a tiny backseat ’cause it’s a tiny car, which it’s a small car, but it does have a reasonable sized backseat. So let me go ahead and sit a 6’3″ person in behind a 6’3″ driving position, and I bet that’s better than you expected.

I mean, I know it’s better than I was expecting. Again, it’s not a dramatic amount of EQS-level room in the back, but, again, heated seats back here if you want. And again, this sunroof is gonna be shaded if you want it to be or open and letting light in. I think that’s pretty sweet, not bad. And as a backseat experience, you get USBC and USBA.

There’s also this cup holder in the middle here. The only thing really missing from the backseat, in my opinion, is HVAC controls.

It’s not that big of a car, so you could argue you don’t really need ’em, but you don’t have separate AC and heat back here. But yeah, nice seats, heated back seats, that’s pretty good. So what’s it like to actually live with and drive this thing?

Okay, it’s not that thrilling. It’s very utility. It reminds me a lot of like, it’s competition is basically Nissan Leaf, Volkswagen ID.4, and something along the lines of, I mean, Ionic is much more expensive than this. You really are fighting for under 40 grand, and there’s not a lot that actually genuinely compares to this at that price number.

If you’re looking at a Model 3 or something like that, yes, that will be more sporty and accelerate faster, but I’ve been fine driving this around.

And again, for what you’re getting for the money, a 200-plus mile range is rock solid. Now, two things, one, I am a little interested in why it’s front-wheel drive. I would’ve expected them to either do rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive, but it is front-wheel drive. And two, this actually does have Super Cruise, which is their driver assist feature that works on certain mapped out roads depending on where you’re at in the U.

S. There are some roads that it works with here. So when I say this car feels like it’s not missing anything, if you were to get a Tesla or something that has some basic autopilot features, you will still have exactly that in this less expensive car. I think the disadvantage with Super Cruise is it works on way less roads and it basically just does highways at this point for me. But it works the same way.

It does not do lane changes, I found, but it does everything else. It follows the car in front of you. It follows the lines on the road. It does a pretty good job. And this camera is actually just literally watching you as you’re driving to make sure you’re paying attention.

So it does that. I mean, it has all of the the basic stuff that you would expect out of a car at this price. It doesn’t overdo it as far as modernness. It’s got plenty of reasonable buttons here that all makes sense. That’s your climate control HVAC stuff I want to be easy to do while I’m driving and not necessarily looking.

Again, you have your infotainment system is solid, and the leaf tells you how you’re driving and based on certain factors, how you can do better. So yeah, not really missing a whole lot here with the Bolt. It’s just bringing everything a little bit down in price. – It’s funny, when I write the the column on Top Gear for summarizing my thoughts on these vehicles when we get to test them, one thing I get to say every time I review them is if I were to compare it to any reasonable household electronics object, what would I compare it to? And when I had the Volkswagen ID.

4 here, I compared it to a toaster oven because it’s just pure utility.

No one’s getting it for the excitement of driving in the sport mode or any of that stuff. It’s just like, all right, does it have the storage, does it have the miles, does it charge reasonably fast, does it get me from point A to point B? Yes, yes, yes. Check, check, check.

What’s the price? I’ll take it. And this reminds me a lot of that, but it takes it to the next level. It is much more attainable and affordable. I think we’re kinda sleeping on the $30,000 Bolt as the most affordable, best version of a cheap EV you can get.

I’d like to just throw that out there. We should probably use this as a baseline more often. But yeah, in the quest on our way to the eventual dream, which is probably in like a decade, having a 25 to $29,000 300-plus-mile, fast charging, sporty electric car, we’ll get there someday, but on our way there, we’re gonna need more good ones like this. Chevy Bolt impressed me a lot, I’m happy to say. Let me give a shout-out again to the Insta360 for sponsoring this video.

This is the way that we were able to get some of those shots that you saw. If you wanna get one of these cameras, again, if you’re shooting on your own like I am, you will get a lot of shots that you would typically miss because it’s constantly shooting in 360 degrees all around the camera all the time. So if you wanna check one of these out or pick one up, I’ll have the link right below. If you use the link below, you’ll actually get some bonus items with your purchase. And also, if you wanna watch a little bit of a video on how we used the Insta360 to get some of those shots, there’s a new video right now on the studio channel of a little bit of behind the scenes of this exact Auto Focus video, how we shoot it, and how we got some of those shots that you saw in this exact video.

A little bit of meta for ya, just a little sponsorship meta thanks to Insta360. So that’s it for this one. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys later. Peace.