this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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City Life

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[–] snowe@programming.dev 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I haven’t driven many EVs, but the bolt was the worst of them all. You literally can’t even tell what your battery percentage is. They give you ten bars and you have to read it like a WiFi signal, except it’s impossible due to how small it is. GM vehicles are absolute trash. Anyway more EVs are better so ignore my rant.

[–] Butterbee 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My parents have a bolt and it has a gas gauge type bar, but also a range in kilometers overlayed on the bar and it takes up the entire left hand side of the dashboard. It's like an inch wide by 5 inches tall. Very easy to see and read. So they may have learned in later models that people need to see how much range they have left

[–] snowe@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or that's the european or canadian version? It was the brand new 2023 Bolt, with less than 1k miles on it, from a car rental. It just had shit software. No overlay or anything. I literally had to google how to tell the battery percent because it's so non-obvious. And it wasn't even on the main cluster, it was in the center display on a different screen. Just absolute shit. Car drove great though.

[–] Butterbee 1 points 1 year ago

Canadian version, and the one you drove sounds awful bad

[–] Car@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The bolt has always been a strange car for the sake of being strange. I went to look at one and was turned off by non-symmetric two-toned seats, the generally ugly exterior, and just weird control interface. I’ve had cheap cars including a Chevy Aveo, so barebones functionality doesn’t scare me.

I kind of wish it was just like a Malibu or something with an EV drivetrain. A lot of people don’t want an EV as a status symbol. For those who do, they wouldn’t buy a GM product anyways…

[–] snowe@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

the car drove fine, and I didn't really care about the looks (well the interior looks weren't great, but they weren't horrendous) it was just the software. No reason for it to be that bad. it was like they did it on purpose.

[–] Vodulas 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like Butterbee mentioned, that was probably an older model and they learned their lesson. Bolt is a great city/commuter car. Nothing fancy, but still not terrible. The problem is that the price doesn't reflect that. My friend just test drive one that was one step above the base model and it was $43k. People will just go to the Kia Niro/Hyundai Kona at that price.

[–] snowe@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was a brand new car rental. It had less than a thousand miles on it. So no, not old. It wasn't bad by any means, but GM software is just absolutely shit and it showed. The car itself was great.

[–] Vodulas 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Weird. I was in a 2023 as well, and just last week. It was the Bolt EUV, but I can't imagine the software is different between the EUV and small Bolts

[–] snowe@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

might be a screen size thing. idk. anyway, the car drove great, but man if it's got the reliability of a gm and the software of a gm then I don't really think it's a good buy.

[–] Vodulas 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, and value of it is not good. They are behind on charging tech quite a bit too. 50kw on a modern car is just so bad. If you do zero road trips it would be fine, but for a lot of people that relegates it to second car status, and at that price it just isn't worth it. Hell my 2 year old ID.4 was 10k cheaper and has better tech.