Monthly Archives: June 2017

The Chevrolet Bolt, Buy or Pass.

When you read all the reviews about the Chevrolet Bolt it sounds like nothing we’ve ever seen before. An engineering marvel of the 21st century.

The Chevy Bolt is all of the following:

2017 MOTOR TREND CAR OF THE YEAR, 2017 NORTH AMERICAN CAR OF THE YEAR,

2017 GREEN CAR OF THE YEAR®, AWARDED BY GREEN CAR JOURNAL

But probably best of all as far as I am concerned it is,

2017 IIHS TOP SAFETY PICK WHEN EQUIPPED WITH OPTIONAL DRIVER CONFIDENCE II PACKAGE.

Add to that it gets an EPA estimated 238 miles of range on a full charge. Only the Tesla gets as much or more. And the base price of the cheapest Tesla S is almost twice as much as a Chevrolet Bolt.

But it’s not really some engineering marvel or some great design.

As for the design it’s a lot like the Honda Fit. The battery technology is not very special either. It’s just a bigger battery pack (60 kWh) than has been put in any car that size to date.

There are also plenty of cars on the market with backup cameras, parking sensors and traffic alerts and adaptive cruise control. Today you can order them on many cars midrange trim packages.

So why don’t I love the Bolt. Like almost everyone else who finds the marriage of automotive technology and electricity a compelling proposition?  I love that cars are electrifying. I also love that they have cameras, cross traffic alert and a myriad of other features designed to make driving safer. These are now a must on any future vehicle I buy. As is keyless entry and starting. Try doing a car that needs a key to start after doing one that doesn’t.

On the Chevy Bolt you can get all the latest safety and convenience options for a price. You just can’t get comfortable if you are slightly wider than your average 30 year old.

And just like the Tesla there is a trade off between battery technology and fit and finish. You can buy a Porsche Panamera for the same price as a Tesla. The Panamera is far nicer inside and out.

Even at the Premier trim level the Bolt seats are small. The cabin trim is basic as well. But you do get a cheap leather instead of just plastic. I’d feel far more comfortable if they chose to use IKEA to design the interior, sort of like the BMW i3.

The Bolt is a very small car. They say it feels much bigger than it really is. It doesn’t, it looks much bigger than it really is. That’s a big difference. What they really mean is that there is a fair amount of legroom for the back seat compared to your average compact car. That is true. Since the roof doesn’t slope and there is little cargo space unless the seats are folded down it does have more room than the Focus but no more than a Honda Fit. I’d probably buy the Honda Fit.

Like the Chevy Volt, I don’t need to drive this car to know I don’t like it. All I had to do is sit in it. The difference is, in the Volt I like sitting in the drivers seat. If you are a driver it is comfortable. If you ever have to be a back seat passenger and you are over 5′ 6″ you’re probably not going to like it, at all, not even for a 10 minutes drive to get lunch. My 13 year old son was 5′ 6″ last year when I wrote about the Volt 2.0, today he is 6′ 1″ (1 inch taller than I am) and he didn’t like sitting in the back seat of the Volt, back then leg room was an issue. Today he would have the same issue I did as well. You needed to put your head back in the window so the headliner didn’t hit your head.

In the Bolt both of us can sit comfortably, in the back seat. He can sit comfortably in the front seat. His 32″ waist fits fine. My 40″ waist not so much. When I first get in the car and sit down about 2 inches of my butt is hanging off the seat. Then I have to slide right till my right hip hits the side of the seat. The front seat hip room is 2. 3 inches less than the Ford Focus Electric. If you fit in a Honda Fit you will be ok with that as front hip room is almost identical.

For $15k more than the Honda it would have been nice if they had just made the car just a couple of inches wider and a couple of inches longer. Would that have added that much more if anything to the price?

They should have made the car more the size of the Mercedes B250e and less like the Honda Fit or Nissan Leaf.

The Mercedes B250e is by far the nicest Compact BEV I have driven. It’s only drawbacks are the range and it’s only sold in Compliance States.

So should you buy a Chevrolet Bolt? If you want to pay about $44k (before tax incentives with the highest trim and almost every option) for a $20k economy car that has a (according to GM) $8.7k battery pack. No, not if that is the true cost of the battery. That means you are paying a lot for an economy car. Even after the government picks up another $7.5k.

That’s probably why a lot of people are waiting for the Tesla 3 or buying hybrids like the Hyundai Sonata.  O.K., they aren’t buying hybrids, or sedans for that matter. Gas is so cheap that people are once again going down that road to getting stuck with a vehicle that in the future is going to cost them a lot for gas.

The only thing less smart is paying $20k more up front for an electric car that fits in the back of most of the SUV’s or Pickup Trucks out there.

So my recommendation is to take a pass, even though there needs to be people buying these things so that automakers not only continue to build BEV’s but also improve BEVs.

Buying this car for me would be like buying a pair of shoes that is a half size to small. They may not bother you that much at first but give it a few minutes.

Maybe the GM/Lyft partnership will buy lots of them. Although I doubt that’s going to work well. Right now when you call Uber or Lyft you usually get a pretty nice car. Some of the time you get picked up in a compact car. At least right now the odds are I will get picked up in a bigger car. Add lots of Bolts to Lyft and Uber will be my first choice. Actually that’s not fair, I have never used Lyft. I always use Uber.

If you are  like me have never used Lyft. Use the code DOGFOOD and get up to $20 off your first ride.

If you have never used Uber. Use the code Z4JRI for $20 off your first ride.

And if you still drive a car that has a Internal Combustion Engine make it more environmentally friendly by using Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants. For more information go to www.BDPSYN.com

Thanks for reading. Leave you comments below and make sure you share and like this post with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Trump, Reagan, Alternative Energy.

Back in Junior High I was a bit of an Alex Keaton (Michael J. Fox) from Family Ties. I wrote a report on how to invest in stock and why Tyco Labs was the place to invest. They had this great technology called a photovoltaic cell. Solar Energy was an idea whose time had finally arrived.

We had just been held hostage by OPEC and people had to wait in lines to buy gas, at was then, record prices of over a dollar a gallon.

Jimmy Carter had put solar panels on the White House to set an example of how we could start on our way to energy independence.

Then Ronald Reagan got elected. There was no way that in his America we were going to conserve. We drive big cars, heat and cool our houses to whatever extreme we want. We are a big and powerful nation and can afford to waste as much as we want. And for the next 30 plus years that’s exactly what we did. Only communists suffer shortages.

Bush gave tax breaks to people who bought Hummers. And lots of people did. You still see a few of them around today. But they don’t make them anymore. They went by the wayside when many American Automakers went bankrupt.

American Automakers also gave up a lot of marketshare to Japanese automakers in the 80’s. Because like most commodities that don’t have competition the price of gas just kept going up. And that drove people to buy the smaller, better built more fuel efficient imports.

But for those who study history we can often find examples of history repeating itself.

So lets go back just a few years. After a major recession the US elected one of those un-American leaders. The kind that doesn’t believe in American Supremacy and actually promoted the notion that once again Americans should conserve energy, invest in alternative energy and have a lofty goal of getting 1 million electric cars on the road in just a few years.

But the first order of business was bailing out American Automakers. Something Reagan did with Chrysler back in the 1980’s now had to be done again 30 years later. Because we forgot that gas can get pretty expensive and building lots of big cars that get crappy gas milage hurts the economy when gas hit’s $3 a gallon. And when the only cars on your lot don’t sell anymore bankruptcy is a given.

Well, the economy recovered because we have cheap gas once again. Or at least we perceive it as cheap because once you hit $3 a gallon $2 looks really cheap. Almost as cheap as $1 where gas hit at the height of the recession. I’ll bet if gas hits $3 now people will still perceive it as being pretty cheap.

So now after 8 years of that commie socialist we have once again elected a President who acknowledges the Supremacy of the United States of America.

His first order of business is to incentivize 19th century technology. Make coal great again. His second order of business was to make sure we can burn lots of fossil fuel. Keep it cheap so people can burn lots of it. There can’t be an iceberg hiding below the surface using that strategy. No,literally. All the icebergs are melting. Deny that this strategy has environmental consequences at all costs. Science is suspect. What do scientists know anyway.

And worst of all spreading the myth that restrictions on environmental pollution makes us uncompetitive in the world.

Trump is Reagan revisited. And I don’t mean that in a positive way.

This time the world is no longer looking for Americans to lead the way. We are way behind the power curve on implementing alternative energy.

Unlike the United States or China most of Europe and the UK does not have vast areas of unpopulated land mass. Most of France, Italy, Germany and the U.K.  have lots of people in very small areas. Their pollution problems are like ours of California prior to Nixon and The EPA or those pesky California Emission Standards.

Other countries are actually investing in technology to get off of fossil fuels. German automakers that were first pushed by Tesla and further pushed by their own greed and cheating emission rules with their diesel cars are now going all out on developing Electric Vehicles. Add that to their growing supply of solar power and other countries are leading the way into the 21st Century. Not the U.S.A.

What are American Automakers doing? Building as many SUV’s and Pickup Trucks they can churn out. And that is pretty much a sign that although many Americans feel that the economy still sucks that it really doesn’t. Poor people don’t buy $70k Automobiles, or do they? Well poor people don’t, but having a $1k a month payment and another $150 or more a month going to Mobil or BP can sure as heck make you feel like your broke. Especially if you have 2 of these in your driveway. Let gas hit $3 or $4 a gallon again and it won’t take long before another recession hits.

Another fallacy is that regulations make products cost more. Well let’s go back to the 1980’s. Factories used to just dispose of certain waste from production, much of it in small particles like the sawdust from mills.

Well there was this company called Torrit Donaldson. You might know who they are. They make filters for your car among other things.

They would also design collection systems that collect sawdust among other things. Now instead of these particulates being dumped in the air and garbage they make particle board and other products from them.

Both the mill and the filter maker, make money. Long term results are better. That’s how jobs and new technologies get created. Not by doubling down on burning toxins. Too bad Wall Street doesn’t care beyond the next quarter

So is their a silver lining in this Trump cloud?

Well just like the 1980’s businesses will continue to look for ways to make more money and people will continue to ask for innovation.

Tesla proved that you can make a compelling Electric Car. Germany and the U.K. have proven that solar and wind are competitive with nuclear and coal when you factor in the external costs that we in the U.S. don’t account for.

The only real question is will politics get in the way of the U.S.A. becoming a leader or will be relegated to the position of follower?

Will American Car Makers once again, for the third time misjudge where the market is headed. Maybe that’s why Tesla has a higher market cap than Ford or G.M.

One that it really doesn’t deserve as Tesla makes less cars in a year than the other automakers make in a week.

If only there was a military reason to develop alternative energy. When the Russians were beating us in space we moved heaven and earth to get their first.

And much of the technology that got us into space is driving most of the technology we have today. It’s not like we hadn’t given the Germans the lead in technology before. It took a World War to give us the drive to outsmart them as well.

I doubt beating ISIS will require a new modern energy that was easy to deploy almost anywhere.

Actually now that I think about it. What if we dropped a few solar panels connected to a battery that could power a radio or two and maybe some type of modern convenience that we could broadcast the truth to every village or town where the electricity infrastructure has been bombed out?

 

 

2017 Audi A3 e-tron, I love it, maybe.

You can’t make a sound financial argument for buying this car. It’s a $48k car before tax incentives. And since EV’s, especially plugin hybrids are finally becoming popular dealers aren’t even offering much in the way of discounts anymore.

So far the only EV I have been able to make a financial argument for is the Ford Focus EV. It’s also hard to make an environmental argument for a hybrid. Maybe in Europe it would be easier but not in the U.S.

Gas is still pretty cheap and we don’t have an excessive problem with pollution in our city centers. You don’t have to pay a pollution tax here and you aren’t going to see an EV only zone anytime soon like you will in the EU in the near future.

Now some more reasons you might not want a hybrid, plugin or not.

You still have an Internal Combustion Engine with all its required maintenance. Oil changes, spark plugs, belts, hoses and fuel tanks, gauges and pumps. What a hassle. . Then you have the electric motor. The most efficient part of the system. Then you have a transmission and all the controllers that tie the two motors together, It’s amazing they are as reliable as they are. It’s like a twin engine airplane. Way more expensive than it has to be and when one engine system fails it won’t necessarily save you. At least in the case of the hybrid you get better gas mileage, not worse.

Let’s compare it to a turboprop  airplane. A jet engine that turns a propeller. More efficient than a jet for shorter trips at lower altitudes.  Hybrids are more efficient in the city than on the highway. If most of your driving is on the highway you should either drive a diesel (this was written before VW Dieselgate), a high mileage ICE car or a pure EV with a range you can live with.

So now that I’ve told you what I don’t like about this car and  hybrids in general why would I want to buy this car?  Lets start with I hate my Prius V. Driving it is about as much fun as doing laundry. Is that reason enough? No, maybe not.

Back to the A3 eTron. It’s cute, it’s fun to drive and most of the time you drive it you won’t be using any gas. That is if your daily commute is less than 20 miles a day or you can plug in at work. My drive to work. 20.2 miles. I can charge at work. Did I say I only drive to work 1 or 2 days a week. The rest of the week I’m driving about 15-20 miles a day running errands and driving my son to and from school.

So what’s holding me back. The $50k price tag for a hybrid. Why wouldn’t I just buy a Chevy Bolt? I haven’t driven a Bolt yet but $40k for a Top of the line Bolt that has little if any of the comforts of a German car. That’s what. Even a Basic VW Golf has more style.

And there is one other really big thing holding me back from buying any current EV. The Tesla 3. Just the threat of the Tesla 3 has many automakers promising pure BEV’s that will have 200 miles of range and come in around $35k.