I bought my mom a Chevy Bolt EV – Here’s how it went
When Chevy announced it was dropping the price of the Chevy Bolt EV by $6,000 earlier this year to $25,600, it went from a good EV option to a great one. This is a 5-star-safety-rated sporty hatchback EV with 259 miles of real range, lots of space inside, and a great interior.
So good, in fact, I decided to do the unthinkable: buy one for my 70-something mom. Here’s how it went.
As a background, I’ve owned mostly Teslas (S, X, 3, Y) since 2013, and one of the things I like most about that experience is not having to deal with car dealers. I leased a 2017 Chevy Bolt from 2017 to 2020 and loved the car, but again, didn’t love the dealership experience on either end of the Bolt ownership. I went over this in my Bolt ownership retrospective.
With Chevy’s help, we identified a Bolt that was being sold for MSRP on its way to Serpentini Chevrolet in NE Ohio. I remember their ads from growing up – “American, and prooooouuuud of it!” – and even though the name sounds like “snake” in Italian, they’ve been around for a long time.
I spoke with a salesperson there about my requirements. “Just the car, please. No upgrades. No maintenance plan. No nothing.” We were very quickly on the same page. One nice thing about not being nearby was that I didn’t have to go into the dealership and deal with waiting, paperwork, and of course, the upselling and haggling.
After some minor delays, the car arrived on the lot. After taxes, destination, and other typical miscellaneous charges, the $26,500 Bolt EV price had grown to over $28,692.04. Backward Ohio doesn’t have any EV incentives and, in fact, charges an extra $200/year on registration for disincentivizing EVs. This kind of thinking is indicative of the governance that sends forward-thinking people packing for the coasts – I digress.
I wired the money to the dealership’s bank account and told my mom and brother that it was plated and ready to be picked up the next day. After calling the insurance company and having it added to their plan, they went to the dealership the next day.
Dealerships suck
Did I mention dealerships suck? They almost universally do. I had almost forgotten how bad my experience was in New York when I picked up mine in 2017. The salespeople there in Ohio decided to hit my 70-year-old mom, who doesn’t know much about cars, let alone EVs, with a bullshit maintenance plan upsell. (Free oil changes!) According to her, it wasn’t an option – it was just a choice between that one and a more expensive one. She wrote a check for almost $2000 even though I had already paid for the car and told them I didn’t want any of their BS maintenance plans. My brother called me and told me what was happening.
I picked up the phone and started screaming at those $%#* cockroaches because, apparently, a customer who wanted to buy a car sight unseen with cash wasn’t enough of a gift – they had to try to steal a few weeks of retirement money from a widow. I’m not still mad, I swear.
To their credit (?). they did quickly tear up my mom’s check and apologize, and I guess they have a system in place that incentivizes this behavior. Also, Serpentini did originally offer the car at MSRP, which was decent in those times. Shoutout to Chris there for the help.
After the remote scene I caused, they gave my mom and brother a quick rundown of the car. My mom drove the car home timidly but figured out the car pretty quickly. She’s coming from a 2010 Prius, so it wasn’t night and day different.
Qmerit charger install
One genuinely genius move that Chevy made was offering either $1,000 of EVgo fast charging credit or $1,000 toward a Qmerit home EV charging unit install as part of buying a Bolt. That’s going to get new EV owners off on the right foot, and I was excited to get a Level 2 charger installed in my childhood home.
Unfortunately, Qmerit never responded to the order request, and again, almost a month after the car purchase, I had to intervene. I called Qmerit, and they said the dealer never approved the work order. I called the dealer again, and they said they sent the order to Qmerit. I rang up the Chevrolet concierge to hopefully mediate, but everyone just kept pointing fingers at each other. Finally, I did a three-way conference call and told them all that the call wasn’t going to end until someone took responsibility for this.
Finally, I got a guy at Qmerit to take responsibility and project manage the operation. He got approval from the dealership manually and found an installer near the dealership but 30 miles from my mom’s house. The first estimate was $2,500 (so we’d pay $1,500). That included a device necessitated because the 80A breaker box was nearly full. We had a decommissioned breaker for a hot tub that made this unnecessary.
I had specced out the install with a local electrician who said it would cost $500, which broke down to about $250 in parts and $250 in labor. Inspection was separate.
I got a second installer from Qmerit to offer it for $1600, which would have still cost us more than just having our local guy do it. I showed the $500 estimate to the Qmerit project manager and finally got an under-$1,000 estimate that would be reimbursed with Chevy’s generous offer. Days later, the 240V plug was installed.
The post-mortem on Qmerit that I sent to Chevy:
- Qmerit says that hundreds of new Chevy Bolt owners go through this same problem.
- It sounds like the system that communicates between dealers and Qmerit often breaks down, and it is up to the customer to get everyone on the same page. Bad experience.
- Qmerit needs a dedicated project manager to keep everyone in line. They obfuscated the situation and solution until they knew I was going to keep calling them. I imagine many give up.
- The installers told me that plugs were dumb and wanted to do straight wire. I think this option is best for some but not all – should be some literature about that to help customers decide.
- Two installers told me that Qmerit takes a 20-30% cut, so they pass on the extra cost to the customer. So a real $750 install will use the full $1000 credit.
240V Level 2 charger standard on EUV, but only 120V in EV
So the dealer and Qmerit both dropped the ball earlier so it was my turn to fail. I was under the impression that the Bolt EV and EUV both came with 240V Level 2 charge cables (Webasto Go OEM). Turns out that the Bolt EUV comes with it standard while it is a $295 option on the EV. The Bolt EV comes with an old 120V Level 1 charger, so my mom didn’t have anything to plug into the 240V outlet like I had assumed.
She doesn’t drive much and was doing fine with the 110V charger, which puts on about 4 miles/hour of charge. That equates to about 60 miles in the 15 hours she’s not using it, more than she almost ever drives in a day.
In the short term, I sent one of these adapters which allows the Level 1 charger that comes with the Bolt EV to accept 240V (x12A) and charge at almost 3kW, which means a full charge from dead (65kWh) can happen in 24 hours. I plan to have a proper 240V Level 2 charging option there by the end of the month. I have to wonder how much GM is saving by putting a Level 1 charger in the car vs. a $295 Level 2 charger option. I bet it is under $100, and I’m pretty sure people would rather pay extra for the better charger.
Mom loves the Bolt EV
Initial hesitation gave way to outright love of the little vehicle. Things she didn’t know she would love:
- Always warm when starting. Can start heat in the garage.
- Easy to get in and out. Hatchback easy to open and close.
- Wireless CarPlay great for Music and Maps. Easy to make and take calls.
- Headlights are brighter than the Prius. Easier to drive at night.
- Loves rear view monitor when backing up. Small size makes parking/garage easy.
- No more range anxiety after first few weeks.
- Loves talking about it with strangers who ask about EVs.
- “Smooth!”
Doesn’t like:
- Wipers. They aren’t in sync, and they come from both angles, which is distracting.
- Has left it on a few times because it is so quiet.
Electrek’s take
It wasn’t an easy journey, but it was worth it. The dealer experience is still broken in my opinion compared to EV players like Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian. I’m not even sure it is fixable. Ford and Volvo/Polestar are trying to spin off their EV groups so they can escape dealer headaches. Chevy and Ford have told me they are trying to eliminate and threaten dealers who do markups. But they still proliferate. My best advice to consumers is just hold your nose and get the dealer experience over with. Try to do as much over the phone or on email as possible and stick to your guns when picking up the vehicle.
But the final Bolt EV product is fantastic, even for someone like my mom who isn’t terribly interested in learning new technology or changing how she does things. Yes, the Bolt EV has slow 54kw DC fast charging, slippery FWD, and other minor shortcomings. But there are so many positives for every negative, and for my mom, who will rarely (if ever) go on a 250+ mile trip, fast charging is moot.
So my mom loves it, and yours probably will too.
I had a chance to drive her Bolt EV when I drove through town (with the absurdly big in comparison Ford F-150). It was an absolute pleasure, especially for city driving and parking. So much so, I think I might get one of my own.
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Renewables increased their output by almost 10% and provided nearly a quarter of US electrical generation in 2024, according to newly released US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data.
Solar was still No 1
Solar remained the US’s fastest-growing source of electricity in 2024. Utility-scale and “estimated” small-scale (e.g., rooftop) solar combined increased by 26.9% in 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, according to the SUN DAY Campaign, which reviewed EIA’s “Electric Power Monthly” report data.
Utility-scale solar thermal and photovoltaic expanded by 32%, while small-scale solar increased by 15.3%. Together, solar was nearly 7% (6.91%) of total US electrical generation for the year.
In December alone, electrical generation by utility-scale solar expanded by 42% compared to December 2023.
Small-scale solar (systems <1 MW) accounted for 27.9% of all solar generation and provided 1.9% of the US electricity supply in 2024. In fact, small-scale solar PV generates over five times more electricity than utility-scale geothermal.
2024 renewables milestones
The electrical output of US wind farms in 2024 grew by 7.7% year-over-year. Wind remains the largest source of electrical generation among renewable energy sources, accounting for 10.3% of the US total.
Wind and solar combined provided more than 17.2% of US electrical generation during 2024. The mix of all renewables – wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, geothermal – provided 24.2% of total US electricity production in 2024 compared to 23.2% of electrical output a year earlier.
Between January and December, electrical generation by renewables grew by 9.6% compared to the same period the year before – nearly three times the growth rate of natural gas (3.3%) and over 10 times that of nuclear power (0.9%).
In December alone, electrical generation by renewables grew by 10.1% compared to December 2023.
Wind and solar together produced 15.9% more electricity than coal and came close to matching nuclear power’s share of total generation (17.2% vs. 17.8%).
The mix of renewables reinforced their position as the second largest source of electrical generation, behind only natural gas.
“Renewable energy sources now provide a quarter of the nation’s electricity,” said the SUN DAY Campaign’s executive director, Ken Bossong. “Consequently, the rash efforts of the Trump Administration to undermine wind, solar, and other renewables will have serious negative consequences for the nation’s electricity supply and the economy.”
Read more: Renewables provided 90% of new US capacity in 2024 – FERC
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Tesla has applied for a permit to operate a ride-hailing service in California, but it will be using human drivers rather than the promised robotaxi.
Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that Tesla would launch “unsupervised self-driving in Texas and California in Q2 2025.”
However, we suspected that this would not be “unsupervised self-driving’ in customer vehicles like Tesla has been promising since 2016, but an internal fleet with teleoperation support in a geo-fenced area for ride-hailing services, much like Waymo has been doing for years.
Sure enough, Musk confirmed last month that this was the plan for Austin in June. We describe this as a “moving of the goal post” for Tesla.
With the focus on Austin in June, Tesla stopped talking about California, which was announced to happen at the same time as Texas last year.
Now, Bloomberg reports that Tesla has applied for a ride-hailing permit in California:
The electric vehicle manufacturer applied late last year for what’s known as a transportation charter-party carrier permit from the California Public Utilities Commission, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg. That classification means Tesla would own and control the fleet of vehicles.
But this application is for a regular ride-hailing service, like Uber, albeit for an internal fleet rather than vehicles operated by customers.
Tesla has yet to apply for a permit to operate driverless vehicles:
In its communications with California officials, Tesla discussed driver’s license information and drug-testing coordination, suggesting the company intends to use human drivers, at least initially. Tesla is applying for the same type of permit used by Waymo, Alphabet Inc.’s robotaxi business. While Tesla has approval to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver in California, it doesn’t have, nor has applied for, a driverless testing or deployment permit from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, according to a spokesperson.
Musk claimed that he believes Tesla will be able to achieve “unsupervised self-driving” in California by “the end of the year”, but he has claimed that every year for the past decade.
The latest available data shows that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system is achieving about 500 miles between critical disengagement. Tesla has stated that it believes it needs to reach 700,000 miles between critical disengagement to be safer than humans.
Electrek’s Take
This is just a step for Tesla to test ride-hailing services ahead of autonomy. A nothing burger, really, since ride-hailing has obviously been solved already by several companies, Lyft, Uber, Didi, etc.
What needs to be solved is autonomous driving.
As I have been saying for the last year, I am sure Tesla will be able to launch an internal fleet with teleoperation support in a geo-fenced area for a ride-hailing service in California later this year like it plans to do in Austin in June, but that’s nowhere near what Tesla promised since 2016.
It’s a moving of the goal post, and it’s basically just proving that Tesla is able to do something similar to Waymo – 5 years later.
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Tesla drivers in China are using the new Full Self-Driving update and are racking up fines as the system drives in bike lanes and makes illegal turns.
As we reported earlier this week, Tesla has started to release advanced driver-assist features sold under its Full Self-Driving (FSD) package in China.
The feature is called “Autopilot automatic assisted driving on urban roads” as Tesla seems more cautious about using the term “Full Self-Driving” in China, but it is a feature known for being in the FSD package everywhere else.
Tesla has been facing a lot of issues in releasing FSD features in China. The automaker has been limited in its neural net training due to restrictions about data coming in and out of the country, and it found it difficult to adapt to regulations regarding bus lanes and other China-specific road rules.
CEO Elon Musk warned that FSD in China would be a problem during Tesla’s earnings call last month due to the different rules. He mentioned bus lanes as an example:
By the way, were about the biggest challenges in making FSD work in China is the bus lanes are very complicated. And there’s like literally like hours of the day that you’re allowed to be there and not be there. And then if you accidentally go in that bus lane at the wrong time, you get an automatic ticket instantly. So, it’s kind of a big deal, bus lanes in China.
The automated ticketing system is not just for bus lanes and Tesla owners are learning about it the hard way.
Tesla owners have been testing out the features in live streams on social media and some of them are reporting getting numerous tickets for using FSD.
For example, this Tesla driver received 7 tickets in the space of a single drive because the FSD drove in bike lanes and made illegal maneuvers:
Car News China tracked several live streams and customer feedback on Chinese social media, and the consensus appears to be that it’s “pretty good, but with lots of bugs”.
The drivers are particularly impressed with how “natural” FSD drives, but they also noted that it still
Where the system lacks is the understanding of local traffic rules (such as no use of shoulder/bike lanes on turns, similar to the bus lane rules that Elon talked about in the most recent earnings call) and the sporadic use of wrong lanes (e.g. going straight in a left or right turn only lane) or navigation showing the vehicle in one lane when in fact it’s in another or wrong perception of objects (red balloons as traffic lights). Many of the live streams counted the number of traffic violations from the vehicle and the number of points that would have been taken off or licenses suspended (12 points = suspension) as a result.
Chinese media websites are now getting flooded with Tesla vehicles running red traffic lights, failing to recognize green lights, and driving on restricted lanes, like the video above.
The report also highlights how Tesla is facing strong competition in ADAS in China, with competitors like Nio, Xpeng, BYD, and others launching competitive products, which is not necessarily the case in other markets for Tesla.
Electrek’s Take
I feel like this is likely going to result in bad PR for Tesla in China. You can’t have drivers losing their licenses because FSD doesn’t recognize bike lanes.
Now, of course, Tesla will say that the driver remains responsible, but I don’t know how good Tesla’s messaging is on that front in China.
It’s going to be an interesting story to track in the coming months.
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