Should We Buy A Used Chevy Bolt EV? Under $25k EV Buyers Guide - Ep. 1

alright, hello everyone, welcome to off-spec reviews. I'm Max and well this is a continuation of that video you may have seen a few weeks ago where Kyle and I were talking about buying a cheap

used

EV for under 25k. it's happening and we hear your comments, the first one we're seeing It's the Chevy Bolt, the elephant in the room here when it comes to a cheap and depreciated

used

electric car, well the Chevy Bolt is an obvious deal, it's got plenty of range 259 miles eps to make a range on the newer ones, uh , on this specific 237 for not a lot of money, so on this specific we found a local dealer who we told what we're doing, we just said, look, we want to look at one of their used

bolt

s, so here we have a 2019 Chevy LT

bolt

, it's just the EV because they didn't have the euv version at this time, but if we zoom in we can see you know this is your Chevy Bolt, in my opinion it's not the prettiest vehicle in the world, it's obviously not the vehicle technologically most advanced in the world, but you have talked and we have listened and you can't argue with the numbers, what you are seeing for this particular one is They are asking somewhere around twenty-six thousand dollars, so if we were to buy it, we would have to convince them a bit and say that I think it's pretty doable, not just for us because we're a YouTube channel, but for you too because guess what the new Chevy Bolt is because of that whole battery fire situation with LG chem, it's been discounted and new models for the most basic ones start at twenty-six grand for a new one, so I think it's pretty reasonable to expect a 2019.

I used one with a little mileage on it to be cheaper, so I think it's pretty doable to get to less than twenty-five thousand dollars now to summarize why less than twenty-five thousand dollars is so important. Well, that's because that's the number where the maximum price is. The new tax credit will go into effect in 2023, meaning that if you buy a used electric vehicle made at least two years or more ago, you can get up to four thousand dollars back from that purchase, basically taken off the purchase price, making it the use of electric vehicles is even more. of a value option that is good to see in this market where honestly the cars have not depreciated that much and that is why it is good to see examples like the Chevy Bolt where even if it is for somewhat unfortunate reasons it is now depreciated and those reasons I hold high. trust are good reasons.

I think you know that yes, there was a LG camera battery fire situation. There was a recall. GM takes care of customers. They replace the battery. This one has one of the new batteries, as far as we know, that's the problem. resolved now if there are fires again well I'm sure

chevy

will have some issues but right now they are focused on ultium so it looks like they have fixed things with the bolt and here we have it so let's just be nice. from walking around the car, give it a quick tour, so like I said, it's Bolt EV, it's not Bolt Euv, which means this is the hatchback style, uh, that's what he said, the new Bolt UVS that are a little bit more expensive, they have an SUV style, I think they have slightly more ground clearance, they are a little bigger, a little more space, they still have front wheel drive, so let's talk mechanicals, this vehicle is a front wheel drive hatchback, it has a motor on the front axle that's giving you 200 horsepower or about 266 pound-feet of torque now, that may not seem impressive compared to the cars we've been looking at recently, like of course Well Kyle's Rivian or the Lucid Air which we've been testing, but keep in mind this is a budget hatchback and that gets us from 0 to 60 and a lot less than seven seconds faster than maybe some compact electric SUVs from Mercedes, so it's great to see which is actually comparable to my Mini Cooper.

I think it might be a little slower, but we'll do it. see in the driving part of this video where we test it now, we are not going to buy anything yet, we will see several other used EVS, stay tuned for this series because we will see the other names in the room your Nissan Leafs your i3s Etc. in the note of the blade, by the way, another thing about the bolt, since we're talking mechanicals, this one has a 60 kilowatt hour battery, which gives it 237 miles of EPA rated range. Now the battery pack is liquid cooled, so let's put LG's chemical issues aside now that it's replaced and new, let's assume there's nothing wrong with it, it's liquid cooled, you'll see less degradation than something like a Nissan Leaf that is air cooled. battery, so it's amazing to see it now.

One thing I

should

note about the bolt if we go that way is I can show you the charging door here right on the charging topic, that's another drawback of the bolt in my opinion, so the bolt has DC fast charging , this is a 2019 model, like I said, it was introduced in the 2017 model year and they didn't change it much, but here's the downside, so the DC fast charging, the top speed was only 50 to 55 kilowatts peak. charging rate, so this is not a fast charger by any means, it wasn't when it came out and today, next to say, 800 volt mass market vehicles like the Hyundai ionic 5 egmp etc, it's really out of class, which is why I think part of why GM had to reduce the price, so not only does it have a slow DC speed, this model has a built in level 2 charger for AC, just like your home charger , limited to 7.2 kilowatts, not even 11 kilowatts.

I think it was updated in the later years of the model. so it's not particularly faster charging no matter which way you're charging, but they do have a built-in charger, so if we end up buying the bolt, I don't have an eviction in my house, in fact, I'll rely on fast DC. charging but if you were really living with lightning it might be a good idea to have level two you won't see fast speeds but it has level two it has level three of course so some of the EVS we're on might what we're going to see in this series hasn't necessarily had DC fast charging, so it's nice to at least have the bolt offer it so we can see if we keep going around the vehicle, here in the window, there's just some information about this.

It's of course a 2019 dealer vehicle and let's go back to the back and this is one of the reasons I like the bolt, it's probably a reason you guys like the bolt, it's a hatchback and, As someone who drives a two-door mini cooper hatchback, I can just tell you that hatchbacks are amazing and that's still the case here because you have a lot of space and you get a surprising amount of storage capacity - it's basically 17 cubic feet with the seats. rears, but if you fold them you get 57 cubic feet of storage. capacity, so it was good when it came out, it's still good now because it was built from the ground up to be an electric vehicle.

I think it has always been a very practical vehicle and I must add a personal note that my grandmother actually drives. I think it's the debut model. year, the 2017 bolt had it, uh, he had it at least then he bought it on the lease and since he had it, he loved it at the time he was looking at, you know, a cheap electric vehicle and there weren't many options in the market like there. Now, there still aren't that many cheap options, the choice for her was this or a base model 3 and a base model 3 would still have been much more expensive and let's face it, it's a rear wheel drive sedan that's not exactly a granny. specific vehicle, this hatchback is very practical in that sense and if I open the back door you can see that the cargo floor or not the cargo floor, I mean the passenger floor, it's flat, it's completely flat there, so it could be a little dark.

I see it on camera, but I think it's really cool that they basically gave you that flat floor. They packaged the battery very well because this was never an ice vehicle, it's always been an electric vehicle, so it's just an overview of the boat we have. now Jordan and I are going to drive it and just give you some quick impressions uh and like I said we're not buying anything yet we're at Fowler Chevrolet here in Broomfield Colorado and I'm sure They're going to want us to move in soon but we're just looking at several EVS in this series.

Thank you all, by the way, Fowler Chevrolet for letting us use this bolt. This could be one of the vehicles we bought, but we have a couple. There's more to see in this series before we choose, so let's pull the bolt to see what it's like, uh, before we move on to future episodes of this series, but yeah, driving impressions, let's do it by cranking the Chevy bolt, which It has a power button, not all of them. EVs work especially with some of these new ones, like Volvos, but I don't know what you think about having a start button on an EV.

Jordan. I think we

should

stop thinking that just driving this Mercedes SUV has a start button too yeah and Tesla doesn't have to do that either, just enter id4, same thing, just enter and go, yeah that's how it should be everyone modes one positive thing about this interior you just have a normal uh prnd selector so that's really nice and also on the prnd selector there's an L for regenerative braking so bolt enthusiasts know this wouldn't be an EV nerd if it didn't have a one pedal mode even like one of the first EVs and this one certainly does. cool and since we're nerds, why don't we go into that high regeneration mode? um, yeah, it's one-pedal driving, it's capable of doing that, so the recovery is there. uh we're just driving around the deal or just test driving today avoiding the biggest one in the world. pothole I think that could eat your Miata probably yeah, bottom out love we love the Colorado Department of Transportation and how they maintain their roads okay.

Max for stopping us, let's see what this thing can do. Oh, basically, some wheels turn, wheels turn. our Michelin Energy Saver 215 tires, my Miata has wider tires than these, yes, however they are not energy efficient and in fact are giving us an estimated range of 279 miles right now, so I guess that's because when GM replaced the batteries I probably put in the bigger 66 kilowatt hour pass, oh that's right, yeah, as opposed to the 60 that was launched wet, so that's another advantage of that, you know, the LG problem and GM is a win for customers once you know they took care of you.

What I like here is uh, I hope you can see it on the GoPro. This gauge cluster is very simple at the moment, for some reason it shows the tire pressure, but of course we can show the trip odometer speed, whatever a note on the load, as we mentioned earlier. segment of the video, this isn't a great story about EV charging, but if you're not an intellectual nerd like us, you probably don't care, right? You're charging at your house overnight, it's a cold liquid battery pack, so you're not going to see any major degradation even if you left it out for years, that's cool and yeah, in terms of that guy, that's fine, I must say that with these tires it is too easy to make the wheels spin, I don't think so. that's a powertrain failure, this is actually pretty aggressive from a stop in terms of giving you that power and yes, once you get into the 30s and 40s, the limits of that 200 horsepower engine definitely show up, but the fact that I can basically just spin the wheels in my weather saving my energy saving low rolling resistance Visual and the tires are just fun so if you want to be a drift god well front drive bolt Chevy Honestly, maybe it's not the worst option in the world, yes it's not that low horsepower when you compare it to a model 3, sure it's less power and torque, but when you compare it to other things that we consider attractive hatchbacks, It's hot hatchback territory in terms of power, so I don't think it's anything to complain about.

Yeah, and I haven't touched the brakes even once, so in this low setting the regenerative braking is really doing its job and there are paddles on the steering wheel long before Hyundai and Kia made them on all their cars to really give you like the aggression of that region in real time, so I think this is an easy car to drive with one pedal. One thing to keep in mind with an older Bolt versus a new one: it doesn't have adaptive cruise control even in the max package, so you're sacrificing that versus a new one because a lot of people are comparing new Bolt to old Bolt, including ours Friend Dominic Yoni, who many of you may know from within EVS, is literally in this debate right now.

I think he's leaning towards new, but the price is pretty close, you can definitely undercut the price of the new bolt with the price of the older bolt, but then what are you sacrificing? In this case, it is the driver assistance now to get a new bolt with super crews, then thedone at all, so be aware that the only package you'll probably want to look for is the one you want to make sure The bolt you have is that DC fast charging is most North American bolts. There are some, however, who don't, so it looks like we'll look at this Carvana.

This is a 2017. A purchase in progress here, so we can't buy it, but let's just look. in the specs to see, make sure this one has DC fast charging, so there is an open recall which of course is the battery. The big benefit of these used bolts is that you basically get a new battery pack and it's the new big one. capacity 66 kilowatt hours, one as used or new, the reason I compare them so much is because you really like it, the battery is by far the most expensive component in an electric vehicle, especially one like the Bolt, which had a Quite large battery capacity. so it was, when you consider that you're getting a new battery with a new warranty, even on used ones, that's why this car seems like a great deal and you know it's incredibly compelling, so I'm not here with a Carvana.

Although I'm a big fan, we can see the photos here and there should be an easy way to see the loading door. Oh yeah, it has that orange cover over the CCS board, so it has those two extra pins for DC fast charging. Brilliant. to confirm it's good to see that of course carplay, those tech features, they're all standard, they're not leather seats because they're LT, but I don't care that the only thing I might look for in a Colorado climate is heated seats. the climate package basically with heated seats and steering wheel and uh let's see if this actually has that we can easily look at the pictures here actually let me go back to this steering wheel.

Yes, this is a heated steering wheel, so cool that it could be a Colorado spec bolt, it's good to see that you know damn well that under that twenty-five thousand dollar limit, you can still get bolts for a pretty cheap price. It's a good deal with the price cut GM made and those new batteries under warranty. I see why the bolt is a good deal. A very strong contender on the short list, but of course there are more cheap used EVS to look at later in this series, which I will do along with Jordan Kyle who can Join us, but we have more to see, stay tuned.

Thanks for looking at out of spec reviews. I have been Max.