As the weather turns warmer our ideas and daydreams might be turning toward making some road trips. And for our household that means doing it on the electric side of things. Readers may recall my electric vehicle experience kicking into high gear last year when my beloved Honda Fit bit the dust thanks to an errant deer smashing into it and I replaced it with a 2016 Nissan LEAF.
Owning that car was a revelation! Not only did I discover that I could make my normal life work around an EV – and one with only 85 miles of range maximum at that – but even more importantly, I LOVED the thing and the EV lifestyle. It is hard to express how much your life changes when you don’t have to worry about a vehicle that carries its own fuel around for its own reactor, but rather one that simply carries energy around with no reactor. Nothing gets set on fire onboard to generate the power needed to move the vehicle, it simply goes when you press the accelerator and stops when you don’t. That is as long as you have the “one-pedal driving” mode engaged.
But the LEAF’s days were numbered in our household as we moved back to Rutherford County and I needed something with a little more range. Enter – the Chevrolet Bolt! This thing is amazing. At its price point, an extremely affordable $32,000 for the Bolt EV 1LT model that I purchased, the Bolt has the best in class range. The LEAF was a manageable 85 miles with a 24 Kilowatt battery. The Bolt has a 66KW battery with a range of 250 miles. There were times with the LEAF when Meda was gamely gritting her teeth that we might not make it home from a trip to the other side of Charlotte when the warning lights on the LEAF dash would light up indicating we needed to charge soon or enter the dreaded “turtle mode” where the car limits speed to 30 mph.
We’ve never once been in a situation like that with the new Bolt. And the charging situation at our apartment in Rutherfordton isn’t the best, but we can simply plug it into an extension cord in the garage with the other end hooked up behind the couch and the vehicle will be mostly full by the next morning ready for our next adventure.
And the EV adventure is one I hope many more of us take!
