This morning at CES, Chevrolet unveiled an all-new electric vehicle called the Bolt (not to be confused with their hybrid, the Volt.) For around $30K after rebates, Chevy is promising a range of around 200 miles per nine-hour charge and a pretty sweet suite of technology.
I’m not going to go too deep with my impressions here, as my experience thus far is limited to a few quick laps around a test course.
But the car, even in this early, pre-production state, seems pretty solid. I’ve never been a huge fan of this crossover vehicle form factor, so I wasn’t too blown away by the exterior — but the interior packs some tricks that caught my eye.
Namely, it’s deceptively spacious. I’m around 6′ tall on a good day, and I was comfy in every seat of the vehicle.
The touchscreen in the dash is snappy and, in my cursory experience, intuitive. I particularly liked the reverse camera setup; by merging a bunch of imagery from cameras around the car, it’s able to fake an overhead view of what’s around you. It’s trippy, and really, really fun to use.
Oh! And the rear view mirror! Check this thing out:
Flip the lever at the bottom one way, and it’s your standard rear view. Flip it the other way and it instantly transforms into an 80-degree view of whatever’s behind you by way of the rear-view cam.
I’m excited to give this thing a closer look as it heads to production at the end of 2016.
