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tbh I continue to say the i3 scale/weight was what mass market EV transportation should have been designed towards (and more efforts focused on public trans tha
by caycep 2y ago
tbh I continue to say the i3 scale/weight was what mass market EV transportation should have been designed towards (and more efforts focused on public trans than single/small n occupant cars). Societal/environmental cost of 6000-7000 lb behemoths erase any emissions gains from going EV.
- unsnap_biceps 2y agoI really wish they would have continued to make the i3 and reduce the cost. It was perfect for a lot of people but the price was just too high.
- caycep 2y agothe irony is that apparently it was the one model where the sales were going up year over year, vs. the usual initial high demand and subsequent decline of ICE models
- inhumantsar 2y agoSo basically the sub-$30k Chevy Bolt EV and EUV. US sales broke 60,000 units in 2023.
- 39896880 2y agoThe Bolt EUV is the perfect EV, and it’s a travesty that they stopped selling it. Hopefully the talk of them bringing it back is true.
- bsder 2y agoWTF is going on with the Chevy EVs? They dropped the Volt which you can only pry out of owners cold, dead hands. They dropped the Bolt EUV which seems to be similarly adored. What dumbass metric is causing these stupid decisions?
- 39896880 2y agoTheir CEO seems to be reacting to a perception that Chevy is “behind” and trying to get ahead of the market on EVs. If they were smart they’d still be making the Volt, since it’s an extremely reasonable PHEV that many people with garages in the US would appreciate. It would increase the number of electric miles driven.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoI have a Volt and love it - it's the perfect car for someone like me with a 30 mi round trip commute. Partner recently got the plugin hybrid version of the BMW X5 (gets about 50 miles on electric), and so far we love that car, too. Don't understand at all why GM doesn't make a PHEV SUV. They would be the perfect car for lots of people in the US.
- dpkirchner 2y agoThey don't need to bother. They got competition effectively banned at the border. Now we're stuck with the same mediocrity we've had for decades.
- 39896880 2y agoEh. If foreign carmakers want to compete in the US they can do what Toyota did and set up shop in the US. Employ Americans with market wages and under American labor standards. We had a generation of globalism. It gutted the middle class.
- dpkirchner 2y agoToyota did that because they saw the value of being in the US based on the then existing demand. Other manufacturers aren't getting that chance, and I'm not convinced those that banned 'em will be willing to let 'em manufacture here. Just look at how they're treating something with basically no stakes: TikTok.
- bastawhiz 2y agoThe biggest failing of the i3, in my opinion, is that it looked stupid. It was cheap and "dorky" looking for no obvious reason. There was nothing that stopped BMW from making it look like any of their other models but they chose to make it weird and different in a way that surely hurt its sales. A real shame, honestly.
- NewJazz 2y agoThe Bolt looked nearly as dorky and they sold plenty of those. Even with the battery recall. I doubt GM made much if any profit though. LG chemicals sure didn't. The Ioniq 5 looks way better than both and of course it is doing numbers as a result. i3 was just expensive, low range, and overall not a competitive EV in the NA market.
- bastawhiz 2y agoI can forgive price and range, because those are the sort of things that come with a company's first generation of EVs. But they didn't get anything else about it right. It's almost as though they were trying to have it fail so they could say "look, nobody wants EVs".
- potatochup 2y agoI think the bolt looks fine? Especially the 2022+ versions. Biggest issue is the 50kw max charging rate imo.
- NewJazz 2y agoThe newer versions look OK. But all of them are a little chrome heavy IMHO. It can look nice on larger cars, but because the bolt is so small, all the accents and flourishes seem jumbled together.
- caycep 2y agoIf range was the main criteria, of course it's not competitive. In weight (or lack of a weight penalty), power efficiency, vehicle handling dynamics, and size efficiency it was hugely competitive - for miles per kWh, it was not surpassed until the current get Ioniq/EV6 came out. Someone pointed out thought - in a scenario where you charge your car nightly like your phone, absolute range (and thus excessively large/heavy battery packs) should not be a main consideration. And one would think that the I3's carbon fiber chassis should need a much smaller battery to equal or surpass the range of a Cybertruck, for example.
- rangestransform 2y agopersonally, I'm more happy that 1000 hp is cheaper than ever before with the model s plaid