GregHowley.com

I'm driving an electric car now, and I love it. This past September, my old Corolla began losing power on the highway - turns out that it had a cracked cylinder or something - so I was forced to go car shopping.

My current commute is about 50 miles each way, or about two hours round trip, which may not match the Brewster, NY to Hartford commute or the Canon City to Colorado Springs commute, but it's pretty far. I'd been spending roughly $500 each month on gas, so I wanted to look at options that would save me some money. An early front-runner was the Prius Prime, a plug-in hybrid. My reasoning was that I could plan to make the drive using battery only, and use gas only when the battery ran out. But I found out that's not the way the car works, and that highway driving reverts to use of the internal combustion engine even if the battery is charged. So the car dealer pointed out some fully electric vehicles, and I hesitantly began looking at them.

A good friend of mine drives a Tesla, and even before Elon came out as a first class asshat, I knew that I didn't love the Tesla's screen-first operation. Having some manual (or at least manual-feeling) components just feels good. Nobody wants a car with lag. And so largely based on the surprisingly low price tag, I went with a 2023 Chevrolet Bolt EUV.

I've always preferred smaller cars, and had I known that EUV stood for Electric Utility Vehicle, that may have put me off. Similarly, I've never been much a fan of American cars. I do like Toyotas, and I loved my 2005 Volkswagen Jetta, but I was initially hesitant on a Chevrolet. But it drives very smoothly, and six months in, I'm very happy with the car.

I'm now buying zero gas, obviously. We had a level 2 charger installed on the side of our house, and the state paid for the bulk of the charger and for the installation. The ChargePoint app tracks how much electricity we spend charging on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. The rates have spiked as winter has progressed. For roughly the same amount of electricity, I spent $62 in November, $78 in December, and $133 in January. But when compared to the $500 I'd been spending on gas, it's nothing. The difference is more than my car payment, so in many ways it's as if I got a free car.

I'm still riding that new car feeling, despite the fact that the car was used and that it's been six months. I've done what I can to spiff the car up a bit - I bought a custom license plate holder, and I got a really nice set of thick rubber floor mats from a rando on r/ChevyBoltEUV for half off. After realizing that plugging the car in while it's dark is difficult, and that the Chevy lighted charge port mod costs way too much, I found a beautifully functional $30 LED online that fits neatly into the charge port with double stick tape and turns off when not in use. If I wait until around 9pm before plugging in, I get electricity on the off-peak rate, and if I charge at least 80% at off-peak times, we get a nice $10/month credit on the electric bill.

Our driveway is extremely narrow - I often joke that the driveways in West Hartford are almost wide enough for a car - and so arranging our three cars in the driveway in the correct order each evening has been a pain. I usually leave first, but my car needs to be far enough forward to plug in, so I'll often need to move my daughter's car when leaving. Eh - first world problems.

Electric cars have a far higher torque than traditional ICE cars, and I've noticed that the acceleration is extremely good, especially on the highway when changing lanes. But I've also noticed that if I take off from a stoplight too quickly, the tires will sometimes spin, especially if I'm turning at all as I accelerate.

There are a few things that annoy me about the car. One is that it comes with Sirius satellite radio, and there's no way to get rid of that. If I hit the wrong button sometimes, Sirius comes on and tells me that I should get a subscription, which drives me nuts. There's nothing that Sirius could give me that I can't get from my phone. The car also comes with OnStar, and includes a few hard buttons for using it. I peeked at the monthly prices, and I likely wouldn't pay for it even if it cost 25% of what it does. It's required in order to monitor my car's battery while I'm not sitting in the car, which is also an annoyance. The MyChevy app is also garbage, and I have yet to identify a single thing that the app does which I should have any interest in doing.

But the Bolt Euv drives wonderfully, and I'll no longer have to buy gas, get emission inspections, oil changes, or the vast majority of repairs that the overengineered traditional internal combustion engine requires. Even brakes generally don't need to be replaced in an electric vehicle, since you're usually braking with the car's engine rather than the brake pads. Maintenance is really just replacing tires, wiper blades, wiper fluid, and air filters. The primary battery will likely outlast the car's metal body.

I've not yet ever made use of public charging. I can charge for free at work, and I plug in at home most nights. My car gets over 200 miles of range in good weather, and is down to a low of 130 miles in the coldest part of the winter, so longer road trips might have to rely on an old school gas car until we eventually get an electric with a bigger battery. But bottom line? I'm very happy with the car.