The aesthetics that say, "I entered 'generic electric vehicle' on iStockPhoto, and this is what I got."? I own lots of TSLA, I'd even consider buying a Tesla when the Leaf dies, but that purchase would be despite the aesthetics of any Tesla, not because of.

But to each their own. As long as what's available today isn't the aesthetic equivalent of the Pontiac Aztek, I wouldn't put off a purchase for several years just for looks. Though I also own a Leaf and an original body style Scion xB, and I'm sad that the Honda Element is no longer made. Do not look to me for fashion advice.

Different strokes for different folks hey.

(but I will concede on one thing if we're talking about pure aesthetics: Tesla's "T" logo is really cool, Chevrolet's "+" is anything but. I honestly think they should change the logo. As established as that brand and logo may be, they should be targeting the newer generation... "Chevrolet" definitely does not scream cool to anyone born in the last 40 years)

The Bolt looks more like European cars than what we imagine 'American' cars looking like (though that has changed over the decades). We'll see many more like it as more people move to cities but still need cars.

Yeah, Chevy doesn't scream cool. I've had an Acura since 2003 and knock on wood will drive it until it's dead. I wouldn't put as much stock in an American-made car to last as long.

http://www.motortrend.com/cars/bmw/i3/2017/2017-bmw-i3-range...

Also used models in Denver are selling for 25k or less; might be the best deal in EV's right now.

It's like if IKEA designed a car. If I'm riding in a BMW, I expect a certain amount of luxury, not bamboo and vast open spaces where the dashboard should be.

I agree the Model 3 looks better than any of them.

Edit: I will say I like the look of the Ford Focus EV much better than the Bolt, it's quite a bit cheaper, and I like Ford better as a company, but the Focus EV has only about half the range of the Bolt.

While I see what you mean, this comparison isn't all that dissimilar to saying "No need to buy a 5 series BMW, you can get a Nissan Micra for less!"

I wouldn't imagine that a person looking to buy a large, fast sedan that can get from 0-100kph in under a handful of seconds is going to consider a small runabout in the same decision making process...

Because the interiors of Tesla cars are extremely poor compared to even the lowest end cars. Poor quality, cheap looking plastics and leathers. And the large screen looks tacky and easy to date.

The big digital displays were nice, but the rest of the interior seemed about on par for a Honda Fit or Chevy Sonic type vehicle, and significantly worse than something like a 2017 CRV (my daily driver).

It felt like a sub $20k car with electric guts and some (admittedly nice) tech gadgets added on. It's also weird that there is no adaptive cruise control available, a feature that's present now on some cars that are $10k cheaper.

To be fair haven't seen what the interior of a $35k Model 3 looks like either, all of the photos and units that have shipped have had the more expensive 'Premium' interior option.

It makes me worry about Tesla. Once GM, Ford and Toyota start churning these things out, how does Tesla support that valuation?

Anyway, Tesla isn't about dominating the /entire/ electric car market. They're a premium brand like Apple. They're not trying to make econobox cars. The Model 3 is probably close to the cheapest car they'll make.

And yeah, you can make really, really cheap electric cars. Just as cheap as conventional cars (and as we make advances in battery economics, nearly the same range... though the longer range ones will always have a slight mark-up).

But GM is not selling many Bolts and not planning to. It works as a halo car for them, and by only producing a few tens of thousands of EVs per year, GM can stretch out their EV credits for many years longer than Tesla. (The Bolt MSRPs for greater than the Model 3.)

The Bolt is also more vulnerable to a cut in the EV tax credit. (Tesla knew the credit would go away for them soon anyway.)

The Bolt also doesn't have access to the speedy and extensive Tesla supercharger network. This, besides the brand value, is one of Tesla's premier advantages over everyone else.

But I don't think it's necessary for everyone else to fail at electric cars in order for Tesla to succeed.

GM has announced many more electric vehicles.

Source on GM not selling many Bolts? Define "not many"... Definitely more Bolts are on the road than Tesla Model 3.

http://pushevs.com/2016/11/23/electric-cars-range-efficiency...

In addition, the guy mentioned commuted in, presumably on the highway.

This was in a 2012 Accord, not an EV. But yeah it seems do-able in a modern EV. Most urban dwellers daily driving is never more than like 20 miles all-day.

Luckily, it's only a matter of time before the electric motors start showing up in non-Bolt lines.

To my mind this is the number 1 thing that Tesla has done right with their vehicles. They don't sell "Electric Vehicles", they sell vehicles. Which kick ass. And happen to be electric.

it may have been the case 15 years ago. Not today. EV/plugins/hybrid appeal to very specific perceived sense of practicality, to which hatchback (single volume) design appeals too (speaking from my mind as i have Pruis Plugin, and in the past among others i did own a high end BMW, and our tastes/preferences do change with time). Notice that all popular and/or good sellers EV/plugins/hybrids are hatchbacks, be it Model S or Bolt or Prius. And in my opinion GM did very good job with Bolt styling. It fits exactly the target segment, where is Model 3 looks like cheapened Model S, not a good start. I mean it is a high skill to sell cheaper, yet not cheapened, models by a high end manufacturer, and for example Mercedes(especially) and BMW do it masterfully. GM, not being high-end one, with Bolt needed to do something what is really far from "bad" GM, yet still GM. For me it seems like they hit the target.

Edit: Yes of course, one pedal driving only applies to regenerative braking, normal brake pads are still engaged with a separate pedal. The Bolt works the same way. Imagine if simply releasing the accelerator slammed the brakes as hard as possible. That's a bad idea.

Supposedly, there is a recall mandated by NTSB that will mess up this 1 pedal driving. The NTSB does not like it because the brake lights do not turn on. I'm not having that done.

What I don't like is the "creep" that they put in to emulate an automatic (torque converter).

The NTSB must be ignoring the millions of manual-transmission vehicles which can be slowed down through engine braking without their brake lights turning on.

And you can easily get down to 5mph with engine braking, which is more than slow enough to be a problem if you don't have brake lights on.

Surely I'm not the only one terrified by this? Is there seriously a computer sitting between the pedal and the pads, and the pads don't move unless the computer says so?

the GM cars can work both ways, the L on the automatic puts in one pedal or as close to it as GM will allow. Using D is like any gas car and much simpler to stretch mileage for many in

The Leaf has that with B-mode although I think this area is ripe for improvement.

In B-mode or one pedal driving, when you take the foot off the pedal, rather than slowing down with aerodynamic drag, regen is engaged and those electrons are pumped back into the battery. On the Leaf and just about any EV or hybrid, when you brake, regenerative braking is used down to about 5 mph. Brakes last forever.

One pedal driving takes a little getting used to. Not a lot, but a little.

Presumably if I want to brake more slowly I need to keep my foot slightly on the gas.

Naively, the system seems wasteful. Regenerative breaking tops out at 80% efficiency I think, so I'd guess that you waste a lot if you remove the natural coasting null point of a two-pedal system and induce drivers to alternate between acceleration and deceleration. Maybe the idea is that if you encourage the driver to brake quickly using the regenerative system you recover more energy than if you coast slowly and bleed it into air resistance.

Yes. BTW, you mostly use B-mode on the highway. You don't get any advantage in stop and go traffic.

> What is the rate of braking when you take take your foot off the pedal?

It is greater than aerodynamic friction. What I like is that in emergency situations where you do brake, it brakes faster since in the interval between your foot on the accelerator and your foot hitting the brake, it's already braking.

> Does it take into account the car in front of you?

There may be cars that do this (Tesla?) but not the Leaf and probably not the Bolt.

One thing that makes me sad about Tesla's adaptive cruise control is that it's not as good as I am at never touching the real brakes -- it doesn't anticipate very well, and waits until it gets within 2-3 car-lengths (settable) before it even thinks about braking.

Is it comparable to engine braking in a manual transmission vehicle in at cruising RPMs?

(Note: By "Engine braking" I'm referring to throttle retardation in a typical non-diesel engine, not jake brakes on big diesels. I have no idea how powerful those are.)

Sure, but how much greater? How often do you find yourself wishing to break faster?

One of the things that sucks about my new truck is that 3rd gear is so efficient that I can no longer engine brake on many of the grades where I was able to do so in the past. It's a much less comfortable driving situation to have to brake periodically on the downhill.

You can coast, to do that you just keep your foot down enough to keep the regeneration from kicking in.

There's no free lunch. You don't recover meaningful energy by regenerating vs. coasting over the same distance. What you do recover is energy that would otherwise go into the air as heat in braking situations.

> You don't recover meaningful energy by regenerating vs. coasting over the same distance.

In fact, you lose net energy if you regeneratively break and then accelerate (vs just coasting) because it's only 80% efficient. So if the "default" position of the pedal is to be braking, rather than coasting, I naively expect it to induce more braking followed by more acceleration, wasting net energy.

The expectation is that if you reduce speed at a rate associated with braking that your brake lights should come on.

Would you call it a "velocitator" rather than an "accelerator" then?

Hopefully, GM will fix it on the next version.

I don't own a car with one of those rear-view cameras but am always fascinated to watch it. I worry I would trust it too much instead of what I'm used to.

Just a subjective opinion, but I find the look of the Bolt unimpressive. Seems way too busy. I much prefer the clean aesthetics of the Model 3

For people with multiple cars, it's not much of an issue for things to be just a little off (the plastic, the handles, the seat fabrics, steering wheel alignment, shavings on the dash board, etc.)--the Tesla is a show car and treated as such. For people who would use the Model 3 as their primary vehicle, the experience is subpar for its current price point compared to all other vehicles in its class (entry level luxury vehicles) or engine type (other EVs) and this is one of the difficulties Tesla will run into once it actually starts public shipments of the car. There's enough competition out there now that being an electric isn't enough to justify a premium price; the car has to have premium interiors as well.

Source: my boss has all of them. I ride shotgun quite frequently.

They do look great, but they feel cheap.

Luxury car buyers, fundamentally, are buying the logo, and the handful of obviously markers inside the car that tell people it's a Lexus or whatever. They aren't buying fit and finish, even if they think they are. Tesla buyers are no different: they want a Tesla, not a Lexus or a Mercedes.

I'm sure to the trained eye a Lexus has a different build than a Tesla, just as cheeses and wines are different. That's not what drives sales.

They want comfort, first and foremost. A Tesla nameplate means nothing on your daily commuter car if it's not pleasant to drive. A Lexus or a Mercedes, even at the entry level, provides a comfortable ride. The interiors feel luxurious. A Tesla does not. And that's the problem--it charges an entry-level luxury price but doesn't provide an entry-level luxury ride. Subjectively, I find that the Tesla's interiors aren't even as comfortable as the Bolt, and I'm not even including the many QC issues they have in that assessment.

The Tesla name might bring potential buyers to the dealership, but when you're targeting a road warrior, the interior is what sells the car.

At least one reviewer agrees: https://youtu.be/d2ogGZXmepY?t=626

1) Bolt is $2500 more than Model 3 pre-credit.

2) How well it rides is debatable, but it doesn't have anywhere near the same performance as Model 3. For instance, it has a motor power of 150 kW vs 300 kW for Model 3, and its acceleration is significantly worse, too.

3) It looks like a typical boxy hatchback.

Finally, we already know GM loses $9,000 per Bolt and it seems to have been losing 10,000 euro for the Bolt-based Ampera-E in Europe. What this tells us is that it's more of a compliance car/EV mascot for GM than a model they actually intend to have everywhere.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/30/gm-stands-to-lose-9000-dolla...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-peugeot-gm-opel-exclusive...

GM has sold 3,000 Bolt units so far in 2017. Tesla will sell hundreds of thousands of Model 3s in 2018. I don't think GM will be in a hurry to catch up to them going by those losses.

Well, if we're just going to pull stuff out of our arses, why not millions? Millions! of Model 3s sold in 2018!

For our readers at home, if you ever wondered what a real-life example of "FUD" looks like, this is as close as you'll come without a time machine to the 80s to witness IBM's marketing in person. Instead of making a valid comparison based on the reality of today, let's talk about what might happen tomorrow. And since tomorrow isn't here yet, we can make up whatever shit we want. Whether it's the capabilities of the new mainframe IBM's releasing next year, or how many cars Tesla is going to sell next year. Because comparing current products to what your company might produce next year is super easy when I can't buy a Model 3 today.

But more to the point, as a TSLA shareholder I find the idea of bringing up GM's losses laughable. Do you really want to go there, talking about who's making money manufacturing cars and who isn't? 'cuz I got some balance sheets you might want to take a look at.

But I also do not think Tesla can pull off a significant ramp up on the Model 3. I think numbers for next year will be below 100,000.

That's a damned fine point, as it's the one part of the supply chain GM doesn't control and can't take in-house over the short term. So we end up with a company that can build the hell out of some cars, but is constrained on batteries. Another has lots of batteries, but is still wet behind the ears when it comes to making cars. Hey, I have an idea...

Then again, Tesla is showing all the signs of a company that has grown too fast and with too much hubris.

The difference is, GM can actually manufacture the cars it sells.

The difference is that GM can afford to absorb the loss while it ramps up production. Tesla needs the Model 3 to be profitable, or the company dies.

[1]GAAP = generally accepted accounting principles. In other words, standardized methods of accounting for profit and loss. Tesla uses non-standard (i.e., non-GAAP) accounting in its financial reports to paint a rosier picture of its financial state than GAAP reporting would provide. Some people say that non-GAAP reporting paints a more accurate picture of a company than GAAP. This might be true for new industries that don't have sufficient history to establish industry-specific GAAP. However, the auto industry has been around for more than 100+ years, so the use of non-GAAP accounting by Tesla and Faraday is generally indicative of unstable financial health.

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/11/01/tesla-pi...

GM could should they choose to do so. They can certainly manufacture them, whereas Tesla's ability is questionable. But one has to sell them once their made. Oh, sure, you might buy a Tesla. Hell, I bought a Leaf, I might buy a Tesla. But you know who won't buy a Tesla? Everyone after the early adopters. GM's been making cars for over 100 years. Odds are really good that a potential customer has owned a GM. Odds are near zero that a potential Tesla customer has owned a Tesla before. For good or for bad, GM is a known quantity. Personally, I go back and forth before laying out money for a $700 phone that is a switch from my current phone. Now scale that up to a $35K car. Maybe you'll just take that out of petty cash from your last liquidity event. The rest of us will scrape together a down payment and hope we can make that monthly nut. And if you're doing that, you're going with the safe bet. The safe bet has a nation-wide network of dealers to work on it, has sold cars for 100 years, and isn't going out of business any time soon. The less-safe bet can't even tell you when you're getting your car +/- six months. In short, when we bought our Leaf, I knew it could easily turn into a $35K mistake, but we have the means and the risk tolerance. I would not make the mistake of projecting that to Mr. and Mrs. Middle America.

As of the beginning of November, GM has sold ~20,000 units in the US, with an additional 2000 or so in Canada 2017, not "3,000." As of the end of the year it'll probably be about 30,000 units sold if you include those from last year: http://gmauthority.com/blog/gm/chevrolet/chevrolet-bolt-ev/c...

The hypothesis that they lose $9000 on each unit was based on one analyst, and was contradicted by GM themselves and others: https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/20/ubs-chevy-bolt-drivetra...

Same people who tore down the Bolt and estimated these costs said it would cost far less in 2018, and also pointed out that Tesla's Model 3 costs are almost the same.

And indeed GM has already pre-announced a bunch of new models and says 20 electrified vehicles by the early 2020s, including two new ones late 2018, 2019.

LG Chem wouldn't be opening a brand new battery facility in Detroit if GM wasn't committing to production vehicles.

"Compliance" vehicles are vehicles like the Fiat 500e, or Rav 4 EV or Honda Clarity that sell only in states that mandate them. GM is selling the Bolt in all states and provinces, though has of course allocated more inventory to regions that have subsidies or incentives.

Demand has outstripped supply for the Bolt everywhere except California, where there is subsidized competition from above named compliance vehicles.

Unlike Tesla GM has to make a profit and doesn't have a seemingly infinite investor line of credit.

EDIT: even better sales numbers through November, demand outstripping supply, doing exceptional: https://insideevs.com/chevrolet-bolt-ev-continues-hot-sales-...

https://electrek.co/2017/11/01/chevy-bolt-ev-sales-record-us...

First thing, cheap? The Bolt starts at $37,495. Straight from GM's website. That is pretty much the same as the Model 3.

Electric, check. But with the Bolt, you are maxed out at 238 miles EPA range. With the model 3, your base is higher and if needed you can get over 300+, I believe the EPA just rated it out somewhere in the 320's for the Long range version. Perfect.

I think you are one of the few who would call the Bolt "slick", especially in relation to Tesla, but to each their own.

Rides excellent.. yeah, the Model 3 does that well, see MotorTrend's review even.. [1]

Parallel parking manually... that's cute. Model 3 does it autonomously.

I'm pretty lost on where you think the Model 3 fell short of expectations and isn't what it was intended to be?

To top it off, I just checked 5 Chevy dealers around me locally (I'm in the third largest metro in the U.S.) and not one had a Bolt in inventory. I have actually never seen one on the roads either. So the "you can get it today" argument is very limited to only a few markets... and that is a maybe.

Don't forget that the Chevy Bolt is also a compliance car. I'm sure the quality and engineering time put into it was top-notch.

[1] http://www.motortrend.com/cars/tesla/model-3/2018/exclusive-...