Originally published on CleanTechnica.
The celebrity science advocate Bill Nye (“The Science Guy”), best known for his work on the popular PBS educational series that uses his name, recently took delivery of a 2017 Chevy Bolt EV.
Nye is a strong climate activist and communicator, clearly concerned about the climate crisis we are facing.
The “Kinetic Blue” Bolt EV that Nye took delivery of around 3 weeks ago is apparently his 7th all-electric car to date — so he definitely has some experience driving older EV offerings. With that in mind, what does Nye think of the Bolt EV?
According to Nye, it’s “head and shoulders above the rest.”
“The rest” in this case refers to: the GM EV1, the BMW i3, the Nissan Leaf, the Volkswagen e-Golf, the Ford Focus Electric, and the Mini E. So, pretty much everything out there in western markets other than Tesla’s offerings.
Green Car Reports provides more:
“It has better visibility than his previous Leaf, especially the rear three-quarter view, and he loves the ‘bird’s eye’ top-down view assembled from the Bolt EV’s various cameras.
“He admits he’s still getting used to the video rear-view mirror — which makes it hard to judge how close a following car actually is. That’s a reaction we had too, driving both the Bolt EV and a Cadillac CT6 fitted with the GM electronic innovation.
“So far, he told us, his only quibbles are that he wouldn’t mind the driver’s seat to be a bit wider. He’d like the steering wheel to tilt over a wider range, too, because when the seat is properly set for him, the wheel rim blocks a portion of the instrument panel.”
The Bolt EV is now reportedly Nye’s “everyday car” — more or less meeting his general travel needs, without having to think abut range at all. He noted that he needs just under 100 miles of range every day in order to genuinely feel comfortable with the range of a fully electric car. The Bolt EV has 238 miles of range.
To close things off here, here’s a quote from Nye that was included in the coverage referenced above: “Who the hell wants to drive a combustion-engine car? People … come on!”
Photo by Oskar Liners, Community Chevrolet, Burbank
Reprinted with permission.
As usual here your intentions are good, but your relationship to facts isn’t. Those cars are rather far from “pretty much everything”. Off the top of my head, I think of the B-class electric, the ZOE (best selling EV in Europe, kind of a big omission), the e-Up, the iOn, C-Zero and i-MiEV, the Ioniq, the Soul… If we include earlier or some of the more obscure offerings there’s the 500e, the Fluence, Think, Reeva, Buddy, Kangoo, Partner, e-NV200 and surely several I forgot about.
Granted, the article doesn’t hinge on this point, but then again it is really little but fluff anyway. A sciency American semi celebrity likes the Bolt. End of story.
How many people have owned 7 EV’s? Several of the cars you mentioned are European, or not out yet. So, the Smart ED, the i MiEV, the Soul, and the B Class – are the ones he has not owned. Fewer than the ones he has owned.
Thanks for the details on what Bill Nye thinks about his Bolt EV. He is qualified to judge, for sure. I like this color, too.
The seats will be the key hurdle, for my family. Overall, it seems to be excellent.