2022 Chevy Bolt EV | Your Next AFFORDABLE Electric Car?

Today we have the 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EV. This is the hatchback version, not the EUV, which is the bigger version. So this is smaller and less expensive. And really, when we go through this video, think about, should this be your next electric car? Compared to last year, this Bolt EV is refreshed, it's redesigned, it's got some new features, and it's $5,500 less than the previous model. So today we're gonna take a full look at the exterior, the interior, talk about how it drives and the charging and all of that. Then I'm gonna tell you exactly what I think about it. Let's go ahead and get started. Real quick, before we get started, my name is Nolan. I do reviews like this every single week. So if you wanna see more, be sure to subscribe down below. But also a huge thank you and shout out to Britain Chevrolet Cadillac in Greenville, Texas. They were super generous to let me take this Bolt out as soon as they got it and let me show you guys. If you're in the DFW area, please be sure to check them out. I'll put all their information in the description below. Let's take a look at the exterior here. So we have the Bolt EV1LT. There's the 1LT and the 2LT, and I'm gonna tell you all about the features on both of them. And starting right up front, first of all, you'll notice you don't have an opening for a grill because we don't need one because it's electric. But what do you think of this front end? It is revised all around compared to the last years of the Bolt, and check it out. This area right here is the daytime running light, but it also shares the sequential turn signal. I like the sequential turn signal. It's definitely unique, not something you always see. And then you actually have LED headlights standard on both models, and I believe it was HID last time, but now you've got full LED headlights up front. And this super bright blue paint is exactly what it is. It's called Bright Blue Metallic. It's a $400 optional paint. And if you're gonna go for a little funky electric car like this, you might as well go for a funky paint like this too. I think it looks pretty good. But with the redesign, it's a little more sleek, a little more modern. What do you guys think? Leave your comments down below. And as we take a look at the wheels, wheels on electric cars aren't always fancy because they're meant to be efficient, but these have the optional wheels. These are the optional 17 inch wheels with those inserts. These wheels will be standard on the 2LT, but they're optional here. And we actually get Michelin self-sealing tires, and I'll tell you why that's important later. It doesn't matter what your paint color is, you're gonna get these black capped mirrors with the chrome trim, and they work because you have this black running from the headlight all the way back to the mirror. And it's got a similar design to the last generation of, or the last year of the Bolt EV. Kind of have the same side profile. It's definitely a small car with dimensions at only 163 inches, so it's very compact, but it's got a lot more space inside than you would expect. And coming to the back, you've got this badging right here that looks pretty cool. Bolt EV with the little electric bolt in there. You've got LED taillights, and these are some unique looking taillights, plus the LED signal separated from the taillight down below. And of course, you don't have any exhaust outlets or anything like that, because you don't need them. All right, now let's take a look at the cargo area, and this is where this car might actually surprise you. There's a little touch pad under here, and then you can lift, and it'll kind of pop itself up on its own. And behind the second row, or behind these seats, there's not a ton of space, but wait till we fold them down. There's about 16 cubic feet right here. There is a cargo light over there, which is good to see. Of course, you've also got this cover because we have the hatchback, but also check this out. This is a false floor, so you can take this thing completely out. You can have it there. You can even put it back here if you want to separate some stuff or just leave it up. This is where the charging cord is. You can put that wherever you want, carry it with you if you want to. So when you get rid of that false floor, you've got a lot of covered storage, or you have a much taller area that you can store some stuff. And remember when I told you that these are self-sealing tires from Michelin if you get a puncture? That's important because you don't get a spare tire. This is a tire inflator kit, which was actually installed by the dealer as an option. I would definitely recommend having a kit like this just in case you get a flat tire because you don't get a spare tire on any bolts. Just for reference, there's my backpack there. So you can fit some suitcases, but it's definitely a little tight in the second area. And to fold the seats down, you come to the second row. It's a 40-60 split. And then it is actually fairly flat, and this gives you much more space, 57 cubic feet of space, especially when you take out that floor. You'll get a lot of extra room, especially because of the height here. So this could be a little more practical than a lot of you would have expected for this size of a vehicle. Now Chevy even gives you the smart key system on every bolt. So even this base one LT, and you get remote start. And the nice thing about remote start, you can remote start this electric car. Nobody's really even gonna know it's running and you won't be using any gas. And the way the smart key system works is there's no sensor in the back. It all goes with this button. So you press that to lock it or you press it to unlock it, and then you're good to go. Now let's take a look at these front seats and go ahead and hop inside. So on this base model, the one LT, you're gonna get these cloth seats. They have like a unique triangular kind of diamond looking pattern on them. You've got some mild bolstering, nothing aggressive with some contrast stitching. I kind of like that. You got this blue stitching that matches this blue car. And these are not power adjustable, but you can get leather power adjustable seats on the two LT. These are gonna be manual on the one LT, but you can get a power seat optional on the one LT. So you've got height adjustment, so you can move it up and down. You can recline it, and then you've got the manual scooting forward and backwards ability. There's just no lumbar support in here. And like I said, you can get power seats optional on this one LT, but you're gonna get leather seats on the two LT. With the power seats, they will also be heated here. The two LT is gonna be standard heated. So the standard setup right here, cloth, manual, not heated, at least in the US, but you can get power and heating. And comfort wise, Chevy actually said they improved these seats. And it's been a while since I was in the last Bolt, so I can't really remember, but in my short time in here, I don't have any complaints. The bolt spring seems okay. There's actually really good leg room in here too. So taller people, headroom is really good. I mean, you've got a tall ceiling. I'm five foot nine, so I've got tons of room, but bigger people can fit in here and you can probably stretch out. All right, now let's take a look at the backseat. And this is gonna be the same cloth material in here. I believe you'll get leather on the two LT, just like the front seats. But despite the size of the vehicle on the outside, the backseat is much more spacious than you think. Now, one thing to note is that there are no charging ports or air conditioning vents in the backseat. You have to rely on those, but this car, the whole cabin is not very big. So it shouldn't be a problem getting cooled off or heated up in the backseat. The other thing is there's not a center folding armrest right here. I wasn't really expecting that. It would be nice to see that, but let me show you the best part. At five foot nine, sitting behind myself, I actually have good knee space and foot space. I have the seat really low right now. And if you raised it up even a little bit, you'd have a lot of room for your feet, but a lot of space for my knees, considering just how short this car actually is. And check it out, sitting up tall, no problems at all. Five foot nine, of course, I'm gonna have good headroom pretty much everywhere I go, but not always the case in backseats. But I have plenty in this bolt, so you can fit some adults back here, no problem. Now let's go ahead and start it up. So there's push button start right there. And then of course, there's really no startup sound. You just get the, you know, the gauge turns on, the displays turn on, but it's just very, very quiet. And that's what you get in these EVs. And for this 2022 model, the interior is redone a little bit. It definitely still resembles the last year, but it's a little bit more modern and Chevy wanted it to still be a good layout and just nicer overall. And real quick, just a quick note on the interior, we have the optional driver confidence package, which is available on this LT, standard on the two LT, and it gives us the blind spot indicators with the lane change alert, rear parking sensors and rear cross traffic alert. So when you're backing up and somebody's crossing, you are gonna drive behind you, it'll let you know. That's an option and we have it on this model. This will not come with adaptive cruise control, but the two LT model will come standard with adaptive cruise control. If you want the super cruise, the best technology cruise control, autonomous type driving, you can get that on the Bolt EUV, the utility vehicle. Okay, so right in front of us, we actually get kind of a flat bottom steering wheel. This looks nice, it feels nice. It is not leather wrapped on this one LT, but it will be a heated leather wrapped steering wheel on the two LT, at least in the US. And I think it just looks good. The controls are very similar to other GM models with the way that they are laid out, very simple and easy to use. And you even have, we'll go through this in the test drive, but this is for on-demand regenerative braking. So I'll show you how to use that and when you might wanna use that to help charge your battery while you're driving. And then over on the door, you've kind of got a unique style with this little swoop that comes down to match the outside body. You have nice materials up here. This is actually all soft. You have a cloth material on your arm rest. There's not a lot of padding, but it's still a decent place to rest your arm, good grab handle, and then one automatic one touch window. And down here, there's actually a lot of storage. And as you can see, my big tall bottle fits in there. Perfect. All of your light controls for your exterior and your interior lighting is right here. And then check this out right in front of us. We get this digital cluster in front of us. This is similar to the 2020 models, but it gives you quite a bit of information. So as you can see, you have the digital speedometer in the middle. You've got your trip or not your trip, but your range on the left, the minimum that it thinks you can get and the maximum that it thinks you can get on your current charge. And then on the right, it's kind of like an instantaneous fuel economy on how much power you're actually using at one time. And then using your steering wheel, you can scroll through different information and you can choose different information that you want to see right here as well. So if I go ahead and use the steering wheel, you can see audio, navigation, phone controls. There's a lot that you can do. You can even lightly change the layout from modern to enhanced. I like enhanced because on the right, you can see a little bit more of how much power you're actually using and the full range of what is available for your actual driving range. And then you go down to settings. And like I said, there's still quite a bit that you can change and customize on here. And there's still a lot of available good information. Now coming over here, this again is still kind of similar to the 2020 model, but check it out. You have wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. That wireless CarPlay and Android Auto is standard on both the base LT and the two LT. You can plug in down there to actually get your stuff started. But once you have it going, you can do wireless just like every time you get in the car, which works great. And if we want to just get back to the main menu, you do have a home button over there. You have a volume knob. This scrolling knob is good because you don't even have to touch the screen. You can move this around. So let's go up to energy, select, and you can see some charging information. When you actually have it plugged in and you're charging, you can see what time it will be done, depending on which charging cable you're using. If we go over to energy, this will show you basically the state of your battery. When you're driving, you can even see this as well. If you want to, you can see what has impacted your range. So you can definitely improve and get better at your range as you get used to driving the car. But just like a typical GM and Chevrolet, you have the same system right here, audio, all the necessary controls that you need to be able to customize different settings. So there's a lot of different things you can customize as well. This does have the teen driver, which gives you a bunch of information on if you want, you know, if your teenager is driving the car, it'll allow you to set restrictions and things like that. But overall, the screen is really large. It's very easy to see, even though it is tilted upright. In my short time, I have not had any glare issues at all. And I like how we still have some actual physical controls over there, but we do have the piano black that goes around it, which is just really good at collecting lint and dust and fingerprints. And then moving down from there, we've got automatic single zone climate control right here. So temperature controls, fan speed, you can have it set to automatic. You can customize a little bit of that stuff on here as well. And the interesting thing is you can faintly see where the heated steering wheel button is, the heated seat buttons are, but we don't have those. They're just fixed. They don't move. So if you move up to the 2LT, you'll get some of those controls, but we don't have them in here. So it's fairly simple and basic with the controls there. And then we've got a couple of charging ports, a type C and a regular SD card slot and a 12 volt power outlet and a little storage bin there as well. The 2LT can get wireless charging optional. I'm not sure if it's going to be down there. My guess is that it will be, but you can't get it on the 1LT. Then from there, you actually get this flag is for sport mode, traction control, and then your lane keeping system to turn that off or on. Then you've got a push button shifter here. So park, reverse, neutral. You just put your foot on the brake, pull back or pull back or press. It's pretty simple. Well, let's go into reverse. So this has a regular backup camera with dynamic lines. You can get rid of those too, if you want. And it's actually a pretty big view because it takes up the whole screen, which is cool. So this is just your normal view, but on the 2LT you will get the surround vision camera, which is like a 360 camera where you see all angles of the car. And then this little button right here is the one pedal driving button. And we'll go through that in the test drive. It's pretty cool what it's like to drive with that electronic parking brake. And then this is a great little spot to store your key. Fits it just perfect in there. Now, one complaint I have had with a lot of GM vehicles lately is the cup holders. They're just small and they're fixed. They don't accommodate larger bottom drinks very well at all, but at least it fits in both doors. So that's a plus, but just one complaint. Then check it out. Below the center console, you've got even more storage right here. So there's just an extra space to hide some stuff. And then our armrest, it's not real soft and padded, but it's got a little bit. It is fairly narrow because this is not a very wide car. And you've got a really good size storage bin inside considering how skinny it is. It's really pretty deep. It does not have a locking glove box, but it's got a soft opening glove box and you kind of have some softer material up there on the dash. And then right up above, we have the regular manual flipping mirror, but you'll get an automatic dimming mirror on the 2LT or even optional on this 1LT. And then up overhead, you will not find a sunroof slash moonroof in here, but check it out with the visibility. You've got the window, like the little corner pocket window. That actually does help with visibility. It's pretty unique. The visibility is really interesting because the front part of the car feels really pushed forward. So I feel like I can see quite well out here. And then as we look out the back, window size isn't too bad. Back pillar is a little bit large, but I can actually see out of that rear window better than a lot of crossovers nowadays. Okay, so obviously you know this is an electric vehicle. That's what EV stands for. So we don't have a gas engine under the hood, but we're under here anyways because we have what propels this vehicle, which is an electric motor, one electric motor and a lithium ion battery. Propulsion is gonna be about 200 horsepower and 266 pound feet of torque. And that's actually pretty peppy. And there's a big difference driving an electric car versus a gas car. And we'll talk about that in the test drive. This can actually go zero to 60 in about six and a half seconds, which is pretty quick. And the best part about this Bolt EV, considering its price, is that it's electric driving range. So its total range of driving on a full charge is 259 miles. That's a little bit more than the Bolt EUV, the utility vehicle, which is a little bit bigger. And if you're concerned about the electrical components, this has a warranty of eight years or a hundred thousand miles on the battery, the lithium ion battery and the electric propulsion components. Now let's move on to charging. Charging is the next step. It's a little bit more complicated than just going to a gas station and putting the pump in, you know, and pumping gas. You've got this right here, just like a regular gas tank would. And then your Bolt is going to come standard with this charging cord. It's got just a regular three-prong outlet. So you can plug this into any kind of regular three-prong 120 volt power outlet, like at home in your garage. And then you've got the other end. All you gotta do, plug it in. It'll click and then it'll start charging. That's called level one charging. That's definitely going to be the slowest charge, but your car will let you know how many miles or how long it's going to take to get to a certain amount of miles or how long it's going to take to get to a full charge. Then there's level two charging, which is a 240 volt plug, like an appliance plug-in that's going to give you 39 miles of range per hour of charge. And then DC fast charging is going to give you 100 miles of range in 30 minutes. The DC fast charging is a lot of what you'll see at, you know, certain stores that have the big, the big machines that can charge or like actual charging lots where you can go and plug in your car. So there's going to be a lot of places you can go, maybe a grocery store that you go to. You can park, plug your car in while you shop, and you'll have a full charge or plenty of charge by the time you get back to your vehicle. And if you want to see more information about the charging, I'll put a link in the description below of what Chevrolet says about the different charging and how you can even get a 240 volt plug-in put into your garage. So you could just plug it in and be good to go right away overnight. All right, y'all, we are now behind the wheel, and I just want you to get an idea of what it's like to drive an electric car. I'll talk about the differences of this versus gas model. We'll do some regenerative braking. We'll do one pedal driving, and I'll tell you kind of ride comfort, acceleration, and just day-to-day driving with this. I got to drive the 2020 Bolt EV for a week's time, and I really started to like it. I mean, it's quiet. I mean, you don't hear hardly anything except a little interesting electric car noise that you get with any electric car at very low speeds, but it's just darn quiet. You don't hear a thing, and the thing with electric cars is the second you touch the accelerator, you go. That was just partial pedal. It's because the torque is just instantaneous. Like a gas engine, you have to wait for either a turbo to kick in or RPMs to climb, but in an electric car, it's just boom, you just go. They're perfect for city driving. They can even be fun if you want them to be. Now, that's why some Teslas, people love the fact that the most expensive Teslas go really fast because they're so quick. Just cruising along, just in normal mode. It's quiet. You're not gonna notice hardly anything with it, and the ride comfort of the Bolt is kind of on the taut side. There's some surfaces where it feels kind of stiff, but then there's some that you hit some bumps and you're like, oh, that wasn't bad at all. It soaks things up, but it's a little more tighter suspension than some other cars. But for vehicles this size, this is about what you would expect. We're just cruising along. So I'm just kind of coasting now. I'm gonna hit the regenerative braking paddle. When I hold that in, it starts to brake. It starts to regeneratively brake. So what that means is that it's capturing energy without me actually pushing on the brake pedal. Then I let go, I can coast, press it again, and it brings me to a stop. So you can use the regenerative braking paddle basically as a brake, but you're not really using your brakes. You're recapturing energy. So you're essentially partially recharging your battery a little bit. And then I'm gonna put it in one pedal driving. The one pedal driving is interesting because it's like basically having the regenerative brakes on all the time. So you're regeneration, so you're capturing as much energy as possible. Just push that button. Without pushing on the brake, it is slowing me way down to where you essentially could probably drive this car most of the time without touching the brake pedal. So I'm on the accelerator, start to let off the accelerator, and it's braking for me. I'm not touching the brake pedal at all. So something that definitely takes a little bit of getting used to. And I'm driving in town right now because this is the most ideal scenario for electric cars is in town driving. The more braking you can do, the more coasting you can do, the more range you're gonna have. If you're on the interstate going 70 miles an hour, straight shoot, constant acceleration, just holding it, it's gonna go through your battery pretty quickly. And then if we get on it a little bit, whoop, geez, that's one thing about this. It's only front wheel drive. And you can definitely, I wish it was all wheel drive just because the torque is so crazy on these cars that you can spin the wheels really easily. But one pedal driving still, just cruising through town, and I'm gonna, well, there's a car behind me now, so I'm not gonna do it. But if I let off the accelerator, here we go, it starts slowing me down automatically. And it shows a regen symbol down there, and it shows your power usage goes into the green. So it shows that you're recapturing that energy. So it's definitely something you have to experience to really kind of understand what I'm talking about. And another thing you can look at when you're driving, you know, with gas cars, you have miles per gallon. With the electric cars, your battery is kind of a way to look at your gas tank. Your battery has 65 kilowatt hours available, and you can see how many miles you can get per kilowatt hour. So you can just multiply them and see what your range is based off what you're getting in real time. Now, I'm gonna take it out of one pedal mode. So we're just in normal mode now, and I'll probably put it in sport mode for just a second up here. Acceleration is so smooth and so seamless in these electric cars, and it actually handles fairly well. Now, got it in sport mode. And if I floored it, we would probably spin out a little bit, but I mean, just partial acceleration, it just pulls and get you up to speed so fast. And one thing I wanna make a note of in this Bolt is that you actually sit up a little higher than you'd probably expect compared to, for example, like a Tesla sedan, you know, the Model 3 kind of thing. So it's a little bit higher, feels a little bit more upright, and I kinda like that aspect about it. And as far as road noise, I don't have, I have decibel ratings on the former Bolt EV. I can't remember how good those were. I don't have any on this one, but I pulled into a parking lot and there was a big mower, somebody mowing, not far over there. And I didn't even know they were mowing until I rolled the window down. So it definitely blocks out some sound. I can hear some, you're gonna hear some road noise, but it's definitely not bad. But let's go ahead and wrap things up on this Bolt EV. So to wrap things up on this 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EV, it's an affordable electric car. When you look at all the electric cars and you look at the range, this has good range. It's low priced. It's got a lot more space inside than you would think. And some features that some of you might really appreciate, especially when you get to the 2LT model. But I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you're considering an electric car, would you consider this Bolt EV? Maybe you'll go for the Bolt EUV, which is a little bit bigger and longer, but a little bit more expensive with less range. So let me know what you think of this 2022 Bolt EV. Do you like what they did with it? Are you considering an electric car yourself? Leave your comments down below. Thank you so much for watching. Be sure to subscribe if you wanna see more videos like this and hit the thumbs up button if you liked it. Have a great day.