From Diesel Truck to EV | Part 1

The unexpected journey of changing from a diesel truck to an electric car.

On June 17th, 2022 I picked up a 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV and chronicled my thoughts across several forum posts. I have now had the car for over a year with 15,022mi and will revisit the journey through a 4 part series. Overall, the EUV is an excellent, economical transportation appliance for the price.


This post is mainly about initial impressions and light mods. If you’re looking to read about life with an EV, environmental math, perspectives, and experiences please see Part 2 | 30 days of EV, Part 3 | 6mo of Bolty McBoltface, or the finale: Part 4 | 365 days of Appliance Car


2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV Launch Edition in Silver Flair Metallic

“Making the switch from diesel to electric is going to be odd.”

– Self, June 18th 2022

It doesn’t shift !
There’s only one gear !
It takes half an hour to fill up the “tank” at a DC Fast Charger !

– Self, June 18th 2022

The interior changes were pretty radical between my diesel 2016 Chevy Colorado Z71 and the EUV.

Some additional features the EUV has over my Colorado:

  • Panoramic sun roof
  • Super Cruise literally drives the car for me on divided interstates
  • Adaptive Cruise Control
  • Lane Keeping
  • Automatic wipers
  • Automatic headlights
  • Automatic high beams
  • 360* cameras with top down view for parking/low speed (Would have been nice on my Colorado !)
  • Rear view mirror that is a screen for the rear facing camera while driving !

1 Week Thoughts

Miles Driven: 692 Miles
Days since last gas station: 16
Charging Cost: $31.18 ($15.27 Home electricity + $15.91 DCFC)
Equivalent if diesel: $189.72*

Thoughts from this past week:

  • One pedal driving is awesome
  • So smooth and quiet
  • No gear shifting is crazy
  • Instant power/torque at any speed is dope
  • SuperCruise makes the miles FLY by.
  • Quite roomy when you have no engine burgoning into the firewall/dash.
  • Seats
  • Mods

Excellent gateway vehicle – Just enough ICE vehicle features and design for familiarity mixed in with EV peculiarities.

One pedal driving


Because EVs can recharge themselves with “Regenerative Braking” they usually have some form of one pedal driving. Initially this takes some getting used to, but I now love it for 2 reasons: Laziness and saving brakes.



Laziness: Imagine not having to press your foot on the brake at stoplights and also being able to feather the accel *or* brakes without moving your foot to another pedal.

Saving Brakes: One pedal driving does not operate like this, but imagine easing off the throttle and instead of coasting, the truck began to brake increasing in firmness to medium braking; that’s what it feels like but not how it operates. I’m not an EV engineer so I won’t be able to explain this in great detail, but it uses the electric motors to recharge the battery instead of using the friction brakes. The brake pads/rotors are not involved at all which obviously reduces wear on them. Some EV owners report in excess of 100k miles on original pads with plenty of life left.


So smooth and quiet, gear shifting, instant power


It’s crazy to have the same pedal response at 55mph as at 0mph. No engine noise (which I kind of miss), no exhaust noise, and no shifting. Just the very quiet whine of the motor, tires on the road, and wind noise. I can hear myself breathing in the car on the recently paved roads ! With the majority of the vehicle weight in the battery pack way down low, the car handles very well. Don’t get me wrong, I love the ride of my King suspension lifted truck, and I purposefully elevated the Center of Gravity in order to improve my approach/departure/break-over angles, but not having the car shift/load one side of the suspension during familiar curves is nice.

SuperCruise and roomyness


I recently drove 83miles each way to a neighboring city and ~60miles were SuperCruise. I basically sat in the front left passenger seat (formerly known as “driver seat”) and talked to my buddy the whole way there and back. I don’t have 100% faith in this system (trust issue ? Control issue ? Who knows) and paid just as much attention to the road as I would if I were driving, but across ~300miles of SuperCruise so far, I have had very few instances of the car making me nervous (usually was someone else veering into my lane) and zero instances of the car trying to kill me. Insert Project Farm, “Very impressive !“.

My 6′ tall jacked buddy even remarked on how much room he had in the front right passenger seat. He actually scooted the seat closer to the dash because he felt so far away from everything. I never noticed how far back the dash of my truck actually went, but not the case on the Bolt.


Seats


While at first the seats were a little stiff and definitely make me think GM did a collab with airline seat makers… they have begun breaking in like my Colorado’s, which also started off kinda stiff.

Mods


Really trying to take it easy on this car. Just did “the usual”:

Weathertech floorliners+sunshade
Wash, Tool Daily foam cannon, and Turtle Wax Hybrid Solutions Ceramic Spray Coating
T10 Interior LED lights (Phillips Ultinon LED 6000K)

Garmin DashCam Mini2

Extreme Outback No-Loss tire caps
Gerber Shard

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