Ex dealer service manager, former GM master tech and current Bolt owner here (3x.)
Nobody should buy a factory new battery pack from a dealership. Get a used one, get a reconditioned one or repair your existing pack with an independent shop. All of these options are a fraction of that cost.

Yeah, we still have the ‘19 Bolt we bought new and we’re very happy with it. If your lease has a good buyout price you might want to pull the trigger on that when the time comes if you’re not looking for a faster DC charge rate by then.

Me too, and there are tons of Bolts here. They are the value play for people who need a second car and want an EV to beat our ridiculous gas and service prices, and our local Chevy dealer stocks and sells loads of them.

Bolts are about $26k here in the US to start, or $19k with the federal tax credit. It’s a screaming deal for the power and range and that’s why Bolt sales have gone way up this year.

Ford is selling every Maverick it can build

Before the battery recall, my local chevy dealership maintained about two dozen 2017-2018 Bolts that were used for taxi/uber service. They all had nearly 200,000 miles on them or more on their original 4 to 5 year old batteries and were charged to 100% nearly every night since new - some were fast charged in addition…

Not if you need to use the car for road trips, live in an area that has real winters, live in a rural area, and/or don’t want to buy a Tesla.

Speaking as someone who has daily driven an EV for the last 4 years. BTW, plugging in every night is dead easy and takes 5 seconds.

Plug in hybrids are for single car households, particularly those where the car is used for a predictable daily commute and the car can be conveniently charged at home or work.

Hybrids are for those same people who may not have a way to charge at home.

For those of us who can charge at home and have a two car…

As long as you’re ok with around 14 mpg on the required premium fuel...

Ah, the days of Tony’s Tattoo and Transmission in dirty Jerz.

Sitting in an airport right now, waiting at the gate for my delayed Southwest flight. Plane is here but nobody is boarding.

That little engine is working too hard to get good mileage. A 1.5T with 40 more HP would likely get better mileage too.

Buick’s 1.2/1.3 triple engine choices for this and the Encore GX are mystifying. How much can be cost cut out of a car with one less connecting rod, piston, injector, spark plug and 4 fewer valves…

Those early single shock/single seat Sports are nice, and worth real money with low miles in good shape. I had the Ohlins front and rear suspension upgrades on my 2008 Sport 1000S and I sold that bike for $15k in 2012 and they’ve gone up from there. It would be worth seeing what that bike would sell for with the…

I owned a MH900e. Gorgeous to look at, terrible to actually ride. For so many reasons. The two Sport 1000S models I owned later were much better, but still incredibly painful due to the ergos. Don’t sweat missing the class action lawsuit fix, on the sport classics it was a set of cheap metal brackets to hold the…

Beats me, at this point. But consider how Tesla does business by comparison and that seems even worse in some ways. 5 price rises in a year, no dealers to discount slow moving inventory, no incentive to make a deal, no real service competition, they don’t sell parts to independent shops, you essentially have to go to…

I think that varies widely. Way back in 1994/5 during the first SUV craze I was a mechanic at a big Chevy/Honda/Geo dealership and we sold every single tahoe and suburban we could get our hands on for MSRP or better, and people would literally follow the transport trucks down the highway to try and buy then before…

We had a ‘13 Sonic LTZ 1.4T/6A hatch and a ‘13 Fit Sport 5mt, both bought new. Transaction price was similar, about $17,500 each. I drove both for ~5 years.

The Sonic had a far more comfortable ride (best in class), much quieter - as quiet as a 2019 mercedes E450, also best in class - and had much more torque down…

You nailed it -

It’s all of these, all at once, and making progress at one often hurts the other(s):
1) constant bean counter pressure to make parts cheaper/faster/easier to build
2) pressure to comply with ever tightening emissions standards
3) pressure to incrementally increase mileage by even the tiniest fraction to…

Yeah, that was my advice to them.

Honda supplied their V6 engine and accompanying automatic trans for use in some Saturn Vue SUVs, an engine that proved to be pretty reliable in that vehicle.

And Toyota has had major engine problems too - multiple years of engine oil sludging across multiple engines, and blown head gaskets come to mind. Not to mention…