The thoroughbreds weren't running that morning. I was in the parking lot of the Santa Anita Park horse track, east of Los Angeles, for a different sort of race. The orange cones demarcate an autocross course that a solid driver in a high-performing car should be able to complete in about a minute.
Ready?
Yep. I slam my foot down, and the Bolt launches forward. “Focus on those pointer cones, really you’re going to drive to those,” says Mike Burns, a Chevy performance engineer who's riding shotgun. The weird quiet of the hatchback is, well, disquieting, and belies my rapid progress. “It’s a left, right, left, into a long right hand corner here—too fast, too fast!” hollers Burns as I come out of one corner into the next, the tires squealing out a solo, without a roaring engine to accompany them.
I drive another few laps, getting my time down to 57.28 seconds before swapping from my grey Bolt to an orange one with stickier summer tires (55.32 seconds). I then do a couple of laps in a Volkswagen Golf GTI, the internally combustioned hot hatch that’s always cited as a benchmark for fun, and which Chevy has rented for comparison (57.18 seconds).
Chevrolet orchestrated this whole thing to prove that electric cars can be a blast, even when they don't run you six figures or come with a Tesla badge. My grin, as well as my official times, say they've succeeded.
You can buy a Bolt for $36,620 (before tax credits and other incentives), and Elon Musk promises the Model 3 version that costs $35,000 will arrive soon. You can go cheaper, with a $30,000 Nissan Leaf. But if that's still a bit rich for your taste—and it will be for many—there's good news. You can go even cheaper with a used electric, and still get a usable, practical, fun car. A few years into the nascent age of EVs, many cars are coming off two- or three-year leases. Plenty are available for under $10,000, and still carry warranties on the batteries and drivetrains. They need less maintenance than a gas-powered car, and charging is cheaper than filling up, especially as fuel prices rise.
“There’s a newfound interest in these vehicles, which can be an incredible bargain,” says Eric Ibara, director of residual values at Kelley Blue Book. “From the get-go, they haven’t retained their value as well as normal cars, and as a result they’re quite a bargain after three or four years.”
Sure, the specs aren't quite up there with a fancy new all-electric, but even if a 0-60 mph time looks slowish on paper (and a lot do now that Tesla has set that bar stratospherically high), most EVs still feel super-responsive, with the full torque of the motors available from a standstill. And they handle surprisingly well, because the heavy batteries are often low in the body or built into the floor, lowering the center of gravity. “If you tune your suspension to that, you can have a very rigid platform to build off and provide good dynamic capabilities,” says Burns.
Key to finding the right car is being realistic about the range you need. The Bolt is good for 238 miles, but the older, cheaper EVs tend to post numbers in the double digits. That may not giving buyers anxiety the way it used to, thanks to better familiarity with EVs in general, and more charging stations, which are easier to use. Four big charging networks—Electrify America, EV Connect, Greenlots, and SemaConnect—have just joined forces, for example, to make a network of 12,500 chargers across the US. And if you've got a garage or driveway, you can probably install a charger at home.
Automakers have spent years chasing the 200- or even 300-mile range figure, figuring that's what it would take to compete with gas-powered cars. They might have been right, but the results tended to be big, heavy, and expensive things. The most robust EVs now hitting the market come with luxury badges: The Jaguar I-Pace, Audi E-tron SUV, and Mercedes EQC all cost $60,000 and up.
But many buyers won't need so much range or power. An aging, even dinky EV might work just fine.
“I basically do three types of trips,” says Los Angeles resident Randal Miles, who is looking to trade his 2002 VW Jetta for an electric. “The vast majority is my 20-mile round trip commute, and I can do a shorter road trip in any car that has fast charging.” For those rare, super-long drives, he can rent a car, and likely still save money compared with his current gasoline bill.
Miles is checking out the BMW i3, which he’s found gently used for $16,000 to $18,000, and also the Chevrolet Spark, which has been around for five years, predating the Bolt. It has a relatively tiny battery at 20 kWh, good for just 82 miles. But because the battery is so small, it tops up from a DC fast charger in a mere 20 minutes—so you might have to stop often on a road trip, but not for long. It’s nimble to drive around town, and Miles has found some for sale in the $8,000 range, or one-quarter the price of a (not yet available) base Model 3.
A trawl through used listings reveals cheap looking Nissan Leafs, Fiat 500e, VW e-Golfs, Kia Soul EVs, Ford Focus EVs, and more. (If you're wedded to the idea of burning gasoline on occasion, you can snag an old Chevy Volt.)
If you want to join this electric bandwagon, though, you may want to jump on it. Ibara’s research shows that other people are catching on to the appeal of the cheap EV. “Over the last six to nine months, we’ve seen a resurgence in used EV values,” he says. That may be because gas prices have been creeping up, and it may not last forever, with a new class of 200-mile plus, electric cars entering the top of the market.
“EVs make my regular car seem so outdated, so old-timey,” says Miles. Time to buy into a cut-price version of the future. Just be nicer to your tires than I was to the Chevrolet Bolt's, and you should be able to find a car that goes for miles and miles, no muss, no fuss.
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