I mentioned Bolt and EV's in general to a neighbor. We've been friends for 40 years. Her reaction: She was dead serious:

No!!! Don't do it!!! Everyone's getting electrocuted in them!!!!

She works for the radio network that broadcasts four hours of Limbaugh daily.


And I recently posted the following in another thread here:

There are some interesting comments over on Reddit based on reading this Motor Trend 3-car review.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BoltEV/comm..._ev_vs_nissan/

I was amused that someone in Texas said the local ******** with dually pickups won't roll coal - "drop a small Chinese factory" - on a Bolt like they do to a Tesla or Prius - because they don't recognize it's an EV.

Where are you located?

 

On a more serious note - see this post over on another board where I made inquiries about the Bolt and got surprisingly hostile replies.
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/...elated-topics/378559-electric-cars-chev-bolt-seems-post4771111.html#post4771111

That was after I posted this link describing Volvo's plans:

Article: Volvo won't develop diesel engines any longer, will shift effort to EV's.

and farther down the page got this response:

Oh, we understand, be careful though, you'll end up in a dumpster someday.

That thread (I initiated it) ran to 890 replies before the moderators decided it was too controversial for their preferred demographic (mostly hobby farmers with disposable income, majority retired), and locked the thread.

It would take hours to read that whole thread but in addition to revealing a couple of loons, there were specialists in electrical generation and transmission, and numerous EV owners and other interested parties, who certainly broadened most readers' understanding of the EV revolution.

 

It would take hours to read that whole thread but in addition to revealing a couple of loons, there were specialists in electrical generation and transmission, and numerous EV owners and other interested parties, who certainly broadened most readers' understanding of the EV revolution.

And this is how it needs to go. Person to person getting the truth out there. There are a lot of people that have serious distrust of EV owners because they think we are all a bunch of communists that are plotting to force everyone to either buy an electric car and junk their current car, or junk their current car and ride a bicycle by law. There are some EVangelists out there do dream of these things, but I think the vast majority of EV enthusiasts are pretty ordinary folks who like all the advantages of driving electric.

If we ever hope to make BEVs "normal" all through out the land, we need to refrain from lecturing people. Telling people that they are ruining the planet wasting precious resources by driving whatever they own is not helpful. IMO, whenever discussing BEVs with non believers the subject of the environment and the word "sustainable" shouldn't even come up. Talk about all awesome advantages we enjoy, like major fuel savings, silent driving, excellent acceleration and torque and bets of all, almost no maintenance.

 

Unless you are driving a new car yourself, you don't notice Other People's Cars. The Age of Car Spotting died with the advent of the smart phone.

 

Most of this stems from the Prius drivers in the left lane holding up traffic. Don't be that guy!
I still hate driving near/around Prius drivers because most are clueless and dangerous, IMO.

 

Where I live, Prius drivers are some of the fastest. Most are going 80. I think the people that have to commute hate their commutes so much that they feel they have to drive pretty fast to get it over with. Then they look at their fuel bill every month and decide to get a Prius so they can have their cake and eat it too. Anyhow, here in the Bay Area there is no fast lane and slow lane. There is just a bunch of whatever you want to do lanes.

I just wish everyone could just chill the heck out on the highways. Why we have to be so hateful and competitive is beyond me.

 

My Volt never got negative remarks and most people thought it was really neat, especially if I took them for a ride in it. And my town/county is very conservative and Republican, as I am. Negative remarks/gestures about my driving? Well I never claimed to be a great driver.

Now I will say that on my test drive in the Bolt I got honked at by a car behind me. I had the thing in Sport and Low and the deceleration is very dramatic when the foot comes off the pedal. Folks are used to seeing brake lights on a quickly decelerating vehicle and I guess the Bolt's don't at less than 0.2 g. And the road was slick in spots due to ice and snow.

Was I angry at the honker because he was technically tailgating me? No. Rather, I learned a lesson - for safety reasons stay in D and use the brake pedal as normal. Save L for when it's really needed. And use the turn signals.

Be assured I won't be holding up the fast lane, one big reason I bought the Bolt is this thing is fast. And, since a chunk of the local grid is wind power and the rest is natgas, it's guilt free waste.

 

HAHA. I know exactly what you mean. I am interested in the Bolt for the technology and am considering buying a used one when the lease turn in cars flood the market. Hopefully then they will be much cheaper.

In conversation with others, they were mostly negative. Most of the men said things like "You will need to turn in your man card if you get one" or "I didn't know you were a homosexual"......

I googled the topic and found an article on this exact subject but I can not post links. My account is too new.

Apparently, this thinking is growing out there. Who knew?

 

If you want to know what contempt and raw hate is like, try riding a Segway among hardcore bicyclists.

 

Oh that would do it for sure!

 

When I think about this topic more, at least here in California where the daily commutes can be tedious, long, frustrating and crammed, one of the great benefits of an EV is the use of the HOV lane, where I pass by at 65 mph while all other lanes are at a standstill. The CHP motorcycle officer makes a morning appearance to cite maybe 2 to 5 vehicles who tempted fate by using the HOV lane, and they each have to pay a $461 fine or so.

The whole idea of creating a privileged commute for one type of vehicle over another is social engineering, to get people to behave in a preferred way, and to punish those who behave in ways the political class doesn't want them to behave. This certainly builds resentment, especially considering the subsidies which the political class confers upon the privileged which the crammed lanes have to pay for.

Historically, the HOV lane grew from the need to get commuters to share their cars for multiple occupancy and the past history of horrific smog from old, unclean ICE technology, and this was before the man-made global warming scam came about.

 

You're not serious are you? Cherry picking from the 1% of scientific papers that ignore/conflict objective observation/truths to support your religious, cultural, political or economic philosophy discredits your contributions.

To the OP, I have had one run in with a belligerent couple, ICEing a charging station but I find the most effective route to enlightening the less informed is to respond to those truly interested to learn/understand in a polite non-judgmental tone with facts. Not just the positives but also the few negatives. It's quite disarming when someone that may lean towards the Trump agenda starts the conversation about how it's not fair that their tax dollars go towards the EV tax credit when in fact none of their tax dollars end up in my pocket since it's a credit, not a rebate. Then follow it up with the Gas/Oil subsidies ($50b+/year) of the past 100 years which my tax dollars do support. Arm yourself with as much information based on facts as you can and you'll find that you will quickly become the go to guy for any questions regarding EV's. I'm my circle of family and friends, I've already seen the wall crumble with some and those that will never change their minds even when confronted with the facts, know to not even bring up the subject anymore.

 

I read a bit of that tractor thread, and frankly I thought it was just a couple good ol boys trolling the thread.

Happens. Esp on fora. If the 'trollers' in question are good standing members...what's a mod to do?

I've been driving BEVs in suburban Philly for almost 4 years, and never got any verbal attitude from anyone. And personally, I am in a liberal-geek-engineer bubble, and never got any response worse than bored.

I do have a clear '100% electric' label on my EVs (previously a LEAF, now a Bolt), b/c I think just seeing them in the wild is key to getting people to consider the tech going forward. But I have shied away from anything more in people's faces or political.

 

I live in Tea Party country. Back under Bush 2, the right was still OK with EVs. Once Obama was prez, EVs became Obama-mobiles. A few on the far right are still EV supporters because of the middle-east oil/terrorist connection. But for the most part, GM's EVs are vilified as welfare for corporations. Had a guy get very emotional when I showed him our Bolt. He said he would never buy another GM product, because it was now "Government Motors"..."bailed out several times!" Like many, he "knows" this because he heard/saw it on right wing media. I commonly hear that my EV is "coal-powered!" My response is that, right here, it is actually 30% coal powered, 38% natural gas powered, 18% nuke powered, .9% PV powered, and .6% diesel powered, and the rest biomass, etc.

 

In fairly recent memory the GOP, which was once known for favoring an agenda of personal responsibility, free enterprise, and low tax burdens has turned into a hate-radio fueled mob of “we are automatically opposed to absolutely anything and everything that the Democrats support” reactionaríes. How unfortunate, because now BOTH major political parties are steered by the Democratic Party’s agenda exclusively — one positively and the other negatively.

 

I’ve not experienced a single instance of EV hate around town. Quite the contrary.

EXCEPT: In my Bolt EV w/green plate heading by myself south in the HOV lane on hwy.404 from north of 407 down to around Finch. Between 4:30pm and 6:00pm.

As you’re passing (at 80 kph/50 mph, having slowed from 115 for safety) 4 lanes of stopped/stop-start ICE vehicles going nowhere. Invariably a single occupant ICE vehicle typically a euro-zoot (Audi, Mercedes, Beemer, etc) gets cheezed off at you, pulls illegally across the hatched painted markers into the HOV lane and accelerates to sit 6-inches or so off your rear bumper. Sometimes flashing his/her led euro-zoot headlamps into you. Of course you’ve got nowhere to go because you’re stuck in the left HOV lane. It’s not pleasant at all. I’ve been too rattled to get a license plate number, but next time it happens I’ll go out of my way to do so. I’ll try to report it as road-raging, illegal behaviour.

 

Invariably a single occupant ICE vehicle typically a euro-zoot (Audi, Mercedes, Beemer, etc) gets cheezed off at you, pulls illegally across the hatched painted markers into the HOV lane and accelerates to sit 6-inches or so off your rear bumper. Sometimes flashing his/her led euro-zoot headlamps into you.

Use the brakes. Hard! Or if you don't feel that aggressive, use the windshield wipers to spray his car.

 

In this modern age of media manipulation and rampant corruption of academia, politics, business and journalism, I am more interested in truth than in what is popular. Sorry if being an EV owner who doesn't believe in the hubristic orthodoxy of MMGW discomforts anyone's lazy pigeon-holing mind.

 

I have no idea how an educated person doesn't believe we are doing harm to this planet??? Each step in human impact has been disregarded until we saw the impacts. Chemical dumping into the huge great lakes, plastic accumulation in the oceans, and I can't believe people are not open to the idea that we are impacting the tiny atmosphere that allows us to exist. We find more plastic material than living organisms in the middle of the ocean. The oceans on this planet are huge and people must have been skeptical that we could EVER do that.

It doesn't do the planet a service by having non-scientists like Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio leading the efforts. I would rather get the information directly from the scientists and not from an entertaining speaker.

If you don't believe in global warming, that is fine. The good thing about beliefs is they have no scientific merit and show that you are making a decision that is completely irrational. If you want truth, that is also not how science works. Science is about predicting future events by past events. Scientists don't know exactly what will happen to this planet, but the way we are going it will not be good. Each country has different politics, different cultures, different languages, etc... However, every country has scientific data that agrees that we are affecting the climate of the planet. The US has made global warming a religious and political argument. Read a scientific paper from China, Russia, Japan, any European country and you will see that their data all supports this theory that you don't believe in. BTW, yes, I said theory. However, theories that have scientific backing are the closest thing to the truth that exists.

 

Actually, rather than hostility from the ICE world, I get more from the Hybrid community, explaining they had to have a hybrid because "EVs just aren't practical for real-world use."

jack vines

 

I find it funny how people seem to think it's any of their business what another person drives.

 

Here is a video from a die-hard super car enthusiast. It is worth a watch.

 

How do you feel about indoor toilets?

 

Indoor pit toilets are OK. Anything requiring plumbing, and electrical is obviously not sustainable.

I know lots of folks think this is tinfoil hat stuff. But we were basically going to end up in the same place, as soon as we figured out how to get a reasonably stable surplus of food. Fossil fuels just accelerated/compressed the timeline.

 

Saturday night epistomology! I'll bring the popcorn.

 

That there is funny! I had to look that one up! :laugh:

 

Here on Long Island nobody seems to be paying much attention to driving, much less targeting cars because of emissions or lack thereof.

I do get a lot of questions when I’m plugging in at the local mall, since EVs are still pretty rare on LI. Most are interested in getting an EV, or at least curious as to how an electric car works, how far it goes, etc... Nothing but positive reactions.

One thing a Bolt has going for it is that it looks a lot like other small hatchbacks, it doesn’t have the unusual (I’m being polite) styling of the Prius. Unless somebody’s a car enthusiast the Bolt just blends in, which I believe was one of GM’s objectives.

 

I get a LOT more hate / undeserved road rage on my motorcycle than I ever have my EV. Usually from men in older full size pickup trucks or middle aged women in mini-vans.

 

"I cannot speak for Bolt Action, but one can believe in anthropological global warming AND believe the rhetoric surrounding it is a scam. "

I'm not reading his post "(and this was before the man-made global warming scam came about.)" as believing the rhetoric is a scam but that the science is a scam.

"Humans surely affect the environment in everything they do. The man-made global warming religious extremists argue that this is the biggest crisis humanity faces. I can assure you, it doesn't even make the top 20 list (ask a 100 year old what the worst things that happened in their life were. Seas rose 10" in that time, similar to what is projected in the next 100 years.)."

To assuage my skepticism, can you provide a link to the top 20 list from credible sources. Not claiming one doesn't exist, but I'm having a hard time coming up with just a handful that have the potential to exceed the impact climate change has had just this year.

"People destroy human environments directly through war and other means, which is of much greater concern than global temperature."

And the metric you measure this by is what? I'm on board that war causes more loss of human life currently and that's ultimately what we're concerned about but I think you underestimate the potential impact climate change can wreak.

" Eliminating every fossil fueled vehicle on earth would make no measurable difference to the global temperature."

Again, do you have a source for that claim. Power plants pollute 3X more than all vehicles but that doesn't mean that cars have no measureable impact.

"Trying to manipulate the outdoor thermostat at considerable expense and coercion is a great tyranny in light of the more urgent, acute harms humans face."

You just made my point. That's exactly what burning fossil fuels do.

"In other words, stop the bleeding before attempting to adjust the outdoor thermostat. It's a much more cost effective and responsible way to spend limited resources."

On this we can agree. In the residential solar industry, it's not uncommon to see solar panels installed on a home that is poorly built, under insulated and sealed, inferior specs, etc, where the net savings of the panels could have been quadrupled if the other issues were fixed instead. Pick the low hanging fruit.

"Trump has nothing to do with your false view of how taxes work."

Never said he did.

"If you avoid paying tax money, then the public funds are decreased by that amount. Even if you don't view that as taking money from someone else, you are at the very least contributing to the national debt, which is not only increasing the tax burden children will be facing in the future, but increasing the interest payments we now pay on the debt. This tax credit is a regressive subsidy for the wealthy."

I understand your point and also how the credit works. While true that if I have a deduction on my owed taxes like my mortgage tax, the difference is made up elsewhere by my fellow citizens, it's the elsewhere that is in question. If the EV tax credit is countered by some other tax adjustment enacted at the same time that makes up the difference from taxing maybe imported wine, then my neighbors tax burden has not been affected at all by the EV tax credit (unless he drinks imported wine). But the fact of the matter is that Oil and Gas subsidies have been in existence far longer and are far more damaging.
http://www.hybridcars.com/how-do-electric-vehicle-incentives-compare-to-oil-and-gas-subsidies/

Bringing up fossil fuel subsidies doesn't justify EV subsidies, just as someone punching you in the face doesn't give me the right to punch you in the gut.

It does if you want to eliminate the EV subsidies. I'm all for eliminating them both.* “The need for subsidies for renewable energy would also disappear, if fossil fuel prices reflected the full cost of their impacts.”
*There are some oil subsidies that are beneficial but there needs to be a balance that does a better job of providing an incentive to conserve our natural resources. Case in point, Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program keeps the price artificially low for fuel oil. It may be necessary to keep certain people from an unhealthy living condition but allows others to be less diligent about closing the window. I think as a society we have been spoiled by cheap energy. I'm guilty myself, I've never carpooled to work and may make 3 trips to the grocery store in one day. Europeans don't do that.


"Perhaps you're the unreasonable person, unmovable by facts, and people have a similar opinion about you?"

They may but I care about what's true and if you can provide the evidence, you've got my attention.

"There's a saying about removing the plank from one's own eye before attending to the speck in others eyes."
Whatever

 

Not at all hate but just a recognition that 'something is different now'.

I followed a Tesla in slow urban traffic that didn't give me the expected brake light cues as he tracked the erratic slow speed of the car in front of him. (I assume he was using autopilot). I realized I was in a driving experience that my learned instincts had never dealt with before. I fell back a little and paid more attention. Had to switch my brain to manual mode, so to speak.

 

So far, this thread is mostly about HOV hate, not EV hate. Passenger-free stinkers obviously resent having to drive in the slow people's lane.

But as someone who lives in a place not affected by the HOV police, no one here hates EVs. Once I explain that I pay a $100 surcharge on my annual registration to cover road maintenance, everybody is cool with them. Before the Bolt came here, that was the main talking point of Foxers.

 

But as someone who lives in a place not affected by the HOV police, no one here hates EVs. Once I explain that I pay a $100 surcharge on my annual registration to cover road maintenance, everybody is cool with them. Before the Bolt came here, that was the main talking point of Foxers.

After I explain that I am paying for roads with the surcharge, they ask who pays for the free public charging? I tell them that we charge 99.9% at home, on our own dime, and that many of the free chargers are owned by businesses trying to attract affluent customers. They seem fine with catering to the affluent.

 

At 200 horsepower and 266 foot-pounds of torque from a dead stop, this is NOT your mama's EV! If anyone should suggest that getting this car is handing in your 'man card', give them a test drive.

I was leaving the grocery store yesterday, and there was a guy collecting signatures for a petition to revoke the recently imposed additional 12 cents a gallon gasoline tax here in California. I looked straight in the eye and told him "I just bought an electric car. I don't buy gas any more." Too bad, suckers! I honked and waved at him on my way out of the parking lot. Yeah, there was a little EV hate coming from him.

 

I know tell me about it! I just used it today again! Instant torque with no noise, one second you are here, the next second you are where people don't expect you to be, and thats the beauty! Its like a sneak attack. Its a sleeper!

 

re: the original question

Three years in a Leaf and three months in a Bolt in the State of Maine: No hate lots of interest. Republican friends of the religious kind seem to have little or no interest. Not sure what that means.

 

I haven't encountered any EV hate, but then I've owned my Bolt for less than a week.

I have encountered one instance of Prius hate. A guy came storming up to me in the parking lot at church yelling how we were a bunch of hypocrites. We talked for a bit, and it turned out he'd seen a Prius driver speeding WAY over the speed limit in a residential area, and followed him to the church (it was a fellow member). They had a shouting match.

What calmed the guy down was listening and taking him seriously (he was right about the safety issue, even though he handled it poorly), and I think that's what will turn aside the great percentage of any belligerence related to the Bolt. My hunch is that it will confound the assumption that you're a sanctimonious virtue-signaler.

 

wow, interesting thread, never contemplated this issue. I have had my Bolt for 6 months and never experienced any negativity, however, where we live we don't have any HOV lanes. I do make use of the "greentag" reduced tolls on the NYS Thruway and free public charging. Mostly curiosity regarding the vehicle and how we like it, general questions about it. Most of the time it is my wife who is approached and asked about the Bolt when she is driving it.