On Monday in Los Angeles, Motor Trend named the Chevy Bolt electric vehicle as its 2017 Car of the Year, the second all-electric, long-range EV to win the award — the auto industry's equivalent of an Oscar — after the Tesla Model S in 2013.
"Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Bolt EV is there are no caveats, no 'for an electric car' qualifiers needed in any discussion," wrote MT's Angus MacKenzie in announcing the award.
"It is, simply, a world-class small car, and that’s before you factor in the benefits inherent in the smoothness, silence, and instant-on torque provided by the electric motor."
He added: "The Bolt EV is also a car for a world that’s increasingly urbanized and that needs to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels—partly because there’s only so much we can frack and partly because air quality in our cities is again becoming a significant health issue. But this isn’t some earnest, po-faced science project we should endure to save the planet. The Bolt EV is fast, fun, and genuinely entertaining to drive. It makes you smile."
That's high praise of an unexpected stripe from the most gear-heady of automotive publications. And to be sure, the editors of Motor Trend didn't skimp of the technical details. They also see the Bolt as a triumph of automotive engineering, worthy of the famed Golden Calipers trophy.
There has certainly been no shortage of gearhead pushback against electric cars, which simply don't require the same level of nuts-and-bolts engagement as old-school gas burning cars, with their engines, transmissions, brakes, pipes, tubes, belts, and so on. Modern EVs are starting to look, as many have noted, more like rolling computers than automobiles. Wrench-turners hate that. But Motor Trend isn't sticking to type here.
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In fact, the publication is taking gearheadedness to a new level, lauding the Bolt's technology, just as the publication did the Model S's when it won.
This is a wonderful thing to see.
Of course, since the Model S was named COTY, EVs haven't exactly exploded in popularity. The entire global market is less than 1% of annual sales.
That's been blamed on the lack of an affordable, long-range EV in the marketplace. Tesla is aiming to get there with its forthcoming Model 3, which will price at about $30,000 after tax credits; the Bolt comes in at $29,995, a symbolic undercutting of what's Tesla's been shooting for.
So if there really is an EV mass-market, the Bolt should address.
Regardless, it's already impressed some of the toughest critics in the car business.
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