
The Chevrolet Bolt Has Totally Trumped Tesla’s Model 3 - smacktoward
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602365/the-chevrolet-bolt-has-totally-trumped-teslas-model-3/
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nathan_long
> Though it has only a small edge in terms of range, GM’s all-electric car
> will get to market well before Tesla’s Model 3 does.

Meh. This kind of sounds like the 800-pound gorilla boasting that it can lift
slightly more weight than the spider monkey.

And before we declare a winner, let's see when, and what, the two companies
actually ship. How will they compare on price, range, reliability, safety,
comfort, software features, handling, etc?

Nobody knows yet.

Gorilla projects great victory over spider monkey!

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jeffwass
Can they use the same charging stations, or are we approaching a forked
situation like iPhone vs android?

Also - can someone who owns an electric vehicle answer a question on highway
driving? Basically I'm curious how quiet the interior is at highway speeds vs
a regular ICE car. Ie, how much of the noise comes from the ICE car engine, vs
the sounds from just the road and wind?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
It's a hard comparison to make. While NVH is a priority for OEMs making the
customer perceive that there's some serious power under the hood is a priority
as well.

Most manufacturers tune the exhaust system to be fairly loud at the top of the
power band (if you buy an "ultimate driving machine" you don't want it to
sound like a Prius). Coasting on flat ground or down a hill (low load)they'll
be about the same but flooring it up one and you're gonna hear stuff.

As you get into more SUV like shapes and designs that aren't dominated by "use
the least energy (gasoline or otherwise) to get from A to B" electric vehicles
lose a lot of the advantage at higher speeds where wind and tire noise is more
dominant.

Additionally a many high end vehicles have such good sound deadening that they
employ various tricks to increase engine noise in the cabin (laying sound
through the speakers, tubes that resonate at particular frequencies)

If you have a vehicle that's fairly quiet at speed something as simple as
tread pattern, a roof rack or bike rack may be enough to be the dominant noise
source regardless of drive-train. Larger than that is road quality. A huge
chunk of the population in the US drives on roads that are rough enough that
any difference in NVH between a Model S and non EV of similar price is
meaningless.

It would be interesting to do an NVH comparison of high end sedans though.

