How the Chevy Bolt made me a better driver

The 2018 Chevrolet Bolt EV
Premier.
Mark Matousek / Business
Insider

• Near the end of July, I
  spent a weekend driving a $44,000 Chevrolet Bolt EV
  Premier.
• My two favorite features were the lack of engine noise
  and the lane-keep-assist feature.
• Each was subtle but made a noticeable, positive impact
  on my driving experience.

Near the end of July, I
spent a weekend driving a $44,000 Chevrolet Bolt EV Premier.
It was my first experience driving an electric vehicle in
real-world conditions for more than an hour, and by the end of
the weekend, I understood the hype around the Bolt.

Released in late 2016, the Bolt was the first non-luxury
electric vehicle with a range of over 200 miles per charge,
beating Tesla’s Model 3 to market by seven months (though Tesla
has yet to deliver the $35,000 base version of the vehicle). Car
reviewers praised the Bolt, with Business
Insider’s Matthew DeBord calling it a
“masterpiece” and Motor
Trend naming it the best car of 2017.

The Bolt’s motor was quiet

The Bolt’s range is a major advantage, and it had a number
of other features I liked, including its handling, ride quality,
regenerative braking system, and raised seating position. But my
two favorites were the lack of noise it produced and its
lane-keep-assist feature.

Electric motors are much quieter than gas-powered engines,
and the Bolt’s lack of engine noise made a small but noticeable
difference that became more significant over around eight hours
of driving. I noticed that I felt a little more relaxed driving
the Bolt than I often do when driving gas-powered cars, which I
partly attributed to the quieter motor.

The lack of noise did have a small downside
:
Sometimes it took me a few seconds to realize how fast I was
driving since I didn’t have the usual sonic cues to indicate how
quickly the Bolt was accelerating. But that spoke well to the
Bolt’s ability to minimize wind and tire noise.

Lane-keep-assist made me aware of a bad habit 

The Bolt I drove came with subtle but effective driver assistance
features: front and rear cameras, as well as systems that
alerted me when I came too close to a car in front of me, when a
car was in either of my blind spots, when pedestrians were
walking behind me, and when I was drifting too far to one side in
my lane.

My favorite was the lane-keep-assist feature, which consists
of a small icon on the instrument panel that changes its color
from green to orange when the car isn’t centered in its lane. I
quickly learned that I tended to drive too close to the inside of
a lane on the highway. In eight years of driving, I had never
been made aware of that tendency. I realized that my caution
about keeping a safe distance from the outer edge of a lane had
led me to overcompensate and likely bother other drivers. After
using lane-keep-assist, I understood how even small advancements
in automotive technology can ease drivers’ concerns and promote
better driving habits.