Family man feels ‘right at home’ in Chevy Bolt
David Hochschild is a commissioner with the California Energy Commission, where his work focuses on advancing renewable energy in California. Hochschild grew up in San Francisco but now lives in Berkeley with his wife, Cynthia, their daughters, Rosa and Sonia, and their dog, Pepper.
My first automotive love was a sleek, green 1978 MGB convertible that I got in my late 20s. It was a beautiful, curvy, temperamental car with equal supplies of character and electrical problems. Now I am in my late 40s and I have fallen in love again, this time with an electric car — the Chevy Bolt.
I had never aspired to own a Chevy, but I had been waiting for a mainstream electric car to hit the market and loved the idea of charging a car with solar panels on my roof instead of having to go to a gas station.
So I got on the waiting list for the Tesla Model 3, but by the time I signed up, I was ranked number 300,000. It appeared that it would be a few years before a Tesla would be available, so when the Chevy Bolt debuted a year and a half ago, I took my daughter down to the dealership to try it out.
At the Chevy dealership, they didn’t know much about the car, besides letting me take it for a spin. My expectations were low, but when I got in I suddenly felt right at home.
I am 6 feet 3 inches tall and was surprised that I fit nicely with plenty of room to spare. That the car manages to feel roomy while being compact is a tribute to the design team — and it was easy to park.
The Bolt is slightly shorter than a Toyota Prius, which is a valuable feature as I am often trying to squeeze into increasingly scarce parking spaces downtown.
Back during the pre-kids period of my life, I was fully content zipping around the Bay Area in a two-seater convertible. These days my wife and I are ferrying our daughters and their friends around non-stop, so I was happy to see that the Bolt’s back seats were plenty big, as was the trunk.
But let’s be clear — as much as I love my Bolt, it does not look like a Tesla.
The Bolt may be modern, well crafted and comfortable, but it is not sleek. However, when stepping on the accelerator, it becomes clear that the name is nonetheless deserved. This car has real punch, and while sitting inside the Bolt’s quiet interior with only the whisper of the electric motor, it is easy to suddenly find yourself hitting 90 mph on the freeway before you realize it.
Aesthetics aside, my principal concern about buying an electric car was range, so I smiled when I read a Wall Street Journal review that referred to the Chevy Bolt as “Prozac for range anxiety.”
With its 238-mile range, the Bolt gets me where I need to go. I live in Berkeley and work in Sacramento, and I can do that 150-mile roundtrip without charging up. And when you do need to charge, the handy PlugShare app shows where all the closest electric vehicle chargers are around you.
Today I can say that the longer I’ve had the car, the more I enjoy it. Twenty years ago, just after I bought my beloved green MGB, I was at a stoplight on Stanyan Street at Golden Gate Park, when a beautiful woman on the street saw the car and asked to get in and take a ride around the block.
I recognize this is unlikely to happen to me in the Bolt — or if it does happen, it is more likely to be a group of electrical engineers. But driving my family around in the Bolt, especially as we pass the lines at the gas station, I have never been happier.