Likely, at least in part, due to the 1973-74 oil embargo (I
turned 16 in 1973) followed shortly by the second oil crisis in 1979 (the year I graduated from
college) I’ve always had a passion for small economical cars. My first new car purchase in 1980 was a Chevy
Chevette (remember those?) that I babied and coddled – always Mobile 1 synthetic,
washed, waxed…….. until the motor blew up in 1982 on Route 128 in Massachusetts
one morning during rush hour……. I can still picture the motor parts in the rear view mirror...... I had the motor replaced (Chevy was great about that) but I continued to have problems – the car was so poorly designed and built it was literally falling apart. Swearing off American cars for life it
was Japanese autos after that – a couple of Datsun (now Nissan) vehicles, a
Honda and then a couple of Toyota products.
Well, these days nothing lasts forever and I’ve actually been
looking at couple of Chevy electrics – the Volt and the Bolt. I’m especially
impressed with the Bolt, the car General Motors has been using the past few years as its primary
autonomous-driving testbed. Last week GM unveiled the latest version
of the Bolt, with an EPA-rated 238-mile range and a
base price of $37,495.
Looking at older autonomous model Bolts - the lidar units were mounted on roof mounted rods and the car had sensors stuffed into drilled and cut holes in the body. The new autonomous Bolt has sensors hidden in the bumpers and fenders and the lidar unit is hidden in the roof rack. The new model appears to be a huge step up.
Looking at older autonomous model Bolts - the lidar units were mounted on roof mounted rods and the car had sensors stuffed into drilled and cut holes in the body. The new autonomous Bolt has sensors hidden in the bumpers and fenders and the lidar unit is hidden in the roof rack. The new model appears to be a huge step up.
How did GM move so fast? The company acquired San Francisco
startup Cruise Automation last year for $581 million. Cruise Automation was started
by Kyle Vogt and he came along with the acquisition to head up GM’s
automation efforts. Vogt has an interesting background, having cofounded Twitch, a streaming
service used by video gamers to watch others
play video games. Amazon bought
Twitch in 2014 for $1.1 billion and Vogt was on to his next big idea,
originally thinking his new company would develop portable driverless software
that could be attached to almost any vehicle. First experimenting with Audis
and Nissan Leafs, he realized it would be much easier to build the technology
directly into a car’s onboard controls and the Bolt was the only car suitable to
do that.
Cruise Automation headquarters remains in San Francisco and, with GM
backing, Vogt has grown the company from 40 software and mechanical engineers
to over 400. He’s also bought lidar maker Strobe, claiming this will cut spending
on laser gear 99 percent.
GM has big plans for the Bolt, intending to use them as the
backbone of a robo-taxi business it plans to start in 2019.
