2018 Chevrolet Bolt EV: minimal changes, same range and price

2018 Chevrolet Bolt ev

With sales of the Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car rising every month, shoppers are inevitably curious about any changes to the Bolt for the 2018 model year, its second.

Now the information is out, and buyers will find the 2018 Chevrolet Bolt EV is virtually the same car as the 2017 model—with two exceptions.

Looking for a Bolt?  Visit Ron Westphal Chevrolet in Aurora, IL or call our Customer Care Team now at 630-898-9630.

Chevy has changed the heated steering wheel and made a very, very minor change to the specifications of one trim level.

DON’T MISS: Chevrolet Bolt EV\Bolt 2017 Review

The 2018 Bolt EV remains a five-door hatchback that’s rated at 238 miles of range by the EPA, with a base price of $37,495 including the mandatory destination fee.

Its 60-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack, housed under the cabin floor, powers a 150-kilowatt (200-horsepower) electric motor that drives the front wheels.

So, about those changes.

The first is that Chevy has replaced last year’s manually controlled heated steering wheel with one that is automatically switched on by the car, based on ambient cabin temperature and other factors.

The second is that the company has deleted the map pocket on the back of the front passenger seat from the intermediate 2LT trim level.

And that’s it. Every other spec and price remains the same.

Source: Green Car Reports 

Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 AEV Concept Unveiled at SEMA

Chevrolet ZR2 Concept Off-Road vehicleChevrolet unveiled its Colorado ZR2 AEV concept truck with unique bumpers, skid protection and off-road tires at the SEMA show on Tuesday.

Chevrolet unveiled a Colorado concept truck called the ZR2 AEV, designed to travel off-grid in the wilderness for days at a time.

The automaker revealed the truck – developed jointly with off-road manufacturer American Expedition Vehicles – at the 2017 Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Association, or SEMA, show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Looking for your own unique Chevy pickup truck?  Visit Ron Westphal Chevrolet or call our customer care team now at 630-898-9630.

“Our collaboration taught us that Colorado makes a great platform for building an off-road truck that can take you as far out as you want to go, safely,” said Dave Harriton, AEV’s founder.

The ZR2 AEV concept has unique features such as AEV front and rear off-road bumpers, complete underbody skid protection, an expedition bed rack, high clearance fender flares, a snorkel and 35-inch BF Goodrich KM2 Mud-Terrain tires to allow it to go off-grid reliably.

zr2 aev concept back side

Chevrolet is using the concept to draw attention to the Colorado.

Since its 2014 introduction, the mid-size pickup truck has sold 250,000 units in the U.S. and has become a key player in the truck strategy of General Motors, which owns the Chevrolet brand.

It has sold about 83,000 units through the first nine months of this year for a 25 percent share of the mid-size pickup truck market, according to industry research firm Autodata Corp. Toyota’s Tacoma leads the segment with a 44 percent share.

GM is pitching its so-called three-class truck line, with offerings in the mid-size, full-size and heavy-duty pickup segments.

zr2 aev concept front grille unveiled at Sema

The Colorado has become a popular truck model in urban areas. Los Angeles is its biggest market, said Sandor Pizar, who heads Chevy truck marketing. California logs more Colorado sales than any state, including truck hungry Texas, he said.

About 10 percent of Colorado sales are of its higher priced ZR2 performance off-road variant, and about a quarter of those buyers opt for the diesel engine, a move that can send the price of the truck well into the upper $40,000 range.

But buyers don’t appear to be balking. Pizar said there’s only a 26-day turn between when the ZR2 leaves the factory and the sale.

Other manufacturers are looking to enter the mid-size truck market. Ford Motor Co. is expected to reintroduce its Ranger to the U.S. at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January. Jeeps also plans a mid-size pickup.

But the market has stalled. Total U.S. mid-size truck sales rose only 1 percent to 335,507 units through the first nine months of this year. Both GMC’s Canyon, a sister truck to the Colorado, and Nissan’s Frontier have experienced double-digit percentage sales declines.

 

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Source: Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 AEV Off-Road Concept Unveiled at SEMA

Modern Teen Driver has many benefits

Old school teen driver
Old school Dad teen driver
New school teen driver
New school Chevrolet teen driver

 

Teen Driver.  Nothing is more important than the safety of your family. That’s why Chevrolet offers Teen Driver, an available built-in system that helps you coach your new driver — even when you’re not there. It lets you set speed alerts, a volume limit and more; and with the industry’s first and only in-vehicle report card, it’s easy to track your teen’s driving performance.

 

Studies show that teenage drivers are more likely to make poor decisions like speeding or not fastening their safety belts than adults. Teen Driver gives parents the tools to discuss and correct some of the possible mistakes they or their new drivers make on the road.

  • Only 55% of high school students wear seatbelts when riding with someone else
  • Teens are more likely than older drivers to speed

  • About 93% of teen drivers play loud, distracting music behind the wheelTeen Driver has a number of safety features, from muting audio until front seat occupants are buckled, to automatically turning on available active safety technologies like Side Blind Zone Alert, Forward Collision Alert and Front Automatic Braking. The in-vehicle report card shows how your teen performs behind the wheel so you can identify potential problem areas and coach your new driver on improvements.
  • To encourage safer driving habits, Chevy is the only car company to offer Teen Driver technology with an in-vehicle report on most of its models.
  • For a complete list of models that feature Chevrolet Teen Driver please call our customer care team at 630-898-9630.

3 Weird facts about Halloween

Halloween is a time for candy, costumes and the Charlie Brown cartoon special, but how did it become this way? Why are children and teens encouraged to run around the neighborhood threatening tricks? Jack-o’-lanterns are a pretty strange concept, but historically, strangers giving you candy was supposed to be a bad thing.  Keep reading to discover 3 weird facts about Halloween that you probably didn’t know.

3 weird halloween facts pumpkin man dancing gif

You may already think that Halloween is a pretty bizarre holiday: What other celebration could inspire both a Sexy Olaf costume and spooky drones? That said, sexy snowmen can’t hold a candle to Halloween’s truly bizarre origins (even if that’s just because a snowman would melt if it held a candle). Chances are you really have no idea just how weird Halloween truly is, so here are eight facts to fix that…

1. Originally, you had to dance for your “treat.”

Most experts trace trick-or-treating to the European practice of mumming,” or “guysing,”in which costume-wearing participants would go door-to-door performing choreographed dances, songs and plays in exchange for treats. According to Elizabeth Pleck’s “Celebrating The Family,” the tradition cropped up in America, where it would often take place on Thanksgiving.

In some early versions of trick-or-treating, men paraded door-to-door, and boys often followed, begging for coins. Most of these early trick-or-treaters were poor and actually needed the money, but wealthy children also joined in the fun. Door-to-door “begging” was mostly stopped in the 1930s, but re-emerged later in the century to distract kids from pulling Halloween pranks.

2. Halloween is more Irish than St. Patrick’s Day.

3 weird halloween facts Irish drinking gif

Halloween’s origins come from a Celtic festival for the dead called “Samhain.” Celts believed the ghosts of the dead roamed Earth on this holiday, so people would dress in costumes and leave “treats” out on their front doors to appease the roaming spirits. Granted, the Celts were not solely based in Ireland when these customs started taking shape around the first century B.C., but as will be talked about more in a later section, the Irish Celts were the ones who invented the jack-o’-lantern. This Halloween prototype was eventually disrupted and adapted by Christian missionaries into celebrations closer to what we celebrate today, including partly by the not-Irish St. Patrick, whose work was later mostly recognized by Americans.

“St. Patrick’s Day was basically invented in America by Irish-Americans,” said Philip Freeman, a classics professor at Luther College in Iowa. According to National Geographic, the holiday was only a “minor religious holiday” until the 1970s in Ireland. So it’s not all that Irish. And for what it’s worth, St. Patrick probably wasn’t Irish himself, his color was a type of blue, not green, and that story about banishing snakes is actually just a metaphor for his triumph over Irish paganism. The type of paganism that invented Halloween.

3. Some animal shelters won’t allow the adoption of black cats around Halloween for fear they’ll be sacrificed.

It’s unclear whether black cats are actually sacrificed around Halloween, but various animal shelters refuse to let people adopt these cats in the lead-up to the holiday. Lynda Garibaldi, director of The Cats’ Cradle in Morganton, North Carolina, told The Huffington Post that the shelter “does not adopt out black cats during the month of October … because of superstition and the concern that the wrong people (who might harm them) might adopt them.”

This type of ban is starting to wane, however. When reached for comment, Emily Weiss, vice president of Shelter Research and Development at the ASPCA, said, “Years ago, this used to be pretty common — that shelters would not adopt out cats during Halloween for fear of something horrible happening to the cats, but we don’t hear too much anymore. And many, many shelters are actually [holding] a special black cat promotion around the holiday.”

ASPCA provided this list of a few of the black cat adoption promotions that have been tied to the holiday. As Weiss put it, “Most people who go to shelters to adopt a pet are not going to adopt a pet to sacrifice into ritual.”

Halloween is also a time when auto prices drop faster than a heads in a apple bobbing contest. So, if you are looking for the best values of the season, visit Ron Westphal Chevrolet in Aurora, IL.  Or, call our customer care team now at 630-898-9630.  Our website is always open as well. 

Thanks for reading about 3 weird Halloween facts.

Chevrolet mysteriously halts production on 2018 Corvette

2018 Corvette production stopped
The Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport on display during the Geneva Motor Show in March 2016

 

If you’re looking for a collectible Corvette, you may want to think about buying a brand new one.

The Bowling Green Daily News reports that Chevrolet — which is a part of General Motors — will stop building the 2018 model on Jan. 22 after a total of just four months of production.

Chevrolet won’t say why.

For all the latest news on Corvette, call our Customer Care Team at 630-898-9630 or visit our website.

The Bowling Green factory where the Corvette has been manufactured since 1981 has been shut down the past few months for the installation of a new paint shop and other upgrades, so the model year was already truncated.

Chevy is still scheduled to build around 9,700 of the coupes and convertibles by January, according to the newspaper, so 2018 cars won’t exactly be rare, but they may end up being among the last of their kind.

Although the folks at Chevy haven’t admitted it, they are hard at work on a next-generation sports car that’s believed to be a mid-engine successor to the Corvette.

Prototypes of the vehicle have been spotted on the road, and it is expected to officially debut at the Detroit Auto Show in January.

The question is, what will be coming out of the factory when the plant starts building 2019 model year cars on Jan. 29?

Chevy won’t comment, but along with the mid-engine coupes, a high-performance version of the current Corvette has also been spotted being tested, so the front-engine version should live on for at least part of the year.

It’s still possible that the mid-engine car isn’t a Corvette replacement at all, but a more exotic model that will be sold alongside the traditional Corvette.

In any event, all should be revealed in a couple of months.

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Source: Chevrolet mysteriously halts production on 2018 Corvette

Cruise’s self-driving Chevrolet Bolts are coming to New York next year

cruise automation Chevrolet Bolt vehiclesGM’s Cruise Automation will expand its test pool, while keeping a focus on city driving, something it has said gives it an edge in the autonomous driving..

GM’s Cruise Automation will expand its test pool, while keeping a focus on city driving, something it has said gives it an edge in the autonomous driving space. What better city to use for testing, then, than New York, one of the densest and most hectic traffic nightmares in North America.

Would you like to test drive a Chevrolet Bolt?  Visit our Bolt page for details or call our Customer Care Team now at 630-898-9630 to arrange your VIP appointment.

Cruise will test its self-driving fleet in New York in a five-mile square section of Manhattan, the company announced led via the WSJ, in a move that will also make it the first automaker to test autonomous vehicles in the city. Each will have a safety driver on board, as they do in the current San Francisco test, but now they’ll be tackling inclement four-season weather, as well as other drivers and pedestrians who are less laid back than their west coast counterparts.

Alongside the pilot deployment, Cruise will also be operating a new research center in the city, likely because it doesn’t make much sense to round trip the data back to its offices in San Francisco. No word yet on timeframes for consumer-facing deployment, but as Cruise’s testing in NYC proceeds, it seems likely the GM subsidiary will replicate its staff-facing prototype on-demand autonomous pick up service in Manhattan, too.

Cruise recently explained that it believes its testing in city environments provides much more useful data in terms of helping teach its autonomous driving systems, vs. testing in suburban areas, like the Arizona pilot location for Waymo’s on-demand ride hailing trial. I’d expect more major cities to become testing targets for Cruise as capacity and local regulators allow, then, since it seems like GM will aim to deploy and future consumer self-driving services in those areas first.

Source: Cruise’s self-driving Chevrolet Bolts are coming to New York next year

2019 Chevrolet Corvette Will Enter Production on January 29, 2018, Report Says – The Drive

chevrolet corvette will enter productionNew report claims the 2019 Corvette starts rolling off the line that date. But will that be the all-new model?

The next generation of ‘Vettes may be arriving sooner than we thought. According to the Bowling Green Daily News, the 2019 model year version of the Chevrolet Corvette will enter production at the sports car’s Kentucky factory on January 29th, 2018.

Want to place your order now?  Call our Customer Care Team now at 630-898-9630.  View our current corvette inventory!

The news came tucked away deep in a longer story regarding the Bowling Green factory’s imminent November 6th reopening, after a multi-month reset designed to retool the plant to build new models. The facility will go back to cranking out 2018 Corvettes for two and a half months until concluding that run on January 22nd, according to the paper, at which point the GM plant will begin the process of switching over to the new model.

The million-dollar question, though, is just what that 2019 Chevy Corvette will look like. The eventual arrival of a mid-engined Corvette is pretty much the worst-kept secret in the automotive universe these days, but it’s entirely unclear just when said mid-engined ‘Vette will make its grand entrance—especially seeing as how General Motors also presumably needs to roll out the C7-based Corvette ZR1 before the new eighth-generation sports car arrives.  (Also unclear: Just where the new DOHC V-8 confirmed for the 2018 Corvette by internal GM paperwork plays into these future plans.)

Regardless of what sort of car it’ll be, if correct, that January 29th date—coincidentally or not—means the 2019 Chevy Corvette will enter production immediately after the Detroit Auto Show wraps. Could that be a sign that GM has big plans to reveal something very, very fast at the next installment of the North American International Auto Show? Guess we’ll have to wait until 2018 to find out for sure.

Source: 2019 Chevrolet Corvette Will Enter Production on January 29, 2018, Report Says – The Drive

Mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette caught making a McDonald’s run

Mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette caught at McDonaldsThe next-generation Corvette is destined to do battle with exotic sports cars like McLarens, but first…McDonalds!

What is almost certainly a camouflaged prototype of the long rumored mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette was spotted pulling into the drive-through of a Michigan Mickey D’s, with two more and a current convertible Corvette parked in the lot nearby.

Despite the heavy cladding and dazzling wrap, the shape of the front of the vehicle exhibits the distinct style of a Corvette, while its long rear deck is a clear indication that its motor is in the middle.

 Mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette

Chevrolet hasn’t even yet acknowledged that it is working on such a vehicle, so details are scarce. Speculation is that it will feature a lightweight chassis, however, and may reintroduce an overhead cam engine to the Corvette lineup, along with a hybrid powertrain.

As for when we’ll know for sure, with the prototypes looking nearly complete, a debut at the Detroit Auto Show in January is looking likely, and sales should follow in 2019.

Mid-engine Chevrolet CorvetteThe real mystery is: what were they doing at McDonald’s? Were they just hungry, or making sure a Big Mac could fit through the Corvette’s window?

Source: Mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette caught making a McDonald’s run

Chevrolet Is Running Low On Equinoxes 

Chevrolet Is Running Low On Equinoxes 
Chevrolet Is Running Low On Equinoxes 

1st Gear: The CAMI Assembly Strike Continues To Affect Chevy’s Precious Supply Of Chevy Equinoxes

The strike at the CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, has been going on for weeks now and Chevy is starting to feel the sting in the form of a diminishing stockpile of its popular SUV the Equinox.

From Automotive News:

Stockpiles of the Equinox, GM’s second-best-selling nameplate, are quickly drying up, despite the automaker’s attempts to ramp up Equinox production at two plants in Mexico to supplement Canadian output.

U.S. inventory dropped to 43,453 vehicles, or a 41-day supply, at the beginning of October, according to the Automotive News Data Center. Estimated inventory stood at an all-time high of 74,400 units, or a 66-day supply, in June.

“That’s going to be hard on Equinox to compete on such a limited quantity in such a hot segment,” said Edmunds analyst Jessica Caldwell.

Since the June peak, Equinox inventory has dropped on average about 10,300 units per month. If that pace continues, it would mark the lowest Equinox inventory level since 30,900 vehicles in August 2012.

There are still a lot of Equinoxes left, of course, so buy one while there’s still time.  You can find the perfect one for you at Ron Westphal Chevrolet in Aurora, IL.  Call our customer care team now at 630-898-9630.

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Source:  Jalopnik