Gadgetory

back in the 90s GM had his first electric car the ev1 but it canceled that program in 2002 taking those cars away from their lease holders now GM is back in the Eevee game for the Chevy spark let's take a look at the 2014 Chevy spark Eevee Chevy launched the spark is a gasoline car it's actually a global car so it looks a little bit funky maybe not really perfect for American audiences as he's weird like oversized headlights it's a four-door although you might not realize it because it has these door handles that are hidden in the panel's here but you'd fit two people out back here it's not too bad that's got a high roofline so the cabin is actually not too bad either you got good Headroom here and I found plenty of legroom no problem sitting in here for the e V version while we've got the charging port right here we've also got these 15 inch aluminum wheels they used aluminum to save some weight another styling cue for the Eevee are these front plates on the grill obviously you don't need a lot of air intake for an electric car they also have some styling along here that if you know the Chevy Volt this is fairly reminiscent of that car none of the hood here we obviously don't have a gasoline engine we don't have too much to see exactly we've got some power control electronics up here and the electric motor is down there powering the front wheels most of what's going to be down here is batteries and there's about 500 pounds the lithium-ion batteries in this car that's electric motor actually makes this spark a lot more powerful than the gasoline version with the gasoline engine it's a 1.25 liter it's only about 85 horsepower this electric motor gives the spark evey 140 horsepower and also 400 pound-feet of torque actually GM likes to say it's got more torque than the Ferrari 458 Italia but more important the charging port GM puts us on the front side of the car which is pretty convenient when you nose into a parking space this is the standard J 1772 charging plug for a 240 volt source they'll charge up this car in about 7 hours this is actually the J 1772 combo plug so you see down here it's got room for two extra pins that's actually a very new standard in the louses car on a DC fast charger to charge up to about 80 percent battery in 20 minutes the Chevy spark is actually the first one the first electric car to include this standard the BMW i3 will have it too I like it noted decent size a head room here I'm 5/8 and I've been pretty comfortable in this space you know few more inches I might start getting close to the ceiling we have this nice body tone metal pattern in here too that's sort of part of the interior although we have a lot of hard plastics around - that's an economy car we also have this instrument cluster pod here this is just like in the spark the gasoline version but in the electric version we have an LCD panel instead of analog gauges so that makes it configurable right now I have it showing kind of minimal information here on the Left I've got my range left on the battery on the right a set of a driving coach this is actually very similar to what they have in the Chevy Volt I can push this configure button on the side here and add information so I can add a little more information about the range and I can add information about the driving coach I can actually see how many kilowatts I am expending when I'm accelerating how many I'm gaining when I'm regenerating when I'm braking I sort of like the information screen that gives me the maximum information maybe that's sort of a geek thing that you know people that are into electric cars you're really going to like to see I also have some of that electric information on the main screen here right now I'm on the home screen I can just push this this leaf button here which shows me the power flow situation this will show me when electricity is going out to the wheels or when the wheels are regenerating the electricity to the main battery and as you can see there's no CD player here should we got rid of the CD player it's you know it seems kind of quaint to me to bring these little plastic discs in the car to like play music from when I've got all this music on my iPhone or maybe on a USB stick I bring into the car USB port right down here where I can plug in any music so I can get on my multimedia I've also got satellite radio Bluetooth audio of course I got you know Bluetooth telephone and I've also got this smart phone link and this actually gives me some apps here so I've got like Pandora and stitcher and tune in I can run those apps if I have them loaded on my iPhone and the iPhone is plugged into the car now if I have an Android phone it'll actually work over Bluetooth you can also see another app here bring go that's a navigation app that integrates with the head unit if I have that on my phone at $60 for that app so it's one of the cheapest navigation options you can just put into a are without having a pre-loaded from the factory I found it pimply you're pretty quick here this car the Chevy spark is one of the first of the Chevy models to integrate Siri so then through the phone it'll actually feed me its turn-by-turn directions through the audio system I don't actually have to look at my phone I can just hear it tell me when to turn left and turn right and it should recalculate and handle all that kind of stuff we've got the shifter down here this is really just a drive selector there's no transmission in this car except for a single gear reduction to the wheels this car has a sport mode I've used it it doesn't really seem to do much I don't know really why they have that here maybe Chevy's just trying convince people this is a really fast car the Chevy spark definitely drives like an electric car really just smooth quiet forward motion and you also feel that torque pretty heavily it moves forward is the real authority when you press down on it it can really take off and get moving pretty fast too you know you can also feel that this is electrically boosted power steering you kind of hear that that's what a rheostat like electric functioning they don't really hide that very well in this car so you definitely know it's it's an electric car and the ride quality is yeah I'm pretty so-so and this is definitely not you know luxury car ride it's far from the Tesla Model S the 2014 Sparky V goes for about $27,000 with government incentives such like that depending the attack situation you might be able to bring that down to say $20,000 which makes it a pretty reasonably priced electric car it compares with the Honda Fit EB and the Fiat 500e they're all about the same size very different styles each one personally I kind of like the Honda Fit evey for its drivability and its looks and practicality now there's also the Nissan Leaf and the Ford Focus Electric but those are much larger cars those are more mid-sized cars I'm waiting for the day when an automaker can get one of these cars up to 200 miles and that I think will hit the sweet spot and range for most American buyers Oh