Chevrolet is still on schedule to introduce the 2017 Bolt, the brand’s first purely electric vehicle. Along the way, the brand hasn’t been shy about teasing its forthcoming EV, but we have our first look at the production vehicle’s interior, thanks to Autoblog.
Most noticeable is the center stack’s tablet like design with the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt, but it seems to remain fairly user friendly with physical buttons and knobs in place. The screen itself is much larger than any current MyLink system in place, and also seems to be running a very different software, quite possibly pre-production, as it looks fairly bare. Curiously, three buttons remain blank, a sign this may be a lower-spec interior with missing features.
Also curious is the shifter’s design, something decidedly iDrive looking. The gear selector shows a dedicated park button, and illuminated arrows pointing towards neutral, and what we assume is the drive gear. A similar looking design seems to have been spotted in the 2017 Cadillac XT5‘s gear selector in a photo we revealed in the past.
The cluster itself is a bit harder to make out, but it looks to be a full-digital design, with a large round portion in the middle displaying what looks to be navigation directions.
The exterior of the vehicle hasn’t lost any camouflage, and continues to look identical to what we’ve seen in the past from the electric hatchback.
Comments
“the brand’s first purely electric vehicle”
I think the Spark EV team would beg to differ with that designation. Sure there are gas Spark’s… but that doesn’t make Spark EV any less purely-electric of a vehicle.
As to the Bolt… it looks like Chevy is trying new ways to undercut Tesla without resorting to leather. The interior plastic seems to be covered in some sort of soft-touch leatherish plastic. Much better than before, but I suspect Tesla will pay the few bucks extra for leather throughout Model 3.
SIDEBAR
My wife is in the fashion industry. So I’m familiar with fabrics. Especially the current miracles polyester can pull off. Recently we discovered some cupro (a form of cotton based rayon) that’s silky as hell but machine washable and dryable. Absolutely amazing.
When you become painfully aware of what miracles can be done with fabrics it starts to become weird that hard plastics are used anywhere in a car they shouldn’t be. That is — there must be cheaper rubber plastics that are no big whoop to create and install. That hard plastic should only be reserved for spots that are needed.
I mean you can walk into a frickin’ JCPenney and see AMAZING fake leathers everywhere for nothing.
What about the ev1’s?
The EV-1 was curiously branded as just a “GM” car, and leased through Saturn dealers……
General Motors should remember that ‘sex’ sells especially cars and they should consider dropping Chevy’s FNR concept car’s body over a Chevy Volt or Bolt.