Woz on Bolt vs. Model S: I’ll take both, but now expects Chevy to be main car, Tesla for trips

nice Bolt parking job Woz

In the comment section of a long winded Facebook rant on the trials and tribulations of driving through Arizona’s pothole-laden roads and staying at pet-friendly hotels in Vegas, Apple’s Co-Founder and flip flopping EV enthusiast Steve Wozniak noted that he is now expecting his Chevy Bolt to become his main car.  It will arrive next week as Chevy slowly ramps up deliveries in compliance car states – currently California and Oregon only.

We’ve, for some reason, documented Woz’s plight from Swarming his Supercharger station odysseys and his on again off again love affair with the Chevy Bolt…

At this point, it should be noted that the whole Bolt vs. Tesla battle is a farce that the fossil fuel industry would love us to play out but in reality, Tesla and Bolt owners are on the same team, team Electric! The more Bolts on the road, the more charging stations/infrastructure, less CO2 for everyone. I’d like to get a Bolt myself if Chevy ever gets around to announcing availability in New York State (my initial review from a year ago here).

Back to Woz. The big deal here was that Woz is a long time Tesla advocate and the media and even Chevy made a big deal out of his September statement that he was going to “trade in his Tesla” for a Bolt EV. But then Woz did the thing that a lot of us do when we consider buying the Chevy Bolt: he considered long road trips which aren’t going to be nearly the same as Tesla’s experience with the slower half to a third-speed 50-80kW (depending who you ask) stations and mishmash of providers.

Woz’s wife then bought him another Tesla two weeks ago where he echoed our sentiments:

Tesla’s Supercharger network and the Model S’ capacity to DC fast-charge at 120 kW are really what enable Tesla’s vehicles to go on road trips. While the Bolt EV has somewhat of a similar range with ‘more than 200 miles,’ its charging capacity is whole other thing.”

That’s what is kind of interesting to me personally. I’m trying to decide what to trade in my garbage Prius Plug-in for and if I could buy (or lease) something right now and hopefully not have to deal with a dealer, I’d be all over a Chevy Bolt. My experience with the car has been great and I like the utility and size. More importantly, so does my wife.  If I want to go on long trips, my 4 year old Tesla still does the Supercharger thing with ease and I recently got a CHAdeMO adapter to expand my already plentiful options.

But with Chevy taking a big $9,000 loss on every car, it feels like this isn’t going to be available widely until Tesla’s Model 3 lineup is ready to ship and at that point, knowing myself, I’m probably not going to want to give Chevy my money anymore.

So if you are a multi-millionaire tech celeb like Woz and have Chevy reps rolling by your house to offer test drives and early access to their vehicles, you can choose the Chevy as your daily and the Tesla as your road trip vehicle.  But for the wider majority of EV buyers who have to choose only one car, this whole saga should be a wake up call to Chevy to get its charging network sorted out.

…and to our readers who often claim either Tesla or Bolt bias in the comments, again, we’re on the same team.