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What does a Tesla Model S owner think of the Chevy Bolt? (Full review)
Southern California Tesla Model S owner Alex Venz was recently given 24-hour access to a Chevy Bolt with the stipulation that he not drive it more than 100 miles. After his time with the car was up, Alex put together a lengthy video that explores the Bolt and highlights some of its pluses and minuses.
For starters, Alex found the Bolt was somewhat smaller than the Nissan LEAF he used to own. He calls it larger than a Ford Fiesta but smaller than a Ford Focus. His first impression is that the seats are somewhat narrow. In fact, they measure about 17 inches wide. A quick check on his Model S finds those seats are about 20 inches wide, as are the seats in a Honda Accord he had access to. So the Bolt is a little tight when it comes to hip room.
Head room is another story. The Bolt has more front and rear head room than the Model S. Venz, who says he is 5′ 9″ finds he has almost no headroom in the back seat of his Model S but about 3 inches of clearance in the Bolt. Front headroom in the Bolt is about double what he has in his Model S.
Luggage capacity is also significantly greater in the Tesla. The Bolt can handle three moderate size carry on bags, but with little to no room left over. The rear seats of the Bolt do fold flat, however. Lenz says there’s not enough room to actually lie down in back with the seats folded, but there is enough room for lots of cargo if the rear seats aren’t needed for passengers.
The Bolt takes about 2 seconds more to get to 60 mph than Lenz’s Model S 70 but the time required is still around 7 seconds, which is fairly quick in comparison to most in-category cars with internal combustion engines. The quality of interior materials is adequate, Lenz finds, and he notes that the Bolt has fewer squeaks and rattles than his Model S.
Checking out the car’s controls, Venz found the Bolt comes up short when it comes to ease of operation. The touchscreen is customizable, but requires far more effort to drill down through the available menus than the Tesla does. The Bolt also has no built in navigation function for route planning or finding charging locations. Instead, Bolt drivers will have to rely on apps or the mapping functions provided by Apple Car Play or Android Auto. Neither map program is as fully featured as what Tesla offers.
Venz notes that CCS quick charging is a $750 option. Without it, the Bolt can only be charged at either 8 or 12 amps from a household outlet, or roughly 3 miles of range per hour of charge. Just as with the Chevy Volt, 8 amps is the default setting. The driver must manually select the 12 amp setting every time, which is tedious. The car also is programmed to do a 100% charge every time. There is no way to select a lesser charging level.
Update: In the comments to this post, several people took issue with Venz’s information on charging. This comes from GreenMonkeyPants: “Untrue. without the CSS option, there’s a standard J1772 that will charge at 32A @240V.” Further information may be obtained from the website Chevy EV Life.
The ride and handling of the Bolt are described as good. The car is responsive and nimble in a way the Model S, being considerably larger, is not. Venz does praise the regenerative braking feature built into the Bolt, which he says permits one pedal driving. The regen is available even with a full battery and can be boosted with a paddle mounted low and on the left side of the steering wheel.
Venz’s conclusion is that the Bolt is an excellent car for someone who will use it primarily for commuting. It has more than adequate range for most people, it is comfortable, and fun to drive. The seating position is higher than in the Model S and is more like what a driver would expect in a crossover SUV than a sedan. That’s a big plus for a lot of drivers.
On balance, Venz feels the Bolt is one of the best products to come from Chevrolet in quite some time. Comparing prices and functions with the Model S, the Bolt is a good car for the money and may actually be better suited to the way ordinary people drive on a daily basis than the Model S.
That’s not the whole story, of course. The real test will be how the Chevy Bolt stacks up against the Model 3. Most people expect the Tesla midsize car to be more refined and offer a higher level of technology than the Bolt. The Chevrolet product has lane keeping assist, blind spot warnings, and automatic emergency braking available but nothing similar to the Autosteer or TACC features available in the Tesla. The Model 3 will be capable of full autonomous driving; the Bolt is not. It will be interesting to see how the two cars compare when both are available to consumers.
Energy
Tesla Model 3 and Model Y can now do what only Cybertruck could
Tesla Model 3 and Model Y can power your home with Powerwall 3 during outages.
Tesla has turned its two top sellers into backup batteries for the house.
Tesla Energy announced on Tuesday that Powershare Home Backup is now available for new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles paired with a Powerwall 3, saying the car can “extend your home backup by over 2 days.” Minutes later, Tesla’s main account quoted the post with a broader pitch: “With Powerwall 3, every Tesla can now serve as your home’s backup battery.”
Until this week, the Cybertruck was the only Tesla that could send power back into a home, and that capability only began working alongside Powerwall 3 last month, after years of ambitious targets.
Tesla’s updated Powershare page says every Model 3 and Model Y ordered in the U.S. or Puerto Rico on or after October 1, 2026 can use the feature. Some, but not all, earlier cars also qualify. Owners can check on the touchscreen under Software, then Additional Vehicle Information, where a capable car shows “Powershare Support: Enabled.” As Electrek reported, bidirectional power on the two cars runs through an inverter Tesla calls PCS2 Lite, and the company has not said when that part entered production on each trim.
The home side is simpler. A house that already has a Powerwall 3 and either a Wall Connector 3 or Universal Wall Connector needs no additional equipment, and Tesla says compatibility is enabled through a software update. When the grid drops, the Powerwall and the car work together, with up to 11.52 kW of continuous power available. Tesla’s “over two days” estimate assumes a home using 30 kWh per day and a car starting at a 90 percent charge. Standard trims are rated for up to two days, while the Cybertruck adds more than three.
There are limits. Powerwall 2 and Powerwall+ support is listed as “coming soon.” Model S and Model X are not included, and Grid Support, the program that lets Cybertruck owners in Texas send power back to the grid during demand spikes for bill credits, is not available for Model 3 or Model Y.
The rollout also lines up with something Elon Musk said more than three years ago. At Tesla’s March 2023 Investor Day, Musk said, “I don’t think very many people are going to want to use bidirectional charging, unless you have a Powerwall.” Tesla has now shipped the feature for its volume cars with exactly that requirement attached.
The Powerwall pairing was the hard part on Cybertruck. Tesla told owners in December 2025 that Powershare with Powerwall had been pushed to mid 2026, and lead engineer Wes Morrill explained that two devices capable of forming a home’s grid have to negotiate which one leads during an outage, across multiple generations of hardware. With that work done for the truck, Tesla was able to extend it to the Model 3 and Model Y within a month.
Ford and GM have offered home backup from their EVs for several years, but both require a separate inverter and backup hardware. Tesla’s version leans on equipment many Powerwall 3 owners already have on the wall. Powershare for the two cars also ships as part of software update 2026.38.3, the same release that began delivering Halloween Mode on Tuesday.
Tesla is now starting to ship a “Halloween Mode” that is filled with some creepy and fun features; the company says, “This spooky update turns your Tesla into a haunted house on wheels.”
The update is just the latest in a series of updates that Tesla typically ships out in a seasonal fashion. The Spring and Summer Updates provided some fun novelty items while also packing some cool features that are actually useful for the ownership experience.
This one seems to be more fun-forward, and there are not any updates to the Full Self-Driving suite or overall operation of the vehicle. Instead, these novelty features are geared toward getting you in the mood for the Fall and Halloween.
Halloween Mode now rolling out 🎃
This spooky update turns your Tesla into a haunted house on wheels
– Ghost costume on your car’s avatar
– Enable Trick or Treat to play spooky sounds & flicker the lights when visitors approach
– New haunting light show, wraps & lock sound
– A rather chilling Photobooth
– Frighten people remotely by speaking through the app…your car will say it in a voice of its own
Side effects may include neighborhood notoriety
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 6, 2026
New Ghost Costume on Car Avatar
Driver Visualization will now show your vehicle as a ghost, as an all-white sheet is draped over the vehicle. Pedestrians are turned into mummies or skeletons, and other vehicles are all a spooky green:
Credit: Tesla
Additionally, the Park Scene with your Tesla now displays that ghost costume draped over your vehicle in the foreground of a scary backdrop with Jack-o-Lanterns and a haunted house:
Credit: Tesla
Trick or Treat Mode
Trick or Treat Mode will enable the vehicle to play spooky sounds and flicker the lights as visitors approach. This might be a nice touch for when you’re handing out candy to kids on Halloween Night.
Other Features
Tesla is also adding a new Light Show, new Wrap Options, and a new Lock Sound with this update.
Credit: Tesla
Additionally, Photobooth has a new Halloween option:
Credit: Tesla
You will also be able to speak remotely through the app and transmit your voice to people outside, which is not a new feature, but the car will say it in a voice of its own, which is a new feature with that bullhorn-like feature.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions
SpaceX reveals plans for one million Starmind AI satellites and calls out operators hiding maneuvers.
SpaceX has put the largest satellite count it has ever published into writing, and it says that plan only works if every other operator in orbit starts sharing what it knows.
In a new Space Safety page highlighted Tuesday morning by Sawyer Merritt on X, SpaceX said it “plans to operate up to 100,000 Starlink satellites and up to 1 million Starmind AI satellites to meet the growing demand for broadband and supercompute.” Starlink has a little over 11,000 satellites in orbit today, so the target alone implies roughly a ninefold expansion of the broadband network.
Starmind is SpaceX’s orbital AI compute constellation. Elon Musk confirmed the Starmind name in June after an xAI trademark filing surfaced, and in August SpaceX said it was working with Nvidia on the compute payload. The FCC accepted the filing for up to one million satellites back in February.
FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan
SpaceX also released a new render of what a full Starmind constellation could look like. Alongside it, SpaceX VP Michael Nicolls explained why the satellites will not operate on their own. “We need to operate clusters of satellites in tight formation to get enough coherent compute to run AI models efficiently,” Nicolls said. “A cluster will be 10-ish satellites connected with 10 terabits or so of bandwidth between them, and interconnected to the broader constellation.”
That is the most specific detail SpaceX has given on how Starmind will be built. Instead of a million independent servers, the network would work as tightly packed groups of about 10 satellites acting as one compute unit, with Starlink’s laser links carrying results back to Earth.
There is a bright and exciting future for humanity ahead – and space is fundamental to that future.
To achieve this, space safety must be done right. We encourage every operator to not only share ephemeris data proactively the same way Starlink already does, but to also adopt the high standards of space safety that SpaceX and Starlink use every day → https://t.co/QizAkQZvEm
— Starlink (@Starlink) October 6, 2026
Packing satellites that close together, at that scale, makes collision avoidance the central problem, and most of the Space Safety page is aimed at other operators. SpaceX said Starlink encountered collision risks with about 650 unique maneuvering third party satellites in 2026, and only about half of them shared data. Over six months, Starlink recorded roughly 164,000 more collision risks where the closest approach came within four hours of an unannounced maneuver.
Some operators keep maneuver plans private over proprietary concerns, while others cannot get government permission to share them. SpaceX called those policies “counterproductive,” saying they “largely only serve to create preventable collision risk between satellites.” Starlink is also offering a free ephemeris sharing and screening platform that returns risk results within a minute, backed by its Stargaze network of 30,000 optical sensors.
The push comes as the Starmind application draws opposition from astronomers and environmental groups. In a September filing with the FCC, SpaceX said each Starmind satellite could weigh up to 4,000 kg, nearly seven times the mass of a Starlink V2 Mini. Musk has brushed off crowding concerns before, telling viewers in June that “space is enormous” and that SpaceX already knows how to run very large constellations safely.
SpaceX’s Starmind page says its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, is designed to produce AI satellites at scale, with deployment of thousands of units starting as soon as late 2027.
Tesla Model 3 and Model Y can now do what only Cybertruck could
Tesla ships ‘spooky’ Halloween Mode with creepy and fun features
