- Chevrolet Equinox EV owner tells all after 20,000 miles.
- Nothing broke on the car, but there are some bugs.
With a price of just under $30,000 with the federal tax credit thrown into the mix, the Chevrolet Equinox EV is a value hero. Few, if any cars, in the U.S. come close to it, electric or otherwise. But it’s not perfect.
Here’s the owner of a 2024 Chevrolet Equinox EV in 3LT trim summarizing his experience with the American electric crossover after 20,000 miles and eight months. This particular car is front-wheel drive, but it’s “plenty powerful” as a daily driver. It’s also very comfortable, even for someone with a bad back, and overall, the Equinox EV is described as being a great family car.
The fact that it can be charged on any DC fast-charging network in the United States, including the Tesla Supercharger network, makes range anxiety pretty much disappear. Furthermore, General Motors’ Super Cruise hands-free driving assistant makes long trips a breeze.
For a one-child family with a dog, the storage space situation is also plentiful. There’s a spacious trunk, and the owner said he never needed more room to fit stuff into. When it comes to the software experience, it’s mostly good.
The built-in route planner that uses Google Maps is great, and the fact that the driver can manually precondition the battery is a good thing to have on long trips. The car can also automatically precondition the battery for fast charging if a DC stall is set up as a destination in the navigation system. The fact that there are native apps for Spotify and others alleviates the need for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, both of which are not available in the Equinox EV.
The one-pedal driving is “extremely well-tuned” in Normal mode, and the steering wheel paddles make it very easy to come to a full stop without touching the brake pedal.
However, it’s not all good. The two biggest gripes with the Equinox EV have to do with the car’s charging performance and software niggles. It’s well-known that Chevy’s entry-level EV isn’t exactly a fast-charging champion, needing roughly 40 to 50 minutes to go from 10 to 80% state of charge, but this owner’s issue is with consistency—he would like to have the same charging times whenever it’s nice and warm outside. Also, he experienced a few software bugs that randomly came and went. Some over-the-air software updates were problematic, failing a few times before installing successfully.
All in all, it’s a great family car at the right price. Nothing broke on this particular car, which is encouraging, but there are some shortcomings.
