Here's What Happens When You Race A Golf GTI Against A Chevy Bolt

In a race that pits internal combustion against the power of electricity, VW's hot hatch takes on Chevrolet's dinky EV

27 Jun 2017

We won’t spoil the outcome of these races, but two of the three are really, really close. The races demonstrate the performance potential of electric vehicles and their instant torque - as a sort of lower key equivalent of all those Tesla vs supercar videos that have been flooding YouTube over the last few years, this effort shows that even an EV at the less exciting end of the market can give a petrol-powered performance car what-for.

On paper, they’re strikingly similar: the pre-facelift Mk7 GTI is good for 217bhp and 258lb ft of torque, while the Bolt puts out 197bhp and 266lb ft. All of this tees up a fascinating real-world race.

Place your bets, then hit play…

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

Quite a shocking result…

This pun is so pun-ny

JenstheGTIfreak (pizza) sorry bruh.
Electric Cars are taking over the world.
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Noo, GTI is more fun though definetly

Yeah, this “electric evolution” is moving forward a whole lot faster than I expected. Why can’t we get all “normal” people to drive EV and all the petrolheads get the gasoline?! That would be perfect…I suppose

#EVMASTERRACE

Matt Robinson You made a typo in the title. Pretty sure it should say Bolt instead of Volt

Matt Robinson I was just about to say that too. It’s a Bolt, not a Volt.

I think that says something about how much we actually care about the car

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Considering the Chevy jumped the first start, lost the second, is hideous, costs slightly more and in any other ‘race’ (involving corners) would show its weight and slight power deficit, it didn’t really ‘give the GTi what for’.

Impressive torque, and electric cars are slowly getting there, but still, I’d take the GTI

It’s not that the Chevy jumped, the Chevy accelerates instantly like all electric cars and most hybrids while the GTI got turbo lag.

Okay, I wanna race. Can either car handle my 5-Pot? I don’t think so. I don’t think either car can handle the guy watching them! =D
look at the mid/top right corner

Perhaps. Bolt is better than any other electric car in its class, but doesn’t it make more sense to put it against automatic (DSG) GTI? The manual GTI itself should be at least 1 second faster, given the driver knows how to shift properly.