2017 Chevrolet Volt

Up front, the lights and fenders sweep back from the pointed nose. There's a two-panel Chevrolet "grille" design, but it's made up of two distinctive flat-silver blanking plates with a sort of circuit-diagram pattern. The rear deck—while still high—is also less flat and plain than in the prior generation, and the liftgate has only a single glass panel now.

While the new Volt is less bluntly distinctive than the first version, it's fresh and appears to be popular among non-Volt owners, who dub it sporty and modern. Regrettably many of the Volt’s styling cues look similar to those of the Chevrolet Cruze compact four-door sedan. Especially in the same color, they’ll look similar on the showroom floor—perhaps too similar—except the Cruze will start below $20,000 and the Volt starts above $33,000. The design also carries echoes of the 2015 Honda Civic sedan, and the taillights evoke the older Subaru Legacy sedan to boot. All that said, though, it's a cohesive and appealing look that lives up to the car's tech-forward powertrain.

The 2017 Volt's interior is more conventional than earlier models, and that's all to the good. Chevy’s twin-cockpit design is executed in black with silver accents, and optional two-tone interiors add a touch of elegance.The switches, controls, and instruments are legible, intuitive, and easy to learn and use. The 8.0-inch touchscreen in the center of the dash is bright, crisp, and remarkably high-resolution. While old car’s gimmicky touch switches were deeply frustrating—even dedicated owners said so—that’s all gone now. Even the display graphics, a model for the segment back in 2011, have been streamlined, refreshed, and made more elegant.

In the rare circumstances when a driver depletes the battery entirely, the 1.5-liter inline-4 comes on and the Volt effectively turns into a conventional hybrid, rated at 42 mpg combined. The power of its electric drive remains at 111 kilowatts (149 horsepower), but torque has increased to 294 pound-feet from the 273 lb-ft of the old Volt.

During our road tests, we missed that startup in virtually every instance unless we watched the power-flow diagram on the central screen. The car is considerably quieter under all circumstances. We drove a 2016 Volt almost 100 miles in hybrid mode and simply forgot that the engine was on in most cases. Combining 200 pounds less weight with an accelerator tuned for more power delivery between 0 and 30 mph, the new Volt seems quicker than the old one and will keep up with almost any traffic if driven attentively.

The engine is still audible under maximum acceleration, especially at higher speeds, but it’s more of a remote hum than the higher-pitched howl delivered by the old Volt. Unlike some other plug-in hybrids, the engine start lags maximum power demand by up to several seconds, and it starts at a low speed.

The Volt's latest powertrain allows both motors to power the front wheels together, or one motor to drive the car while the other recharges the battery, depending on which combinations are most efficient. The engine can clutch in to assist the electric motors in powering the front wheels directly if that's most efficient.  Still, it all works transparently to Volt occupants, who will feel only a quiet and smooth flow of electric drive.

The new Volt is hardly lithe, in the manner of a Mazda, say, but it’s more enjoyable on twisty roads—and its quiet lack of fuss and smooth, consistent electric power delivery is soothing no matter what the road or traffic may be. It still seems heavy for its size, but both roadholding and steering feel are livelier than the old car, which sometimes felt underdamped.

GM's engineers have improved the blending of friction and regenerative braking to the point where no transition is perceptible. While the old Volt was good in this regard—notably better than first efforts from other makers—the new 2017 model is exemplary.

The majority of owners who use only the 120-volt charging cable that comes with the car will need nine to 12 hours for a full recharge, depending on a variety of factors that include outside temperature and the quality of the household circuit. Using a 240-volt Level 2 charging station, GM says, recharging takes 4.5 hours.

The onboard charger has a power rate of 3.6 kilowatts, up from 3.3 kw, but Chevy chose not to use a 6.6-to-7.2-kilowatt charger. Its reasoning is that the higher rate isn't needed, because most Volt owners recharge overnight. No DC quick-charging is possible with the Volt either.

Chevy doesn’t call it a seat, but the rear now has a fifth "seating position." It's strictly for limber riders willing to put up with discomfort and splay their legs around the battery tunnel, over for short trips. Its occasional-use status is reinforced by the lack of a headrest, though that rider does get a shoulder harness. It’s fine for a lithe teenage soccer player, but not your middle-aged business colleague.

The new Volt is smooth and quiet under electric power, the mode in which it’s likely to spend most of its miles. Almost all modern electric cars are better in this regard than their gasoline equivalents, but we heard almost no hum from the electric components. But once the battery has been depleted and the engine switches on, it’s a far quieter vehicle inside than the last generation.

GM’s engineers put a great deal of effort into reducing engine noise, starting with the engine design itself, and the difference between old and new Volts under full acceleration is notable. The aero engineers have also done a good job reducing wind noise, and the hard rubber compound of the low-rolling-resistance tires is only noisy on certain road surfaces—though the car is generally so quiet that tire noise from coarse concrete highways is remarkably intrusive.

The interior design is rendered in high-quality materials, with soft-touch materials in most places that will get passenger contact and only sparing use of hard plastic surfaces. Thankfully, the gimmicky high-tech interior of the last Volt is gone, and the dashboard and controls are straightforward, logical, and intuitive.

Chevy says it listened carefully to its first generation of Volt buyers, and made a number of changes in response to their needs. One of the more notable is simple but highly useful: the charging cord now lives in a separate side compartment inside the cargo bay. That means drivers no longer have to remove all their luggage and lift the load floor just to reach the charging cord underneath, as they did in earlier Volts. Little things mean a lot.

The Volt comes with a standard rearview camera and 10 airbags. For 2017, adaptive cruise control has been added to a package of optional safety systems that includes blind-spot monitors, rear cross-traffic alerts, lane-keeping assist with lane-departure warning, forward-collision warnings, and automatic emergency braking. Chevy calls its advanced parking-assist function “semi-automatic parallel parking," which includes both front and rear assistance.

Outward vision from the 2017 Volt remains far from best in class, though it's incrementally better than the first-generation car. Chevy has now fitted a high-resolution rearview camera as standard equipment, which helps mitigate the dismal over-the-shoulder rear-quarter view. The camera has much better resolution and provides a crisper image on the 8.0-inch center display screen than we’ve seen in any other compact car. (We’ll find out if it’s easily blocked or distorted by rain and snow—as most of them are—when we have the car for a longer test.)

The old Volt’s notorious blind spot at the base of the windshield pillars has been reduced, but that triangle is still much larger than in other compact cars—Honda and Subaru are exemplary in the segment. Volt engineers told us the steep angle of the windshield requires a larger structural support to withstand roof-crush tests. Chevy also eliminated the second vertical glass panel in the tailgate, so the rearview mirror vision doesn’t show the road as close to the back of the car as it used to.

Every Volt comes standard with keyless ignition, automatic climate control, OnStar 4G LTE with a three-year subscription, a built-in wi-fi hot spot (including a trial data package for three months or 3 GB of data), and Siri Eyes Free and text-message alerts. All Volts include Apple CarPlay on the home screen, allowing occupants to pair iOS devices and use an Apple-like interface. (Any cars not fitted with Android Auto as well can be retrofitted via a software upgrade available through the dealer.)

The base Volt LT has a six-speaker audio system with an auxiliary jack; leather-wrapped steering wheel; LED headlights; 17-inch, 5-spoke wheels; and an 8.0-inch touchscreen.

The next and only step up, the Volt Premier, adds available active-safety packages such as blind-spot monitors, forward-collision alert and lane-keep assist; available leather seats; and standard automatic parking assist. For 2017, that package will include adaptive cruise control as well.

Cloth seats are standard, but heated front seats are optional. Leather seats are available as an option too, as is a very handsome two-tone interior treatment. A navigation package is optional, as is a Bose premium audio system. Chevy has chosen not to offer a sunroof as an option.

Electric range is more and more a point of competition among plug-in hybrids these days, as drivers go to remarkable lengths to avoid having plug-in hybrids turn on their engines. GM says 90 percent of trips in the new Volt will be made using battery capacity exclusively derived from wall current, without ever switching on the engine. That makes the Volt essentially an all-electric car for most travel.

The Miles Per Gallon Equivalent (mpge) metric measures the distance a car can travel electrically on the same amount of energy as contained in 1 gallon of gasoline. The 2017 Volt's 106-mpge efficiency range approaches that of some battery-electric vehicles, and rises from the previous generation's 98 mpge. It’s also more fuel-efficient, with an EPA combined rating of 42 mpg in range-extended mode—up from the prior car’s 37 mpg.

In our view, the 2017 Chevrolet Volt offers the best of both worlds: almost all-electric transportation but without the worry of battery depletion. As such, it rates our highest score of 10 on The Car Connection's Green rating.