The Chevrolet Equinox EV is high on comfort and convenience

Summary

At the heart of the car, between the axles, lives the 85 kWh lithium-ion battery pack, which gives the Equinox EV an EPA range of 319 miles (513 km) on a full charge. Unhelpfully, GM quotes charging as “up to 36 miles of range per hour of charging” for AC level 2 charging (at up to 11.5 kW), or “approximately 77 miles of range in 10 minutes” with a DC fast charger of up to 150 kW, but no 0–100 percent time for AC or 10–80 time for DC charging. We fast-charged the car from 34 percent, without preconditioning the battery first. Charging peaked at 75 kW and took about 45 minutes to reach 80 percent. The charge port is CCS1, although Chevrolet will sell you an adapter to use NACS chargers. On a full charge, in below-freezing weather, the Equinox reported an estimated 311 miles (500 km) of range, and during our week we averaged 3.5 miles/kWh, despite using the car’s heater because there’s enough else going on in the world that we don’t need to shiver in our cars to prove a point. It might be Goldilocks-sized. Credit: Chevrolet An all-wheel-drive version is in the pipeline, but for now, the Equinox EV is available only with front-wheel drive. The permanent magnet synchronous motor generates 220 hp (164 kW) and 243 lb-ft (329 Nm), which is enough to keep things feeling peppy. There are two levels of lift-off regenerative braking available for the one-pedal driving mode, which you toggle on or off via a persistent icon on the 17.7-inch infotainment screen, but even when one-pedal driving is set to off, there’s still some degree of lift-off regen, so you can’t coast the Equinox as you might with a European or Korean EV. The bit that all the comments will talk about The infotainment screen is bright, legible, and responsive, and the onboard Google Maps navigation works well, particularly with voice inputs. I have to give props to the backup camera, too—one of the crispest and highest resolution I’ve encountered all year. But other voice commands for the Android Automotive OS-...