Off Road in a Chevy Bolt

By Paul Gipe

Ok, it wasn’t four-wheeling, but it was off-road. Today I took the Bolt off road with the Kern Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. The objective was watering a group of Bakersfield Cactus that we planted about a year ago. The young cacti are drought stressed and needed a shot of water before the winter rains begin.

Because of the very high fire hazard we could only take high clearance vehicles or vehicles without catalytic converters. The Bolt doesn’t have a gasoline engine so it doesn’t use a catalytic converter. We needed one more vehicle, so I stepped up.

The Bolt had more than sufficient clearance for the farm track near Caliente, California. The car did fine. We never scraped bottom.

The cacti were happy to see us and perked right up when hit with two gallons of water.

This is only our second watering. We may have to hit them again before the winter rains come. They’re doing surprisingly well–less than 5% mortality so far.