It's Not a Five-Seater - 2016 Chevrolet Volt

Edmunds.com

It's Not a Five-Seater - 2016 Chevrolet Volt

The 2016 Chevrolet Volt is sold as a five-seater, and it does have five seatbelts, but fitting five adults inside is more easily said than done.

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agentorange

Claiming that most cars are capable of taking five full sized adults is the single biggest fraud put on the motoring public IMHO. Cars are narrower than in the 60's and 70's and the doors and structure are now thicker for safety reasons. Even my dismal math skills tell me that has to result in less width. The last time I was in the back of a Buick Lacrosse I was miserable after 20 minutes. No shoulder space at all, and the other passengers were slightly built women. 5-seats = BS.

stovebolter

Even though the center seat is worthless (unless perhaps a child car seat could be placed there?), I prefer this arrangement to the previous Volt's gap-between-the-back-seats approach.

Maybe they should remove the center seatbelt just to remove the illusion that the middle bit is another seat.

bc1960

It doesn't look that different from an older compact or subcompact RWD car (I had a friend in high school with an AMC Gremlin with the front bench; this has more room than that for sure), and certainly not much different than the middle position of a standard-cab pickup with floor shift. People complained that there wasn't a middle seat belt for some rare emergency and that a child seat couldn't be mounted in the center; complaint addressed and now there's something else to complain about.

actualsize

I'm fine with it. This is much better than the first Volt. The rear seatback now goes all the way across so it can prevent trunk contents from spilling through what was previously a foot-wide gap. And that middle position is just fine for a child seat. That's kind of the point. (And that's why the seatbelt needs to be there - for a booster seat.) Who regularly has three adults sitting across the back of their compact, anyway? Some, for sure, but that's got to be a very low use case.

goaterguy

You rather pay your friend an Uber than have him/her ride in that seat for a few minutes? That's either a hunk of BS or you are an amazing friend. If that friend didn't wanted to ride in the center, I would have him walk! This equation gets even worse for long drives, that would get expensive in an Uber...