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Ah dang! I wish I saw this video a week earlier! Just finished installing a home EVSE 2 days ago. Went with 16amps cause it was more than fast enough to charge the car for the daily commute. If I need faster, I'll just go to a level 3 station. 12 amps would've been perfectly fine too. And would've saved me about $120 xD Oh well. I'll look into getting adapters anyways, so I can keep the oem evse in the trunk for emergencies.

Very informative vid!

Typical ford junk. Why would they not make it easier. Such a joke. Thanks for the video.

If they started producing these reasonably sized trucks again, but with modern ev technology, I would start making payments on one for sure haha. Would be awesome to have a long bed electric truck.

I find rain will decrease my efficiency bot as much as a good cold snap will

Thats a really clever name for your channel... I bet most don't notice

I’m currently using the app and I’m at a fast charger charging. On the app it show the 65% of charge and 145 miles but on my dashboard inside the it say I only have 90 miles and 20 minutes til 80% why are the miles not matching???

Im thinking maybe you should whip out your old channel logo splash for these videos!

Unrelated, new Rivian chargers in Placerville, CA

A little off the charging topic, but Eagle Lake was beautiful. Now that you’re closer, AND charging is more available, it’d be on my top-10 ‘escape-to’ places. Well, once it’s a little warmer …. Thanks for the scenery along with the learning!

Thanks for that Ford. Good thing you didn’t run into any Dentrassi or Vogons!

Your retro road trips with your positive attitude, are most interesting to this EV newby, Thanks

Drove my 2017 Bolt down to Sacremento from Reno the weekend after Christmas..... why? My 2024 Subaru solterra died in my garage as I was loading up for the trip...... The bolt made it through chain control (with snow socks) Lost my traction devices as it so happens Chevy Bolt made it no problem. That said, I only. charged on Tesla chargers and V3 chargers kinda suck (cable is too short) but V4s man really awesome no as fast as EA but so much easier to use.

@38:37 what chaps my gears is when a hotel installs TesDes and makes them free and also a ChargePoint, but charges for that. I got stuck with that situation in Little Rock the night before last. Luckily, I beat the system with my Lectron J1773 <- J3400 adapter and switched after I discovered my error & got some free extra special Tesla electrons while I ate my breakfast.

@32:00 it was off-line for bout a month or two, but now seems to be lit. I have been seeing positive check-ins. Price not too bad too.

@23:09, don't think I have ever seen deer wade into water like that. I know they can swim. Just never seen it.

@20:00, we had our LYRIQ with a single bed setup in back for our recent trip. Car camping in an EV is great to have as a flexible option.

@10:40, I am thinking the new EV meca is Ohio where charging is plentiful and easy to install quickly. I think CA can work on a fast track method or perhaps EE stationary storage can shorten the long pole.

@22:12 STOP THE PRESSES, Holy Smoke. 3.5 going up hill in the cold? Did I hear that right? She's a monster if your car can get that good numbers. Down hill in the summer must be like five. I NEVER see anything like that in my two EVs. No idea the Bolt was so good on electrons like that.

I live in your past, so these days of Boltmas are right up my alley. 200 GOM miles in `17 is really saying something. Like the 25k EV we are still waiting for from Tesla delivered 8 yrs ago by GM. I think planning road trips around meals and having 50 kW chargers at those stops makes it a breeze. What we found on our recent trip is we enjoyed walking and discovering while charging. We did that quite a bit and it makes the road trip less procedural and more of an enjoyable adventure. Thx for the video. I enjoyed watching.

When I had a Bolt in 2022, I remember having such a terrible experience with EA, that I actually started traveling the East Coast and Midwest exclusively on ChargePoint CPE250s with occasional EVgo visits wherever possible. Great video as always, and it was fascinating to see more content from the before days! Edit: I still can't trust the Walterboro, SC EA after how many times it almost left me stranded lol.

Interesting how back in 2018, the Sacramento airport was seen as a reliable place to charge up. Today, I would imagine that any airport charger in California would be completely swamped with EV rideshare drivers, leading to guaranteed long waits, even at odd hours.

Eric you are my main man and I am having way too much fun! Dare I ask you to revisit The Recall?😱😈 Happy Christmas ending methinks; new battery with essentially an extended warranty, or in my case, a sweet buyback that more than paid for a new’23 Bolt. Counting my blessings! 😅😊

Great series Eric! Very good point about grocery stores as sites. The new Costco in Sacramento at I-5 and Arena Blvd. has a nice EA station. Too bad the food court is now off-limits to members.🤷‍♂️ Sac State has a massive bank of level 2s in the parking garage at the front entrance. $1/hr in lieu of parking. Great for students and public alike if you’re in for a game or a nice walk. Definitely a robust model for other colleges. Incremental progress…

Just got around to watching this, well done. You’re like a kid at Christmas at the Yerba stop but I gotta say that’s a great location.

Hello again. I just wanted to give you a quick update on my 2024 Equinox EV FWD RS. The average efficiency is still at 3.0 miles/kW after 2354 miles and the temperatures here since we bought it on November 8th have been very cold in the morning when we normally use it at around 28°F. And my partner always blasts the heat at maximum when he gets in. At this same time In winter we were getting about the same with our 2017 Bolt EV. So, things are actually looking good for the Equinox EV. Maybe the heat pump is compensating for the added weight of the Equinox EV. It will be interesting to see what the efficiency will be this spring. FYI - Edmunds came 2 weeks ago with a range test of 356 miles for the 2024 Equinox EV FWD. Wow.

It would be very helpful if charging stations could have signs like gas stations, advertising the location and the price

6th day of Boltmas? 🤔

According to PlugShare, Bolts finally have access to DC fast charging off highway 395 north of Reno (at least those with NACS adapters).

To add to your point about this trip being one of the last times you called Electrify America support. I'll point out the fact that as a Driver of a CHAdeMo equipped Soul EV and my wife's LEAF EV both 2017 model year. The EA station with the CHAdeMo plug was more likely to work because Soul and LEAF vehicles had no choice but to hang onto the phone line and wait on hold for support in the hope that they could reset power to the station wait for it to power back up. Then wait again for the 2nd reboot so the station could sync up to the proper network time and then hopefully successfully handshake with the car to start charging. Some EA support people were reluctant to go through the remote restart process. The success rate was about 50% and after awhile they didn't want to do the reset as it messed with their response time numbers and if the restart didn't work they just wanted to leave it as an open ticket for a site visit by technical support. My running commentary to CCS driver's was to always call to at least report issues. Half of the time the Station with the lone CHAdeMo plug was the only station working at a site because they were the stations where problems were more likely to have been reported. I can't tell you how many times I got stations with blank/black screens to work because I knew what the screen prompts were without the benefit of the screen not working at all. Also being able to use the station in spite of the screen displaying Station Unavailable. EA has indeed come a long way in terms of uptime over the years. They would have had much more business if they had opted to put stations out that enabled both plugs to be active on each station. The practice of targeting sites where EVgo or Greenlots (Shell/Recharge) stations were deployed didn't help with long distance travel across I-90 in Washington State or even I-5 on the Electric Highway routes.

Good stuff, Eric! Certainly takes me back to the beginnings, making plans to drive around my state inclusive of using L2 chargers to ensure I could make the distance into the charging desert comfortably. I was introduced to very cold weather inefficiency and hard working PTC heaters in my first 24 hours of owning my Bolt EV. Got any “near brick” stories?

Eric or anyone for that matter. I own the 2017 bolt. Love it. But is there any suggestions to make your driver seat more comfortable?

8 chargers at a station?!? Wild! I would push back on the idea that 2020 was the worst in terms of EA's reliability. Summers 2022 and 2023 saw entire stations going down (I'm looking at you, Hermiston, OR), 100A thermistor limits were common, and crazy long lines at de-rated stations.

Happy New Year, Eric! Thanks for adding to the festive season with Boltmas. Looking forward to the Ghost of Boltmas Future at some point this year... 👀👀

Your retro Boltmas posts are very interesting, great to see how far we have come.

I drive a 2018 Volt and bought mine used during the COVID price drop while almost all Bolts were having their batteries replaced. I still recommend that people just go for BEV instead of PHEV even though I really like my car. I don't commute, so I don't drive much and the 50 mile range on the second generation is just enough for me to use electricity for most trips locally. I've moved around the country 4 times since then and it has worked for me because I have had insecure charging access, even though basically all the places I've lived I've had access to a 120v outlet. That and the rollout of DC chargers plus the unavailability of the Bolt at the time when I was buying pushed me into the Volt. The only real time when I was thankful that I had gas was in Yellowstone and the Tetons in 2023. So little charging infrastructure and deep into the woods, it was nice to have a hybrid. I also got to cook off a hot plate that I had wired up! It's been a wonderful car to me but I also think that most people don't really need to have a PHEV instead of BEV. I was a kid when the Volt concept came out and 2010 me was really excited that EV tech was coming. I still think it makes sense in the 2010s and not for the future. Too bad most people are really behind on understanding this technology

in 21 I worked hybrid for a few months and drove my leaf 300 miles once every two weeks for work. It was really fun, super hard, but we did it. I had a leaf plus so id get amazing speeds till the battery started cooking! LOL.