This holiday weekend I've been driving around town in my brand new Bolt EV. Going to visit family, going to the movies and today I did a couple of hours at work for some overtime. I have a car payment now lol. I've been using a regular 110 outlet in my garage and I'm surprised that for the most part it's getting the job done. I do hope to have an upgraded outlet installed this coming week on Chevrolet's dime of course. The Bolt is so much fun to drive. It really is a fantastic vehicle. Gr8 vid as usual. 🚙 🇺🇸 🔌
Hi Luke and Rachel. Thanks for posting your travels on TH-cam. Those Road Ranger chargers look nice and clean. My latest day trip, from Sacramento CA to Mesa Az was on 11-17. I stopped for 3 hours and a minute, at 3 different locations. (An hour a piece) Drove 805.8 miles in 13 hours 18 minutes. Used 13.8 kWh to go 177.1 miles in EV mode, 628.7 in hybrid mode. $3.60 for electric, and one free stop, $90.41 for gasoline. 43.41 mpg, with a leg that got me 48.38 mpg. This was only the second road trip on my Fusion Energi. My average speed while driving was 60.01 mph for 13 hours. I think you and Rachel have as much fun as I do taking these trips. As always YMMV.
Redline version of the Bolt EUV Premier...that is the "best Bolt!" Named it "White Light'nin!" 🤣😂 I am going to do a 1,000 mile round-trip from Central Florida to Atlanta over the New Year break. My charging preferences are very similar to yours. I like charging from 30 to 70 percent (or 25 to 65 percent). It normally takes about 30 minutes or less to make that curve. I can get 80 percent of charging in an hour (two 30 minutes sessions) as opposed to doing one line stop from 20 to 80 percent (that is normally a 70 minute stop and only 60 percent added). I have found that if you stick to the middle part of the charging curve, you will average 45-50 kW as opposed ot dropping off to 30 kW (or less) on the extreme ends (under 20 and above 65 kWh). It also helps keep the other EV drivers happy when you are there for 30 minutes or less.
Love the look of that Ioniq 5 there at EVgo. Such an attractive looking EV. The EVgo partnership with Chargepoint is very handy to be able to use those EVgo credits. It is a bit stressful being in the Bolt and worry about holding people up is real. However like you said the Bolt can't handle the speeds so even the slower chargers is more than my Bolt will handle. Since winter temps have arrived my charging speed has really suffered. Makes every stop painful right now. Thankfully I keep a substantial buffer as I was forced to use a Plan B charger on the road trip for Thanksgiving. It is a EV desert so I needed a pretty big buffer and had to go to a Chevy dealer and pray that the charger was actually working. It was so the trip was saved. There wasn't going to be enough range for a Plan C. Keeping a substantial buffer is smart. So glad I did.
Just bought a 2023 Bolt EV 2LT and love it. I've had a 2014 Nissan Leaf for a year and a half but needed more range than the Leaf. I have a Level 2 charger in my garage so have not used a Level 3 charger and a little anxious about how much effort it is to find a working/compatible charge station. Thanks for your video.
This is a good video. I have a bolt euv and I am working up the courage to take it on a trip. Where I live it seems like the DC fast chargers are all vandalized. I haven't even seen a working one before..
Nice trip! I think the charging was managed pretty well, and probably would have done similar. However, the fact that you ran the battery down to 11% unintentionally does show the pitfalls of relying too much on the Bolt's range estimator. Most likely, you were driving around Austin for quite a bit at slow speeds down congested roads, which caused efficiency to improve, which caused the range estimator to become very optimistic. Once you exited the city and started sustained 70 mph driving, those optimistic numbers became impossible to achieve. Rather than relying on the range estimator to know when to end the charge in Austin, I think a better approach is to just assume 1% for every 2 miles traveled (e.g. a 200 mile range) and add buffer to that. If the car outperforms this conservative estimate, that just means the next charge session can be shorter.
Two reasons: the battery on your car has not been replaced, so you might have one of two versions of the software installed, the first version allows charge to 80% as a precaution by GM. The second version still allows up to 80% but will monitor the cells for the next 6,200mi if the software does not find any anomalies in the battery modules after the 6,200mi it will let you charge to 100% the software will keep monitoring the cells, if anything comes up your car will need the battery changed, if nothing comes up you just keep using the car normally. Just keep in mind if the software finds anything wrong, it will limit charge to 35% and only about 3,500kW (fast charge disabled) the AC will be disabled. Propulsion will be reduced. And Regen will also be disabled.
@@jcmib7 hey so I had a bad battery I got a reduced power propulsion out of nowhere and charge meter was forced to charge to only 30% took 2 weeks but got a new battery and can charge up to 100% but I only charge to about 75-80% on every charge
This is what I don't understand yet with EVs, theoretically, your Chevy Bolt's range of 260 miles should be enough to get you to Austin without any recharge... What makes that not come thru?
A couple of things. The EPA range of 259 is for mixed driving conditions, city and highway, which I can get regularly on my daily commute and sometimes even exceed. During road trips, with miles and miles of extended highway driving at freeway speeds without the benefit of regenerative braking, the power gets used up more quickly and efficiency goes down. That causes range to go down. Also, in a perfect world, there would be a fast charger at our destination, which there wasn’t, so we have to have enough range to get to our destination and back to another fast charger. Finally, EVs have a charge curve when fast charging that varies the rate of charge depending on how much power is in the battery among other concerns. It seems strange, but we end up spending less time charging by stopping every hundred miles or so and only getting enough power to get to the next charger as opposed to going as far as we can and filling to 90 or 100%
@jasanmiguel better in spring and fall, ok in the summer, not as ok in the winter. Climate control also impacts range, heat more than ac. We average 4.0 miles per kWh in the normal commute which is 260 miles. Our late summer road trips are around 3.6-3.7 mi/kWh which would be 234-240 miles. Our current trip in colder weather is averaging 3.4 mi/kWh which would be 221 miles. Of course, that last one has some freeway sections with an 80 mph speed limit. Higher speeds = less efficiency.
Thanks much for the FYI. I recently rented a EV in Houston for 2 days. I couldn't understand the rhyme or reason for the graduations in use. by day 2, I had a better idea of how to use the brake regeneration on the vehicle. @@SpinnerEV
Another factor, with three people in the car, it is probably going to be necessary to make a bathroom stop every 100 miles or so, regardless of the car's remaining range. Once you're making bathroom stops anyway, it saves time overall to do the bathroom stops at a place where there's chargers and plug in. This allows the bathroom time to be effectively subtracted from the "waiting for the car to charge" time, ultimately saving time on the trip. Leveraging snack and bathroom stops to charge the car is a key trick for getting real-world road trip travel times in an EV down to essentially the same as what you'd get in an ICE vehicle. On top of that, testing chargers on the way down provides peace of mind for the drive back because any charger that is working in the morning is probably still working in the evening that same day.
This holiday weekend I've been driving around town in my brand new Bolt EV. Going to visit family, going to the movies and today I did a couple of hours at work for some overtime. I have a car payment now lol. I've been using a regular 110 outlet in my garage and I'm surprised that for the most part it's getting the job done. I do hope to have an upgraded outlet installed this coming week on Chevrolet's dime of course. The Bolt is so much fun to drive. It really is a fantastic vehicle. Gr8 vid as usual. 🚙 🇺🇸 🔌
Thanks!
Hi Luke and Rachel. Thanks for posting your travels on TH-cam. Those Road Ranger chargers look nice and clean.
My latest day trip, from Sacramento CA to Mesa Az was on 11-17. I stopped for 3 hours and a minute, at 3 different locations. (An hour a piece) Drove 805.8 miles in 13 hours 18 minutes. Used 13.8 kWh to go 177.1 miles in EV mode, 628.7 in hybrid mode. $3.60 for electric, and one free stop, $90.41 for gasoline. 43.41 mpg, with a leg that got me 48.38 mpg. This was only the second road trip on my Fusion Energi. My average speed while driving was 60.01 mph for 13 hours.
I think you and Rachel have as much fun as I do taking these trips. As always YMMV.
Redline version of the Bolt EUV Premier...that is the "best Bolt!" Named it "White Light'nin!" 🤣😂 I am going to do a 1,000 mile round-trip from Central Florida to Atlanta over the New Year break. My charging preferences are very similar to yours. I like charging from 30 to 70 percent (or 25 to 65 percent). It normally takes about 30 minutes or less to make that curve. I can get 80 percent of charging in an hour (two 30 minutes sessions) as opposed to doing one line stop from 20 to 80 percent (that is normally a 70 minute stop and only 60 percent added). I have found that if you stick to the middle part of the charging curve, you will average 45-50 kW as opposed ot dropping off to 30 kW (or less) on the extreme ends (under 20 and above 65 kWh). It also helps keep the other EV drivers happy when you are there for 30 minutes or less.
Almost got a white one, so I see the appeal. Enjoy that trip you’ve got planned.
Nice, I wanted a white EV 1lt, got a deal on a silver 2lt, silver bullet, the boltage, the long ranger
My wife and I are road - tripping to Florida thru Tennessee and Georgia. Thanks to your videos, we now have a new favorite road stop: Buc-EE’s!
I can’t seem to not stop at a Buc-ees and always get some beaver chips.
@@SpinnerEVYes we tried them as well and they were great!
Love the look of that Ioniq 5 there at EVgo. Such an attractive looking EV. The EVgo partnership with Chargepoint is very handy to be able to use those EVgo credits. It is a bit stressful being in the Bolt and worry about holding people up is real. However like you said the Bolt can't handle the speeds so even the slower chargers is more than my Bolt will handle. Since winter temps have arrived my charging speed has really suffered. Makes every stop painful right now.
Thankfully I keep a substantial buffer as I was forced to use a Plan B charger on the road trip for Thanksgiving. It is a EV desert so I needed a pretty big buffer and had to go to a Chevy dealer and pray that the charger was actually working. It was so the trip was saved. There wasn't going to be enough range for a Plan C. Keeping a substantial buffer is smart. So glad I did.
Just bought a 2023 Bolt EV 2LT and love it. I've had a 2014 Nissan Leaf for a year and a half but needed more range than the Leaf. I have a Level 2 charger in my garage so have not used a Level 3 charger and a little anxious about how much effort it is to find a working/compatible charge station. Thanks for your video.
This is a good video. I have a bolt euv and I am working up the courage to take it on a trip. Where I live it seems like the DC fast chargers are all vandalized. I haven't even seen a working one before..
Great video, but I think the Silver Bolt is the coolest, lol😂
Thanks! To each their own👍
Nice trip! I think the charging was managed pretty well, and probably would have done similar.
However, the fact that you ran the battery down to 11% unintentionally does show the pitfalls of relying too much on the Bolt's range estimator. Most likely, you were driving around Austin for quite a bit at slow speeds down congested roads, which caused efficiency to improve, which caused the range estimator to become very optimistic. Once you exited the city and started sustained 70 mph driving, those optimistic numbers became impossible to achieve.
Rather than relying on the range estimator to know when to end the charge in Austin, I think a better approach is to just assume 1% for every 2 miles traveled (e.g. a 200 mile range) and add buffer to that. If the car outperforms this conservative estimate, that just means the next charge session can be shorter.
1st week of owning a 2020 bolt it won’t let me charge to 100% only 80% do you know why?
It might be software limited.
@@SpinnerEV thanks
Two reasons: the battery on your car has not been replaced, so you might have one of two versions of the software installed, the first version allows charge to 80% as a precaution by GM. The second version still allows up to 80% but will monitor the cells for the next 6,200mi if the software does not find any anomalies in the battery modules after the 6,200mi it will let you charge to 100% the software will keep monitoring the cells, if anything comes up your car will need the battery changed, if nothing comes up you just keep using the car normally. Just keep in mind if the software finds anything wrong, it will limit charge to 35% and only about 3,500kW (fast charge disabled) the AC will be disabled. Propulsion will be reduced. And Regen will also be disabled.
@@jcmib7 hey so I had a bad battery I got a reduced power propulsion out of nowhere and charge meter was forced to charge to only 30% took 2 weeks but got a new battery and can charge up to 100% but I only charge to about 75-80% on every charge
This is what I don't understand yet with EVs, theoretically, your Chevy Bolt's range of 260 miles should be enough to get you to Austin without any recharge... What makes that not come thru?
A couple of things. The EPA range of 259 is for mixed driving conditions, city and highway, which I can get regularly on my daily commute and sometimes even exceed. During road trips, with miles and miles of extended highway driving at freeway speeds without the benefit of regenerative braking, the power gets used up more quickly and efficiency goes down. That causes range to go down. Also, in a perfect world, there would be a fast charger at our destination, which there wasn’t, so we have to have enough range to get to our destination and back to another fast charger. Finally, EVs have a charge curve when fast charging that varies the rate of charge depending on how much power is in the battery among other concerns. It seems strange, but we end up spending less time charging by stopping every hundred miles or so and only getting enough power to get to the next charger as opposed to going as far as we can and filling to 90 or 100%
That makes sense. So what exactly do you figure is the range estimate for the Chevy Bolt in highway conditions?@@SpinnerEV
@jasanmiguel better in spring and fall, ok in the summer, not as ok in the winter. Climate control also impacts range, heat more than ac. We average 4.0 miles per kWh in the normal commute which is 260 miles. Our late summer road trips are around 3.6-3.7 mi/kWh which would be 234-240 miles. Our current trip in colder weather is averaging 3.4 mi/kWh which would be 221 miles. Of course, that last one has some freeway sections with an 80 mph speed limit. Higher speeds = less efficiency.
Thanks much for the FYI. I recently rented a EV in Houston for 2 days. I couldn't understand the rhyme or reason for the graduations in use. by day 2, I had a better idea of how to use the brake regeneration on the vehicle. @@SpinnerEV
Another factor, with three people in the car, it is probably going to be necessary to make a bathroom stop every 100 miles or so, regardless of the car's remaining range. Once you're making bathroom stops anyway, it saves time overall to do the bathroom stops at a place where there's chargers and plug in. This allows the bathroom time to be effectively subtracted from the "waiting for the car to charge" time, ultimately saving time on the trip. Leveraging snack and bathroom stops to charge the car is a key trick for getting real-world road trip travel times in an EV down to essentially the same as what you'd get in an ICE vehicle.
On top of that, testing chargers on the way down provides peace of mind for the drive back because any charger that is working in the morning is probably still working in the evening that same day.
Big deal over a 400 mile road trip. Every gas fillup of my Toyota built hybrid shows 525 mile range.