Chevrolet Bolt & Bolt EUV

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DougWantsALeaf said:
I went and checked my last charging stop coming from Kansas to Chicagoland. In Davenport I pulled in with battery at 108F and ~10% SoH. It took 75 min to charge to 85% so I could do the 180ish miles home. End temp was 123F. This was my 3rd consecutive DC charge for the trip. I was rapidgating during 2nd half of the charge. My average charging speed was 29KW. (Started in mid 40s and tapered to 19 at the end)

It doesn't seem like the Bolt would have done much better, though I would certainly welcome an extra 8-10kWh of battery capacity.
Re: much better, if you don't terminate charging at such high SoC, Bolt would be a lot better. On a high enough powered DC FC (e.g. all Electrify America ones that aren't having problems, search https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1131501_2021-volkswagen-id-4-range-and-road-trip-charging-some-first-impressions for sensor), you should be at above 50 kW the whole time up until about 50% SoC. And, you should be at ~37 kW or so until ~70%.

One can rinse and repeat over and over on Bolt.
 
cwerdna said:
GRA said:
If it takes 45 minutes (checking my notes I see it was actually 47 minutes, from 7:18 - 8:05 p.m.) to charge from 45-80%, it's going to take considerably longer to charge from 20-80%, which is what I'd be typically trying to do on a road trip given adequately-spaced chargers. As it was, at 45% it was charging at 44kW, so not that far down from the 55kW peak. Assuming it could charge from 20-45% @ 55kW the whole time it would take another 18 minutes, and in real life with taper somewhat longer. Thus, even the best case would take 1:05 from 20-80%, and as the car can only drive about 2 hours using that charge range, that means 2 hours driving/1:05 charging, and repeat. That simply doesn't cut it for road trips requiring multiple charging stops, if you actually need to get somewhere with minimum downtime.

BTW, this was a brand new (54 miles on the odometer when I picked it up from the owner, 559 when I started the charge described) 2020 Bolt.

I can't speak to the DC FCs you used. If it wasn't sufficiently powerful or there was something wrong with it, you won't hit 54 or 55kW.

62.5kW CP. Even if it were only 50kW max. the time difference would only be a few minutes.


cwerdna said:
As for 20% to 80%, again, not going low enough and terminating at too high SoC, is of course not going to be fast. If you watch the video I pointed to (which still had the sharp drops), at about 71% is a sharp drop in charging speed. Skip to about 2:18 in the video.

Ideally I'd love to be able to take it all the way down to O% SoC without a care, but that's not a good idea with any battery, now is it? 20% is as low as I'm willing to take a Li-ion battery down to repeatedly, especially at short intervals, given that so much of my driving is on long trips. Plus there's the simple fact that in many rural areas 20% or greater reserve is needed to get to the next nearest charger if you can't charge at the intended one, as proved to be the rule rather than the exception on that trip. That has to change, before BEVs will be acceptable to mainstream users for trips.*


cwerdna said:
As for the bolded part, I don't disagree. Bolt's DC FC rate now is not competitive vs. many other non-Tesla BEVs with similar battery capacity introduced after it originally came out in Dec 2016.

That said, I did take my former 80% capped via software Bolt to So Cal in Dec 2021. With that limiter, it becomes super slow once you get close to 80%, even slower than if you DC FCed a Bolt to 100%. Was a bit over 370 miles one way, since I took highway 99 (far more DC FC choices there including free ones: https://dot.ca.gov/news-releases/news-release-2021-001 + plenty of backups).


BTW, maybe I missed it, but have you posted any info on your experiences, like/dislikes with your Niro now that you've had it a few months? While it is also too slow to charge for my needs (the Ionic 5/EV6 are the only current semi-affordable BEVs I would consider for trips, with their 2 hours driving/15 min. 20-80% charging cycle. When we've got affordable BEVs that can do 4 hr. HWY driving/15 min. charging cycles, most people will be willing and able to kiss other techs goodbye), it comes closest to what I want size-wise (the 2023 is even better), albeit still not AWD.

Maybe the Equinox will get there, or Toyota will introduce a BEV version of the Corolla Cross, although given how inadequate the bZ4X is I don't expect a Corolla Cross BEV would come close to meeting my requirements either. But of course, an FCHEV or PHFCEV along with the requisite infrastructure would be the best ZEV match of all for extended road trips, providing essentially the same operational capability as liquid-fueled ICEs.



*Some recent data from here in the Bay Area, never mind the boonies: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1136104_california-study-fast-chargers-poor-reliability
 
Will respond to the rest of the above later.

Apologies, I've been kinda busy and I haven't really written too much about Niro EV likes/dislikes. Yours isn't the only request.

I did create a video that focused on the infotainment system and pointed to it at https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=622868#p622868. It's really geared more towards people familiar w/Bolt's infotainment system. I can't compare to gen 2 Leaf SV/SL's as I never had one and a lot of functionality was added on those vs. gen 1 SV and SL stereo.

For me, I'd say the thing I miss the most is GM Surround Vision or Nissan Around View Monitor equivalent aka 360 degree cameras w/virtual overhead view. You can't even get that as an option on Niro EV.
 
Dealers are finally discounting the 22s by the same amount. If you need an affordable EV right now, I would get a Bolt EUV over the Leaf.
 
cwerdna said:
For me, I'd say the thing I miss the most is GM Surround Vision or Nissan Around View Monitor equivalent aka 360 degree cameras w/virtual overhead view. You can't even get that as an option on Niro EV.
That feature is what sold my wife on the Leaf. She wasn't that excited about EVs (until we got one), but the 360 degree camera was something she really wanted.
 
Indeed. I loved the above feature and was enjoying it on my 2 Leafs then my Bolt, until the Bolt was bought back at end of Jan 2022.

Bolt's Surround Vision on '17 to '19 had lousy picture quality though and didn't have a right side curb view which Leaf had. The was remedied with "HD Surround Vision" available on '20+ Bolts: https://gmauthority.com/blog/gm/chevrolet/bolt-ev/2020-chevrolet-bolt-ev/2020-chevrolet-bolt-ev-changes-updates-new-features/.
 
I didn't know anything about the cars when I leased my 2013 SV, and I got extremely lucky: I got one with Premium Package for $149 a month, with $2k down, for 2 years. I was able to extend the lease several times, to 5 years, with only an increase to $160 a month because of sales tax. The car lacked QC, but then so did my region at the time. I too fell in love with the Around View. At one point I could have bought the car for $6k (or $5k the month before, had I known!) but by then the range was a little marginal - albeit still with 12 bars.
 
GRA said:
20% is as low as I'm willing to take a Li-ion battery down to repeatedly, especially at short intervals, given that so much of my driving is on long trips. Plus there's the simple fact that in many rural areas 20% or greater reserve is needed to get to the next nearest charger if you can't charge at the intended one, as proved to be the rule rather than the exception on that trip.

If you ever get the chance to drive an EV with decent range estimate software and fast DCFC'g, the way to do this is to be conservative during the first 1/2 of the leg and then drive faster the second half if you have excess kWh.

I cannot help you with poor CCS reliability. That is the nature of the network for now
 
GRA said:
Ideally I'd love to be able to take it all the way down to O% SoC without a care, but that's not a good idea with any battery, now is it? 20% is as low as I'm willing to take a Li-ion battery down to repeatedly, especially at short intervals, given that so much of my driving is on long trips. Plus there's the simple fact that in many rural areas 20% or greater reserve is needed to get to the next nearest charger if you can't charge at the intended one, as proved to be the rule rather than the exception on that trip. That has to change, before BEVs will be acceptable to mainstream users for trips.*
Re: going below 20%, I wouldn't worry about it on Bolt.

FWIW, their long term storage instructions (4 weeks to 12 months) on page 266 of https://my.gm.ca/content/dam/gmownercenter/gmna/GMCC/dynamic/2019/chevrolet/Bolt/en/2019-chevrolet-bolt-ev-owners-manual-english.pdf?evar25=ch_bolt-recall_owners-manuals_bolt-ev call for draining the car down to 2 or 3 battery bars. Bolt has 20 battery bars.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Are the Bolt's charge bars equal in the amount of charge they represent, or are they more like the Leaf's charge bars?
As far as I know/recall, they were 5% each. But, you couldn't really tell if you were at the top, middle of bottom of a bar. There were also tick marks at the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 of the entire battery bar gauge.

If you charged to 16 bars (80%), that 16th bar may not vanish until you're at ~75%.

'17 to '21 (and probably '22) has no 1% increment state of charge display anywhere. It just has the 20 battery bars and 1 to 3 GOMs (see https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/the-math-behind-min-max-calculations-and-the-energy-usage-score.18114/). If you want to see the 1% increment SoC value, you need to use the My Chevrolet app to see it. It has CarPlay and Android Auto support (never used the latter), but the CarPlay support for that app became a total dumpster fire. It worked for me for awhile but eventually I gave up as too often, I'd hit an error, it would get stuck w/a spinner or worse, I think I've even been logged out, which I'm not going to fix when I'm driving.

The rest of CarPlay (e.g. Waze, Apple Maps, Google Maps, Spotify, etc.) worked fine on my Bolt so it was the crap app at fault. I had Waze up almost everywhere I drove but sometimes I'd use Apple Maps for navigation.

Related to the '23 Bolt price drops, there are reports that there's a $6300 or $5900 price cut on '22 via incentives. Google for $6300 discount 2022 bolt. These may be visible for you if you look at Bolt EV and EUV at https://www.chevrolet.com/current-deals. It is for me.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
https://youtu.be/mshuhsznk5w

13 1/2 hours seems pretty similar to a Leaf Plus for 620 miles.
Haven't most of the video but he mentions he ran into some weird technical problems. He also said he was stuck for an hour due to traffic. Looks like NewsColoumb did it on a pretty hot day. At ~11:35 you can see it's 90 F outside or 32.2 C. Ditto at 12:34 into the video: 90 F at 7:01 pm.

You can see at 3:37 in the video, at 10:44 am, it was already 83 F (28 C).

From 23:17 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps8hwnxzk4c, Leaf Plus took 15.5 hours. In winter, it took 14:10.

I bet if NewsColumb took Leaf Plus on the same day that he did and also got stuck in traffic, it'd have taken longer than 15.5 hours.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
13 1/2 hours seems pretty similar to a Leaf Plus for 620 miles.

If you had watched the video, you would know that he had charging problems.
So sure, a LEAF is like a 150 Amp max Bolt with charging issues.

Along the same lines, I'm pretty sure that a LEAF can whip a Bolt that is missing a wheel.
 
So at our local Level 2 tonight, there was a relatively new Bolt EV parked next to a Bolt EUV. While I like the styling of the EUV much better, they both feel like pretty small cars as you walk by. The RAV4 looks like a giant next to it. The EUV is by spec 6 inches longer, but you barely notice. You can see the additional rear leg room, but would worry that the rear cargo just isn't quite enough. The 10% (over 226) additional range would be quite nice though.

Not related, but more Rivians are appearing in the neighborhood. They must be getting some volume out the door.

Just passing thoughts.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
So at our local Level 2 tonight, there was a relatively new Bolt EV parked next to a Bolt EUV. While I like the styling of the EUV much better, they both feel like pretty small cars as you walk by. The RAV4 looks like a giant next to it. The EUV is by spec 6 inches longer [than the EV]

[my clarification]

The Bolt feels bigger on the inside than it looks and measures on the outside, exactly how I like cars. The Asian manufacturers have figured out this bit of magic for decades now, while the domestic manufacturers other than Tesla manage to do the opposite. The Bolt is Korean design and engineered.

The 6 extra inches of length in the EUV is real but the details matter here. Half of the increase is spent on the hood to make the outline of the car look "nicer." It adds exactly ZERO additional functional space to the car. The other 3 inches is added to the compartment where passengers in the second row sit. That space can also be utilized for cargo if the back row seats are folded down.

If the back row seats are upright, then the cargo area depth (front to back) is indeed pretty shallow. However, the fake bottom can be easily removed, and then the total volume is I think serviceable for luggage. That of course depends on what you want to carry. Add a big dog along with 5 passengers and luggage to the mix and then only the dog will be happy.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
With the price drop, for those that don't road trip often, the Bolt is absolutely the value champ now in the entry ev market.

I think so too.
It has cooled off a bit around here -- now only into the mid 80sF. My Bolt pack was 71F when I checked in the morning. I took a leisurely 10 mile drive into the city for an errand and drove home for a total of 20 miles and 2000 feet up and down. That brought the pack up to 75F. Nice! And 3.2 kWh for the total trip, or 6.25 miles/kWh.

This type of driving is where EVs shine their best, and the Bolt is no exception. And it is great that pack temperature are no longer a concern.
 
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