Two months with a Chevy Bolt
Two months ago, I bought a Chevy Bolt. I won’t go into the purchasing process, others have ranted plenty about the antiquated dealership/haggling process.
Michele and I got our first all-electric car about 2 and a half years ago, a Kia Soul EV, which we love. I installed a home charger (Clipper Creek HCS-40) and we found the EV life easy and without problems. We learned the basics about how to find public chargers and how long recharges took.
The largest incentive was the ability to drive in the HOV/car pool lane. This is attractive to drivers in Los Angeles and my daily commute has a car pool lane. Second, the car gives off no emissions, which is a benefit in smoggy Los Angeles. Along with no oil changes, fluids to manage, other costly maintenance the appeal really adds up. Lastly, with chargers at home & work, no fucking gas stations.
The car itself is well designed, and pleasure to drive. Plenty of guts and fairly good handling for a small car.
The electronics package works well, and has integration with both Android Auto and Apple Car Play central to the operation of the car. Apple appears to have intentionally crippled Car Play, so I can’t blame Chevy for those limitations.
The core issue is really about “range anxiety”. Range anxiety is the concern about running out of energy and not having a way to recharge quickly. In my normal drives and commute, it’s a non-issue, but on longer trips, you have to think it through.
For our anniversary weekend, my wife Michele and I decided to drive up the coast, ride our bicycles, stop at wineries, and “test” their products. The concern was the drive. The stated max range of a Bolt fully charged is ~240 miles. The trip from our home to Cambria, our destination, is ~240 miles.
We agreed to give it a try.
Before I go further, a little on charging an EV car. EV cars have huge batteries. Truly gigantic batteries that can hold an incredible amount of energy. The process that converts electrical energy into the chemistry of batteries is complex, and can only go so fast. One of the ways of dealing with this is using lots of smaller batteries that charge quickly simultaneously, rather than one large one that takes a long time to fill up. Computer controllers are used to manage the process.
Even with these techniques, there is only so fast a battery can charge. Using a charger that plugs into a traditional wall outlet, called a Level 1 charger, works, but can literally take days to fully charge a car. It’s fairly impractical for day to day usage.
Most people with EV cars are familiar with Level 2 chargers. A Level 2 charger can be connected to the same kind of circuits in a home that run your large appliances (220V), and provides a much faster level of charging. Even with the big batteries in Bolts and Teslas, a Level 2 Charger can fully restore the battery overnight.
Getting a Level 2 charger installed is not hard, but can cost a little. The charger will cost ~$500 and the install probably another $500.
You get huge piece of mind and can take advantage of power pricing plans that make charging at night much cheaper than charging during the day.
Level 2 chargers are being found more in more in public places and are commonly used by all EV drivers to recharge a little while shopping or at work. Many of the public chargers are free, which is basically the equivalent of free gasoline while you shop.
Even with Level 2 chargers available, the recharge rate still isn’t fast enough for road trips. No one wants to wait 6 hours in the middle of a trip to refuel.
Hence the need for a Level 3 charger also known as a DC Fast Charger. DC fast chargers can replenish an EV car in hour if everything goes right.
The issue with DC fast chargers is that they are fairly new and come in three different flavors: Tesla Supercharger, CHAdeMO, and CCS.
Telsa’s Supercharger is for, well, Tesla cars. They are the only ones that can use it. CHAdeMO is commonly found in Asia. CCS is the newest standard, mainly found in Europe and now the US. This is important, since my Bolt has the CCS connector.
Plug compatibility is a big issue for EV car owners. If you don’t have the right plug you can’t charge. The EV car industry has cycled through multiple versions of plugs and charging system from a funky induction paddle for the old GM EV1, to a military-spec connector on the first Tesla Roadster, to the current common standard of the J1772 found on most cars (Telsa have adapters to use these.)
Back to our road trip!
To make the trip reasonable, we’d need to recharge on the way north at a CCS fast charger on our route to make it in a reasonable amount of time.
On the route we had planned, there are six CCS charging stations we can use, one of them being out of the way, but close to our destination.
Our plan was to stop in Solvang/Buellton and charge while we had lunch.
As we headed north of Santa Barbara on the 154 up the hill, I was nervous. We’d used a lot of battery already. Would the charger be open or would someone else be using it? Would it be working? Would it actually charge as fast as it’s supposed to.
The charger is at Marriott hotel, where Tesla has installed their Superchargers and common stopping point for Tesla drivers. As we rolled past the Tesla area, I saw 4 cars charging but didn’t see the charger we needed. After a frantic map check, we headed to the rear of the hotel and spotted the Chargepoint charger.
Still nervous, I plugged into the Bolt and started the charge. Relief flooded through me as the charge began and the car said it would be full within an hour.
We wandered off in search of lunch. Passing by several fast food joints, I was obsessively checking my phone app to confirm that the car was still charging. Michele spotted a Mexican restaurant and we went in to have lunch. In case you are wondering, I had the two taco combo and Michele had the enchilada plate. Able to relax, we enjoyed a margarita and then wandered into the store next door to buy some supplies (junk food) for the weekend.
Returning to the car, we found it just over a 90% charge. DC fast charging works great when the car is near empty, but dramatically slows down when you get closer to full. Kinda of like filling an ice cube tray. At first, you can pour water in, let it slosh around where ever when it’s empty, but as they fill, you have to be more careful to fill each cube slot slowly and more carefully.
Batteries work in a similar fashion, when they get close to full charge, you need to lower the amount of electricity you feed it since there are fewer electrochemicals floating around freely waiting for a charge.
90% was plenty enough to get us to Cambria, and we headed out with grins on our faces, since our vacation was not ruined.
Our hotel didn’t have a charger we could use. They did have a Tesla Destination Charger (Level 2) though. We hooked up the slow 110V charger to grab a few extra miles of charge.
Over the weekend, we made our way to Paso Robles for a bike ride and while we rode, we had the car charge at a CCS charger there. Once again, we had a full charge.
On a side note, I highly recommend riding between wineries up in Paso Robles. There’s no better way to burn up the calories and alcohol between tastings. Plus you have a great excuse to eat all the things when the ride is over.
Heading home, we didn’t have enough charge to make it all the way home, so again, we stopped in Buellton to charge up while we had breakfast.
As you can see, in an hour we added 104 miles worth of charge for a little over 15 bucks. Using the DC fast charger costs a bit more than level 2 chargers, mainly because they can charge whatever they want. This will change as more are deployed.
Notice how the charge starts out at 45kW, which is a LOT of energy pouring into the battery and ramps down over time as the individual batteries start to get full. With a typical home charger you are going to get 6 kW levels.
We headed south on the highway towards home.
I kept our speeds lower on the way home and noticed that we drained the battery much slower. Just like a gasoline powered car, going fast costs you more fuel.
After completing our first real road trip, we were a lot more confident in our choice. We didn’t have any problems and learned about fast charging.
The car itself is great. Full of features and besides a few small “would be nice” issues like adaptive cruise control, GM built a solid car. It’s my first GM car since buying a Saturn in 1993 and I’m happy to see General Motors engineers developing a well designed car that can compete with the new ideas coming out of Tesla. Real competition in this area is great for everyone.
Our lease runs three years, at which time I expect a lot of even better choices. The Tesla 3 should be widely available, and new EV cars from all the major manufacturers will be on the market, each trying to out do each other with features and lower prices. As the charging networks continue to increase, range anxiety will be even more reduced.
So if you are in the market for a new car, come join the EV bandwagon.
