I took a road trip earlier this year in my new Chevy Bolt. While it’s not a study, I hope you’ll find my personal story and anecdotal evidence compelling.
TL;DR? I drove from Minneapolis to Chicago and back, and it cost me $45.90 in energy for the whole trip.
Before I went on my first EV road trip, I needed to know where to stop, as there aren’t fast charging stations on every corner like gas stations. The best resource for finding charging stations across all of the different networks is plugshare.com.
All of the other fast charging stations we used were Electrify America. I don’t want to make this an Electrify America commercial – but they seem to have a pretty darn good DC fast charging network:
EA Network May 2021
Probably second only to the Tesla Supercharger network:
Tesla Supercharger Network May 2021
An aside about Electrify America – it’s a Volkswagen company created in the wake of their diesel scandal.
Charge Speed
I’ve seen some complaints that the only reason they’re not buying a Chevy Bolt specifically is because of the charge rate. I could see this argument as valid if you’re consistently doing cross-country road trips. But for a 400-mile (each way) road trip, this car is great.
The Bolt will fast charge at around 53kw – a far cry from the hundreds of kilowatts the Teslas will slurp up, but it’s no slouch. On our trip we left in the morning and our first charge was at lunch time. After an hour lunch it charged from 25% to over 90% – good to go for another 200+ miles.
It’s sort of topsy turvy to think about charging in terms of miles per hour – the charger is stationary 🤓 But Level 1 & 2 and DC fast chargers can all pump X amount of miles back into your EV in an hour.
At 53kw when you’re at the bottom of the tank it will fill about 28 miles every 10 minutes. That comes out to 168MPH, but that’s not the full story. Charging will slow in all EVs as they approach the top of the tank so to speak. Full charge rate usually starts dropping off somewhere between 66-80% charge level. Around 66% when the charge rate is between 30-40kwh, the Bolt added 18 miles in 10 minutes (108MPH).
At our second stop we just needed to “top up” to get to the final destination. Topping up is a bit of a misnomer. EV lithium batteries take the fastest charge when they’re below 50%. So it’s best to use the middle range of the battery and not get hung up on getting it to 100%. The very end of the charge takes longer because all of the battery cells need to reach their maximum voltage together without going over 🔋🔥
Hotel & Return Trip
I found a hotel on plugshare.com that had a level 2 (240 volt) charger. The $5 was a single-use fee that the hotel charged to activate the charger. You could probably find a hotel that includes it for free, but it wasn’t a big deal. I paid the $5 and charged up to 100% which covered all my in-town trips, plus enough power leftover to get to Madison on the way out of town.
On our way home during the last charge, the Bolt went from %18 to 60% in 35 minutes. It brought the range back up to 160 miles – more than enough to get home from Eau Claire to Minneapolis with energy to spare.
What do you do while you’re waiting?
One thing I didn’t expect to do was talk to curious people noticing me plugging the monster cable into a little hatchback. One guy who just bought an EV chatted me up while he was going around town to get familiar with his neighborhood charging stations.
Another guy wanted to know what we did while it charged. Well, I had a conversation with him – how meta. We told him about the new Ford F-150 Lightning as he needs a truck for his farm.
If no one else is around and it’s not mealtime, we both brought books. I honestly didn’t get more than a chapter in between the bathroom breaks, the conversations, and snack time 📕🍫
That’s a click-baity title. But seriously I bought a Chevy Bolt without ever driving one. However, I had ridden in one and it seemed perfectly fine. It also met all of my criteria:
Is it all-electric? Yes ✅
Does it have a good range? Yes ✅
Does it look like a normal car? Yes ✅
Great! I’m sure whatever other quirks it has I can get used to. Even with an open battery recall, I think it’s a fantastic car.
I got a great deal on a new 2021 Bolt from an out-state dealer, and they just dropped it off at my house. My first “test drive” was picking my daughter up at school. After driving it for a couple of months I’ve gotten used to it. The number of settings that you can configure is rather daunting, so I put this reference together 😎
You can get to these options by going to the Settings icon from the all-icons menu.
Rear seat reminder: off. This is probably useful if you’re traveling with small kids or pets.
Radio settings
Auto volume: medium-low. This setting seemed the most natural to me where I didn’t notice the volume actively going up and down with the vehicle speed.
Vehicle settings
Remote lock / unlock / start
Passive lock / unlock: on
At first I wasn’t sure if I liked this setting. Mostly because my alarm was blaring when I was trying to get in the car. Later I realized it was from unplugging the charge cord before unlocking the vehicle (see charge cord theft alert below).
I’ve since gotten used to keeping the key fob in my pocket and pressing the door handle button to unlock the car.
The car locking on it’s own after I get out is mostly convenient, but sometimes the car locks while I’m getting out and walking to the other side to get something out of the back seat. No worries, just press the unlock button on the passenger side.
Energy Settings
Energy settings are always accessible at the bottom of the screen. Energy settings are kind of weird. You may want to turn location based charging on while you’re parked at home. Once your home location is set you can have separate options for home and away. To configure the away options, you’ll want to set them while you’re away from your home.
Charging options
Location based charging: on
Charge cord theft alert: off. I turned this off in case I’m at a charging station and someone else needs to charge. Otherwise the alarm will honk when you unplug it before the car is unlocked.
Charging
Home
Make these settings changes after you’ve set the home location, and while you’re there.
Charge mode: Departure
Portable cord limit: 12 Amps. Setting this to 12 Amps will only save if location-based charging is on. Make sure you’re on a 20-amp circuit or on a 15-amp circuit with no other loads.
Target charge level: 80% (the recall letter I received suggests 90%)
Away
Charge mode: Immediate
Target charge level: 100% (this is currently not recommended until the battery recall has been performed).
Verdict
This car is great. Even with the battery recall I would still buy one. Heck now would be a great time to buy a used Bolt (privately) because it’s going to get a brand new battery with a 100k mile warranty.
Several people on the r/BoltEV subreddit complain about the GM experience. Sure the dealerships aren’t as clean or well lit as the others, but does that matter? I bought my car over the phone because I don’t like going into any dealerships – no matter how nice they are 😱 My sales guy was great, I knew what I was getting in to, and he helped me get the best deal possible.
I’ve taken several road trips (post upcoming) and it’s been a pleasure to drive. Cheap and cheerful, would recommend.
