I was talking to a friend about my Chevy Bolt after I got it, and remarked how many features it has. Then I realized nothing on the list of features would impress him. He’s the type of guy that gets a new car every 2 years, so he’s seen the gradual stair-step addition of features across several models.
The “new” automatic windows that go all the way up/down with a single button press astound/annoy me. That’s how far behind I was.
I’d driven a 2002 Subaru WRX since 2005. It was a fantastic little car that was terrifically fast. At the time it didn’t have a lot of extra features – you could buy the base WRX for less than $25k in 2002. While the base MSRP for a 2021 Chevy Bolt is in the $30k range, tax and dealer incentives frequently brought it to the $25k price point.
Are there some things I miss from my WRX that the Bolt doesn’t offer? Of course. One of the things I’m completely willing to let go of is the additional .6 seconds of quarter-mile time. The Bolt does it in 14.9 to the WRX’s (stock) 14.3. The fastest I ever drove my WRX in the 1/4 mile was 14.001 – after several modifications. I’m OK with the Bolt being “stuck” where it’s at in terms of speed, because the motor/transmission/drivetrain is so dead simple that it may last forever.
The things the WRX had that I will actually miss:
Great seats (the Bolt’s are notoriously un-bolstered)
CD Player
All wheel drive
Turbocharger
Manual transmission
Occasionally that rumbly sound (but not on road trips)
Part of the reason I bought the Bolt without a test drive is because of this enormous gap in time. I knew that there would be a tremendous amount of “new stuff” that I wasn’t accustomed to. Would I have purchased a higher trim level like the Premier if I had test driven? Maybe, but only for the stereo upgrade 🔊
Being a die-hard Minnesotan, I’ve developed some habits that I need to break. Many of these are stubborn/stupid habits that simply come from getting old and always doing things the old way.
One of them is my insistence on not using seat warmers in cars. Mostly because my first encounter with them was unknowing. I was riding in someones fancy car (Lexus) and it detected that a butt was in the passenger seat. Combined with the outdoor temperature, the climate computer decided it should activate the heated seat. About a minute later I was wondering if I had peed my pants 😳🍑🔥
I decided then and there that it would be the first and last time I used a heated seat… But was it really?
Driving my Chevy Bolt in winter, the range is reduced due to several factors: batteries don’t like the cold, the factory heater is a resistance unit instead of an efficient heat pump like on the newer Teslas. Combined with the fact that my car is currently limited to an 80% charge, the juice gets used up much faster in the winter.
I still love this car, and I’ve come to terms that I won’t be doing any winter road trips in it this year. But even with long-ish drives around town, I want to know my options for energy conservation. My two best friends in this department are the heated seats and the heated steering wheel.
Running both full blast for one person is less than one hundred watts 💯
Compare those numbers to the resistance style heater that is used to heat the cabin – it can use up to 9kW. That’s 9,000 watts y’all – enough power for a small rock concert 🎸 It works well – the cabin heats quickly, especially compared to an internal combustion engine. It’s just sort of a power hog… granted it won’t be using 9kW all of the time, but it will use that much to get up to your desired temperature.
Reducing heater usage
There are a few things you can do to reduce the mega energy sap from the heater:
Pre-heat the car while it’s plugged in
My 240V charger can deliver 40 amps of power to the vehicle, that’s 9kW (240V x 40A = 9600W). The Bolt will use up to 7.6kW of that (32A). If the car is plugged in while pre-conditioning, the Bolt will use as much of the AC power it can. This will pull at most 1-2kW from the battery even if the heater is going full-tilt. Result: pre-heating while plugged in won’t take away any range from your trip, plus your car is toasty warm when you get in.
Use the heated seats and steering wheel
I’ve learned to love the heated seats and steering wheel. You’ll be surprised how much a difference it makes to heat the surfaces your body touches. The wheel is like holding a hot cup of coffee, which has some sort of lizard-brain effect on your perceived comfort.
The climate controls will guess how high to turn the seat warmers on. Despite my earlier protests, I now find myself turning the seat heater up an additional setting so I can turn down the cabin heater a few degrees.
Turn the heater off
I don’t normally do this, but I will if I really need to conserve range or it’s not terribly cold out. The difficult part to manage when the heater is off is window fogging. Face masks help with moisture from our breath – what a strange time we live in. Wet hair from a recent shower certainly won’t help either. Even a cup of coffee can make things worse, but I have to draw the line somewhere! ☕
I really wish there was such thing as a heated foot plate. I think I could go further with heater off longer if my feet had a little heat 🥾🔥Maybe I’ll get some heated socks or boots to see how much it helps.
I knew having two electric-powered vehicles in the garage would initially present some charging problems. We have a garage fridge and an air compressor that already like to trip the circuit breaker when both are running full-tilt. Charging two vehicles from that same 120V circuit was going to be tricky.
Offset Charging Schedules
Until we could add a dedicated 240V circuit, the first thing I did was set charging schedules for both vehicles. I set the Bolt to charge from Midnight to 4PM. Because I work from home, I tend to drive my car (usually to rehearsal) after work.
Setting the Bolt’s charging schedule is a bit complex. It’s labeled rate scheduling because you can configure it to match your power company’s off-peak, mid-peak, and peak rates for weekdays and weekends, summer and winter. Lots of options!
I set the car to charge on off-peak only when at home and then made the off-peak hours Midnight to 4PM every day, year-round. Done and done.
The Pacifica is easier to set a schedule. It simply has start and stop times for weekdays and weekends. I set it to charge from 4PM to Midnight every day.
Because both vehicles clocks are synced to the cell phone network or GPS, I made them turn on/off at the exact same time. This seemed to work for a while until I tripped the breaker at 4PM one day. Just one second of overlap with one car coming off the charge and the other firing up was enough to trip the 20 amp circuit.
Both vehicles use 15-minute increments in their scheduling software. So I set the Bolt to charge from 12:15AM to 3:45PM to give a buffer. Still, on days when both cars were driven, neither were getting a full charge, so it was time for an upgrade.
240V Outlet & Level 1.5 Charging
To facilitate a Level 2 charger, we had an electrician install a 14-50 50-amp RV-style 240V outlet in the garage. If you have a 240V outlet and don’t yet have a Level 2 charger – don’t worry, you can double your charge rate with the included “portable” charger.
Dual Level 2 Charging
After the electrician installed a 50-amp 240V outlet, it was time to go big or go home at home. I ordered a Clipper Creek 40-amp dual car charger. While it’s true that most charging stations are just “fancy extension cords” – this one has some smarts in it. If two cars are charging at the same time it will split the charge and feed 20-amps to each vehicle. If only one vehicle is charging, it will get the full 40-amps.
At that rate, the van can charge fully in 2 hours and the Chevy could always get to a full charge overnight. Because having a Level 2 charger means we can really blast some power into charging, I set both vehicles charging schedules to 9PM-9AM which is off-peak for my power company.
Charging Extension
While I’m waiting to get my Bolt’s battery replaced because of the recall, I need to keep it outside. To be able to charge in the driveway I purchased a 40-amp J-1772 extension cable. It adds 20 feet to to my garage charger so I can reach it in the driveway. So the charge handle doesn’t just get left on the ground (or in the snow), I mounted a EV holster to the side of the garage.
When I first got the message about the battery recall affecting every model year Bolt, I started parking the car in the driveway (per Chevy’s recommendation). Before I got the extension cord I switched from using the high-amp Clipper Creek charger to the included “portable” charger, but plugged into 240 volts. This worked great for a while because I could use a normal extension cord with the included charger. To work on 240 volts, the extension cord just has to have low-gauge wires (thick) with no extras like LED indicator lights.
It started to become a nuisance as charging both cars meant I’d have to go out and switch the one active charge plug to the other car once the first was done. I could have purchased a 50-amp RV splitter for $100 and used both portable chargers at the same time. The 50 amp outlet would have more than enough overhead as each portable charger maxes out at 12 amps for 24 amps total. This would actually be a great (cheap!) setup for two cars and 240 volts without having to invest in a big charger.
But I already had the big charger and $100 was more than half of the J-1772 extension, so I went that route and it’s been working great.
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.
