Chevrolet Bolt & Bolt EUV

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evnow said:
It felt shockingly small inside compared to Leaf - don't know whether its just a unfamiliarity thing. The seat was ok (but then, I'm thin). Charge was low - so couldn't really go far or quick. but it drives adequately. I knew it would be a econobox - but it was still shocking how barebones - hard plasticky it is. You'd feel practically robbed paying $40k/>$500 a month lease for this.

Currently GM hasn't announced a lease program for WA - and buying the car knowing I want to get rid off this whenever I get Model 3 would be not prudent. Infact if the lease continues to be close to $500 (zero down) I expect to spend about double of what I'd spend on a new Leaf in the next 18 months. I find it difficult to justify the expense.

I just have to comment on your impressions after your brief exposure to the car. We've had ours for two weeks and we just love it. I won't argue that most of the interior plastics aren't hard and cheap feeling. But the engineers have done a phenomenal job with the packaging and the engineering. The car rides and handles beautifully. I find the handling and steering feel very easy to adapt to and reassuring, with just the right mix of firmness for good handling but without harshness. There is such a wealth of adjustability to the regen settings. My wife, who likes to drive a car without thinking about regen and such, and she expects the usual degree of "creep" drives the Bolt in D. I always immediately put it in L, which switches off creep and greatly enhances regen. In addition, there is the regen paddle behind the left steering wheel strut that allows me to add strong regen at any time, regardless of the drive setting (Volt also has a paddle). There is also a Sport setting that sharpens the throttle response. The car has so much more torque than the 2013 Leaf SL that I had that there's no comparison. The Bolt can be a sedate family grocery getter for my wife and it can put a huge grin on my face as a sports machine. The seats are even grippy enough to hold me in place for cornering. I'm not kidding. In fact, I even enjoy it more than my BMW i3.
The space utilization is amazing. The car is tall, so seating is upright. Rear seating for two adults is good behind two other adults, and we routinely carry two kid seats back there with lots of space around them. My wife loves the cargo organization, which offers a covered lower space for shopping bags and small stuff below a rigid floor of a clear luggage space for cargo. Tires are a new Michelin Self Sealing formulation.
And they've really loaded the Premier model. The high def 80 degree rear camera monitor in the rear view mirror, the rear cross traffic alert, surround view, rear parking sensors, lane change blind spot sensors, lane keeping assist, pedestrian and vehicle sensing emergency braking. While the car doesn't offer navigation per se, I'm really enjoying the Nav by Apple Car Play. It's quite sophisticated.
You're right, the lease deals aren't attractive right now. I assume they'll get better. Some dealers are discounting in California, though not many. We found a no haggle dealer who is offering a $2500 discount.
We also have a reservation for a Model 3 and I foresee both a Bolt and a Model 3 in our garage. But we saw enough in the Bolt to warrant purchasing it even though we've leased all three of our previous EVs.
I wrote this because I noticed that it's easy to pile negative comments on to a competitive car on a fan site like this, but some of the comments are based on precious little information or familiarity.
I do think that a Volt would be a good stopgap choice for you before the Model 3 is available. Good luck in selecting your next EV.
Cheers EVnow.
 
lorenfb said:
GRA said:
lorenfb said:
Articles like that don't enhance the likelihood that consumers will consider a transition from an ICEV to a BEV
in the near term. Hopefully, those articles are infrequent and/or don't reach the mainstream media!
On the contrary, they need to reach the mainstream media so we don't have a large number of quickly disillusioned mainstream consumers bitching about BEVs.

Really? You obviously missed the point, i.e. articles like that dissuade potential BEV buyers from further
consideration of a BEV, e.g. "I know now that a BEV is NOT for our family after seeing that NBC report on the
Bolt travel experience in CA". I assure you, if I were to refer friends of mine who have shown some very slight
interest in a BEV to that article, they would laugh and say "I can't believe you bought a BEV and still drive one!".
Nope, didn't miss the point at all. Given the still immature infrastructure and the small % of the population with any experience of BEVs, I want to dissuade people who have only a slight interest in BEVs away from them. They'll be much happier with PHEVs for now, and then their next PEV can be a BEV, when the charging infrastructure, BEV performance and their own knowledge of PEVs) have all improved.

lorenfb said:
GRA said:
GetOffYourGas is exactly right - if GM and the other BEV companies hope to expand beyond the early adopter base that frequents sites like this one, then this is exactly the sort of thing their customers will be dealing with, and it's not as if they're likely to get good info from dealership personnel.
On the contrary, it's the responsibility of the automotive industry to educate potential BEV buyers and avoid articles like that from reaching the mainstream, and not hope that the market will "eventually sort itself out" and the market will eventually learn the "true value of a BEV ownership" over time without proper marketing. That type of article is not what the BEV market needs! Hopefully, GM will not incur another monthly decline in Bolt sales this March.

Bottom Line: Mary Barra (GM CEO) needs to do some marketing "re-education" in the Bolt Product Marketing Group.
So far, after 5+ years no BEV company or any government entity has been able to supply this education. The best education remains word of mouth from trusted friends/acquaintances, and while ensuring initially slower adoption, it's far more effective in the long term. Would Nissan's rep have been better and their early adopters have remained enthusiastic ambassadors for them if they hadn't made such wildly inaccurate claims at the start, and then tried to weasel their way out of standing behind their product?

A company or industry trying to hide 'bad news' from the public, in an era when all institutions are distrusted, is a sure way to turn people off. Trying to claim the car is well-suited for something it isn't (given the typical mainstream consumer's lack of knowledge and interest in learning more) will just repeat Nissan's mistakes. Underpromise and overdeliver remains necessary, until far more people are familiar with the behavior/requirements of PEVs. Trying to rush them out to the general public before the knowledge base has expanded sufficiently to accept their limitations (and those limitations have been reduced as described in my first paragraph) will only cause a backlash that delays mass adoption.
 
edatoakrun said:
GRA said:
...As to the idea that speeding will get her there in less time, that's ICE conditioning for you, but just how you can sell "Drive slower so you get there faster" to the masses...
Speeding (~80 mph on the freeway, as was the case here) will get her there in less time in any BEV with DC charge capability, and with DC charge sites at appropriate locations.

Several recent commentators seem not to understand this.
Actually, several recent commentators understand that even if QCs are in the appropriate locations (and one's working and available), unless the DC charge capability can replace miles faster than faster driving will use them, driving faster will get you there slower.
 
After six years of being tethered near home for all-electric touring in 80 mile Leafs and i3s, we ventured forth on a 295 mile trip with lots of elevation change in our new Bolt today, with just one DC fast charge needed, to great success.

This was a particularly challenging trip because our destination was Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in the California low desert to see the "super bloom" of flowers that is being widely reported. (Not so much, more of a super bloom of humans!)

Challenging because the elevation at Borrego Springs is just 600 feet, but it's surrounded by mountains and plains that are much taller. So the trip felt like heading for a hole in the ground as a destination. EV drivers know the challenges there.

And challenging because there are zero DC fast chargers anywhere east of Route 15, anywhere near where we were going, and darn few Level 2 plugs, though apparently there are 4 Blink Level 2 plugs in Borrego Springs.
This being our first ambitious outing with the car, we planned carefully, and mapped our charging opportunities with Plugshare.

We took our favorite route, down Rte 5 from Orange County, over the 3,500 foot coastal mountains on Ortega Highway, Rte 74 to Lake Elsinore, down Rte 15 to Temecula, DCFC at an EVgo station on Rte 79 while we ate take out breakfast from iHop, then East on 79 to Warner Springs and down into Borrego Springs. Then a fast, steep climb up to Julian (600 ft to 4,000 ft) for lunch and pie, a short 12 mile round trip explore out to Cuyamaca Lake and back to Julian, and then down Rte 78 to Escondido and back up Rte 5 and home. Two hundred ninety-five miles on one DC fast charge. We planned for another DCFC at Escondido on the way home, but we didn't need it and we didn't stop.

We got home having used just 65.2 kWh, traveling 295.3 miles, averaging 4.53 miles/kWh and with the app showing 65 miles remaining range and 23% SOC. We added 18.2 kWh at the DCFC charging stop. If you do the math, we did need the charge in order to make the trip, just barely. If we hadn't charged mid-trip, driving with that 4.53 mi/kWh efficiency with 60 available kWh would have given us only 272 miles of range, and we would have sputtered to a stop 23 miles short of home.

I drove the whole route mostly in L, using Regen On Demand rather than friction braking whenever possible. Freeway legs were kept to an average of 70 mph. We were lucky that air conditioning was needed for only a very few minutes and heating not at all. Temperatures varied from about 53 when we left home about 6 am, to about 70 when we arrived home, with a high of 90 on the desert floor for a short while (but it's a dry heat).
 
For future reference, high-regen modes are not usually the best for freeway or highway driving. You want as little regen when driving on level ground as possible, and usually just a bit on graded downhills. The reason is that coasting is far more efficient than regenerative braking.
 
GRA said:
Nope, didn't miss the point at all. Given the still immature infrastructure and the small % of the population with any experience of BEVs, I want to dissuade people who have only a slight interest in BEVs away from them. They'll be much happier with PHEVs for now, and then their next PEV can be a BEV, when the charging infrastructure, BEV performance and their own knowledge of PEVs) have all improved.

Yes, you missed the point, i.e. articles like that do a disservice to properly informing consumers about BEV's benefits,
which there're many.

GRA said:
A company or industry trying to hide 'bad news' from the public, in an era when all institutions are distrusted, is a sure way to turn people off. Trying to claim the car is well-suited for something it isn't (given the typical mainstream consumer's lack of knowledge and interest in learning more) will just repeat Nissan's mistakes.

It's rather naive to assume an implication that the automotive industry would/should attempt to "hide" BEV
deficiencies verses ICEV or hybrids. By better educating prospective consumers and uninformed new
owners, e.g basic new owners BEV pamphlet, negative BEV articles can be avoided in the future.

With regard to your comment, "Nissan's mistakes", the Leaf, notwithstanding the battery, is a very good vehicle
as exemplified in the many threads on this forum. Yes, Nissan could have delayed market entry by further development
of battery chemistry, added TMS, and masked actual total battery energy to minimize indicated range loss.
But that would have significantly increased the Leaf's cost and Nissan still would have had to contend with
the inherent negative aspect of all battery chemistry degradation over time, i.e. when producing a low range
BEV at Nissan's targeted price point. If asked, most on this forum would still have bought the Leaf knowing what
has been posted on this forum over the last 5+ years.

GRA said:
Underpromise and overdeliver remains necessary, until far more people are familiar with the behavior/requirements of PEVs. Trying to rush them out to the general public before the knowledge base has expanded sufficiently to accept their limitations (and those limitations have been reduced as described in my first paragraph) will only cause a backlash that delays mass adoption.

Oh, please! Where have you been in the last 30 years when technology has emerged ahead of consumer's
understanding of its utility, e.g. the PC - until the internet, few saw utility. A BEV "Knowledge Base" is a little
stretch there! If most can grasp the operation of a smartphone, understanding the basics of a how to utilize
a BEV for a consumer's benefit should be a snap for most.
 
lorenfb said:
GRA said:
Nope, didn't miss the point at all. Given the still immature infrastructure and the small % of the population with any experience of BEVs, I want to dissuade people who have only a slight interest in BEVs away from them. They'll be much happier with PHEVs for now, and then their next PEV can be a BEV, when the charging infrastructure, BEV performance and their own knowledge of PEVs) have all improved.
Yes, you missed the point, i.e. articles like that do a disservice to properly informing consumers about BEV's benefits,
which there're many.
People with only a slight interest (your words) aren't going to get past the price premium they have to pay for a BEV in any case. It takes more than slight interest by mainstream consumers to learn about the advantages of BEVs, especially in an era of sustained low gas prices.

lorenfb said:
GRA said:
A company or industry trying to hide 'bad news' from the public, in an era when all institutions are distrusted, is a sure way to turn people off. Trying to claim the car is well-suited for something it isn't (given the typical mainstream consumer's lack of knowledge and interest in learning more) will just repeat Nissan's mistakes.
It's rather naive to assume an implication that the automotive industry would/should attempt to "hide" BEV
deficiencies verses ICEV or hybrids. By better educating prospective consumers and uninformed new
owners, e.g basic new owners BEV pamphlet, negative BEV articles can be avoided in the future.
Sure, they should be doing that, but they've had more than 6 years to do that and haven't, perhaps because they're afraid that giving out such a pamphlet will lose them more customers initially than will be unhappy later (and unfortunately, it's still the case with far too many car companies that once you're out the door you're on your own).

lorenfb said:
GRA said:
With regard to your comment, "Nissan's mistakes", the Leaf, notwithstanding the battery, is a very good vehicle as exemplified in the many threads on this forum
Notwithstanding the battery? "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play?" :roll: The LEAF's rep was seriously damaged owing to Nissan's overclaims and failure to stand behind the product except when forced to, which undoubtedly had negative spillover to other brands of BEVs.

lorenfb said:
Yes, Nissan could have delayed market entry by further development
of battery chemistry, added TMS, and masked actual total battery energy to minimize indicated range loss.
But that would have significantly increased the Leaf's cost and Nissan still would have had to contend with
the inherent negative aspect of all battery chemistry degradation over time, i.e. when producing a low range
BEV at Nissan's targeted price point. If asked, most on this forum would still have bought the Leaf knowing what
has been posted on this forum over the last 5+ years.
If you mean most on this forum who haven't bailed to another BEV, a PHEV or gone back to ICEs, I might agree with you. But I'm not suggesting that Nissan had to delay market entry (although a far more robust, conservative design wouldn't have suffered the backlash that the LEAF did), only that they shouldn't have made claims for the car's capabilities that they knew (or should have known) were vastly overstated, leading to lots of unhappy customers. 100 mile range? 5 years to 80%/10 years to 70%?

lorenfb said:
Oh, please! Where have you been in the last 30 years when technology has emerged ahead of consumer's
understanding of its utility, e.g. the PC - until the internet, few saw utility. A BEV "Knowledge Base" is a little
stretch there! If most can grasp the operation of a smartphone, understanding the basics of a how to utilize
a BEV for a consumer's benefit should be a snap for most.
Should be a snap? How's that worked out? Sure, tech gets deployed ahead of the mass consumer's understanding of it, but it isn't deployed by the mass consumer during that period. I took my first programming class in 1972 if memory serves, and first used a PC in 1979, and, but I never thought they had much utility for the general public before IBM came out with their PC and the Mac popularized GUIs first for a largish group of early adopters, which then spread to the masses after another 5-7 years (let's have a round of applause for Xerox PARC, who first developed and deployed GUIs years before, although the general public wasn't ready for another decade +). Mass adoption, in addition to a perceived need, also requires a mass-affordable price, and the Bolt isn't there yet. The Ionic BEV is getting close.
 
Boomer23 said:
I wrote this because I noticed that it's easy to pile negative comments on to a competitive car on a fan site like this, but some of the comments are based on precious little information or familiarity.

I do think that a Volt would be a good stopgap choice for you before the Model 3 is available. Good luck in selecting your next EV.
Cheers EVnow.
I was actually quite set on getting a Bolt - until I drove one and started thinking about it. It is not the car per se - but the value proposition to me. I'll give it may be $50 more per month than Leaf, even $100 but not double. I expect to spend about $5 to $6k over the next 18 months on Volt/Leaf. On Bolt that goes to $10k to $12k. That is the real issue. I'm fairly sure by 2020 (in 3 years) Bolt will not be sold anywhere near $40k - and if it is - it will hardly be able to beat 500 in sales a month. So, buying it for the long haul is out of question to me.

Volt will be a hard sell to my wife because she doesn't like low cars. Who knows - I might end up with a '17 Leaf.
 
Via GCR:
Why I canceled my Chevy Bolt EV electric-car order: a reader explains
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1109311_why-i-canceled-my-chevy-bolt-ev-electric-car-order-a-reader-explains

Short version, had leased an FFE and now has a 500e, didn't care for the change in looks from the concept to production, didn't like the cheapo interior plastics, lack of high speed AEB (over 37 mph) and other auto driving features, holding off for a Model 3.
 
Main reason I'm thinking Model 3 over Bolt is the supercharging network. It still feels like with anything other than a Tesla you're dependent on the charity of others to find a place to charge for any longer distance travel. Tesla's stations are appropriately located for road trips along interstates, whereas dealerships and such are located in towns, may only have one stall, may be already in use or closed, whatever.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
Main reason I'm thinking Model 3 over Bolt is the supercharging network. It still feels like with anything other than a Tesla you're dependent on the charity of others to find a place to charge for any longer distance travel. Tesla's stations are appropriately located for road trips along interstates, whereas dealerships and such are located in towns, may only have one stall, may be already in use or closed, whatever.

That's a really valid point, and I share it completely. That's why I'm planning for an eventual setup of a Bolt and a Model 3. The Bolt will be my wife's car for grandkids, local erranding, etc without a care about charging stops interrupting her days in any way. The Tesla will be my personal fun car, with more panache, style, performance and will be our road trip car.
However, since we made the choice to jump into a Bolt and out of an old Prius now, the Bolt is our road trip car until the Model 3 comes along. So we accept that we're subject to the slings and arrows of an unpredictable public DCFC charging network. Or rent or borrow an ICE in the ulikely case of a trip into no-EV's Land.
 
GRA said:
Boomer23 said:
lorenfb said:
Sorry for the "sidebar". Now for more reporting from Boomer23.

:D :D :D
Yes, nice trip. I've always wanted to see one of the 'once every twenty years' desert flower blooms, but have managed to miss them so far. What kind of extra time (including planning) would you say your trip took vs. an ICE?

Good question.
Maybe three hours extra planning time, plus two hours of lost sleep. I'm being completely honest and serious here.

Almost all of that was because it was our first long trip in this car, our first DCFC with it, and because of the challenging terrain.

Wife and I had a one hour sit-down-with-paper-maps and PlugShare planning session. She's a math teacher, a born navigator and wanted to ensure a fun day including all points of interest without skipping any because of energy concerns, but also without needless charging stops.

I spent a couple hours driving to and from a local DCFC charger and charging the car to verify that DC charging works, and that EVgo stations work with the car, and the checking the charging speed.

I spent time on PlugShare and Google Maps mapping the distances and guessing at the impact of elevation changes, and selecting likely DCFC charging spots.

And I actually found it hard to sleep the night before. I found myself thinking about the various decision points on the trip where we could opt for a Plan B route that would be more energy efficient, but those options would cut out some destinations that we wanted to hit. So just a swirl of thoughts that kept my mind active and not ready to sleep,
 
evnow said:
Volt will be a hard sell to my wife because she doesn't like low cars. Who knows - I might end up with a '17 Leaf.

I checked out Boomers bolt EV last weekend, and it seems like a real nice car. I recently had the need to get a car for a company runabout, and I have no need for a car that goes over 100 miles. The Bolt EV costs substantially more than the 2017 LEAF-S that I just picked up yesterday on lease:

30kWh, CHAdeMO fast charge, 6.6kW, glacier white (to be wrapped with company logo), black cloth interior (only choice with the S model):

$33k sticker price
$14k discounts
$9k residual (27%)
$10k total payment for 3yr/36,000 at $279 per month with California "use" tax
$0 down

The car will be used to take packages to FedEx, pick up lunch, shuttle employees around, etc. If the car needs to go more than 100 miles in a day, it comes with the free "no charge to charge" card, and there are about 300 CHAdeMO stations throughout Southern California. That's not the case with CCS used by the Bolt EV, but I'm confident that in the future virtually all charging stations will have both. I don't believe the Bolt comes with free charging. GM does not support infrastructure.

It comes with XM radio on the latest 3G Telematics. The seats are comfy, which I did not find to be the case with the leather seat in the Bolt EV, but the cloth seat in Boomer's car seemed OK. The LEAF appears to have more headroom front and rear and more storage room in the back (Important for our mission with this car).
 
I hope this clears up some issues about the fast charge rate of the Bolt EV.

Power is simply amps multiplied by volts:

A * V = W

So, today, the highest observed amps that the Bolt can handle is 125 amps. This could be because of the 125 amp limit of the chargers, or it could be because GM engineers limited the Bolt EV to 125 amps, or both.

The voltage component of the above power equation in the Bolt EV is 300 volts (empty) to 400 volts (full).

So, rolling into a 125 amp charger with a nearly empty battery, you can expect:

125a * 300v = 37.5kW

Could the Bolt EV take 200 amps? I'm very confident that it can. Is it programmed to allow anything above 125 amps? We don't know... yet.

So, to answer your question, should the Bolt EV be able to handle 126-200 amps, the charge rate will likely look like this:

0% SOC : 200a * 300v = 60.0kW
25% SOC: 175a * 330v = 57.7kW
50% SOC : 125a * 355v = 44.5kW
75% SOC : 60a * 380v = 19.0kW

Using the above assumptions, and using the EPA data of 4 miles range per kWh, then the average charge rate using a 200 amp capable charger might be:

52.5kW average charge rate between 0% and 50% which will add 0.875kWh per minute, or 3.5 EPA miles added per minute average.

That's 105 EPA miles added in 30 minutes. Obviously, the higher 126-200 amp charge rate offers no benefit whatsoever above 50% SOC.

One final note on the 80kW charger issue that GM introduced in the owner's manual:

1) there is exactly zero 80kW chargers in the world for EVs

2) there are exactly zero 80kW chargers that are planned to be built

3) there will be (and already are in Europe and S. Korea) 200a * 500v = 100kW chargers, and 250-350 amp chargers are coming.

As of this moment, the maximum charge rate of the Bolt EV is 45kW, with an average charge rate of just 40kW between 0% and 65% SOC. Above 65%, the charge rate will be pathetically slow.
 
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