[grommet]

This is the part of my new car buying experience where I start OCDing over the little details...so please bear with me. ;-)

I purchased my 2017 LT in Charlotte, NC a few weeks ago and according to the window sticker the car was initially delivered to a dealer up in Mystic, CT. The door jam sticker says it was manufactured in Aug. 2017 so I'm assuming it sat idle at the CT lot over the winter. Not sure why there was a dealer trade from NC to CT but I guess it's normal.

Assuming the battery was charged from time to time, would there be any concern with a Bolt sitting that long over the winter in that climate?

 

[demart]

winter climate shouldn't be as bad as hot summer. They probably charged it and took it for test drives. What was the mileage when you got it?

 

[GJETSON]

I would suggest getting an OBD2 adapter, Torque Pro, and loading up Telek's PIDs for peace of mind about battery health.

https://www.chevybolt.org/forum/370634-post1.html

 

[grommet]

winter climate shouldn't be as bad as hot summer. They probably charged it and took it for test drives. What was the mileage when you got it?

29 miles. :| I loved seeing the low mileage but that's not a lot of test driving over 6+ months which seems odd. I guess there wasn't a lot of demand for these cars up north during the winter? Who the heck knows.

 

[grommet]

I would suggest getting an OBD2 adapter, Torque Pro, and loading up Telek's PIDs for peace of mind about battery health.

https://www.chevybolt.org/forum/370634-post1.html

Cool - I've got an iPhone so it appears I can't use Torque Pro but I'll get the other app and take a look. My OCD will go into overdrive though if it turns out I have less than the advertised 60 kWh. haha

 

[GJETSON]

29 miles. :| I loved seeing the low mileage but that's not a lot of test driving over 6+ months which seems odd. I guess there wasn't a lot of demand for these cars up north during the winter? Who the heck knows.

Ours was built 12/16. It sat on the lot in Manassas, Virginia from April of 2017 to mid-July when we bought it with 10 miles on the odometer. We never saw 60 kWh usable. I did a full range test 05/18/18 and got 55.9 kWh usable. Set up the Torque Pro 06/17/18. It shows 57.7 kWh total.

As has been pointed out, the kWh is a guess based on a number which the car puts out.

https://www.chevybolt.org/forum/422873-post76.html

What the actual kWh number is would be nice, but not vital to tracking battery health.

 

[gern_blanston]

Ours was a 2016 build that we purchased in August of '17 with a hundred miles on it. Torque Pro shows 59-60.5 kWh capacity depending on the day. It every week or two. The dealership had kept the car charged up and the miles/kWh was down to something like .4 because the battery conditioning was working and the car wasn't driven much. I wouldn't worry about your car, particularly because most of its sitting undriven was during winter months. No conditioning in winter is much easier on the battery than no conditioning in summer.

 

[GJETSON]

I wouldn't worry about your car, particularly because most of its sitting undriven was during winter months. No conditioning in winter is much easier on the battery than no conditioning in summer.

I would say you have no earthly idea what your car's capacity is until you check it on Torque Pro, or by doing a complete full to empty run. There are no guarantees. It is a total crap shoot. It could be anything until you check. Chevy will replace it if is is down 40% of "something"...we don't know what that something is, as they don't state an actual number anywhere.

 

[Terry Hancock]

Heat and lack of charging can destroy a battery. I bought an I-Miev that had 900 miles on it. It had been part of a San Diego fleet. Its time at San Diego was not the issue. It was taken to a Nevada Car Max lot, where it was left in the sun and rarely, if ever, charged. When I got it, it would only charge to ten out of twelve bars. Mitsubishi was great, honored the warranty, and gave me a new battery at no charge. I do not consider it a problem with the MIEV at all. It was the dealer's understanding of EV that caused such damage.

 

[GregBrew]

I'd be more concerned about the aux battery, than the traction pack.

 

[DaV8or]

I'd be more concerned about the aux battery, than the traction pack.

Yes! The 12 volt lead acid battery is the one that is giving some people nightmares. Thankfully, it's a cheap fix.

 

[beeguz]

During the winter months when I got finished cleaning the car, I hooked up my B&D float charger to the 12V.


I was very surprised because sometimes the charger kept indicating charging for as much as 4 hours.


I don't bother as much now that its a bit warmer, I used more accessories in winter that was why I was concerned.


I bought my car in the middle of a cold snap if anything is going to kill a 12V it will be extreme cold or hot, not knowing how long the car sat unused I wanted to build the charge in the 12V.


I worked in garages that sold batteries, batteries that were allowed to charge for a short time before use, came back less often.


Many people buy a new battery stick it in then that is the end of it, if you slow charge a new battery you will always get a longer service life out of it.

 

[grommet]

I'd be more concerned about the aux battery, than the traction pack.

According to this article, the Bolt (when unplugged) will wake up every 3 days and check the SOC of the 12v battery, and charge it if required for as much as 90 minutes. So guess the engineers at GM have thought of everything.

 

[GregBrew]

According to this article, the Bolt (when unplugged) will wake up every 3 days and check the SOC of the 12v battery, and charge it if required for as much as 90 minutes. So guess the engineers at GM have thought of everything.

That works!

Whenever we'd travel out of LAX in the late '90s, we'd drive the EV-1, and park in Lot 6 (for free!). After a two-week trip, coming back to find a dead aux battery was not unusual, if the battery was more than a year or two old. Fortunately, we had a "boost button" under the dash that would siphon off some traction pack juice to get it started, then the DC-DC would take over.

That GM handled dead aux batteries in this manner twenty years ago, and the Bolt doesn't have this feature today is frankly puzzling.

Another nice feature the EV-1 had was that it would "warble" the horn at a low level if you pulled on the brights at low speed. It prevented pedestrians from jumping out of their shoes from a horn blast if you crept up on them in a parking lot.

I suppose the low-speed noise maker in the Bolt is supposed to take care of that.

It doesn't.

 

[AC/DC]

Check page 259 in the owners manual re "vehicle storage". If the car sat in Charlotte (just south of me) thru the winter they would likely charge the battery from time to time as the car automatically warms the battery below about 32 degrees which slowly drains the battery pack. This is to protect the battery and at the same time the battery is being "used" some and then recharged. Can't imagine this amount of time would cause any problems. BTW my Bolt had 300 miles on it, likely some test drives then it was driven over from Durham to my dealer.