Charger power, and likelihood of higher power in the future.
One of the issues with CCS charging is the 30 minute limit imposed by the commercial chargers such as EVgo and ChargePoint. If you phone them up and ask about it, they tell you that their chargers were originally set up for Leaf vehicles, but they are working on changing things for the Bolt EV. The implications of this 30 minute limit are that if you need an hour of charging, which will move you to 80% charge from a low range remaining, you plug in and are disconnected after 30 minutes. Then you have to go back and restart the charging to obtain your hour of charging. If you start charging from a higher range remaining, you are disconnected after less than 30 minutes, after either the first or second charge, because the charger will only charge to 80% of full battery charge.
The best charger I ever encountered in my recent fun with long-distance driving was at a municipal parking lot in PA. I used this charger a couple of times, and it just kept charging right up to 80% charge, without me having to go back and restart the charging after the first 30 minutes. During my trip planning and driving, I found myself charging more often by pulling in for charging with a higher range left. This meant that 30 minutes was usually sufficient and I did not have to mess around restarting chargers. Luckily, most chargers are in much nicer places than gas stations on highways, so it was easy to find a good place for a coffee or pleasant meal while charging. The other reason to stop more often is to make sure you have enough range left to bridge those bits of highway that have no chargers available.
I have charged at a couple of Chevrolet dealers, and they only had chargers capable of about 25 kW, so I soon stopped using the dealers' chargers. These installations have equipment this is supplied by Chevrolet, so its inexplicable why they are not at the 50 kW level. This makes a HUGE difference while in long-distance drives, because it takes twice as long to charge than an EVgo or Chargepoint station. Clearly, this is totally unacceptable when driving long distance, even though Chevy chargers are FREE to charge! If all charging stations were like this, it would turn say 90 minutes of charging during a day's driving to 3 hours of charging!
For 50 kW chargers with my Chevy Bolt EV, I obtain 72 miles per 30 minutes of charging right up to 80% charge. This number does not vary very much. the 90 miles number that you find in the manual is not reachable today, but hopefully will be reachable once higher power chargers are installed country-wide.
Finally, one must ask how long its going to be before we obtain higher-power chargers? It seems to me that it is going to happen in parallel with increased sales of long-distance EVs like the Bolt and Teslas. However, the incentive to go to increased power is not great yet, because the only people who use these chargers are long-distance drivers. It seems that most people buying Bolt EVs stay within driving range of home, where they normally charge, so most do not use CCS chargers. This means that the more people use their Bolt EVs for long-distance the more pressure there will be for EVgo and ChargePoint etc to supply higher power chargers. Certainly, I am very comfortable driving my Bolt EV over long-distances, but many are not. Not only that, but I only do half a dozen or so long distance trips in a year, so this in turn decreases the market pressure on these companies to upgrade their facilities.
