[otkachenko]

That little gauge is a great feature, because it tells you if the driving you are doing is gonna help improving the efficiency you see on the screen (green) or will make it worse (yellow). I used it a lot in my 4,5 years of driving my Bolt, especially because I was driving it by efficiency number and not by the posted Min range number. For exemple, if I had a 150 miles drive and 90% battery, I knew I had to keep the car at or above 150/(60 x 0.9) = 2.8 mi/kWh to make it to my destination. And that gauge when yellow, it told me to slow down or when green, it told me that I can speed up a little.

Doing exactly the same, it is more reliable. For me 2.8 mi/kWh it is 80 miles/h speed with no wind. It would be a LOT of help if GM did this calculation of "instant" consumption and show it on display. If it suddenly drops say to 2.6 or 2.5, it would indicate head on wind and need to do something (find charger which is closer instead of what you initially planned for). Yes, eventually it would be reflected on your "min" range, but often it's too late, we don't have chargers at every single exit yet.

 

[pagrey]

Doing exactly the same, it is more reliable. For me 2.8 mi/kWh it is 80 miles/h speed with no wind. It would be a LOT of help if GM did this calculation of "instant" consumption and show it on display. If it suddenly drops say to 2.6 or 2.5, it would indicate head on wind and need to do something (find charger which is closer instead of what you initially planned for). Yes, eventually it would be reflected on your "min" range, but often it's too late, we don't have chargers at every single exit yet.

I think they don't have mi/kwh on a gauge because it would vary wildly as you drive and is really undefined when you are on regen so the gauge would confuse most people.

 

[BehindBars]

Doing exactly the same, it is more reliable. For me 2.8 mi/kWh it is 80 miles/h speed with no wind. It would be a LOT of help if GM did this calculation of "instant" consumption and show it on display. If it suddenly drops say to 2.6 or 2.5, it would indicate head on wind and need to do something (find charger which is closer instead of what you initially planned for). Yes, eventually it would be reflected on your "min" range, but often it's too late, we don't have chargers at every single exit yet.

It might not be instantaneous down to the second, but I see present and very recent mi/kWh efficiency on my ’23 EUV’s Energy screen.

 

[otkachenko]

I think they don't have mi/kwh on a gauge because it would vary wildly as you drive and is really undefined when you are on regen so the gauge would confuse most people.

There are already many things that confuses somebody, so one more or less... With city drive it is not really needed, all averaging to 4(+/-) so just could be ignored. When doing interstate driving it is much more consistent yet proactive enough, not much regen

 

[Voldar]

Doing exactly the same, it is more reliable. For me 2.8 mi/kWh it is 80 miles/h speed with no wind. It would be a LOT of help if GM did this calculation of "instant" consumption and show it on display.

I think they don't have mi/kwh on a gauge because it would vary wildly as you drive and is really undefined when you are on regen so the gauge would confuse most people.

In the metric system of the GOM it is very simple to see what you are doing because the efficiency is measured in kWh/100 km and the instant power is measured in kW. So the corelation between the two values is very easy to make. If the instant power shows you 35 kW, you can assume that driving at this steady instant power you will consume 35 kWh/100 km. In US units, it is not easy to make this translation from kW to mi/kWh. 1 Canada - 0 USA
[I know, I should have said 1 (metric) - 0 (imperial) but couldn't stop myself. ]

The picture above is one that I took on my Bolt when driving in very cold weather (-20C). It told me that if I continue driving at the 110 km/h speed, the 25.0 kWh/100 km will worsen because the trending line is yellow and the car uses 35 kW to sustain that speed.

 

[otkachenko]

It might not be instantaneous down to the second, but I see present and very recent mi/kWh efficiency on my ’23 EUV’s Energy screen.

View attachment 75290

Yes, that one (and another one you can reset on round display) which i currently use. It is the best you can use now, but not even remotely instant. It is averaging after latest reset. So to use it as "instant" I reset it as soon as I suspect my head wind increased. It resets to default 4, then eventually after about 10-15 miles it shows you "reality". Another solution would be to show moving average for last 3-5 miles?

 

[pagrey]

There are already many things that confuses somebody, so one more or less... With city drive it is not really needed, all averaging to 4(+/-) so just could be ignored. When doing interstate driving it is much more consistent yet proactive enough, not much regen

Good point, I used to drive my Insight with l/100km shown instead of mpg. The gauge would pin at 150mpg very often providing no fine detail while the value for l/100km would give you real feedback down to zero. I feel like the Bolt has a similar weakness to the mpg display, there really is no good information to show you fine energy consumption vs speed in real time, exactly what you suggested.

 

[Voldar]

When doing interstate driving it is much more consistent yet proactive enough, not much regen

With one condition : if the driver reset the efficiency screen right before the drive. I've seen a lot of people who show pictures of their DIC of 15,000 miles and the average of 4.2 mi/kWh. This data doesn't say what average you had in the last 300 miles. And most people don't know what is the average at 80 mph (2.8 mi/kWh as you rightly mention). Or the fact that 3.2-3.3 mi/kWh is obtained at 75 mph or 3.5-3.6 mi/kWh at 70 mph. Most Bolt EV/EUV owners don't have this reflex : to learn the most about their own car so that they can enjoy driving it even in long distance trips.

 

[barefootnomad]

I think you are the last person. Someone has to be.

All kidding aside, it is a very cool feature.

I think GM/LG did a great job with the DIC. It manages to be simple, clear, informative, and intuitive all at the same time.

Yes, they did do great. I’m currently renting a Mach-E on a trip and am shocked by how little information that it displays — especially about efficiency.

 

[otkachenko]

With one condition : if the driver reset the efficiency screen right before the drive. I've seen a lot of people who show pictures of their DIC of 15,000 miles and the average of 4.2 mi/kWh. This data doesn't say what average you had in the last 300 miles. And most people don't know what is the average at 80 mph (2.8 mi/kWh as you rightly mention). Or the fact that 3.2-3.3 mi/kWh is obtained at 75 mph or 3.5-3.6 mi/kWh at 70 mph. Most Bolt EV/EUV owners don't have this reflex : to learn the most about their own car so that they can enjoy driving it even in long distance trips.

Towing from the middle of nowhere provides a steep learning curve.

 

[Voldar]

Towing from the middle of nowhere provides a steep learning curve.

Yes, I totally agree with you. "Necessity drives knowledge" or "Necessity is the engine of learning"
But nowadays people became lazy because they got used to have everything at one click away from their nose. I always said : Internet made people dumber than one would expect. The total opposite of what the founders of Internet predicted.

 

[SpicyBolt]

Yes, they did do great. I’m currently renting a Mach-E on a trip and am shocked by how little information that it displays — especially about efficiency.

The EQB300 we are currently renting in Colorado has plenty of info on the DIC. I find it poorly laid out though. Scrolling thru the info is not intuitive either. Of course it may be I'm just not used to it.

I'm only seeing two range estimates. One is not labeled, and the other is Max. However they have yet to vary from each other by more than 2 miles. That's odd.

We are using Android Auto but it's dropping out quite a bit. Being in the mountains right now, as we drove from Denver to Durango might be a factor.🤔

 

[bisco]

Yes, I totally agree with you. "Necessity drives knowledge" or "Necessity is the engine of learning"
But nowadays people became lazy because they got used to have everything at one click away from their nose. I always said : Internet made people dumber than one would expect. The total opposite of what the founders of Internet predicted.

same with television

 

[Voldar]

same with television

The television is not in the same category, IMO. You can always change the channel. While through the Internet, especially because of the social-media platforms algorithms in place that present to the user the more of the things he last searched, you are trapped. You can't change the channel in FB or X or TS or YouTube. You are profiled and you are fed what the social-media platform believes it fits your needs.
In EU, under the Digital Services Act (DSA), very large platforms (like Facebook/Instagram and Google/YouTube) must give EU users a feed/recommendations option that is not based on profiling, plus more transparency and controls. That directly addresses the “I saw X five minutes ago so it keeps feeding me X” effect - if you switch to the non-personalized option, that loop is diminished. This is not a thing in USA, nor in Canada, because the clickbait is what puts money in the pockets of the social-media owners. And we (people living in North America) all become dumber, because critical thinking is not a trait that humans have by default. Judgments are often filtered through one’s personal perspective. This is why the jury in USA and Canada is made up of a group of persons : because using a group helps dilute any one person’s biases and errors. In decision-theory terms, if each juror is more likely than not to judge correctly, aggregating many independent judgments tends to improve accuracy (the Condorcet “jury theorem”).

But this is not the subject of this thread, so I stop here. Sorry for the distraction.

 

[mahlerrd]

In the metric system of the GOM it is very simple to see what you are doing because the efficiency is measured in kWh/100 km and the instant power is measured in kW.

The exact same idea works perfectly fine, maybe even better in the miles/kWh display.

I see 4.2 miles/kWh. Same type of math as you, that means the 40 miles I have left to drive should use a bit less than 10 kWh. Do I have more than 10% charge left? Should be good to go. (Ignoring some cushion).


It is a discussion I have often with several of my European friends, and we have come to the conclusion that they are backwards from each other but otherwise, whichever one you are used to thinking in works great, and the other one is "harder."

But they aren't really.

 

[MichBolt]

...I see 4.2 miles/kWh. Same type of math as you, that means the 40 miles I have left to drive should use a bit less than 10 kWh. Do I have more than 10% charge left? Should be good to go. (Ignoring some cushion)...

I've done the same calculation in my head. But then I realized that 10% of my battery is only 6 kWh, so I stopped for a short charge.

 

[mahlerrd]

I've done the same calculation in my head. But then I realized that 10% of my battery is only 6 kWh, so I stopped for a short charge.

Hehe, caught out.

Because I don't bother with that math anyway. I look at the prediction of abrp and know that it's pessimistic. Done. Anyone doing manual math in EITHER case can get it just as wrong.

Also "metric" has nothing at all to do with "liters/100km" or "kWh/100km". To prove this, "kWh/100miles". Done. Is that metric? Or does it not have anything to do with metric?

Nothing in your display tells you how many kWh you have left. So ...

 

[Voldar]

Nothing in your display tells you how many kWh you have left. So .

Because there is a reason for that. No EV has the number of kWh left in the battery. All EV show the kWh used. And a % of battery left. Heck, no ICEV tells you the galons left in the tank. I hope you know why ! You are an educated guy, I presume.

P.S. You can get the kWh left if you use a third party tool and an OBDII dongle though.

 

[mahlerrd]

Because there is a reason for that. No EV has the number of kWh left in the battery. All EV show the kWh used. And a % of battery left. Heck, no ICEV tells you the galons left in the tank. I hope you know why ! You are an educated guy, I presume.

They could!

That's literally a variation of the percentage. If it were an analog gauge they could literally just change the indicator scale. The could label gas tank fullness in gallons instead of divisions of the whole, and it would actually be useful nowadays what with the accuracy of the sensors. Back in the day that would have been awful with the vagaries and nonlinearities of the sensors, but now?

All uses of "literally" are on purpose and I do not mean "figuratively".

Why, what am I missing?

 

[Robert Gwin]

I think they don't have mi/kwh on a gauge because it would vary wildly as you drive and is really undefined when you are on regen so the gauge would confuse most people.

Many of the newer cars give the current mpg rating, the bolt displays the actual usage as well, I am usually driving around 61mph and I am usually around 17kw, which I think would equate to 1.7 of his 2.8, but not sure.