new bolt charges only up to 180 miles. Is this normal?

to get the 238 mile range you have to do at least 2 things

1. charge the car to full (100% - hill top reserve off)
2. get approximately 4 miles for each kWh (60 kWh * 4 miles = 240 miles of range) - which requires careful driving at posted speed limits and minimal terrain/speed variation.

depending on driving style, terrain, climate control use, weather and other factors you will get anywhere from 2 to 6 miles per kWh - that equates into. 120-360 miles of range from a single charge - 160-200 is fairly common and easy to achieve.

this is true of all EV cars and it's fairly easy to be inefficient or very efficient - but the advertised ranges are typically idealized cases for "normal" use - and it's fairly easy to find real world situations in which you won't achieve that range - but you can often get pretty close and if you work really hard to optimize your driving you can also do better than the advertised range.

for day to day it rarely matters and you can rest assured that for typical < 150 mile days the Bolt or any other EV with 2xx miles range will more than meet your daily expectations.

Seth, have you in fact checked to see if the "Hilltop Reserve" feature is turned on? The reason I ask is that I have that feature enabled, and 180 miles is the figure I usually see after a charge.

If you've checked, and that feature is turned off, then either the Guess-O-Meter hasn't learned your behavior, as others have suggested above, or you just need to tame your lead foot!

Trying to keep the small vertical bar above the mid point on the left-hand battery gauge as you drive is one of several indicators that the Bolt gives us to help tame our sin of acceleration. Another is the height of the yellow/above bar and the presence of the green/below bar on the right-hand part of the center display.

Being smooth, accelerating gradually, and backing off well ahead of stopping points, very much helps boost range.