[JohnEV]

My '21 Bolt is a year old this month. What's it been like? I love the car, but I hate public charging.

It's a pleasure to drive - it's quick, smooth and quiet. In winter the heat is good, in summer the AC is great. Its size is small but just right for my needs. Winter driving is good if not great; I do feel safe. For charging I had a home charger installed. Once a week I plug in the car overnight to recharge.

All good, but there's another side to owning an electric vehicle: if you go on a long trip, you have to rely on public charging stations. If I want to go much over 100 miles, I have to find a charging station. Well, here's the thing: when I bought an electric car I knew I'd have to rely on charging stations. But what I didn't understand was how lousy the public charging infrastructure is.

Note: I live in south coastal Maine, around 2 hours north of Boston.

For one thing, there aren't many charging stations, and most of them are old and ridiculously slow, requiring as much as 4-6 hours to "fill 'er up." Not practical! There are a few truly fast charging stations that take only 30-45 mins for a fill-up. But those fast chargers are rare. In the whole state of Maine, I believe there is only one truly fast charger (the Walmart in Scarborough).

So I rely on my home charger and keep trips to around 200-250 miles roundtrip. Beyond that, I use my wife's Camry.

Oh well, I do love the car. It's so quick, smooth and just plain handy. In the future (my guess, 4-5 years) there will be more truly fast charging stations and/or newer batteries with a longer range, maybe 600 or 750 miles.

 

[Voldar]

For one thing, there aren't many charging stations, and most of them are old and ridiculously slow, requiring as much as 4-6 hours to "fill 'er up." Not practical! There are a few truly fast charging stations that take only 30-45 mins for a fill-up. But those fast chargers are rare. In the whole state of Maine, I believe there is only one truly fast charger (the Walmart in Scarborough).

That's the reason I laugh when people praise the new fast charging EV, when the reality of the EV infrastructure (non Superchargers), show that the Bolt EV, as slow as it is, has nothing to envy about them.
When the Superchargers will be open for CCS charging, the story will change, but for now... enjoy your Bolt EV and tell yourself "even with an Ioniq 5, I'd be in the same situation". And try to move things so that the state put some money in the EV infrastructure.

 

[roseberry]

EA has decent coverage for me here in south central WA and their chargers will max out the Bolt's capabilities easy enough. They've put in a few in the last 2 years that have filled in some important gaps. It's not necessarily as smooth as getting gas, and it can take an hour or so, but we've always gotten to point b in the time that I anticipated. We don't mind road trips with it, but we're retired empty nesters, who like to take an hour eating or walking while charging. Younger folks need a faster DCFC capability for road trips.

 

[jefro]

The Bolt paved the way towards better models. It is a great city car that is a capable longer range car if the chargers exist. It won't be painless to go beyond the range of the house charge.

Tesla drivers have been using the cars originally with slower charge rates so maybe the next gen products will have much better batteries and much better charging.

 

[roseberry]

And you don't want to forget that while gasoline stops may be quick, they're also numerous. With 19,000 miles on mine, I've missed about 60 fill-ups and 4 or 5 oil changes. That should balance 3 or 4 DCFC charges which is about a quarter of what I've done so far.

One time I needed to get blood drawn but instead of driving to my usual place and having it done, I just waited until I was going to Seattle and walked to a place near the charger in Issaquah. I got my flu shot at a Walmart while charging. My wife had her haircut while charging. Mostly we eat or shop but we've never just waited for a charge.

 

[jrschultz]

I agree with everything you have said. I have the same year, trim, and color as you do. My wife also has a Camry as her daily driver. Are we the same person from parallel universes?

I leased my Bolt knowing the public charging options near me are not great. They will have to improve, but it's not there yet. Fortunately I've been able to charge at night in my garage. We also use my wife's Camry for long road trips. The Bolt is such a great car! It's the right size, quick, and fun to drive. I hope you continue to enjoy yours!

 

[Packard V8]

The Bolt is such a great car! It's the right size, quick, and fun to drive.

Agree. I got a PM from a former forum member who bought into the battery recall hysteria here, wailed and gnashed until he got a buyback, then found there was no other EV available in his area at anywhere near the price and/or with the same benefits. He reported in to admit finding the coming-soon EVs are either larger, less fun-to-drive, more expensive and many don't offer as sophisticated one-pedal. "Wish I had my Bolt back. Wish I could blame my actions on pandemic-induced-temporary-brain-fog, but I have to admit I bought into the traffic on the forum and rushed out of a good car when there was really no necessity. About the only upside of the additional $20k I'll have to spend is I'll get AWD, which I wanted."

YMMV

jack vines

 

[fairkelley]

I am based in Houston Texas. I bought a 21 Premiere in April 21 and put 18000 miles on it. Had a lot of road trip experience and DCFC experience. Some bad, mostly good. I see a lot of people on the forum who had similar experiences to me. I enjoyed reading this discussion. So much of EV experience is geography related. How cold it can get in the winter, how hot it can get, how far you have to go to get a fastcharger. I really appreciate it when people mention their hometown/homebase.

 

[Maritime]

My '21 Bolt is a year old this month. What's it been like? I love the car, but I hate public charging.

It's a pleasure to drive - it's quick, smooth and quiet. In winter the heat is good, in summer the AC is great. Its size is small but just right for my needs. Winter driving is good if not great; I do feel safe. For charging I had a home charger installed. Once a week I plug in the car overnight to recharge.

All good, but there's another side to owning an electric vehicle: if you go on a long trip, you have to rely on public charging stations. If I want to go much over 100 miles, I have to find a charging station. Well, here's the thing: when I bought an electric car I knew I'd have to rely on charging stations. But what I didn't understand was how lousy the public charging infrastructure is.

Note: I live in south coastal Maine, around 2 hours north of Boston.

For one thing, there aren't many charging stations, and most of them are old and ridiculously slow, requiring as much as 4-6 hours to "fill 'er up." Not practical! There are a few truly fast charging stations that take only 30-45 mins for a fill-up. But those fast chargers are rare. In the whole state of Maine, I believe there is only one truly fast charger (the Walmart in Scarborough).

So I rely on my home charger and keep trips to around 200-250 miles roundtrip. Beyond that, I use my wife's Camry.

Oh well, I do love the car. It's so quick, smooth and just plain handy. In the future (my guess, 4-5 years) there will be more truly fast charging stations and/or newer batteries with a longer range, maybe 600 or 750 miles.
View attachment 40401

Better chargers are coming this summer. We live 4 hours North of you and I looked at a trip to Portland when the boarders opened and it was sketchy at best as the DCFC were few and far between. But there are a bunch coming in 2022 that will help a lot.

 

[JohnEV]

!

 

[JohnEV]

Re Jack Vines' post above:
Very interesting. Poor guy, it's a lousy feeling to realize you made a big mistake! I speak from experience.

 

[Maritime]

All the wrench's in the shot below are DCFC that should be live in spring/summer:

 

[Inteliquest]

I just have to add my piece in here... I will have had my 2021 LT a year Mar 13th. Little did I know at the time (I bought it as a "I am tired of paying so much for gas!!") purchase, that this decision would be so life changing! This car is so fun to drive and I find my trips (80 mile roundtrip commute) so relaxing and not at all tiring. This EV has been flawless for me and has fit into my world like a fine pair of Italian shoes. I have been commuting to work for 25 years now... if I had a bolt all that time... $$$$ saved!! So far I have saved around 1500 in a year. No gas, No oil changes, no filters, no tune up and virtually no maintenance at all!!
Until a few weeks ago I could charge all the way up and travel pretty well... with software update that is now out until upgraded battery. I still use the car daily, plug in daily (winter) and last month I spent around $35 dollars to charge. I did get a roof top solar system 14.7 Kwh system... Just did my taxes and I am getting back around 15,000 (this year and next combined).
I originally bought mine for 27,000 (GM, State (AZ) incentives) So nope no one can touch this Car for price and fun. I try to keep an open mind, but just don't buy into all the "crap" being put out about this car is not a great deal anymore.
Just try to get another EV for near the price with the amenities it has and range. I only wish I had two of them, so I can ditch my wife's ICE commuter , 2008 Merc Sable Premier/ the gas drinker!
I am sold, I will not go back to ICE ever again... Yes chargers are shaky (I find EA are some of the best) We need more DCFC (who wants more level 2 for travel) unless you are stopping for the night and We need a bit more range... If I had 325 range.. I could go anywhere... I have checked. 185 currently limits me a whole bunch for where I can go....
Go Bolt Nation!!
Oh... almost forgot... only 65 Dollars to register my car BRAND NEW!!.... Just renewed my registration for two years... 35 dollars!!! Cha Ching....

 

[EV Trek 37604]

I live in North East Tennessee, I can go in almost any direction and there are at least 4 or 5 DCFC stations within the Bolt’s range, even with the 80% cap we have now. It’s just going to get better as more and more are opening up all the time. In fact in the 3 months I have had mine I know of 4 new ones that have opened within range of the Bolt.

 

[JohnEV]

All the wrench's in the shot below are DCFC that should be live in spring/summer:

View attachment 40416

Indeed, that's the problem! A number of sites are shown on, for example, plugshare as DCFC but in fact they put out 25-30 Kw which is Just. Not. Fast. There is a site in Scarborough, Maine, with a few chargers ranging from 150-350 Kw--now that is truly fast.

 

[Maritime]

Indeed, that's the problem! A number of sites are shown on, for example, plugshare as DCFC but in fact they put out 25-30 Kw which is Just. Not. Fast. There is a site in Scarborough, Maine, with a few chargers ranging from 150-350 Kw--now that is truly fast.

Yep, these are all going to be 150 watt I believe. the 50W are just barely faster than a L2.

 

[Voldar]

Yep, these are all going to be 150 watt I believe. the 50W are just barely faster than a L2.

50 kW it’s what we have here 90% of them in Quebec. 45 kW max speed of charging. Oh well…

 

[kendallg]

That's the reason I laugh when people praise the new fast charging EV, when the reality of the EV infrastructure (non Superchargers), show that the Bolt EV, as slow as it is, has nothing to envy about them.

I can't agree with this point, specifically regarding the Bolt EV having nothing to envy of the new fast charging EVs. I am fortunate to live in CA where the charging infrastructure, though still lacking relative to our ultimate needs, is far ahead of the rest of the country and the Bolt most definitely has much to envy relative to other vehicles, such as the ID.4, the Polestar 2 or the Taycan, to name a few non Teslas.

The fact is, today, 50kW charging is painfully slow when you go beyond 100 miles of your home. And that 50kW is rarely even seen in the Bolt. We made 6 L3 charging stops during our LA->SAC trip this past weekend. Despite the battery being below 20% on multiple occasions, we barely ever exceeded 38kW of charging speed. I can eliminate an oddball charger as the cause, as this was observed across multiple different EA and EVgo chargers.

We can all agree the infrastructure has a LONG way to go (as does user experience by the way. The EA chargers gave us fits as we tried to use them with poor touchscreens and charging that stopped without reason) in order for just anyone to be able to drive long distances in their EV. But I'm also adamant that the Bolt, as good as it is for daily driving around town, is already far behind the curve when it comes to charging technology and capability for road tripping. As it stands you most definitely CAN roadtrip in a Bolt. But it takes an amount of extra planning and time that not everyone can afford.

We'd already decided to move on from the Bolt a long time ago, and almost bit on getting it repurchased before we decided we didn't like the math in that moment. But this latest roadtrip, with the 33% increase in trip duration, and compared charging experience relative to our friends and their Taycan, was the final straw to convince even my wife, she of the "spend as little as possible on a car" mentality, that it's time to spend the real $$ for a Tesla, Rivian or similar vehicle that will actually make this sort of trip a possibility for us again.

All that said I do agree that if you can't get to charger that delivers more than 50kW, then you're certainly not getting a great benefit out of a vehicle that's capable of more than that. I guess it's part of the equation everyone takes into account as we balance our decisions regarding which car to acquire and how much $$ to spend.

 

[Lite2]

Oh... almost forgot... only 65 Dollars to register my car BRAND NEW!!.... Just renewed my registration for two years... 35 dollars!!! Cha Ching....

Wait till they do like most states do (like IN) and tack on an additional $200 on top of the regular reg to make up for the gas tax you "screwed" them out of....

 

[Voldar]

You say this :

I can't agree with this point, specifically regarding the Bolt EV having nothing to envy of the new fast charging EVs.

... then you end with this :

All that said I do agree that if you can't get to charger that delivers more than 50kW, then you're certainly not getting a great benefit out of a vehicle that's capable of more than that.

So, in the end you agree with my statement : the Bolt EV has nothing to envy the new EV when the EV charging infrastructure nowadays is mostly made up of 50 kW DCFC.

For comparison, based on the info extracted from the Circuit Electrique site (download the csv file at the bottom of the page : Trouver une borne (lecircuitelectrique.com) ), in Quebec we have :
2371 - L2 charging stations
6 - 25 kW DCFC
504 - 50 kW DCFC
127 - 100 kW DCFC
3 - 350 kW DCFC
2 - 125 kW DCFC
1 - 160 kW DCFC
---------------------------------------
In Québec we have about 76 000 BEV, as of December 31, 2021 (Actualités (aveq.ca) )
In what world do you think 133 x DCFC 100 kW+ would sufice for 10% of the number of the BEV on the nowadays roads ? Take away 20% of this number as being Tesla's (even thought they are 12% of the BEV in Quebec). That's still 6 000+ BEV for 133 faster DCFC.

I guess it's part of the equation everyone takes into account as we balance our decisions regarding which car to acquire and how much $$ to spend.

Not true. Remember, the shiny thing is stronger than the we think. The big selling point nowadays is : "It charges 10 to 80% in 18 mins !". And then we see people coming in forums like this complaint "my Ioniq 5 doesn’t charge to 80% in 18 mins. BooHooHooo"

I said it once, I'll repeat it again. I wouldn't buy anything but a Tesla for now : Superchargers rock. When the EV charging infrastructure will mature (in about 5-8 years from now), I'd go for a fast charging CCS BEV. Or, if the Superchargers will accept CCS. Until then, the Bolt EV rocks !