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Potential Bolt Owner with questions

5K views 22 replies 10 participants last post by  Marriott574 
My wife and I, are considering our first EV, we are a one car family so this will be our only/main vehicle. I have tried talking to the local dealers but they are all clueless. We live in Northern Virginia. We currently drive a Ford Fiesta 5dr so the Bolt would be an upgrade in size.

My questions are:

For charging, at L2 what does the EVSE do? from my reading it goes between the wall socket and the car, does this replace the charging cable the car comes with?
L2 indicates a higher charge rate than L1 - L1 is typically 120 volts, and L2 is typically 240 volts (like electric ovens, electric water heaters, air conditioners, electric dryers) - If you have an L2 charger you would use it instead of the L1 charger that came with the car.

The metro station and my office have EV chargers, do people feel concerned about the EVSE/cable being stolen, as it does not Lock into the car.
don't know what type of charger you're speaking bout a the Metro stations, but most public chargers are "installed' and not be stolen. You'll simply plug into the charger using the cord/connector at the metro station - it's not something that can be stolen. It plugs into your car like a gas hose plugs into your gas car - the hose/nozzel are attached to the gas pump, same thing for an EV charger, typical public installs are a "fixed" hard wired "pump" that has a cord/hose that plugs into an Electric Vehicle.[/QUOTE]

Does anyone have any information on battery degradation. I know the leaf lost a lot of battery capacity pretty fast?
don't worry about this - the leaf did not properly manage the Batteries thermals with active cooling and heating and they paid the price with accelerated wear on their battery longevity. The cars like Tesla and Chevy Bolt have active thermal management of their batteries and that greatly reduces wear/tear on the battery making it a non-issue except in extreme conditions that you're not likely to encounter. Battery longevity for a properly designed car isn't a concern.[/QUOTE]


Outside of the, Bolt and Tesla M3 (We have an reservation) are there any other EV we should be considering? The range on the new 2018 leaf is too short for us?
progress with EV's is going to be rapid over the next 3-7 years - recommend you find a favorable leasing rate and consider upgrading in 3-5 years as EV's are going to have more choices and better features and may cause some accelerated depreciation based on rapid feature set development for newer models. The Bolt is the only sub-40k EV worth considering that you can actually buy right now - I"m a big fan of Tesla and own their product and the Bolt -o both cars are great in their own ways…I wouldn't hold my breath for the Model 3 as Tesla has yet to actually ship any units to the general public, but I would consider a used Model S/X or even a new S/X if you can handle paying that much for a car - otherwise the Bolt is kinda the only game in town right now for the range/price point.
 
A follow up, does anyone actually use the DC fast charger? Seems useful but I don't know how frequently it would be used.

The depreciation is certainly a concern, we have always bought our cars, as we tend to destroy them, (1 Burnt to the ground along with a house fire, the current is full of scratches and the seats/trunk have stains from tuna fish (My wife is a commercial fisher woman).) So leasing has always been an issue as I think we would be hit with a lot of damage related costs when we return it. I would plan on keeping the bolt to the 100000 mark or beyond if it is in good working order.
DC Fast charging is a life saver if you want to travel beyond the range of your battery - DC Fast charging can almost fully charge the car in about an hour vs. 9 hour for the maximum L2 charger rate. However this is tempered by the availability of DC Fast chargers on your route - DC Fast charger infrastructure is still being built out - so it's not yet universally available - this is likely to get better over time as there will be more DC Fast chargers in the future rather than fewer - but it will vary regionally for some time and may not be a benefit to you personally until infrastructure comes to your area.

the typical long range driving plan for an EV is as follows:

leave home 100% full
plan stops at DC Fast chargers along your route (stay for 30-75 minutes at each charger) - blending the stop with a meal-break makes this a no brainer.
do 2-3 DC Fast charger stops in a day - this yields 400-600 miles a day of driving (a good day's driving for even a gas car)
stay overnight at a hotel with a good L2 charger - charge overnight at hotel
leave hotel in the morning at 100%
repeat the DC Fast charger story for the remainder of your trip until you get home

(in a pinch you also carry with you a good mobile L2 charger that can plug-in to 240 volt RV hookup and what not - now this still takes 7-9 hours for a full charge, but is a life saver if you travel to places with no DC Fast charging infrastructure - or excellent for camping with RV hooks up at camp sites)

long distance driving with just an L2 charger is possible, but not efficient or enjoyable as full charging sessions can take over 6-9 hours…

if you plan to drive the car down to zero value then yeah - just keep the car and don't worry about depreciation - be aware EV's other than wear/tear on interior are more likely to be mechanically sound for much longer than a gas car - EV's are expected to last at least 500,000 miles from a drive train point of view - far fewer moving parts lead to a greater expectation of longevity.
 
DC Fast charging is a life saver if you want to travel beyond the range of your battery - DC Fast charging can almost fully charge the car in about an hour vs. 9 hour for the maximum L2 charger rate.
it should be noted that 1 hour at a typical DC Fast charger is not enough time to fully charge a Bolt from 0-100% - but it _IS_ enough typically to charge enough to get to the next DC fast charger - when traveling with an EV the mind set changes a bit from "filling up" to - getting enough charge to get to the next charging location - given that charging gets slower the closer to full the battery gets the last minutes of a charging session provide less power than the 1st minutes of a session, so the longer you stay charging the less distance you are actually adding to your driving range…

I've done a lot of traveling and fast charging - and typically I find 40-60 minutes to be the sweet spot to get enough charge + buffer to make it to my next stop - rarely if ever do I hold out for absolute 100% full - as that takes forever.....

to fill a Bolt to 100% would likely be a full 90++ minutes - with the last 10% of battery capacity being 20 of those 90 minutes of charge…

also not all DC Fast chargers are created equal - some are slower than others…so you need to also research how fast they are when planning a trip.
 
Nice! Thanks for the info, this is really helpful.

So I have found some DCFC on I95 Near Richmond, one is at a Hilton the other at a Hampton, do you know if anyone can turn up and use these, or do they only allow guests to use them?

Thanks for all the advice.
let me introduce you to plug-share - it's a crowdsourced app that provides a pretty good map of all the chargers in a given area - by inspecting plug-share you can determine how available a charger typically is - since the data is crowd sources it's not 100% accurate so always take the data with a grain of salt -but it's mostly accurate - and if you find it to be inaccurate you can update entries with your experiences to help improve the situation for others…

https://www.plugshare.com

they also have a very helpful app which I recommend you keep on your phone and/or tablet - for hte serious EV road trip warrior I recommend buying a used tablet and putting all the "useful" EV apps on that tablet and just leaving it in the car for road trips - you can charge it via the car's USB ports or 12 volt adapters and it can get internet from the Bolt's WiFi hotspot - you will be dangerous if you have a connected internet device in the car with a useful set of EV charging apps ;)

the FastDC charger at the Hilton is listed on plug-share as:

1. being run by green lots - a typically public charging network for which you need a free membership to access their chargers - they only charge you when you use their network
2. listed as "un-restricted" - which typically means anyone can use it
3. has a plug-score rating of "10.0" which is the highest rating which means you can almost 100% depend on it being in working condition
4. it has 7/24 availability
5. the most recent comment indicating a working charger is from Oct. 21, 2017 - so that's a good sign that the charger was recently used and functional.
 
here is the set of filters you can use with plug share

I've included 3 filter shots

1. pure Bolt EV with no "extra" charging gear other than the provided L1 charger in car
2. Bolt EV with a portable NEMA 14-50 EVSE in car
3. Bolt EV with a portable EVSE and a Tesla to J-1772 adapter pig tail

based on the filter plug-share will not show chargers your EV can not use…the best case scenario to maximize charging options is:

1. have memberships (typically free) in all the major EV charging networks (Chargepoint, EVGo, Greenlots, Blink + others)
2. have a good in car portable EVSE (L1 & L2 if possible)
3. an extension cord for L1 charger use
4. a Tesla to J-1772 adapter so that you can use L2 Tesla Destination chargers (not superchargers)
5. a device with internet that has various and useful EV charging applications (including plug share) in car

use the appropriate filter based on what you plan to bring with you in the car while traveling.
 

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