Bolt Range

[DucRider]

Talked to someone that sat in the Bolt at EV Roadmap. Range remaining showed 234 miles, but GM staff blocked the attempted photo .

Lots of things can cause a range estimate higher than the official EPA estimate, but makes me think they'll be well above the 200 mark. We should start a pool for fun. Reply with your EPA range guess and I'll add it to the list

210 EastOcean
220 SeanNelson
222 liteson
224 DucRider
225 Geo
230 mark111
235 jhm614
240 rsewill

wq2345, xxx (sorry, 210 already taken)

 

[jhm614]

DucRider, 224
jhm614, 235

 

[Eastocean]

EastOcean, 210

My guess is based on the EPA range of 84 miles on a 24-Kw Leaf battery, just scaled up.. BTW, my Leaf will sometimes show a range of 102 fully charged, which goes down rapidly when driving. THe Guess-O-Meter has some algorithm that uses long-term averages, and seemingly most recent trips.

 

[wq2345]

I'm with EastOcean on this

My Guess on the EPA rated range = 210 miles, wq2345

 

[Aidan]

Because the body on the Chevy Bolt includes aluminum magnesium and carbon fiber to make for lighter materials I'm pretty optimistic on the long range and efficiency of the vehicle

 

[DucRider]

EastOcean, 210

My guess is based on the EPA range of 84 miles on a 24-Kw Leaf battery, just scaled up.. BTW, my Leaf will sometimes show a range of 102 fully charged, which goes down rapidly when driving. THe Guess-O-Meter has some algorithm that uses long-term averages, and seemingly most recent trips.

If I scale my my Fit EV (20 kWh, 82 EPA) it would be 246
Scaling up the i3 would yield 258 (or 225 if you use 21.6 pack size instead of 18.8 usable)
Scaling up the Spark EV would be 234
30kWh LEAF @ 107 would be 214
Model S 60 = 208 or 210 (est) depending on vintage
Model X 60= 200 (est)

Pretty good framework to work from. Factor in weight, frontal area, CD and regen efficiency and make your guess.

 

[SeanNelson]

My guess is about 220miles (~350km). That's based on the probability that GM marketing said to the engineering team "make a 200-mile EV for as cheap as you can". If the car has a lot more than 200 miles of range it means they used a bigger battery than they needed to and that means the car would be unnecessarily expensive. I think the GM engineers are good enough not to err more than about 10% on the "safe" side of the target range.

Where I might be wrong is if they deliberately built in extra battery capacity for competitive reasons - so for example they could up the range by adjusting the battery's min/max State Of Charge buffer if Tesla had announced a higher range for the Model 3.

 

[rsewill]

Somebody took 235 miles as the EPA range, which would have been my first guess.

Can I make a guess, EPA range will be 240 miles (384 kilometers) please?

 

[litesong]

Considering the extra weight of the 60kWh battery pack, extrapolating the Bolt range from a 20-24kWh pack, might be too optimistic. I would have adored a 2sp. manual transmission to gain at least 10% better highway range. Failing this tho, I understand that range will increase dramatically as speeds decrease from highway & freeway speeds. If EPA range won't be greater than say 210 miles at highway speeds, the range will increase a lot at 35mph. Many of the roads I travel are slower backroads & range should easily approach 230-240 miles on such roads..... still would have enjoyed the 2sp. manual tranny.

 

[Geo]

I'm guessing 220-225. If Tesla is suggesting 215 for the Model 3 (which has a sub-60kWh battery) then the Bolt should exceed that.

 

[DucRider]

I'm guessing 220-225. If Tesla is suggesting 215 for the Model 3 (which has a sub-60kWh battery) then the Bolt should exceed that.

I'll put you in for 225 since 220 and 224 are already taken.

 

[litesong]

I'll put you in for 225 since 220 and 224 are already taken.

Can I have 222..... can I, can I, can I?

 

[DucRider]

Can I have 222..... can I, can I, can I?

Done

 

[mark111]

Talked to someone that sat in the Bolt at EV Roadmap. Range remaining showed 234 miles, but GM staff blocked the attempted photo .

Lots of things can cause a range estimate higher than the official EPA estimate, but makes me think they'll be well above the 200 mark. We should start a pool for fun. Copy the list, add your name and EPA range guess.

DucRider, 224
jhm614, 235
EastOcean, 210
wq2345, xxx (sorry, 210 already taken)
SeanNelson, 220
rsewill, 240
Geo, 225
litesong, 222

Sounds fun.

Here's my guess for Chevy Bolt EP range:

Mark 230

 

[rsewill]

Can you sort the guesses by range, please.

Given my extremely optimistic guess, I guess I will find myself at the bottom of such a sorted list.

 

[DucRider]

Can you sort the guesses by range, please.

Given my extremely optimistic guess, I guess I will find myself at the bottom of such a sorted list.

Done

 

[ssspinball]

Because the body on the Chevy Bolt includes aluminum magnesium and carbon fiber to make for lighter materials I'm pretty optimistic on the long range and efficiency of the vehicle

The concept Bolt had CF but the production car will not. Only BMW has so far brought CF to mass production and it took a very big expensive bet to do it.

The Bolt’s press release from GM stated the Bolt incorporated advanced materials including aluminum, magnesium and carbon fiber to help lightweight the vehicle. I asked him if he can explain where these materials were used, and how they helped save weight. Tavel was surprised there was a claim that carbon fiber was used on the Bolt, and in fact told me he believed that was incorrect. As for the use of advanced materials and light weighting, he said:

“We saved just shy of 50lbs by using all aluminum enclosures (all the exterior body panels are aluminum). The underbody is 95% high strength steel or advanced high strength steel, some of it is the first time it’s been used in production so far. The upper body, not counting the exterior panels is about 80% high strength steel, so there is a lot of advanced materials in there, but we didn’t use carbon fiber anywhere I can think of.”

Link

 

[rsewill]

Just learned the definition of EPA range, we are using, needs clarification while reading the article,
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/02/14/the-chevy-bolt-a-deeper-look/

There seem to be three EPA driving ranges.

1) There is city driving EPA range.

2) There is highway driving EPA range.

3) There is combined city/highway driving EPA range.

Sadly, the article predicts the Bolt will have lower highway driving EPA range because the Bolt will have a higher coefficient of aerodynamic drag.

This is all very confusing to me. I suspect I still have no idea how complicated it is to make design choices for a vehicle.

From my lay point of view, I think I would worry about the 200 mile plus range when going on a long trip.

While it would be nice to have 200 mile plus city driving range because that would mean driving the bolt around town would be cheaper, I don't think most people would care about EPA city driving range once the EPA city driving range were over 100 miles.

I assume our guesses are highway driving EPA range. The article suggests my guess is wildly optimistic.

 

[SeanNelson]

From my lay point of view, I think I would worry about the 200 mile plus range when going on a long trip.

Long trips usually mean highway driving, which means high speeds. It's those high speeds that are hard on range. Fortunately, you have a lot of control over fuel efficiency by driving slower. Range at 55mph will be much farther than at 70mph, and given that it will help you to shorten or avoid recharge stops it may not end up taking you much if any longer.

A lot of people seem to feel like they're forced to drive 70mph, but you usually have the choice of staying off the Interstate. And even on the Interstates, my experience on long trips is that once you're out of the city, traffic is light enough that there's plenty of room for people to go around you. And if you feel guilty about driving slow then you can just find a slow truck and follow it.

 

[DucRider]

Just learned the definition of EPA range, we are using, needs clarification while reading the article,
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/02/14/the-chevy-bolt-a-deeper-look/

There seem to be three EPA driving ranges.

1) There is city driving EPA range.

2) There is highway driving EPA range.

3) There is combined city/highway driving EPA range.

Sadly, the article predicts the Bolt will have lower highway driving EPA range because the Bolt will have a higher coefficient of aerodynamic drag.

This is all very confusing to me. I suspect I still have no idea how complicated it is to make design choices for a vehicle.

From my lay point of view, I think I would worry about the 200 mile plus range when going on a long trip.

While it would be nice to have 200 mile plus city driving range because that would mean driving the bolt around town would be cheaper, I don't think most people would care about EPA city driving range once the EPA city driving range were over 100 miles.

I assume our guesses are highway driving EPA range. The article suggests my guess is wildly optimistic.

That article is interesting, but paints only a part of the picture on range by EV's.

AFAIK, the only published EPA range figure is the combined, and that is the number we are using. That is the number required to be published on the Monroney (window) sticker. Many EV owners are able to exceed the stated range on a regular basis, but if you expect to hop on the freeway and run at 70 mph, you likely won't get the full EPA range in the Bolt. At freeway speeds, a good rule of thumb is that you lose 10% of your range for every 5 mph increase in speed.

EPA 5 test cycle schedules can be found here:
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/fe_test_schedules.shtml
click on the tabs to see the different cycles

If you have many, many hours to kill, you can research in detail the methodology:
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/pdfs/EPA test procedure for EVs-PHEVs-7-5-2012.pdf
http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/03/f11/vss027_duoba_2010_o.pdf
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/600.210-12