First Long drive in new Bolt, it was great!

[alevek]

Had to take a friend to Miami airport from Jupiter, Fl, a 90 mile one way trip. Sine I usually drive only about 25 mi/day, decided to take the Bolt to see what a long drive would be like. Fired up Android Auto, used voice control "Navigate to Miami International Airport". Map and itinerary came up indicating approximate drive time of ! hr 50 min via I95. Started out with full charge and 238 mi rated range, should be able to make round trip on one charge, but since I wanted to checkout a store at the Boca Town Center Mall, planned to make a stop and check out the DCFC operation there.

Trip down was uneventful, cruised 75 to 80 mph, Traffic was light until got to express lanes, main traffic backed, cruised right through on express lane. Made it in 1 hr, 10 min with 116 mi range left. I was extremely pleased with how the Bolt felt at highway speed. Very smooth, tight feel. Felt like a much larger car in terms of stability. No galloping going over the overpass sections, and very quiet, Hate to say this, but felt better than my P85D as far as road noise and stability.

Dropped off my friend, set navigation for Boca Town Center and took off. Android Auto is great! Allows texting while driving by reading out text messages and takes dictation for replies. Got to Town Center with 70 mi range. Distance back to home is 44 mi so should have been able to make it. Found the DCFC, an ABB unit. Used my EvGo card and started charging at 50 KWH. Did my store visit, hit the bathroom and returned in 28 min. At 30 min charging completed. Got 25KW and 100 mi range. Started back with 170 mi range.

On the way to I95 couldn't resist a couple of red light derbies. Got pole position at two lights, one with an FPace and one with BMW X6, smoked both to their surprise. Uneventful cruise on I95. At one point was doing 75 mph on outside lane. Noticed late model yellow Vette coming uo rapidly on my right lane, decided to give him a tweak. When blind spot detection came on in right mirror, floored it and watched as Vette faded in rear view mirror. At 85 mph heard and saw Vette flooring and of course he soon flew by. Must have appreciated it, since he slowed and gave me a thumbs up.

Back home with 124 mi left, totally happy with the experience. EvGo charge was $10.95, about equivalent to $2.75/gal gas for a 25 mpg run for 100 mi..

 

[NeilBlanchard]

Good to hear - if you kept your speed down to 60-65MPH, you would have easily done the round trip without the QC, and you would have paid less. EVgo gets $4.95 just for plugging in; which frustrating.

 

[mrdrmorgan]

Good to hear - if you kept your speed down to 60-65MPH, you would have easily done the round trip without the QC, and you would have paid less. EVgo gets $4.95 just for plugging in; which frustrating.

If you do much DCFC charging at EVgo stations, the ON-The-Go plan is the best. You pay $14.95 per month plus $0.10 per minute of charging. I have this plan and it works fine for me.

 

[KimG]

My husband and I just did our first long trip with the Bolt, too. 280 miles round trip, two people in the car and a cooler of water, so carrying about 325 lbs. And 100 degree weather, so air conditioning on one way. (It wasn't necessary at night on the way home.)

The pick up and go was really useful. LA traffic, and merging into much faster speeds. It was much nicer than driving our Honda CRV in traffic, which surprised me. The Honda sits higher, but doesn't have the torque. Turns out I liked the ability to merge faster better than being higher up! It was nice.

We had to find a fast charge on the way back and ran into our first problem - fast charger broken! Argh. Found a good one at, of all places, a gas station. I told my husband he has to stop thumbing his nose at gas stations now. Ha!

 

[bro19991]

Good to hear - if you kept your speed down to 60-65MPH, you would have easily done the round trip without the QC, and you would have paid less. EVgo gets $4.95 just for plugging in; which frustrating.

If you do much DCFC charging at EVgo stations, the ON-The-Go plan is the best. You pay $14.95 per month plus $0.10 per minute of charging. I have this plan and it works fine for me.

Price got jacked up recently. Now $19.95/month and 20 cents/min.

 

[GetOffYourGas]

Price got jacked up recently. Now $19.95/month and 20 cents/min.

:shock:

I guess it is really tough to make a profit in the charging business. We need more users and more networks competing against each other.

 

[bro19991]

Price got jacked up recently. Now $19.95/month and 20 cents/min.

:shock:

I guess it is really tough to make a profit in the charging business. We need more users and more networks competing against each other.

At 10 cents/min, a 30 minute DCFC session with a Bolt well below 50% SOC costs around 13.6 cents/kWh. That is cheaper than the residential rates in a lot of places in CA. For someone that DCFC's a lot, EVgo probably wasn't making much off those people at all, even with the $14.95 monthly fee. So the prices got jacked up.

 

[SeanNelson]

I guess it is really tough to make a profit in the charging business. We need more users and more networks competing against each other.

It's even tougher when you make your customers go through hoops to purchase your service. I've heard that Britain is going to introduce legislation to force all of the charging companies to adopt a universal identification token that can be used to access chargers without having to get a bunch of different phone apps, RFID tags, etc. etc. I'd love to see that in North America as well.

IMHO all chargers should accept a credit card just like all gas pumps do. Imagine how difficult it would be for a gas station to stay in business if they would only accept their own credit card for payment.

 

[SparkE]

Imagine how difficult it would be for a gas station to stay in business if they would only accept their own credit card for payment.

Ahhh, youth! (That is exactly the way it used to be! Except that they accepted cash as well. The 20th century - how quant!)

 

[gpsman]

Price got jacked up recently. Now $19.95/month and 20 cents/min.

:shock:

I guess it is really tough to make a profit in the charging business. We need more users and more networks competing against each other.

Last weekend we went to a play at a local college.
They had a dozen pay to charge stations.
While I didn't NEED to charge while there, I CHOSE to opportunity charge while there.

As only 1 stall of 12 was being used in the 7pm hour, I wanted to give them some business, and show usage (if they track that sort of thing, and they probably do) as a form of thanks. If they went through the effort to support my car technology, I wanted to support them also. Even if it was just symbolic.

It was $1 per hour on a 6.6 kw Level 2.
At that price, they are not even breaking even.
At that price, it was cheaper than charging at home.

 

[GetOffYourGas]

If it was cheaper than charging from home, then that is another motivation to top off.

I too like to support the fledgling infrastructure, even if it costs more than at home. For example, Destiny USA (second largest mall in the country) has L2 charge points. But they cost $0.49/kWh. I still use them, despite never needing the charge and the cost at home being $0.115/kWh on average. Of course, with my tiny battery it never costs much to top off. I give them less than $5/month, but at least it shows them that the charge points are being used. It also shows passers-by what they are for and that people really do drive electric cars.

 

[SeanNelson]

Imagine how difficult it would be for a gas station to stay in business if they would only accept their own credit card for payment.

Ahhh, youth! (That is exactly the way it used to be! Except that they accepted cash as well. The 20th century - how quant!)

I said only accept their own credit cards. That would exclude gas stations that accepted cash.

My first credit card was a "Chargex", and I remember those gas station credit cards. That's why I was very careful to word it the way I did.

I didn't like those proprietary cards then, and I don't like the charging network equivalent of them today.

 

[SparkE]

Most charging networks accept any credit card - you just have to call in. (At least that's the way it is in CA).

 

[GetOffYourGas]

Most of the chargers around me do accept a credit card. BUT it has to have the "Blink" RF chip in it. CC companies deemed those a security hazard (probably rightly so) and removed them from all new cards. I have yet to see a station with a stripe reader.

 

[SparkE]

Most of the chargers around me do accept a credit card. BUT it has to have the "Blink" RF chip in it. CC companies deemed those a security hazard (probably rightly so) and removed them from all new cards. I have yet to see a station with a stripe reader.

You just call the network (provider/company), give them the station number, and a CC number - they turn it on.

 

[GetOffYourGas]

What a pain. I guess it works for now but if EVs really take off, those call centers will be quickly overloaded.

 

[WetEV]

A bit off topic, but fits under long drives.

There are several ways to activate a public charger. The ones I know about are:

Access card or RFID dongle for the network. Chargepoint, Greenlots, SemaConnect, Blink, AV, AddEnergie, eVgo and more.
Some phone apps (Plugshare using a credit card, Wattstation Connect using PayPal, others) can activate some chargers or charging stations.
Credit card and call the number on the charger or charging station.