I got to see and sit in a Bolt today

[michael]

The only way to know a battery's full capacity is to do a standardized test such as Idaho national labs has done on many cars. Unfortunately the did not include a Fit EV in their testing

Battery fade can be easily masked by gradually increasing the depth of discharge window. After three years and 40,000 miles my volt delivers the same 10.4 kWh it did when new and it doesn't have toshiba batteries of course. Is this due to a Volts easy treatment of the battery? Or due to wider DOD window? No way for me to determine.

 

[oilerlord]

Battery fade can be easily masked by gradually increasing the depth of discharge window. After three years and 40,000 miles my volt delivers the same 10.4 kWh it did when new and it doesn't have toshiba batteries of course. Is this due to a Volts easy treatment of the battery? Or due to wider DOD window? No way for me to determine.

You make an excellent point. The Idaho testing lab is doing an ongoing test on the B250e. The "baseline" result at 400 miles was 34.6kWh, and after 4000 miles, it had dropped to 33.2kWh. As of today, I'm at 11,400 miles on my car, and even though my battery may have degraded to 31kWh - I'd never notice it since 28kWh of it's capacity is what's available to me.

Without a diagnostic test, it's easy for an owner to make the assumption that their battery hasn't degraded - when in fact, only their range hasn't degraded. For that reason, it makes sense why we see 100,000 Volts on the road with owners reporting no loss of range - the huge battery buffer preserves it.

 

[splitmitten]

There are two Bolts on display at the Los Angeles auto show. I got to check it out pretty thoroughly and it looks really good

I had been concerned that it would be too small. It is smaller on the outside than my Focus was, but far more spacious inside. Great headroom in front and good in the rear. Plenty of rear legroom

Charging had some interesting options. One was the option to immediately charge to 40% and then to do a timed charge for the remainder. In essence this provides the option to use only the lower 40% of the battery charge window and provide 80 mile class range. This should be great for battery longevity

Another option was hill top reserve. The Chevy people were clueless about this but I bet this gives the option for hill top people to terminate charge early and regen on the way down rather than being forced to use friction brakes

The downers were things we already knew..,lack of homelink. Nobody could confirm resistive vs heat pump

Interior looked good to me. Leather seats were good looking

Rear storage area was much bigger than Focus but seemed smaller than Volt

All in all very nice. Confirms my plan to grab one

What a nice time for you