No, the cost to gasoline drivers is way low.
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Great update.
I did my infrequent but typical Vermont to Maryland drive yesterday. I am able to do so with three charging stops (two short, one long) to cover the 500 mile trip. I hit Electrify America chargers specifically so my normal $80-$90 gas bill is $0.00 for charging. I add each charger in the route planner so the battery is pre-conditioned when I arrive and each is saved as a favorite so it’s like three clicks to use. I started out at 100% SOC at the house and the temp was 54°F. So, warm but not an optimal temp for the battery. Range to start was 276 miles.
Both initial short charging stops took around 20 min to gain the ~50% SOC increase I needed to get to the next stop. I averaged 3.2kW/hr for the first half of the drive. Not bad for winter tires (summers with LRR tires go on this week) and temps in the upper 40’s. At the halfway point, I hit torrential downpours over very hilly terrain for basically the balance of the drive and and energy usage dropped to 2.7kW/hr.
The last, full charge was interesting. I pulled up to the charger at 10% SOC and charged to 80% in 18 minutes:
I’ve hit 250+kW charging speeds quite a few times but 267kW was the fastest in the few months I’ve had the car. This was a 4-stall charging station (all full) with each charger rated at 350kW. The guy in the Lucid Air next to me popped out when he saw the charging speed and started asking me questions, wondering how often I see speeds like that. When I said I get 240kW or greater around 30% of the time (when charging from a low SOC), he shook his head in disgust and said he’d never seen 250kW and was typically charging at these fast chargers at 140kW or so, even from a low SOC.
Total charging time for the trip was 60 minutes. For an ICE trip, I would have to gas up once and make one other bio-break so I’d usually have around 30-40 minutes of stop time using an ICE car. I could have shaved 5 minutes off of each stop yesterday and arrived home at a low SOC but I was not trying to be super efficient. Just using the tech as designed.
So, overall, a good trip and fairly representative of the experience the car was designed around.
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As the EV buying public becomes more savvy, manufacturers will not be able to skimp on the charging systems for their vehicles. A $100k+ Lucid should not be maxing out at half the charge rate of a Kia.
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Meanwhile, QElon can have my credit card number when he can pry it out of my cold, dead hand.
This is a Kia?
Das has that high end Audi eTron, don’t he?
I believe that’s correct.
Audi eTron GT.
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Checking in with how Twitter is going…
Come for the white rage, stay for the pet vivisection.
Checking in with how Musk is going…
Nothing to do with EVs per se, but it’s amazing to me that TXDOT calls their website for the renewal of inspection stickers “TwoStepsOneSticker”. I guarantee you that was a joke suggestion and the decision-maker was not in on the joke.
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The Onion still got it.
Ok, so it was a little more than a week…
Chevy Bolt, 1000 miles in:
Pros:
Fun as shit to drive. With regenerative braking/one pedal driving turned on, it’s like driving a real-life MarioKart. The one-pedal driving takes about a day to get used to, but after that it comes naturally. There’s an extra paddle brake on the steering wheel that gives you extra regenerative braking if just taking your foot off the pedal doesn’t slow you down enough.
Getting about 4.3 miles/kwh, and my current power plan with about two years left is $.0909/kwh, so per my calculations I’m paying about $21/1000 miles.
Around 300 miles on a full charge (although I haven’t let it get below about 30% yet).
$7500 back on my taxes next year.
Surprisingly quite a bit of cargo space with the back seats down.
Really good infotainment system with bluetooth Apple CarPlay. Huge screen.
Cons:
The Chevy-installed Level-2 charger was only for installing the plug! In other words, they didn’t include an actual charging cable. We had already had a plug installed in our garage a few months ago when we had our fuse box changed out, so we didn’t even need the plug. They did have an alternative if you didn’t need the plug - $500 in charging credits at EVGo/Chargepoint locations (DC fast chargers). Credits are good for 3 years. (We still had to buy our own damn charging cable though, I thought that was a little ridiculous).
No cupholders in the back seat. WTF?
No spare tire, WTF?
No FM-HD radio, WTF?
All in all, I’m very happy with it. Small enough you can park anywhere, but more spacious inside than you would think. I can’t believe they’re going to stop making it. This seems like the kind of car that needs to be out there. Of course they’re scrapping it to build giant pickups and SUVs, unsurprisingly.
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Glad you’re enjoying it and seeing the benefits of an EV. I’m looking forward to trying out one-pedal driving. Letting the car decide when and how hard to use the brakes is phenomenal for the longevity of the pads.
That’s not unique to EVs or even Chevies. My Acura comes with a can of goop to seal/inflate a punctured tire. Anything more serious than that…
.
However, binning the spare is more justifiable on EVs, as it is dead weight 99.99% of the time, and that hurts range.
It’s official, Musk has completely broken Twitter.
What now?
It’s now just a blizzard of hilariously irrelevant ads - my favorite so far being one for a church in west Africa that was in French - with virtually no actual content.
Twitter is a Fucking Mess, Part Eleventy Billion:
I deleted the Twitter app off all my devices earlier this week. Feels good, man.
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Stickin’ it to the man…
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