Hi,
Evie has passed the mileage threshold. Sometime between August 17th and August 24th, she passed 24,200 miles and reset herself. I can now charge her to 100% instead of a maximum of 80%. Her battery was at 55% when I discovered this. I normally wouldn’t charge her at home until her battery was around 30% (unless I was going to leave on a long trip the next day), but just to test it out I set her for a 100% charge. It took 4 1/2 hours on my Level 2 home charger, and cost $4.75. On a public fast charger it would take far less time than that (and would be much more costly).
Evie’s GOM’s (Guess-o-Meter’s) reading was at a Maximum of 357 miles, a Median range of 303 miles, and a Minimum of 248 miles, which is much more than I expected. A typical GOM reading at 80% is roughly: Maximum 265 miles, Median 225 miles, and Minimum 185 miles. Notice that there was a 92 mile spread between those two Maximum readings, and a 78 mile spread between the two Median readings. My guess is that this new capacity will give me about 50 more miles than an 80% charge has been delivering, and I’m just fine with that.
I will almost certainly never go 357 miles on one charge, and probably not even 303 miles. I would only come close to 303 miles if my driving was all in town, all on side streets (not on any freeways, which is nearly impossible in the Houston area), and I would have to drive very conservatively. I would also have to let my battery get down to nearly zero to achieve it (and I’m not willing to do that).
I can certainly plan, even on out-of-town trips, on being able to go 200 miles between charges (with a full battery), and 150 miles thereafter if I only charged to 80% on the road. Charging to 100% would require longer times at charging stations (necessitating more travel time during a day because the Chevy Bolt is one of the slower charging EVs on the market). Even if I’m charging at a 350 kW station, Evie is only capable of accepting 55 kW of that. I would need to plan my charging stops near a restaurant or a location where I needed to shop for 45 minutes or so. I could also stop at nearby fast food places, buy a lunch to go, and eat in Evie while she charges. It does require more advance planning, but it’s very do-able.
At some point I would like to do a longer trip (maybe a week or so) to research likely areas of the country to set my Arthurian novels in, and to safely test the limits of Evie’s range.
See you next time,
Michael
Standard Disclaimer: Please post a comment below if you would like to. All comments are personally moderated by a grouchy old guy, though, so posts by self-promotional schemers, spammers, and lunatic ranters won’t make it through. Everyone else, whether your thoughts are positive or negative, please feel free to speak your mind. Thanks.