Chevy Bolt Review

post by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2024-09-26T13:40:05.456Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

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One thing I like about renting cars when I travel is that it's an opportunity to get a sense for a car that's a lot more detailed than what you'd get with a test drive. Traveling to DC for work a few days ago, I took the opportunity to rent a 2023 Chevy Bolt. This is the second time I've rented an electric vehicle, and overall it was the inverse of my experience renting a Tesla:

• With the Bolt, everything was fine except charging.

• With the Model 3, the only good part was the charging.

The car acted like a car, which is what I want. No overly minimalist design where I can't find anything, no automatic wipers that fail to detect spray from the road, and especially no too-smart cruise control with phantom braking. Just a car.

Charging, on the other hand, was terrible. Part of why I got an electric car at this time is that I knew I was going to have a lot of extra time on the way to the airport. I stopped at an Electrify America station, but while it showed up on the map as having multiple spots empty when I started driving, when I got there they were all full. I downloaded the app while I was waiting, which showed a spot empty because someone who'd finished charging was still hanging out in the spot (after disconnecting). When a spot freed up, though, I pulled in. I used the app to start a charge, plugged it in, and waited. A lot.

It was a good thing I only needed to put 5kWh (7%) in to get the car back up to 75% for the return, because after spending ages in the "initializing" state it took 13:12 to put in 5.09kWh.

The charger was marked 150kW, but my understanding is the best the Bolt can do, in ideal conditions with a battery below 50%, is 53kW. And the 23kW I saw is about typical for a Bolt getting to 75%:

If I was going to be able to keep the car somewhere I could plug it in overnight, and rarely drive it enough in a day that I'd need to recharge while out this would be fine. Not a great fit for needing to charge back up to return a rental, though. Since moving electricity to a car is a lot easier than moving gas to a car, it seems like the way this should work is rental companies setting up their garages for charging and advertising that you should just bring the car back at whatever level is convenient.

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