Chevy Bolt - 200 mile range for $30k base price (after incentive)

[omarsultan]

I don't think that you can jump to that conclusion simply because they don't want to fund a fast charging network. Is Toyota personally building h2 stations? Once EV's become mainstream the marketplace will work it out. Since they are not using a proprietary plug, anything they build could be used by competitors. I hate it, but I don't think this undermines their commitment in the long run. I don't know my history but did Henry Ford also build gas stations?

C'mon, this is like Gillette selling razor blades but not razors handles...twenty years from now they can get out of the infra business, but if they are serious about EVs they will need to deliver a complete solution to the market, not just part of one. A better analogy is Microsoft delivering both the Xbox and Halo to kickstart the market which then drew in other game developers.

 

[Rashomon]

Don't know if anyone has mentioned yet.

Car & Driver reporting Coefficient of Drag for Bolt as .312 vs .24 for Model S.

25.8 square foot front area for the Bolt helps.

http://www.caranddriver.com/flipbook/12-things-to-know-about-chevrolets-30000-bolt-ev#6

That sucks! CdA for the Bolt is about .74 meters-squared, compared to .58 m-sqrd for the MS. That means the 3500 pound Bolt will have at least as much, if not higher, energy usage than a much heavier Tesla at highway speeds, getting worse the faster you go. That's why the top speed is limited to 91 mph. Note that while they'll get 200-plus EPA range, real world is going to be very dependent on how you drive it. Urban range will be great, highway range at 80 mph will fall under 200 miles. I'm estimating that model 3 will come in around .44 meters-sqrd CdA. It will definitely exceed the highway range of a Bolt, even if the base model comes with a 50 kWh battery.

 

[Breezy]

It's official: There is no 30,000 unit cap on annual production. Hopefully we can stop repeating that now.

Further, contrary to reports, implications, or suggestions, General Motors media rep Kevin Kelly said the carmaker has not set a 30,000 unit cap on Bolt production for 2017.

Kelly said the Bolt with powertrain components presently being supplied from LG Chem in South Korea could meet demand if buyers stepped up for its EV now being touted as a mass-market solution.

How Long Does The 2017 Chevy Bolt Have Before Federal Credits Begin Fading Away?

 

[Krugerrand]

It's official: There is no 30,000 unit cap on annual production. Hopefully we can stop repeating that now.

Right, they can produce 30,001 Bolts by reducing the number of Volts they produce by 2 (or whatever). They have limited batteries, but it can be whatever combo of Volts and Bolts until they run out.

 

[Breezy]

Right, they can produce 30,001 Bolts by reducing the number of Volts they produce by 2 (or whatever). They have limited batteries, but it can be whatever combo of Volts and Bolts until they run out.

Sigh. Apparently if you repeat something enough times, it becomes a fact. Good to know.

 

[Bangor Bob]

It's not actually that horrible...

Power to overcome drag:
Pd = .5(rho)v^3ACd
rho = 1.2041 @ 20C at sea level.
v = 29.3 m/s for 65mph...
A = 2.44m^2 (25.8 ft^2)
C = 0.312

Pd = .5(1.2041)29.3^3(2.44)(.312)
Pd = 11.5kW to maintain 65mph at 20C on flat ground. 21.5kW @ 80mph

Let's do rolling resistance.
Prr = C[SUB]rr[/SUB] x N x v
Crr for LRR tires is in the range of 0.006.
N - normal force - call it 4100lbs with passengers, fluid, stuff. 18.2kN
v - 29.3m/s for 65mph

Prr = 0.006(18200)(29.3)
= 3.2kW @ 65mph
= 3.9kW @ 80mph

Tractive load = Pd + Prr
= 11.5 + 3.2 = 14.7kW @ 65mph (Corrected 60 to 65 here, thanks rclams!)
= 21.5 + 3.9 = 25.4kW @ 80mph

Assume a 90% SOC window, 54kWh usable.
65mph, 3.67 hours of driving time, 228 miles.
80mph, 2.12 hours, 169 miles.

Deduct for increased aero load at lower temperatures, heating, AC, lights, accessories... It's roughly a 200 mile car if you don't flog it.

 

[jas]

Sigh. Apparently if you repeat something enough times, it becomes a fact. Good to know.

Exactly.

 

[Yuri_G]

Sigh. Apparently if you repeat something enough times, it becomes a fact. Good to know.

What is GM's production and delivery target for the Bolt in 2016? The reason people are guesstimating is because there is no solid answer.

 

[Bangor Bob]

Doh! Completely forgot about motor and drive inverter efficiency. Multiply the times and distances by, say... 0.85 to 0.90. Presumably they'll have targeted it to be most efficient in the "typical" load range.

 

[eloder]

In general I take your point, but this is hyperbole. No vehicle or drivetrain technology can satisfy this requirement.

I always fail to see how people don't understand that there are many people who simply don't need to drive 100+ miles a day.

How would you imagine people on an island live? Most Hawaiians could get around just fine on Gen 1 Leaf range, to any possible location they could ever dream of driving to. I, myself, live in an urban island in the Midwest. There's no place in my city that I can't drive to with my Leaf in the winter (though I have to be careful with heat or speed on the worst days, <10-20 F or so). I've taken maybe two lifetime trips total that would have exceeded the range of my Leaf on gas cars--the rest of my vacations involve a plane.

Even Volt owners, who have full freedom of movement, often are seeing 90-95%+ of their miles on a teeny-tiny 40 mile range battery. Even my Leaf is going to get 60 on the worst winter days.

A majority of households have two cars. If people didn't buy the Volt in large numbers, I don't think they'll buy the Bolt in large numbers for the single reason holding EVs back, psychology. A Model 3 will break that psychological barrier because it can offer a full car replacement (and most people, I imagine, still don't comprehend the many hundreds of dollars saved on roadtripping in a Tesla).

A Bolt will, for the most part, just be taking people who thought of buying Leafs, Volts, or others who fit the current use cases of a Gen 1 Leaf but have colder weather or longer daily commutes. I hope it succeeds but as a mass market car, I don't think Bolt can lay a candle to the Model 3's known specs/cost.

 

[techmaven]

Sigh. Apparently if you repeat something enough times, it becomes a fact. Good to know.

Ah, we know roughly LG's total nameplate capacity. At 30,000 Bolts, that's 1.8 GWh of batteries. If LG didn't deliver batteries for any other car, they might be able to ship 60,000-70,000 Bolts in 2017, maybe 100,000 if they aggressively built out the rest of their announced battery capacity in 2018. However, that's assuming 0 Volts, 0 to Ford, 0 to Hyundai, 0 to VAG, etc.

 

[Bangor Bob]

the Model 3's known specs/cost.[/COLOR]

Which so far concretely consists of "20% smaller than an S", 200 real-world miles, $35,000 and "not a weirdmobile."

All else is hope, dreams and conjecture until Tesla spills the beans or Elon can't resist tweeting something.

- - - Updated - - -

Ah, we know roughly LG's total nameplate capacity. At 30,000 Bolts, that's 1.8 GWh of batteries. If LG didn't deliver batteries for any other car, they might be able to ship 60,000-70,000 Bolts in 2017, maybe 90,000 if they aggressively built out the rest of their announced battery capacity in 2018. However, that's assuming 0 Volts, 0 to Ford, 0 to Hyundai, 0 to VAG, etc.

I'ma just put this here. "Korea" is going to be largely LG.

 

[techmaven]

That sucks! CdA for the Bolt is about .74 meters-squared, compared to .58 m-sqrd for the MS. That means the 3500 pound Bolt will have at least as much, if not higher, energy usage than a much heavier Tesla at highway speeds, getting worse the faster you go. That's why the top speed is limited to 91 mph. Note that while they'll get 200-plus EPA range, real world is going to be very dependent on how you drive it. Urban range will be great, highway range at 80 mph will fall under 200 miles. I'm estimating that model 3 will come in around .44 meters-sqrd CdA. It will definitely exceed the highway range of a Bolt, even if the base model comes with a 50 kWh battery.

I'd like to remind people of the aerodynamics article by Car and Driver:

https://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/the-slipperiest-car-on-the-road.pdf

The Leaf came in at 7.8 square feet for CDa. The Bolt is worse at 8.05 square feet. So it should be safe to say that the Bolt is likely to do slightly worse than the Leaf at highway speeds. The Leaf's curb weight is also lower. The EPA rates the Leaf at 30 kWh/100 miles. Not clear how much of 60 kWh is useable - maybe that is the useable battery capacity. But that also means the highest EPA rating should be slightly lower than 200 miles. Maybe 190-200.

 

[tga]

Even my Leaf is going to get 60 on the worst winter days.

I know Leaf owners who have to fight tooth and nail to get time on EVSE's at work just to make it home in a MA winter. Increase the range by a factor of >2x, and all that range anxiety goes away.

Without fast charging, the Bolt is still a perfectly good commuter car/2nd car for most people. I agree you need a good DCFC option for it to be an only car, but it has the potential to be a good second car.

 

[techmaven]

I'ma just put this here. "Korea" is going to be largely LG.

View attachment 107905

And Samsung SDI in Cheonan.

Note that LG's plant in Ochang has a high nameplate capacity, but with such low demand, they didn't fully build it out.

Global Expansion: LG Chem to Bring Holland Battery Plant Online This Year | BusinessKorea

3.2 GWh at nameplate in Ochang, but running at very low capacity so not all the lines were finished. Remember, they are fulfilling other company's demands from this plant including PHEVs.

 

[stopcrazypp]

It's official: There is no 30,000 unit cap on annual production. Hopefully we can stop repeating that now.
How Long Does The 2017 Chevy Bolt Have Before Federal Credits Begin Fading Away?

The 30k estimate was never a hard cap, but rather an estimate from the Holland plant (I forgot who did it, might be Washington Journal).

When the Holland plant was built it was designed for 5 assembly lines that can supply 60k Volt packs a year. Then people just divided that capacity by half or 1/3 to get 20k-30k Bolt packs a year.
http://insideevs.com/lg-chem-offici...-battery-production-in-us-for-chevrolet-volt/

However, for an assembly plant that may underestimate the production capacity a bit. I think looking at cell count is more instructive than just kWh in this case (given the large difference in chemistry, but similar size cells). 60k * 288 cells in the original Volt means 17.28 million cell capacity per year. The new Volt uses 196 cells, so that boost that plant's capacity to 88k Volts. The Bolt uses 288 cells so that plant's nameplate capacity would be 60k Bolts. This would not be simultaneous though. If the Volt is at 30k, the plant has capacity for 40k Bolts.

Just as a sanity check, the latest report from October 2015 says 130k cells are shipping from the plant a week. That works out to 6.76 million a year. They have 2 lines running right now 24/7 (plus a third line at unspecified rate), given 5 lines at max nameplate capacity, that works out to 16.9 million cells by my math.
https://www.navigantresearch.com/blog/the-first-american-gigafactory-probably-wont-be-from-tesla

Currently in near term, they don't plan to be adding any new lines to that factory for GM (will add 4th line for some other manufacturer), so they have enough to supply ~34500 Volts (they can boost the 3rd line to full production to cover any surges to Volt demand).
http://www.autonews.com/article/20151214/OEM06/312149992/lg-chem-quietly-surges-in-battery-race

The Bolt cells are going to be made in South Korea (probably the same Ochang plant that made the cells for the Volt before the Holland plant was built), so estimating with Holland is kind of moot.

By the data posted by others of 3.2GWh nameplate capacity (which is probably from below), Ochang line can make enough cells for 53k Bolt by capacity based scaling if it made cells for nothing else (which obviously is not true). If I have the time, I can do the same cell based estimate if I can gather that data (I know that plant other than making some cells for the initial Volt also made it for the Hyundai Sonata / Kia Optima hybrid which had 72 cells). Probably would be instructive to actually get the cell size measurements for the Volt and Bolt and compare (I'm using a 1 to 1 assumption above which is not true).
http://www.koreaittimes.com/story/26828/lg-chem-crank-its-idle-battery-productions-lines

 

[eloder]

I know Leaf owners who have to fight tooth and nail to get time on EVSE's at work just to make it home in a MA winter. Increase the range by a factor of >2x, and all that range anxiety goes away.

Without fast charging, the Bolt is still a perfectly good commuter car/2nd car for most people. I agree you need a good DCFC option for it to be an only car, but it has the potential to be a good second car.

And meanwhile, I can charge every other night at home in 0 degree F weather on my workdays while still keeping cabin heat comfortable.

Again, it's all subjective but statistically there are more me's out there that can do a commute roundtrip with no issues on a Leaf, than there are people like your coworkers. Psychologically most people think they need far more than they actually drive though or are 100% unwilling to modify any part of their driving habits, but in actuality most people are more like Hawaiian islanders that could easily use one of their two cars to cover that "95-98%" drive time use case of daily commutes.

The psychology is the issue, which is why I personally don't see the Bolt being a big seller any time before the Model 3 usurps it in almost every way for a general all-purpose vehicle.

Which so far concretely consists of "20% smaller than an S", 200 real-world miles, $35,000 and "not a weirdmobile."

I think it'd be foolish for Tesla to not make the Model 3 supercharger-compatible.

But yes, I think the Model 3 knowns--what little we have--can easily make the Model 3 a far superior general all-purpose vehicle than a Bolt. It'll have its niche and it'll be absolutely great at its niche in my opinion. It'd be a car that would actually be very lovely for me to personally own/drive as I like smaller hatchbacks over bigger sedans, and I don't roadtrip much. It's just not going to be a substantial player, in my opinion. Musk could screw up everything and prove me wrong, but he tends to do a very good job at making things that people like, desire, and use.

 

[wdolson]

Which so far concretely consists of "20% smaller than an S", 200 real-world miles, $35,000 and "not a weirdmobile."

All else is hope, dreams and conjecture until Tesla spills the beans or Elon can't resist tweeting something.

- - - Updated - - -



I'ma just put this here. "Korea" is going to be largely LG.

View attachment 107905

I've looked for more updated data that this and this was the only thing I could find. It's from early 2014 data and the picture has changed quite a bit since then. Some PHEVs were brought online as well as an increase in Tesla's production. In early 2014, Tesla had only produced 6892 cars the quarter before. Q4 2015 they produced 17,400. I expect that increase reduced Japan's underutilized capacity by a wide margin.

Additionally in early 2014 the Gigafactory would not have been in this data. I'm not sure Tesla was even talking about it yet.

Other cars that have gone into production since that graphic was made is the BMW i3, BMW i8, the new Leaf with bigger battery, Tesla inked a contract for new Roadster batteries and probably some cars I haven't thought of.

I just wish there was some newer data available. I don't think the over capacity is anywhere near as high as it was at the end of 2013. LG Chem's difficulty meeting demand may not be quite what I initially thought, but I still think they will hit the wall when demand starts going up. They have a lot of commitments.

 

[Jeff N]

According to GM, the Bolt's batteries are being manufactured by LG in Incheon, South Korea.

 

[cwerdna]

GM not planning on funding DC charging


GM Won't Fund CCS Fast-Charging Sites For 2017 Chevy Bolt EV (GreenCarReports.com)

Total and utter fail...

Indeed. Totally stupid and shortsighted! WTF? Talk about not putting wood behind their arrow.

They should've thrown in the towel and gone w/CHAdeMO or worked out a deal paying Tesla for Supercharger access. At least w/either of those, they'd have access to a much more well-developed DC FC infrastructure than the amount of SAE Combo in the US, esp. outside California.