On the freeway, I saw 53 kW of regen shown on the instrument cluster, which is a lot for this fairly light EV.
I keep forgetting to try this myself but others have reported getting up to 70 kW of regen on the freeway if you press the steering wheel regen paddle together with letting your foot off the 'go' pedal in 'L' driving mode.
It seems like some of the initial Bolt reviews reported some pretty painful losses from going down I-5 (level roads, 70mph speed limit) at normal ICE speeds like 80mph,
I haven't really tried this yet either. I just got back from driving 124.2 miles today around the SF Bay Area including through hills on I-280 and fairly long stretches of flat freeway at 65-70 mph along with some occasional congestion and city street traffic. Overall I used 28.4 kWh for about 229 Wh per mile from the battery. That includes using the air conditioner for an hour or so mildly cool the car.
The Bolt is inherently not going to be a slippery car with its general shape tradeoffs but it's .308 rather than the .32 which is often reported. Pretty average rather than terrible. That's going hurt somewhat at 80 mph but the car is starting from a pretty good baseline efficiency.
I think, after 3 years free, it costs $15-$30 a month.
GM used to have generous OnStar coverage on the early Volt models but the Bolt EV only gets 3 months (6 months free if you sign up before leaving the dealer, I think).
At 50 kW, using them will be pretty annoying I'd think. They say 90 miles in 30 minutes, but on a trip that's not a good example, how long does 180 miles take? That's about 70% for an S, but about 95% for the Bolt at highway speed.
I have a sense that many Tesla drivers stop to charge every 120-140 miles. After you burn off the initial full charge, I think that would be a common stopping point for CCS charging in a Bolt.
While it's certainly true that the Bolt charges at only about half the initial rate of a typical Tesla I've driven both a P85 from SF to Las Vegas and a Bolt from SF to Los Angeles and had similar overall subjective experiences.
The Model S was faster to charge but it didn't make that much of a perceptible difference since both charged long enough that I went off to eat, shop, etc and the car was ready when I was returning from those activities. The Bolt took longer but after 30-40 of charging, the time perception of taking an additional ~20-30 minutes didn't stand out much. I thought the Bolt was very usable as an occasional relaxed holiday road trip car.
My theoretical plan is to eventually get a Model 3 with the optional extended battery pack and use that for road trips while keeping the Bolt as a 2nd family car used mainly for regional trips or where it's practical storage utility is needed. But, I think the Bolt is usable for occasional long trips.
In order to keep the charging above 70 amps, the equivalent MPH to driving at freeway speed, you have to stop every 120 miles after you use up your initial full charge. The taper starts at 55%-60% SOC and drops to 25kW by about 70% SOC.
Yes.
I'm hoping the VW rollout will consist of sizable installations where they are 8-10+ chargers in a single spot.
The VW Highway Fast Chargers will have multiple stations at each site. I think it said 4 to 6 chargers per site.
VW said an average of 5 charging connections at a single location but with a range between 4 and 10. Likely, it will be closer to 10 in urban areas and closer to 4 in rural areas.
However, the Bolt EV is not well positioned to take advantage of these future chargers that are over 50kW because of the severity of its charging taper.
Well, if you arrive with 15% SOC you may be able to take advantage of full charging rates for the first ~23 kWh. On the other hand, I'm not expecting future chargers to do much more than 50-55 kW at ~150A during that stretch but we should no more about that soon.
