As some of you know from posts in other threads - I bought a 2017 Chevy Bolt EV back in November. Paid $24K out the door for a fully loaded Bolt with 32K miles. Not a bad price in the current market but 2 years ago I could have got a new Bolt for that.
This will be a thread for any modifications, general observations, and dealing with the battery recall.
So far I've really liked the Bolt. It is a bigger and quicker version of my old Spark EV with better tech.
Modifications:
To date just snow wheels and tires + scrounging a spare tire. The Bolt is based the Gamma II platform so the GM parts bin is pretty deep.
Snow Tires / Wheels:
I bought 15" aluminum wheels off a 2013 Chevy Sonic. I mounted my old Blizzak 15" snow tires from my old Prius. (I sold them to a co-worker after I sold the Prius, he never mounted them, I bought them back for $100)
Spare Tire:
The Bolt doesn't come with a spare. It has room for a spare under the floor in the hatch but GM was too cheap to provide one on a $43,000 car. I sourced a compact spare from a Cruze, bought a 19mm deep socket online, and a cheap breaker bar from Harbor Freight. For a jack I just put my compact Craftsman floor jack in the back for now. I may get a bottle jack sometime but I had the floor jack already.
Battery Recall:
As most people know - Chevy is replacing the battery in every Bolt made due to a manufacturing defect in the LG cells. (LG is footing the bill) Until the replacement is complete GM recommends charging outside and only using from 30% SOC to 90% SOC. Then in December they released a software update that they claimed would allow normal use, charging inside, and just cap charging at 80%. I got that recall at the end of December and it took 2 hours.
I WOULD NOT recommend anyone get the recall. Prior to the software update I was getting 200 miles of range per charge. After the recall the range dropped to 130 miles and has slowly crept up to 160 miles. There is no way 80% of the battery is still available after the recall. With my current miles / kWh I should be getting about 175 miles per charge if 80% of the battery is available. What's done is done, all I can do now is is get the battery replaced to lift the 80% cap.
Last week I got a notification that my car is eligible for a battery replacement. I called my local dealer that works on EVs (not all Chevy dealers do) and they said they would order the battery. Once it was in shipment to their dealership they would call me to set up an appointment. Their estimate was that it would be 4 to 6 weeks from now. When I was in for the software update they had 9 batteries stacked up so they are doing a bunch of recalls.
Charging:
As with the Spark, I can charge for free at work although I don't go into the office every day anymore. However, with the much larger battery I can go longer without charging so there is no real need to charge at home if I don't want to. I could have just used the 120V EVSE that came with the Bolt but I bought a Wallbox Pulsar Plus Level 2 charger with the car for $500. It is pretty nice, easy to install, and allows charging from 1 amp to 40 amps. Sends notifications and charging stats to my phone via Wifi or Bluetooth.
I did some experiments last week and found charge efficiency varies wildly based on state of discharge. All charging sessions were done at 45F and charged to the 80% limit.
- When I charged after using 31.4 kWh charging to 80% required 33.4 kWh at the charger. 6% charging loss
- When charging after using 13.9 kWh charging to 80% required 15 kWh at the charger. 7% charging loss
- When charging after using only 2.4 kWh charging back to 80% required 3.4 kWh at the charger. That is a HUGE 29% charging loss.