2019 Chevy BOLT

[freebeard]

I'll see your eclipse and raise a nova.

Two Spacecraft Failed on The 13th! What Are The Odds? Deep Space Updates

18:48 watch the skies so um we've wondered
18:52 when this might happen but NASA and
18:53 scientists have come on and say that
18:55 between now and September there's a
18:57 pretty good chance that there will be a
18:59 naked eye Nova in the northern
19:02 hemisphere right so this is a star
19:04 called tonus B torona Borealis right
19:07 which is a binary system with a white
19:09 dwarf in an accretion disc that slowly
19:11 pulls matter off the parent star and
19:14 every 80 years or so it has this massive
19:17 Nova explosion and it becomes like a
19:20 second or third magnitude star goes from
19:22 basically being invisible to being
19:24 visible in the sky so it's getting time
19:27 the last time this happened was was
19:29 1946 so this will be here for a few days
19:32 and then it will fade away so expect
19:35 that in the next uh you know few months

Still waiting on Betelgeuse.

Edit: 2nd source: We're About to Witness a Once in a Lifetime Space Explosion Visible From Everywhere

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by JSH

What is the problem? OK you lost your password book and are locked out of your gmail account. You can just create a new one. You aren't limited to only 1 Gmail account - I have 5. Create a new account and move on.

Once you have a new email account signing up for EA is easy. Name, phone number, email, and then create a NEW password for EA. (They aren't asking for your email password but you can use the same one if you want)

I recommend you sign up for one of the charging apps like Plug share or ABRP. Electrify America is fine but there are also about a dozen other charge networks out there that might have more convenient charge locations or better pricing. Your Bolt is capped at a 55 kW charge rate so even the older 50 kW chargers will work fine for you. If the Charger site has a mix of chargers try to be polite and use the low power ones instead of taking one of the 350 kW chargers that will still only charge your car at 55 kW.




When we had a total eclipse pass over Oregon about 5 years ago the news was going on and on about gridlocked traffic for a week ahead of time. It didn't happen. I drove an hour down to a Walmart in the path of totality and then drove back after. The trip was maybe 5 minutes longer each way.

It was funny to see the difference in attitude between people camped out the parking lot to watch the eclipse and just average customers. It seems a lot of people didn't know that the eclipse was even happening. There were people just going about their normal shopping. Even a few minutes before totality some people would just shrug and walk inside went told we were a few minutes from totality and it was something that wouldn't happen again for 50 years. Couldn't be bothered to take a few minutes out of their day.

*Since I never took my phone to town, I could never use my gmail, since GOOGLE was calling my phone at home, asking if my phone was being hacked in town.
* So I never used it. And I never missed it.
* Greyhound closed their Denton 'office' and the only way I could get to New Mexico was to buy my ticket online. ( now I 'needed' my gmail )
* I opened a second gmail account, but no one can conduct 'business' on a Cricket smart phone unless they use the original gmail account.
* Google AI does not do a ' recover your lost password'.
* Google only allows you to get a 'new' password.
* To get a new password, you must be at Google's website, plus in your text messages, simultaneously, to get a verification code
* I'd never done this, didn't know how, and couldn't 'talk' to Google's robots.
* Nothing at Google's website offered any 'solutions' that were germane to my needs.
* Giving my original gmail name, phone number, and debit card number was good enough to get an email ticket on my phone for Greyhound.
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* To get home, I'd need an account with electrifyamerica, unless I wanted to get raped on pricing.
* I was able to get into EA's system without a gmail password, but when they requested a 'password' their 'robot's didn't explain whether I'd be giving them some password from somewhere else, or create a new EA password ( which after waiting a half hour on the phone, was told by a human, was the case ).
* And I got home, 743-miles, without a gmail password, but needed the password for the EA account one time, otherwise I would have been stranded in Midland, Texas.( none of the equipment functioned, nor the EA app on my phone ) A friendly voice in Indonesia was able to re-boot the hardware, and turn on the charging session remotely. All I had to do was plug in. ' High anxiety '.
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Consumer Cellular said all my phone trouble has to do with my phone, and I'll have to look into replacing it, now that I can't do much commerce of any kind without a smart phone. Certainly no road trips in an EV.
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* I ' topped off' the car this morning at the local EA @ Walmart, capturing the last of the trip data. The APP worked perfectly for the 1st time. No explanation.
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To get to the 'eclipse' and back ( which may be clouded out ), I'll have to open half a dozen new charging accounts according to ABRP.
At least, now I know they'll all be asking for something I've created just for their APP. ( less anxiety )

[aerohead]

So, I made it in yesterday, late afternoon.
Weather is threatening large hail, so I scrambled to clear enough space in the shop for the car ( originally I had until this coming September to accomplish this ).
743-miles, from AeroStealth's to home, with an overnight in Midland, TX.
After the first DC fast charge in El Paso, I stuck the cruise control on 62-mph, to see what that'd do, compared to the EPA HWY rating.
For the whole trip, the BOLT averaged 4.4-miles/ kWh, or 133-mpg-e, @ 91% charging efficiency.
I charged to 80% S.O.C. each session.
The longest leg was the last, Eastland, Texas, to home, then to Walmart this morning to charge ( simulating no home charger ), although not to 100%, as I did before departing AeroStealth's.
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I'll have some more numbers for Thursday, but from the raw data, it looks like, for the well-healed, someone in a Lucid Air could have made this trip with one stop, and if it happened at a 'friend's' home, with an electric plan like AeroStealth, with 'time-if-use' pricing @ 4.7-cents/kWh, the entire trip would have set them back $ 9.17.

[JSH]

Yes, you will need a working smart phone if you plan to travel and DC charge your car along the way. You will also need about a 1/2 dozen apps. The ones you need will vary by your location. All of those will want you to set up new accounts with new passwords and likely 2 factor authentication. Some may also want you to prefund your account with $10 or $20. Charge apps tend to like to have you fund the account in blocks instead of just pay-as-you-go to minimize swipe fees.

Here the primary networks are: Electrify America, EVCS, ChargePoint, and Shell Recharge.

Soon Chevy will also want you to pay a monthly fee to use the Chevy app. I think it is the first 5 years that are included with purchase. The app gives you remote monitoring, remote start, vehicle location, and route / charge mapping.

Of course there are 3rd party apps like ABRP for charging / route planning that you can use in the car with carplay or android auto. Also the remote start on your key fob will still work.

[aerohead]

As to the recent trip, at the day's pricing:
* using only public charging, the trip would cost $ 83.43.
* an ICE version of the BOLT, at 32-mpg, would have cost $ 76.59.
* the BOLT, at my electric coo-op wind plan pricing, $ 25.22
* the Lucid Air, at AeroStealth's El Paso Electric, off-peak, time of use plan, $ 9.12.
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* Electrify America charges a $1.146 /gallon-e tax.
* Texas will extract a $200 EV tax from me when I title and register the BOLT.
* At an average 15,000-mile/year travel distance, between electrifyamerica, and the Denton County Tax Office, some BOLT owner, forced to do public charging would be hit with $ 282.32 / year in 'fuel'
taxes.
* This works out at 731.21-gallons-e / year for the BOLT.
* Indicating for 20.5138 mpg, compared to EPA 122- MPG HWY, and an actual 147-mpg HWY actual ( based on thee 62-mph driving )
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* This places the BOLT owner with a fuel tax burden which is 296% higher than the theoretical 'ICE' Bolt owner.
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*Topping off the car at electrifyamerica allowed me to document the charging session, from 20-miles ave. indicated, to 209-miles ave. indicated.
* Outdoor air temp was 73F.
* It took one-hour, eight-minutes.
* Charge rate ranged from 17-miles/ hour pack gain, peaking at 19-miles / hour, and tapering off to a minimum 8- miles / hour, at the end of the session. From which I could construct a charging curve, as has been reported by others.
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Compared to MotorTrend's Road-Trip Range test, from 100% SOC, to 5% SOC, at 70-mph, and climate control set at 72-F:
* Tesla Model 3 Dual Motor = 250-miles, @ 321.48 Wh/mi.
* Polestar 2 Dual Motor...... = 229-miles @ 340.17 Wh/mi.
* Hyundai IONIQ 6 Dual Motor= 227-Miles @ 323.92 Wh/mi.
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* Driving the BOLT at 62 mph cost me about 13.8-minutes extra drive time / trip leg, but would net 269-miles range, at 229.07 Wh/mi.
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Comparing the BOLT power and consumption curves I prepared for AeroStealth in 2019, to the actual trip numbers, showed a 97.6% agreement to the actual, allowing known unknowns for wind, grades, curve drag, air density, and actual frontal area.
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I like the kW meter, you can see immediate effects of climbing, descending, wind spectra, etc..
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According to the 'math', if I were to 'Coventry University' the BOLT, as was done with the 1999 Audi A2, I could expect to see 375- miles range under the same trip conditions as the Radium Springs, NM, to Denton, TX run.
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With the 'Coventry' mods, plus the gap-filled, hyper-light, tadpole trailer, 441-miles range. Not Lucid Air range, but with a 65-kWh pack, and $ 104,000 between the Lucid and the Chevy, I'd be okay with the 441 mpg.

[redpoint5]

Tangent, but in a theoretical world where a fast charger was located wherever you happened to need it, there's practically no upper speed where driving faster results in a slower trip due to needing to charge more frequently. That upper speed is at least 80 MPH.

That said, chargers are not ideally located, and one must travel at a speed that allows them to reach the next one.

Charging above 80% is mostly pointless (it's so slow), unless one really needs more juice to make it to the next charging location.

... I might be making my first EV trip this month. If I do, I'll make a thread on that.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by aerohead

* Electrify America charges a $1.146 /gallon-e tax.

What does this mean? e-gallons are a nightmare unit of measure. Is Electrify America adding a tax per kWh to every charge? If so what is it?

It sounds crazy to me that Texas is both charging a flat fee supposedly to made up for lost gas tax revenue but then also levying a tax at the charger too.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Tangent, but in a theoretical world where a fast charger was located wherever you happened to need it, there's practically no upper speed where driving faster results in a slower trip due to needing to charge more frequently. That upper speed is at least 80 MPH.

That said, chargers are not ideally located, and one must travel at a speed that allows them to reach the next one.

Charging above 80% is mostly pointless (it's so slow), unless one really needs more juice to make it to the next charging location.

... I might be making my first EV trip this month. If I do, I'll make a thread on that.

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For Texas:
* Phase-1 is targeting DC Fast Chargers every 50-miles along designated corridors, @ 80% charge within 40-minutes ( coming up to 80% from a 93-mile HWY stint in the BOLT requires 33-minutes ).
* Phase-2 will hit more rural areas.
* New installs are running $ 150,000 / charge port.
* Repairs & upgrades are running $ 19,565.22 / port.
Note: I notice that LUCIDs, IONIQ-5s, MACH-es, Taycans, E-Trons, M-B EQEs, RIVIANs, Teslas, etc.. can hit a 350 kW CCS and be gone in less than 20-minutes.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by JSH

What does this mean? e-gallons are a nightmare unit of measure. Is Electrify America adding a tax per kWh to every charge? If so what is it?

It sounds crazy to me that Texas is both charging a flat fee supposedly to made up for lost gas tax revenue but then also levying a tax at the charger too.

1) It's almost a 'miracle' for electrifyamerica to provide a charge summary after you unplug ( they are 'obsessed' that you not 'idle' in place, after the charge is complete ).
2) The 1st time I got an accounting was in Denton:
* 1-hour 8-minutes.
* 45.877-kWh.
* $ 20.45 ( @ 44.575-cents/ kWh ( gross ).
* ' a $ 1.56 tax has been applied to your payment '.
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a) they provided me 45.877-kWhs @ $ 18.89 ( pre-tax ) = $ 0.41175 / kwh.
b) a 'gallon-e ' is recognized @ 33.705 kWh.
c) I purchased 1.3611- gallons-e, with an added tax of $ 1.56.
d) 1.0000-gallon / 1.3611-gallons X $ 1.56 = $ 1.1461 'gallon' gas tax equivalency ( $ 1.1461 /gallon = 296% higher tax rate than for the 'pay-at-the-pump' gasoline tax, on a 'gallon' basis ).
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e) the Federal gas tax is $ 0.20 /gallon
f) the Texas State gas tax is $ 0.188 / gallon
g) OR, $ 0.388 / gallon.
h) The Texas DIESEL tax is $ 0.20 / gallon ( plus the Federal $ 0.20/gallon Diesel tax ) [ $ 0.40 /gallon ]
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Texas Legislature's Senate Bill 505:
1) all new electric vehicles are taxed $ 400.00 for registration ( 1,030.927-gallons gasoline equivalency, & 14.55- mpg-e, on a 15,000-miles/year basis )
2) subsequent annual registration tax of $ 200.00/year ( 515.463-gallons-e, @ 29.1 mpg-e, and 15,000-miles / year.
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It seems that, so far, the American Petroleum Institute lobbyist-owned Texas Congressmen have more sway in Austin, than American Anti-Petroleum Institute lobbyist-owned Texas Congressmen. Perhaps a class-action lawsuit, taken to the Texas Supreme Court ( or higher ) might remedy the matter of economic prejudice and discrimination against the nascent EV owner's subset of the citizen population ( or some local kindergartner could teach the fine gentlemen 'reading and arithmetic' ).
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I'm given to understand that, on Mars, the Gary Larsen- Bizzaro-esque sci-fi cartoonists are making good sport of Earth's Texas Legislature's epic buffoonery.

[redpoint5]

Is $20k in repairs an annual budget, cause that's a ton of money. Seems you could replace the charging cable every month and spend less than $20k per year, so why is it so expensive?

That's the big problem with DCFC, that it has no path towards sustainability. If consumers paid the actual cost to install and operate them, they'd probably be paying $2/kWh, in which case rational people would just drive an ICE.

My prior research found that chargers need to be utilized 8hrs per day to break even on cost, and that's for the cheap 50kW units. Higher output units cost more to install, cost more in demand charges, and require even higher levels of utilization to break even on cost.