Bolt Winter Range and Driving Experience

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Tetondoc

Active member
Joined
Mar 23, 2017
Messages
25
I’ve now got enough winter driving experience with my Bolt EV that I thought I would post a review and share my experiences.

A bit about me. I live in a mountain resort town. I’ve put around 6000 miles on my Bolt in the first 5 months of ownership. My primary mission is to drive to and from work, and to and from the ski resort. I drive about 20-30 miles most days. At least once/week I do a 70+ mile round trip over a mountain pass. My longest road trip was about 200 miles without charging. I haven’t hit 300 miles on a charge yet but I’ve been close. I have a heated garage with a 220V charging station. The closest Chevy Bolt service center is around 250 miles away, a trip I haven’t had to make yet.

SUMMER: I was averaging around 250 miles/charge in the summer months with ambient temps around 70 degrees F. This is a mix of town, rural highway and mountain driving. I don’t use AC much in the summer, preferring to use just the fan or roll down the windows. I “drive it like you own it” and don’t hyper-mile, but I do use one pedal driving in “low” mode at all times. During the summer, I was charging at home every 4-5 days and rarely used public charging stations, although I do have access to them.

WINTER: I live in a mountain resort town and I now have about 1000 miles in winter conditions which include mix of dry and snowy/icy roads, including driving a mountain pass in icy conditions. The ambient temps so far this winter have been between 20-30 degrees F. I’ve only had one day below 20 degrees. It appears that “battery conditioning” kicks on right around 20 degrees. I have only seen a couple of days with battery conditioning so far.

I made three big changes within the first week or two of winter that have impacted my driving range. 1) I put on good winter tires. I chose Toyo Celsius. This is a 4-season tire that is “snow” rated. They are not quite as good on snow as a dedicated snow tire like the Blizzaks, but I think they are about 90% as good on snow and better on dry or wet roads. I’m planning to run them year-round even if they don’t last as long as a 3-season tire would. They are significantly better than the factory tires on dry or wet roads, and DRAMATICALLY better than the factory tires on snow or ice. I would NOT recommend driving on snowy or icy roads with the factory tires. 2) I put on roof crossbars and a ski rack. I went with the Yakima aero bars and am very happy with them. 3) I started using heat. I like to set the cabin heat around 75 degrees and just let it do its thing. No reason to be cold in winter! I also use preconditioning any time the car has been sitting outside in the cold to get the cabin warm and melt the ice on the windshield.

So what is the cumulative impact of these changes and colder temps on my mileage? I’m now seeing a range estimate on the GOM of 160-170 miles per charge, which is around 2.8 miles/kWh. Am I disappointed by this range? In a word... NO. I knew that there would be a significant impact on range during the winter. I like to be comfortable when I’m driving, so I use the heat liberally and precondition the car to warm it up before I get in. I use about 25% of each charge on heating, and the rest on driving. 170 miles of range is fine with me in the winter for 99% of my driving. Basically I just charge every 3-4 days instead of every 4-5. No big deal as far as I’m concerned.

How does the Bolt handle on snowy roads? Quite well actually. The CG is low and centered between the wheels. With good snow tires, acceleration is similar to most other front wheel drive cars. Would I prefer an all wheel drive model of the Bolt or a similar car? Sure, and most likely that will be my next car in a few years. But for now, I’m very happy with the Bolt. The clearance is adequate and quite a bit better than my prior car, a Volt. One pleasant surprise is how well the regenerative braking works on snowy and icy roads. Regenerative braking seems to be similar to gentle braking. Traction control seems to function quite well with regenerative braking and prevents the wheels from locking up. And I think the driving style of using primarily regenerative braking is good training for the driver for snowy and icy conditions. Brakes and ABS work well if you need to stop faster.

Oh... and 6000 miles and I just did my first preventative maintenance. I added windshield washer fluid! Nice to NEVER stop at the gas station anymore.

Overall, I’m delighted with my Bolt and pleased with the winter performance so far.
 
Nice report, thanks!

I agree - a nice toasty cabin is great in the cool weather and I like how quickly the Bolt puts out the BTUs. Reduced range is only a concern if it prevents you from making a trip or requires you to get an enroute charge that you wouldn't otherwise need. In most cases that's not an issue, so why scrimp on the heat?
 
Members on another Bolt forum mention preconditioning as a way to heat the car that has less impact on battery levels. Could someone remind me what this is?
 
randW said:
Members on another Bolt forum mention preconditioning as a way to heat the car that has less impact on battery levels. Could someone remind me what this is?

While plugged into a Level 2 charger? Using grid energy to precondition and/or warm the interior means no range is removed from the battery.

jack vines
 
randW said:
Members on another Bolt forum mention preconditioning as a way to heat the car that has less impact on battery levels. Could someone remind me what this is?

While still plugged in, have the climate system turned on. Timer, app, web. Warm up the cabin, melt the ice on the windshield and windows, all on shore power.

Ten or twenty minutes later, get in the car and leave.
 
WetEV said:
randW said:
Members on another Bolt forum mention preconditioning as a way to heat the car that has less impact on battery levels. Could someone remind me what this is?

While still plugged in, have the climate system turned on. Timer, app, web. Warm up the cabin, melt the ice on the windshield and windows, all on shore power.

Ten or twenty minutes later, get in the car and leave.

Just remember that this won't work well if you are charging with 120 volts, as the current drawn from the pack will greatly exceed the current entering it from the onboard charger.
 
randW said:
Members on another Bolt forum mention preconditioning as a way to heat the car that has less impact on battery levels. Could someone remind me what this is?

There are actually two different types of “conditioning” with the Bolt, which is where most of the confusion comes from.

PRECONDITIONING is accessed through the MyChevrolet app or the “remote start” button on the keyfob. Preconditioning will heat or cool the cabin for 10 minutes before you get into the car. Preconditioning is totally manual, the car will not “start” itself. But after 10 minutes it will turn itself back off. As far as I can tell it doesn’t do ANYTHING to the battery, just warms or cools the cabin. If you are plugged into a charger when you precondition it will use the electricity from the power cord rather than the battery to precondition.

BATTERY CONDITIONING is totally different. Battery conditioning is totally automatic, you have no manual control over it. If temps are too cool or too warm for the battery, the Bolt uses a glycol system to heat or cool the battery. As I mentioned in my earlier post, battery conditioning in cold temps seems to come on right around 20 degrees farenheit, not positive yet of the exact temp. Once again if you are plugged in to a charging cord the Bolt will use shore-power for battery conditioning rather than the battery.

Hope that makes sense.
 
Tetondoc said:
As I mentioned in my earlier post, battery conditioning in cold temps seems to come on right around 20 degrees farenheit, not positive yet of the exact temp.

It's actually much higher than 20F. I have had it come on when the lowest overnight OAT was only down to 30F. The battery has a lot of thermal mass, so it may have even been warmer than 30. If I had to guess what the temperature is, I would say freezing (32).
 
GetOffYourGas said:
Tetondoc said:
As I mentioned in my earlier post, battery conditioning in cold temps seems to come on right around 20 degrees farenheit, not positive yet of the exact temp.
It's actually much higher than 20F. I have had it come on when the lowest overnight OAT was only down to 30F. The battery has a lot of thermal mass, so it may have even been warmer than 30. If I had to guess what the temperature is, I would say freezing (32).
Yeah, I've had a small amount of battery conditioning come on when it was right around the freezing point as well.
 
It would be odd if the TMS activation were determined by ambient air temp. It's the pack temp that matters to the car, and so it should be the pack temp that determines when the TMS comes on...
 
It would be odd if the TMS activation were determined by ambient air temp. It's the pack temp that matters to the car, and so it should be the pack temp that determines when the TMS comes on...

I think we all agree on this point. I am working under the assumption that the car's TMS works on the battery temperature, not the air temperature. We are unfortunately unable to know the temperature of the pack, since Chevy doesn't care to share that information (although you can be assured that the car measures it!). The ambient temperature does give a lower limit for pack temperate in the cold weather (TMS would only warm the pack at these temperatures).
 
LeftieBiker said:
It would be odd if the TMS activation were determined by ambient air temp. It's the pack temp that matters to the car, and so it should be the pack temp that determines when the TMS comes on...
Sure, but when the car is just sitting the battery temp follows the air temp - it's just a question of how slowly it takes the battery to heat or cool.
 
I totally agree... battery conditioning is based on the battery pack temp, not the ambient temps. I keep my car overnight in a heated garage, so battery is likely 50-60 degrees when I leave my house. Probably warmer if I’ve been charging. But even after getting cold-soaked for >12 hours in ambient temps from 20-32 degrees I have only seen “1% battery conditioning” on the energy info screen a couple of times. We will see what happens when ambient temps get into negative teens, which is not uncommon in our area.
 
With a Bluetooth OBDII reader and the right software on a tablet, it is possible to read the battery’s temperature. I believe that you can even read that data while the car is off. The OBDII port always has power, and some devices on the CAN bus never go to sleep, especially if the car is plugged in to charge (even if not active).
 
How come the OP only charged the car every 3 or 4 days? (To preserve the battery for longer life I presume) Why not charge the car to 80 or 85% each night instead?
 
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