4 ms·

>but in several years of driving a Bolt, I have literally never had to charge it away from home That just means that haven't been more than about 120 miles awa

>but in several years of driving a Bolt, I have literally never had to charge it away from home That just means that haven't been more than about 120 miles away from home in 2 years. An especially easy feat when a large part of that was COVID shutdowns. In general, easy access to rapid charging on the road is a luxury of urban & suburban areas. That's where most people live, so electric will be okay for most people, but this is a bit too much cheerleading on the subject of charging convenience if the comparison is ICE. We're not there yet. Also the Bolt may not be the best example to use in the context of how electric can be better. I agree with the sentiment, but Chevy had to recall every Bolt ever made prior to the 2022 model year due to battery issues, requiring batteries to be replaced. It still hasn't replaced all of them. During this time, to avoid fires, owners were temporarily advised to only charge to 90% and not go below 70 miles of range, nerfing range to about 165 miles. Also not charge overnight in a garage and in some cases park 50 feet away from other vehicles. A firmware update has since removed those last restrictions in favor of a semi-permanent range nerf to 210 miles until the battery is replaced. Yes, we can do better than "same, but electric" but we're not quite there yet in a lot of ways, and the Bolt excellently demonstrates some of them. It seems like in terms of battery safety engineering we're at the Ford Pinto stage, but maybe catching up faster?

belval 5y ago
GM is replacing all the batteries with better, newer ones. You can be pessimistic about it, but I have yet to find a Bolt owner that isn't happy with their replacement.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  I'm not pessimistic about the general EV outlook. Bolt simply isn't a good poster child for how much better they are. Why wouldn't Bolt owners be happy with their new battery? The new battery isn't the issue, it's what made it necessary that is the problem. With 100 mile reduction in range and safety issues I wouldn't have kept mine long enough to get the replacement. It wouldn't have been possible for me to keep it under the limitations imposed. And I doubt the many thousands of Bolt owners still waiting for a replacement are not very happy about it. On a much smaller scale, I was happy when I got about $200 in a class action settlement from Apple for it's faulty iPhone liquid sensors. I was still pissed off that I'd had to pay for a replacement years earlier. And years before the settlement I had already switched away from Apple as a result.
  - neon_electro 5y ago
    I'm actually happy to delay my battery replacement - I believe the probabilities & statistics are on my side as far as the chances of my car going up in flames before I decide to actually move forward with my battery replacement. Probably going to do it this year, but I'm not at all in a rush. I also have only really followed GM's recommendation to keep state of charge under 90%; I have happily driven my battery as low as needed, but have always worked to plug the car in and raise the state of charge within 24 hours back to the "appropriate" range. Agreed with you about some folks not wanting to put up with it - there's plenty of stories on the Bolt EV Facebook group about folks going through the buy-back process. But I wouldn't sell my Bolt for even its original MSRP.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      >statistics are on my side as far as the chances of my car going up in flames Sure they are. If statistics weren't at least slightly on your side that would mean that roughly half (or more) of these were catching fire. In most equipment safety issues I can think of the statistics of something going wrong are always on your side. A more comprehensive approach is probably risk/reward. How much will it cost to get rid of the car early? What is my liability if the car catches fire and data logs show I drove the car down to a 65 mile range a few times? Would Chevy still replace it? Am I liable if such a fire caused damage to someone else's property? What if the parking deck where I work doesn't have an open-air top floor to park on? What if I don't have anywhere near my house where I can park 50 feet away from other vehicles? For the same reason, if I owned a Tesla I'd probably turn off all self-driving options except maybe lane assist. Though I wouldn't buy a Tesla or other EV quite yet either-- I'd like things like battery safety to get more mature. It's not even just manufacturing, but also car accidents: EV battery fires can ramp up faster than those from an ICE. On the other hand, there's promising tech on the horizon that works around some of these things: https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/ev-battery-fires/ https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/ev-battery-fires/. When I had to buy a new car recently I ultimately decided against an EV [1] but I expect that may change by the time I buy my next car. [1] Not just tech maturity, but for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is that where I live electricity is almost exclusively generated by fossil fuels anyway, including coal, with an overall efficiency that isn't much different than a new car w/ average gas mileage. Add to that the efficiency loss of translating grid power into EV motive power...
bearjaws 5y ago
Side tangent, I love how when Tesla has anything go wrong its all over the news and massively upvoted on Reddit / HN. Chevy Bolts literally had to be parked outside your home and have battery charge permanently reduced 50%, only 43 upvotes here on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28252550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28252550
- bduerst 5y ago
  Top comment calls out why. Tesla is a luxury brand, not a mid range car. Price differences bring different expectations.
  - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    Eh...I own a Model 3 and I would not consider the Model 3 or Model Y (Which is essentially just a slightly larger Model 3 with a hatch) to be luxury cars. It's a nice car, for sure, but I wouldn't call it luxury.
    - bradlys 5y ago
      It’s the price point. You can get BMWs for the same price and they’re definitely luxury cars.
      - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
        The Model 3 is a $25,000 car with a $15,000 battery.
        bduerst 5y ago
        Underlying cost doesn't matter to markets when it's priced the same as luxury cars. It's the same customers with the same disposable income and different expectations than mid-range.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Tesla sells more, does a lot more cutting edge & controversial things, and so in a community of technophiles like HN it's always going to be a bigger flashpoint of discussion. Especially compared to a stodgy 100+ year old company following a trend for which Tesla laid much of the foundation. Not that I think that's how it should be. For me, even (especially?) from a technophile POV, problems with EV's from a company like Chevy (well, GM) or VW are more interesting. These are the companies that, in the shorter term, will have a much larger impact on mass market EV adoption. They're the ones with the manufacturing, distribution, and service base needed to quickly scale into low & mid market segments that Tesla doesn't much seem to care about. That's what will define how much, or how quickly, these become just another everyday piece of tech. In 5 years the mobile phone market went from most people buying a feature phone to most buying a smartphone. The screwups made by the big EV manufacturers will define how quickly EVs do the same thing for the automobile market.
vel0city 5y ago
> That just means that haven't been more than about 120 miles away from home in 2 years. Not necessarily. I live in a suburb where most people drive cars every day for most things. I can still walk a few hundred feet to the bus stop at the end of my street, hop on the train, ride to one of the biggest and busiest airports in the US, and fly anywhere around the world. Or I can hop on a cheap bus and ride to the nearby cities for ~$30-40 for a last-minute ticket, $1 if I'm planning well enough in advance.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  I think it's pretty clear that 120 miles was in the context of car usage, that they hadn't used the car for such a trip. The car was the context of what I quoted, so unless I was making a non sequitur then it is by definition the context of my comment as well. Of course there are other ways a person could have travelled more than 120 miles away. Used a friend's car, a (very expensive) uber, a rental, or the other options you mentioned. All of which would actually support my point: The only way they could do a 2-way trip of any length, with only charging their car at home, is if they didn't use the car for the trip.
  - vel0city 5y ago
    Many people treat owning an EV as some kind of traveling death sentence. I've had plenty of people ask me "but what about range?", as if only having ~100mi distance (~200mi total on my standard battery AWD Mach E) is somehow limiting my travel. A big part of the answer is there are other forms of transportation available to me on the kinds of travel I'd do. Sure, driving 1,000mi would be a bit more of a PITA at the moment in some respects with the Mach E than an ICE, but on the other hand there's still a lot of other options for the travel. I can still easily go >120 miles from home without using public charging even if my only car is an EV. I took your statement quite literally. Your comment literally states that because they have a Bolt and haven't used a public charger, they "haven't been more than about 120 miles away from home in 2 years". Sure, adding an additional "in their Bolt" to the end of that then means quite a bit more, but taken very literally this statement is stating they haven't gone more than 120 miles from their home. You don't appear to be someone making that argument with the additional context, but there are people who would assume that having an EV means they literally haven't travelled >120 miles from home. I know this because I've talked with people who have thought that of my EV.
neon_electro 5y ago
As another anecdotal point of data for your consideration, I've owned a 2018 Bolt for 3.75 years, have 46,000 miles on it, and have taken it as far as Chicago and Montréal (I'm located near Philadelphia). It took until 2018-2019 to establish enough fast charging infrastructure to make those trips feasible, but it does work in the summer. In the winter, the Bolt's battery management system limits fast charging when the battery isn't sufficiently warmed up, but there's no Tesla-like option to actively heat the battery to improve charging speeds when you want to visit a fast charger.

belval 5y ago

GM is replacing all the batteries with better, newer ones. You can be pessimistic about it, but I have yet to find a Bolt owner that isn't happy with their replacement.

ineedasername 5y ago
I'm not pessimistic about the general EV outlook. Bolt simply isn't a good poster child for how much better they are. Why wouldn't Bolt owners be happy with their new battery? The new battery isn't the issue, it's what made it necessary that is the problem. With 100 mile reduction in range and safety issues I wouldn't have kept mine long enough to get the replacement. It wouldn't have been possible for me to keep it under the limitations imposed. And I doubt the many thousands of Bolt owners still waiting for a replacement are not very happy about it. On a much smaller scale, I was happy when I got about $200 in a class action settlement from Apple for it's faulty iPhone liquid sensors. I was still pissed off that I'd had to pay for a replacement years earlier. And years before the settlement I had already switched away from Apple as a result.
- neon_electro 5y ago
  I'm actually happy to delay my battery replacement - I believe the probabilities & statistics are on my side as far as the chances of my car going up in flames before I decide to actually move forward with my battery replacement. Probably going to do it this year, but I'm not at all in a rush. I also have only really followed GM's recommendation to keep state of charge under 90%; I have happily driven my battery as low as needed, but have always worked to plug the car in and raise the state of charge within 24 hours back to the "appropriate" range. Agreed with you about some folks not wanting to put up with it - there's plenty of stories on the Bolt EV Facebook group about folks going through the buy-back process. But I wouldn't sell my Bolt for even its original MSRP.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    >statistics are on my side as far as the chances of my car going up in flames Sure they are. If statistics weren't at least slightly on your side that would mean that roughly half (or more) of these were catching fire. In most equipment safety issues I can think of the statistics of something going wrong are always on your side. A more comprehensive approach is probably risk/reward. How much will it cost to get rid of the car early? What is my liability if the car catches fire and data logs show I drove the car down to a 65 mile range a few times? Would Chevy still replace it? Am I liable if such a fire caused damage to someone else's property? What if the parking deck where I work doesn't have an open-air top floor to park on? What if I don't have anywhere near my house where I can park 50 feet away from other vehicles? For the same reason, if I owned a Tesla I'd probably turn off all self-driving options except maybe lane assist. Though I wouldn't buy a Tesla or other EV quite yet either-- I'd like things like battery safety to get more mature. It's not even just manufacturing, but also car accidents: EV battery fires can ramp up faster than those from an ICE. On the other hand, there's promising tech on the horizon that works around some of these things: https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/ev-battery-fires/ https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/ev-battery-fires/. When I had to buy a new car recently I ultimately decided against an EV [1] but I expect that may change by the time I buy my next car. [1] Not just tech maturity, but for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is that where I live electricity is almost exclusively generated by fossil fuels anyway, including coal, with an overall efficiency that isn't much different than a new car w/ average gas mileage. Add to that the efficiency loss of translating grid power into EV motive power...

bearjaws 5y ago

Side tangent, I love how when Tesla has anything go wrong its all over the news and massively upvoted on Reddit / HN. Chevy Bolts literally had to be parked outside your home and have battery charge permanently reduced 50%, only 43 upvotes here on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28252550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28252550

bduerst 5y ago
Top comment calls out why. Tesla is a luxury brand, not a mid range car. Price differences bring different expectations.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  Eh...I own a Model 3 and I would not consider the Model 3 or Model Y (Which is essentially just a slightly larger Model 3 with a hatch) to be luxury cars. It's a nice car, for sure, but I wouldn't call it luxury.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    It’s the price point. You can get BMWs for the same price and they’re definitely luxury cars.
    - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
      The Model 3 is a $25,000 car with a $15,000 battery.
      - bduerst 5y ago
        Underlying cost doesn't matter to markets when it's priced the same as luxury cars. It's the same customers with the same disposable income and different expectations than mid-range.
ineedasername 5y ago
Tesla sells more, does a lot more cutting edge & controversial things, and so in a community of technophiles like HN it's always going to be a bigger flashpoint of discussion. Especially compared to a stodgy 100+ year old company following a trend for which Tesla laid much of the foundation. Not that I think that's how it should be. For me, even (especially?) from a technophile POV, problems with EV's from a company like Chevy (well, GM) or VW are more interesting. These are the companies that, in the shorter term, will have a much larger impact on mass market EV adoption. They're the ones with the manufacturing, distribution, and service base needed to quickly scale into low & mid market segments that Tesla doesn't much seem to care about. That's what will define how much, or how quickly, these become just another everyday piece of tech. In 5 years the mobile phone market went from most people buying a feature phone to most buying a smartphone. The screwups made by the big EV manufacturers will define how quickly EVs do the same thing for the automobile market.

vel0city 5y ago

> That just means that haven't been more than about 120 miles away from home in 2 years. Not necessarily. I live in a suburb where most people drive cars every day for most things. I can still walk a few hundred feet to the bus stop at the end of my street, hop on the train, ride to one of the biggest and busiest airports in the US, and fly anywhere around the world. Or I can hop on a cheap bus and ride to the nearby cities for ~$30-40 for a last-minute ticket, $1 if I'm planning well enough in advance.

ineedasername 5y ago
I think it's pretty clear that 120 miles was in the context of car usage, that they hadn't used the car for such a trip. The car was the context of what I quoted, so unless I was making a non sequitur then it is by definition the context of my comment as well. Of course there are other ways a person could have travelled more than 120 miles away. Used a friend's car, a (very expensive) uber, a rental, or the other options you mentioned. All of which would actually support my point: The only way they could do a 2-way trip of any length, with only charging their car at home, is if they didn't use the car for the trip.
- vel0city 5y ago
  Many people treat owning an EV as some kind of traveling death sentence. I've had plenty of people ask me "but what about range?", as if only having ~100mi distance (~200mi total on my standard battery AWD Mach E) is somehow limiting my travel. A big part of the answer is there are other forms of transportation available to me on the kinds of travel I'd do. Sure, driving 1,000mi would be a bit more of a PITA at the moment in some respects with the Mach E than an ICE, but on the other hand there's still a lot of other options for the travel. I can still easily go >120 miles from home without using public charging even if my only car is an EV. I took your statement quite literally. Your comment literally states that because they have a Bolt and haven't used a public charger, they "haven't been more than about 120 miles away from home in 2 years". Sure, adding an additional "in their Bolt" to the end of that then means quite a bit more, but taken very literally this statement is stating they haven't gone more than 120 miles from their home. You don't appear to be someone making that argument with the additional context, but there are people who would assume that having an EV means they literally haven't travelled >120 miles from home. I know this because I've talked with people who have thought that of my EV.

neon_electro 5y ago

As another anecdotal point of data for your consideration, I've owned a 2018 Bolt for 3.75 years, have 46,000 miles on it, and have taken it as far as Chicago and Montréal (I'm located near Philadelphia). It took until 2018-2019 to establish enough fast charging infrastructure to make those trips feasible, but it does work in the summer. In the winter, the Bolt's battery management system limits fast charging when the battery isn't sufficiently warmed up, but there's no Tesla-like option to actively heat the battery to improve charging speeds when you want to visit a fast charger.