Chevy Bolt – Page 15

We made another run to the coast from Bakersfield in our 2017 Chevy Bolt. This was a business trip. I had a half-day lecture to give at CalPoly in San Luis Obispo. So there was no dawdling to take pictures of wildflowers or poking along at a modest speed to conserve our charge. We drove there, charged, spent the night, gave my talk, and drove back.

A few weeks ago I had U-haul install a 1.25-inch hitch receiver on our 2017 Chevy Bolt EV to mount a bike rack.

17 March a small group caravanned from Bakersfield to the Desert Tortoise Preserve’s new parcel adjacent to the Springbok solar power plant near Cantil, California. The plant is located just north of California City and just south of the Honda test track.

12 March I drove our Chevy Bolt to the ChargePoint station at the Palmdale Water District (PWD). I had an interview with the executives there, and, conveniently for me, they had recently installed a 24 kW DCFC. This is a round trip of about 200 miles. Because of the steep climb from Bakersfield over the Tehachapi Summit, this circuit is near the edge of the Bolt’s range. I would charge for a half-hour at the DCFC station and pick up a few kWh as a precaution.

I’ve taken our Chevy Bolt, a battery electric vehicle (EV), on three road trips in our three months of ownership.

On 12 February 2018 we drove our Chevy Bolt to Grover Beach from Bakersfield, California, a distance of nearly 150 miles. I’d been anticipating this drive for several months. It was a first for us to drive directly from Bakersfield to Grover Beach in an electric vehicle (EV). We’ve driven to the coast several times before in our Leaf, but the Leaf’s limited range necessitated a circuitous route that added 100 miles to the trip and many hours of charging en route.

In my first extended trip in our 2017 Chevy Bolt EV, I drove down to the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) Marriott for a conference, a one-way distance of 120 miles. Unlike my previous experience driving to LAX in an electric vehicle (EV), I don’t have much to report. The Bolt worked as designed and I had ample charge and could stay with traffic.

Motoring along at night returning from a meeting and suddenly I hear a thump, thump, thump. Geesh. We only had the car two months and now a flat tire.

We returned home after a two-week Christmas holiday. We found the Bolt where we left it. Always a good sign here in Bakersfield where cars disappear from the owners’ drive way on a regular basis.

On 9 November 2017 we leased a Chevy Bolt EV for about the cost of a cell-phone plan. We chose the base model, the LT, with fast-charge option, heated front seats, and heated steering wheel. In our experience, these items should be standard on all electric vehicles (EVs) even in sunny southern California.