Chevy Bolt EV: New Battery 10% to 80% on 350 kW Charger 

My 2017 Bolt, has very little regen if you charge to 100%. I always charge to 90, unless on a road trip. I was one of the earliest 2017 to get the new battery due to some weak cells in the old pack and I calculated almost 10% range increase! But truthfully, I almost always charge at home, occasionally at work ( both MUCH cheaper than EA or other DCFC ), and I'm really glad guys like you, Eric, are out there pushing the boundaries of knowledge and range so the rest of us can learn!

Great video and I was waiting for it. And you are right. No one drives his Bolt EV to 0% and no one should charge more than it needs to get to the next destination. 70% SOC added : 45 kWh added to your Bolt, at an efficiency of 3.5 mi/kWh, is enough for 157 miles and still have a buffer of 10% SOC.

Great info and help to understand differences (v. small bottom buffer) with Bolt vs a lot of other EV’s. Thanks Eric!! Hope once your Bolt learns you’ve got another 6kWh, it paces similarly vs %SOC to still arrive at 80% by 55min.

Thanks for this charging method information. Just learning all I can before purchase of my Bolt EV 2LT model this coming spring 2023. I have watched other Bolt charging videos and know about the fastest charging rates are between 20-50 percent for the vehicle. Your video is the best so far in explaining what to do. Especially leaving the car turned off until the charge rate kicks down from the fastest rate of 59. take care.

Nice! Learned something new today. I'll make those changes next time I DC charge. So far, majority of my 23 Bolt charging is done on AC at 10kws when I'm at work. I'm looking forward to the Ultiums capable of sucking in 19.5kws AC. Should beable to fully charge before first break.

Noticed pic at beginning showed many empty stalls. Any reason for 350 instead of 150 when Bolts max input is 55? Or are all 350kw in that spot? Side note loved the Bolt I had for 4 yes and would totally buy a used one for my kids in a year or 2.

Thanks for the tips! Just got a 23 EUV

The charging curve shown here matches very well what I get on my 2020 Bolt. Good to know that when I eventually get my battery replaced, charging speeds shouldn't suffer.

Great video and information: thanks :)

Thanks Eric, interesting data. I think you're right that the most useful metric for regular drivers will be 20-70% or 80%... some might be willing to go to the low teens, but at 10% all the warnings start popping up and it will freak out some. Planning for 20% means you'll still hit above 10%, even with unexpected consumption, and it doesn't get uncomfortable. Also never really thought about the drain when the car is on and being watched, so that's an interesting point to test as well.

Great video Eric Yes the Kona EV also displays the charge speed and percentage when the car is off. Seems to be a Kia/Hyundai thing. I suspect also that Hyundai has a fair bit of top end hidden capacity as regen has never been reduced and we charge to 100% fairly regularly (with our level 2 EVSE at home) due to the length of my wife's daily drive! Thanks for the video! Mike 🇨🇦

Hi Eric, This morning I woke up and checked the charge on my 2017 Bolt, (exact color and trim as yours) with the new 66kwh battery, charging with a Level one 16amp charger on a 20amp socket. It showed that I had 283EPA and 333 Max with a Minimum of 232...I've never seen those numbers on my Level 2 charger. I believe the slower you charge the battery the higher charge you can attain without triggering the battery conditioning circuits...Let me know what you think, I love your videos man!

I have what is labeled at 64KWh battery with 40,000 on my new battery. It is 10 degrees Celsius and from 100% I only used 52.4 and 239km total driven. Kwh before I got to the fast charger. Then I got 21kw speed from the charger and it moved down to lower than 7kw speed within a few minutes. I then went to a 24kw at my chevy dealer and charged from 20% at 21kw to see if it was the car. I wonder about your thoughts on this one. My battery says it is 21-22 degrees celsius. I feel my range is way lower than expected.

I agree starting from 10% is a MUCH more realistic low water point for most people to start their DCFC sessions. Few people are going to be comfortable taking their car down well into the single digits SoC. Speaking for myself I'm never going to DCFC without leaving the Bolt on because I want the car to be able to condition the battery when it needs to. Last time I fast charged (late November) I was starting with a battery temp below 20C (18C IIRC) but the temp got above 27C in less than 10 minutes, and in my experience (obviously not even in the same league as yours) the Bolt's battery cooling system can't do better than to keep up with the heat generated by fast charging. I don't want to wait till the charge begins to taper based on the battery getting too hot I want to keep the battery from getting too hot in the first place. Haven't seen you use Torque Pro in your videos in quite a while. Would be nice to use it to get more information about the state of the vehicle and battery during DCFC, since GM think's we all have room temperature IQs and hides so much information from us if we don't use tools like Torque.

My point if it needs to charge above 80% how system can support in case car is turned off?

The display indicated 0% for battery conditioning. While charging the battery will heat up so some conditioning would be needed. Could there be a bug in the BMS that causes this?

Does battery temp affect regenerate? it's seems like my GOM reading actually increases as I drive from starting ?

Really cool to see a more realistic depiction of the Bolt EVs fast charging experience. With increasing congestion on chargers, it will be hard for some EV owners not to feel some animosity towards Bolt EV owners who are plodding along at 30-35kW. At least you’re not driving a BZ4X?

Interesting. I can’t say that I’ve ever actually watched to see if my 2 Bolts charged differently when on vs off. It makes total sense if the AC or heat is on, I would typically turn the AC or heat off (unless it would be way, way too uncomfortable to do so) because that definitely has an impact, but I would have never considered that just having the vehicle on and listening to the radio might make a difference to charging speed. It’s also worth noting that any time the AC is running, it is having some cooling effect on the battery. How much depends on if the battery coolant pump is running and how much it is pumping. Not so much of an issue during the summer, but it is absolutely an issue in winter. When the battery heating is on, it uses a PTC heater to heat the coolant for the battery and runs the battery coolant pump to circulate the heated coolant. If you have the HVAC on in auto or defrost, it runs the AC compressor, even if it’s cold outside (for defog/dehumidification). The Bolt has no way to remove the battery chiller from the AC system, so if the AC compressor and the battery coolant pump is running, it is cooling the battery. If it is also trying to heat the battery while you’re running the HVAC in defrost or auto, you will be simultaneously heating and cooling the battery. I wanted to make a video about this, but never got around to it. It’s easy to test though. Something i did notice on my Bolt was that driving it to nearly empty (especially below 5%) seemed to cause an unusual amount of heat generation in the battery. I almost never did that except when specifically testing, but even just steady state driving at freeway speeds would heat the battery up quite a bit. The latest BMS software also seems to substantially limit battery conditioning at lower SOC, allowing the battery temperature to creep up a bit more than it would otherwise. I did see one time when plugging in to charge at about 5% on a warm day, the battery was at about 100F and it would only charge at 35kw. It charged slowly until the battery cooled down. I never saw that behavior on my 2019, only on my 2022. I also kind of disagree about the Bolt having a top buffer. I don’t believe it has a sizeable buffer on the top or bottom. We know the Bolt tends to cut off at 0% (or 2% in my experience, as reported by Torque and myChevy app), and it charges at low single-digit speeds up near 100% (especially on the 60kwh batteries). My 2019 “later 60kwh” battery only had about 10kW of regen potential at 100%. I believe the 65kwh batteries have more of a too buffer, because they do charge a bit faster at high SOC and they will retain a bit more regen at 100%, but still not much. I believe that is the only difference between the “66kwh” batteries for 2020-2021 and the “65kwh” batteries for 2022+. They took away 1kwh of usable capacity and put it in a buffer.

Have you downloaded the MyChevrolet app? When you set up your Bolt in the app, it will tell you exactly what percentage your SOC is; you can stop charging with it, and you can even adjust the amp rate for Level 1 charging. I've heard these complaints before about the lack of dashboard info in the Bolt, but I've found that the app works easily and gives me all the information I can use. Just a thought. Thanks for all of your in-depth analysis on your Bolt, and EV's. I enjoy your channel.

500 miles? How many miles from this EA stop was the LA Auto Show? Where do yo live? How many charging stops did you take before this one? Did you stop at 80% each time?

Eric by using the My Chevrolet app, one can get realtime charging percentage on the Bolt with the car off.

OBDII reader? They’re not super expensive and would seem to help answer some of the questions you bring up..

All the charging curve information I've seen and my own testing has indicated that the Bolt has a very strong/high charge curve starting at very low percents, relative to other EVs which often have a "ramp up" that doesn't reach peak rate until 15-25% or higher. This means you really do want to drain the Bolt to low state of charge for maximum efficiency, unlike many other models. When road tripping, I usually target 7% charge (as indicated by ABRP's estimates) specifically _because_ I get the best possible travel time if I can drain the pack as low as I dare and then I can stay in the high 50kW+ charging regime as long as possible. Running from, say, 5%-55% will net a much quicker trip than running from 25%-75% with the Bolt. This is, thankfully, quite possible because ABRP's estimates are very accurate (especially with live state of charge data via OBD) so I can be quite aggressive with my targets. If I see the estimated arrival percentage dropping below 5-6%, I can slow down a bit to ensure I still make it (or speed up if I'll arrive with excess). I have never drained it all the way to zero before fast charging, but I've gone as low as 5% pretty regularly and it always starts up at the full 150A rate (assuming the battery is at appropriate temperature and the station is working properly) and holds that all the way to 50-60%. I drive a 2020 that's still on the original battery, so not sure if the results are different with other configurations.

For those who've been doing the recent research. What are the updated times on the new EV6, Ioniq, and Mustang in a 10-80% comparison? Out of curiosity

Craaayyyyz, I say. My spark does give up at 0% maybe around 2 or 3 before. Our Tesla model s 85 on original battery, 2013, I have taken it to ~3 percent several times with no worries. I like Tesla's approach. But the spark charge speed from 0-100 in 30 mins is amazing. 0-80 in 20 mins.

I notice that you drove over 500 miles seemingly without using any climate control, do you have any issues with your windows fogging up? Have you cleaned/treated the windows with something to prevent that? Great video as always :)

HEY BUD HOW CAN I DIRECTLY GET A HOLD OF YOU? I HAVE A FEW QUESTIONS I HAVE IN REGARDING MY 2017 BOLT.

We have been down to 17 miles, less than 10% but only because the EA machines we tried to use were down We normally never get close to that. 20-80 on a rare trip but mostly we just follow ABC and charge at home every night that particular trip we stopped at an EA site with 8 machines. Four were down and the rest were in use. Not a fan of EA. EVGO is rare in our part of FL but we occasionally go to Sanford where there are a few so we use our Chevy credit with them

hahaha I get nervous when I hit 20% but i'll DC fast charge @ ~15%. I've also noticed the thermal management difference in DC fast charging when the car is on vs when the car is off.

thats crazy.. 12.71$!! I could put in 389 KW into a bolt at home for that cost and here we're only getting 42

ok thanks

You can put it on a 2 million kilowatt charger but it's still only going to charge no more than 55 kilowatts. Trying to figure out where the 350 comes in that's just max

on my 2023 Bolt EV, it has never gone past 45kw

54kw charge rate? What’s the point of charging at a 350kw? You’re just charger hogging when almost every other EV charges at 2x BOLT

Gas pumps are SLOW sometimes too! Just recently I cut off the pump at half tank because the pump was so slow…

The Chevrolet Bolt can't go above about 60 to 70 kw, please do not use a 350kwn charger unless it is the only one available and working. 150kw charger is more than fast enough for the Bolt and faster than it can accept. Please leave the 350s for the vehicles that can use it.

So you’re the one hogging 350KW spots

Why would GM spend any money on the Bolt which doesn't fit in their future lineup? When doing charging why refer to Amps and Volts when Kwhr are the true unit , because you have 2 variables that constantly change ? My friend tries to charge his Id4 at a 4 station Electrify America charger and always wastes time trying to get them to work ,usually having to move one charger to another with tech support to finally get one of them to operate. They have very poor up times, and I feel if were going to pay them to add chargers they should only be paid for uptime and permanently loose revenue for time that they are not available. That would make them install reliable equipment and maintain it.

even if its 15 bucks for 1 hour, thats 2 gallons of gas........ so im ok with it,,

Your car can ONLY ACCEPT 50, why use a 150?

You are being disingenuous when you mention gas stations not always having 100% of pumps working. The truth is that most EVERY EV charging station has one or more down units while few and far between gas stations ever have a pump down. While I am still interested in the EV they are still impractical. Grossly overpriced, too short a range, and too long to charge.

Charging a bolt at a 350kw station? Really? Just how rude and clueless you? That wasn’t a rhetorical question.