Chevy Bolt Summertime Efficiency 

The difference between air conditioning and heat in terms of its range impact is pretty simple to explain. First, the temperature delta that the air conditioning has to cross to get to a comfortable level, say you're going from 100 to 75 that's only 25°. Whereas if you're trying to go from 0 to 65, that's obviously 65° of difference. Second, the resistive heater in the bolt is far less efficient than an air conditioning unit and the car also makes no effort to use any waste heat that's available. Third, the battery does actually perform worse when it's cold. It has an effect on battery life for it to get too warm but under normal conditions it barely needs to spend any energy cooling the battery just from driving, the cooling system mostly needs to chill the battery during fast charging in hot weather, and if it's spending energy to cool it while it's plugged into a fast charger that might affect your bill but not your range. I've been driving Bolts for 6 years, three year lease of a 2017 followed by a purchase of a 2020, so I missed out on the second generation. This was a really good test. Thanks for publishing it.

TY for these real world range tests. FYI your content on the Bolt convinced me to enter the EV market and I’m waiting for the delivery of my Bolt EUV . I’m in NJ and my daily commute is 92 miles through local, intrastate and interstate roads with moderate to heavy traffic in the morning and generally heavy traffic in the pm… based on price point, standard equipment, cost of ownership and maintenance and range in various climates (TY for your data on all of that!) , it was an easy decision. Looking forward to your one year review!

Thanks for the videos. I just got my 2023 bolt euv last week.

Get the windows ceramic tint coating to eliminate IR/UV heat. It costs more, but it makes a BIG difference.

For comparison, I drove back from Katy to Seguin 144 miles on I-10 yesterday in my 2023 Ioniq 6 at 75 mph with AC blasting and got 3.2m/kw. I was super impressed.

Increase your tire pressure to 41psi and don't go over 65 on hwy and you will see a significant uptick in your miles/kwh. I did that on my Bolt EUV 2023 and I am now averaging 4.5 mi/kwh. The more city mile the higher the count. I averaged 5.2 one week when I didn't drive on the hwy much. It really works.

Great video. I just did a road trip to Indiana from illinois and did not want my trip odometer to reset so I only charged it to 98 percent for several days because we drove over 700 miles on the trip and wanted all the data….. for my 2023 chevy bolt. Check out my video…. Thanks

"Cool" video on a hot topic. A couple days ago I made a 250 mile trip in our 2022 bolt with the temps in the upper 80's low 90's . When going 75 mph I was getting 3.5 miles/kwh, 70 mph I got 3.9 miles / kwh, 65 mph average 4.3 m/kwh. Total trip 4.1 with 4% going to AC and none to battery conditioning. It seems the Bolt doesn't need to cool the battery unless the temperature gets closer to 100. In the winter we get 2.8 miles / kwh. In South Dakota. So cold effects the range far more than heat.

My experience is that the climate control (both heating and A/C) has a much larger efficiency impact when city driving than highway driving. Thus, when driving to the grocery store ahead of a coming road trip, you might look at the dashboard, see 25% of your energy consumption going to air conditioning, and get nervous, but in reality, the range impact of A/C driving 70 mph on the highway will be much less than this. The reason for this phenomenon arises from the three factors: 1) The more efficient the driving is, the percentage of total energy consumption devoted to things other than driving goes up. 2) Short trips are very inefficient for the air conditioner because the car begins the trip at outside temperature and must be rapidly cooled the moment you turn the car on. And 3) driving at slower speeds means the air conditioner must run for longer for each mile traveled, which translates into more Wh/mile spent on cooling. Even with A/C, slower speeds are still more energy efficient overall than faster speeds; however, the impact of speed on efficiency is dramatically reduced until you get up to very high speeds. (The hotter the outside temperature, the greater this effect).

It's nice to know that in these conditions the Bolt still comes reasonably close to it's nominal range of 259 mi. (Not so much the case in cold weather!). Also, another way of looking at it is that the climate and battery conditioning takes away about 50 miles of range from a full charge (i.e., without the A/C you could have got about 300 miles of range, but you would have been miserable!). Thanks for the real world data. We're getting up close to those temperatures here in SE Washington state. Our Bolt is handling it fine (getting 3.9 to 4.8 mi/kWh with A/C the last few days).

As someone in a similar climate, this is really good to know. Southwest Louisiana heat is deadly without the A/C and i won't sweat over such a minor drop in range.

Yes, I'm in Burleson also and I drive a hybrid car. I do notice it kicks to the engine a lot more on the hot days. I've been saving for an EV and I'm glad you're giving us some honest, local, feedback.

Thanks Luke. I saw Kyle Conner just posted something similar with his Plaid to show the worst case, but I think your temps are definitely worse! LOL Winter climate control absolutely is the worst for EV range. Makes those road trips to go see grandma at Christmas a little more tricky! 🙂At least until we get more infrastructure and more reliable infrastructure. Looking forward to your 1 year review.

I would love to know the time of travel, to calculate how much time the ac was runing… between 1st and last picture of your dash it is 1 hour… if we take that and 15% of 7.1 is 1.06kwh… it is a 1kwh per hour of AC at almost full power???

Nice vid. Still like to see the Bolt charge on an 11kW AC charger, like a Tesla destination charger if you can find one around you. Be interesting to see it charge at its max on AC.

I always appreciate your updates. Looking forward to one year of ownership results. ( in April, I had my one year anniversary on my hybrid, will be interested in your costs, and how they compare to mine.)