Monday, January 2, 2017

SF to LA: ECO Mode!

Headed back to LA today after a few days in SF. While I was there I was able to get a 100% charge at my buddies place and decided to see how far I could push the car on a single charge.

Initially my first stop was going to be in Selma which is around 190 miles from Oakland. I was unsure if I would actually make it that far and it was raining so I set the cruise control between 60 mph and 63 mph the entire trip. After going through two mountain passes and things flattened out I was doing really well with efficiency so I decided to push on to Vasila which was a total of 219 miles from my start.

I ended up making it with 4% SoC and the car just saying LOW for rated miles remaining, I was guess I had maybe 8-10 miles left though. Driving slow really upped the overall efficiency!!

Temp: ~45-50F
Speed: ~62mph
Wind: None
Cabin heat: Off
Miles: 219.2
Total kWh used: 57.6 (100%-4%)
Efficiency: 263 Wh/mi or 3.8 mi/kWh
Charging start: 1:35pm, 4% SoC
Charging finish: 2:25pm, 58% SoC (Also includes 2 minutes on the phone with EVgo)

After that I had a short trip to Bakersfield for another charge before going over the grapevine and getting back to LA. I tried to drive this as close to 75mph as I could.

Temp: ~50F
Speed: ~75
Wind: None
Cabin heat: Off
Miles: 84.8
Total kWh used: 25.8 (58%-15%)
Efficiency: 304 Wh/mi or 3.29 mi/kWh
Charging start: 3:48pm, 15% SoC
Charging finish: 4:30pm, 65% SoC (Total charge time was 39min)

Going up the grapevine chewed up a lot of range but going back down I was able to get a lot of regen.

Temp: ~55F
Speed: Mixed (~60ish going up the grapevine, 65-70 going down)
Wind: None
Cabin heat: Off
Miles: 106.9
Total kWh used: 25.8 (65%-22%)
Efficiency: 241 Wh/mi or 4.14 mi/kWh

10 comments:

  1. Welcome back! Looks like the return trip was much smoother. Your charging rates were faster too. The charging power averaged ~46kW at Bakersfield.

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    1. I'm thinking of doing something like a round trip to Carlsbad one way with no A/C one way with. Climate control impact is one of my bigger unknowns.

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    2. More charge data posted...

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  2. One follow-up question. How was the traffic from Visalia to Bakersfield at 75 mph?

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  3. Pretty much no real traffic the whole way!

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  4. Looking back, what would you do differently?

    I think 3 DC fast charging at 30 minutes would have been better than 2 DC fast charging at 50/38 minutes. Without the monthly plan, it would have been cheaper too.

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    1. The first thing I would do is make sure I started with a full charge which opens up a lot of options for when to start. When I headed to SF I was under 80% charge so that impacted my trip the entire way.

      A 30 minute charge on my last leg would have gotten me around 115-120 indicated miles so assuming I needed to stop again that would be in another 90-100 miles since you are not going to go down to zero. Stopping every hour and a half to charge for 30 minutes seems like it would be annoying to me and you need to watch what chargers are coming up to make sure to skip any slow ones!

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    2. Please comment on plugshare your charging experience and the charging rate. Will make it easier for other bolt EV owners making similar trip.

      Love that color. I was planning on getting the white but your color is much better.

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  5. Hi Jack - thanks for recording your initial experiences with the EV! If you're interested, we'd love to have you share your experiences on our forum: http://www.MyChevyBolt.com/forum
    Thanks again - it's great to hear from owners while we wait for our Bolt to be delivered!

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  6. I'm impressed that you managed better efficiency even going over the mountains. I would have thought your best efficiency would have been in the central valley since it's basically flat, although you were going faster. I guess excess speed really eats into mileage (the fact the Bolt isn't that aerodynamically shaped probably doesn't help).

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