2019 Chevrolet Bolt: Review & Experience from an Energy Analyst Finally Making the EV Leap

As I noted in my recent articles updating the state of Chester Energy and Policy, I’ve recently moved to a new home, high-tailing it from Washington DC to Orlando. As with the many everyday life changes this transition encompassed, one that simultaneously excited and needled me was knowing I would now have to buy a new car.

I had lived in DC for eight years after graduating college, bringing with me my time-tested 2003 Mitsubishi Galant. This noble steed had served me quite well in my college years, taking me alllll the way down I-95 from Virginia to my parents’ place in Florida many times. However, by 2018 with 10 years of service to me under its drive belt, it was time to say goodbye. Living in DC, I was at that point barely driving it other than road trips or for Costco hauls, so the fuel-inefficient car was fine. That is, until all at once I ran it into the ground and the cost to park it in the city was no longer worthwhile. I sold it to CarMax (how the below specimen was ever deemed worthy of a $700 offer from them, I still don’t know)

My wife and I were able to happily subsist in the walking/biking/public transit haven that Washington DC is, occasionally building in short-term car-sharing options when needed and never needed to buy a car. Working tirelessly in the energy industry as I do, I knew that whenever the time came to purchase a new car that it would be an electric vehicle (EV) for me. That time came when we moved to Orlando.

All that said, though, it doesn’t mean that decision process was easy, and I definitely learned that EV buyers today fall squarely in the early adopter category. But now that I’m officially 75 days and 2,400 miles post-purchase, I figured it was time to provide my insights of the buying and early owning days.

Disclaimer of note: I’m only going to be speaking of my narrow experience in the following, so read this just as one data point among many when making a decision for yourself. These insights are relevant to my situation in Central Florida using my family’s driving habits and priorities, and as with all opinion-pieces and advertised EV ranges: your mileage may vary. 

Decision Process

Like I said, I knew that from a perspective of being so entrenched in the energy industry and being quite passionate about the clean energy transition and its need to embrace transportation electrification, there was no doubt this next vehicle would be electric. I couldn’t talk all this talk about clean tech and not walk the walk with my own purchases.

Initially, I was looking at the Chevrolet Volt as a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) that would give the best of both worlds of gas and electric while the transportation sector is still in the transition. We only needed one car, as we’re lucky enough to both work from home at the moment, so the shorter electric range of the Volt (53 miles using just the battery before the gas tank kicks in) would be sufficient for most day-to-day driving and having a tank full of gas would quell any range anxiety and allow for ease of longer trips.  But credit to my wife who pushed that perhaps if we were going to go all electric that we should go all in with a purely battery-powered EV, especially since the range of driving on the battery life is much longer compared with PHEVs.

The idea was: why wait? If we intend to charge every night, if we recognize our daily driving habits are minimal, if we’re willing to stop at fast-charging EV charging stations on longer weekend road trips, then why go half a step now when we could take the full leap? And in fact Chevrolet themselves were in the same line of thinking, having discontinued production of Volt’s in March 2019 so they could focus their attention on entirely electric models.

Looking at the pure EV options on the market, from the Tesla to the Nissan Leaf to the Chevrolet Bolt, we decided the Chevrolet Bolt (the all-electric sister to the Volt) had the most bang for the buck in high-range (EPA-estimated at 238 miles) category. And once we visited a dealer and took a test drive, we were left with no doubts: this was the car for us.

The one hiccup in the decision process was finding one of these we could actually buy. Initially we wanted to save some money by purchasing used, but the stock of used Bolts for sale were minimal and the advances these EVs are making year-over-year in terms of range and battery performance are still notable enough that buying new ended up making more sense. Even still, it was rare to find a Chevrolet dealership near us that had more than one or two available to drive or purchase. When we finally came across one that was the color we wanted, had the features we wanted, and we came to an agreement on price, it seemed all was smooth sailing. We signed the paperwork and were ready to drive off the lot– only for them to unplug it and me to recognize that this was not fast-charging capable (which I’ll discuss what that means later). I had asked that question first thing, but again we’re still early in the adoption phase and the salespeople are still not quite used to selling these that they erroneously told me it was fast-charging when it was not. So biggest lesson from the purchasing process that I’ll impart: if you’ve done your research and know about EVs generally, there’s a decent chance you’ll be more knowledgeable about the car than the salesperson. Recognize that that may be frustrating, and be sure to look at the charging port yourself; we ended up going to a different dealership after that…

 Driving It

Given this is a review of a car, I should probably talk about what it’s like driving our new 2019 Chevrolet Bolt (which we affectionately named ‘Snow White’ thanks to her white coat of paint, eco-friendliness that the princess shared with her love of animals, and our close proximity to Disney World).

Admittedly, though, my take on driving this car is mainly in comparison with the previous car I owned: which was the previously pictured Mitsubishi from 2003. So, any car that jumps forward 16 years in Model Years is going to impress! While I love the bevy of safety features and tech to play with (including lane assist, Apple CarPlay, in-car Wi-Fi, and more), those are not restricted to this model or EVs. But they do make this a whole heck of a lot more fun to drive than a car that was made while I was in high school!

But what I will say in the actual driving of the car and comparing that whole process with having driven internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles my entire life previously, you really don’t feel any difference at all and quickly forget that what’s powering your car is likely different than the car next to you at the stop light. Acceleration, braking, steering, they all feel just the same. The only moments where you’re reminded you’re in an EV are when you start the car and realize there’s absolutely no noise coming from where the engine should be and when you hop out and it’s time to plug in, never to visit a gas station again.

Charging It

That brings me to the next part, and one of the newest aspects of the car owning experience you’ll have to get used to, which is charging. Like I mentioned, I’m lucky that my wife and I both work from home and so we’re not driving far distances every day. We’ll drive to the grocery store, down the street to go shopping or out to dinner, or the occasional longer weekend day where we’ll scoot all over town and cover 70 to 100 miles. All that’s to say, we don’t drive much, and we don’t need to charge much. With a stated range of 238-miles, we almost never see the remaining distance drop below a level that we have to worry ourselves with charging before we return home.

Even better, our home is in a forward-looking planned community, and our garage came pre-wired for a Level 2 EV charger. Now is as good a time as any for a quick guide on different levels of EV chargers:

When you plug into a Level 1 charger, that’s just a three-pronged plug into an outlet which will add to your battery that draws 1 kilowatt (kW) and adds about 5 miles of range per hour of charging. Level 2 charging is what you’ll find at most parking garages and public chargers that are offered, which adds closer to 20-25 miles per hour of charge time while drawing about 6 kW. Lastly, Level 3, or fast chargers, come in several different forms but use direct current (instead of alternating current) and add about 90 miles of range for a half hour of charging at a power draw of 50 kW. For Level 3 chargers, though, there are a variety of different outlet types and drivers must ensure their car is compatible with a given charger type before pulling over to charge. Further, some cars don’t even come equipped with the ability to be charged on a fast charger and it cannot be added on after manufacture.

So, while our home is wired for this type of charger, we would still need to purchase the charging unit (an expense of about $500) and have it mounted. But given the aforementioned lack of driving, we’ve put off that investment and have not been at a need for it at all. After the weekends we’re usually back to full charge by Tuesday at the latest and rarely drop below 150 miles left of range. The 5 miles per hour of charge is more than enough, and so we’ve happily gotten along by just plugging into the wall. Combine that with two times we’ve plugged into a Level 3 fast charger parking lot for about 30 minutes while on longer trips and the one time we plugged into the Level 2 charger that’s free and often available in front of our neighborhood pool (just to test it out), and the whole process has been way easier than I could have even hoped. We haven’t visited a gas station since, and it seems like a relic of the past at this point!

One note I will make about the battery and its life is that the advertised range is often not when you get in practice if you’re driving long distances. EVs like the Bolt rely on regenerative braking, which means every you’re coasting or braking, the momentum and the friction in the car is being converted back into energy. Put another way, the battery gets drained will accelerating or sitting idle, but the battery gets recharged (at a lower rate than is drained during acceleration, of course) when braking or coasting. When they advertise the average range of the battery, it’s assuming a fair amount of braking, which you’re not doing much of while driving long distances on the highway. Further, the optimal efficiency of the Bolt comes while driving at about 50 miles per hour or slower, and when you’re driving at higher speeds (again, as is common on the highway) then the battery drains more quickly. Combine those factors with the obvious concept that the battery gets drained more when using the air conditioner, plugging phones in to charge, etc., and it’s not safe to assume a 238-mile range means you can necessary drive to a spot 238 miles away. In practice for me, it seems the range if I’m predominantly on a highway would be closer to 150-175 miles.

Energy & Emissions Impact

Now for the fun part: crunching the numbers (if you think that’s sarcasm, you clearly haven’t read this blog before as this part has genuinely excited me waiting for me to collect enough data to really see how the numbers look!).

Given that the reason for hype behind EVs are the economic and environmental savings based on using electricity instead of gasoline, let’s see what my performance has been thus far and compare that with a higher-performing ICE car if I had bought one instead. For an example ICE car, let’s also use a 2019 Chevrolet sedan model to be consistent: the 2019 Chevrolet Malibu, which is listed as one of the year’s most fuel efficient cars, is a reasonable choice since I would prioritize those miles per gallon (mpg) had I not gone electric. Specifically, the 2019 Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid (that’s hybrid as in still all gasoline-powered, not hybrid as in PHEV) with a fuel economy of 46 mpg. We can also compare with a more poorly-performing (but still modern) ICE sedan, such as the 2019 Chevrolet Impala with its fuel economy of 25 mpg.

Photo Source: Garber Chevrolet

Stats to Date

Thanks to the handy Chevrolet app and its Bluetooth connectivity to Snow White, I can at a moment’s notice locate my car, unlock it, and check the level of charge all from my phone. Even cooler, I have lifetime use statistics. As of the moment of writing this, they show that we’ve driven this car 2,492 miles at an average efficiency of 2.9 miles per kilowatthour (kWh). Simple arithmetic shows that means the car has used 859 kWh so far.

Cost Calculations

Over that time, the electricity rates charged by my local utility have been approximately $0.109 per kWh (with that not being a flat rate but accounting for the overall average that includes the service charge, fuel and non-fuel charges, and different rates for the first 1,000 kWh vs. the power used above that each month). Over the entire 859 kWh of battery use, that’s $93.65 for powering the Bolt. If I add in the $21.18 I’ve spent during my two stops at a Level 3 fast charger, that’s a total of about $114.83 spent to keep Snow White charged.

Compare that with the average cost of gasoline in the state of Florida over from June through August (as reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration), which was $2.47 per gallon. At 46 mpg, it would have taken the Malibu over 54 gallons of gas to travel 2,492 miles at a cost of $133.81. So thus far, I’ve saved almost $20 by using electricity rather than fueling the Malibu Hybrid (which would have been about $40 if I had not needed those two fast charging pit stops). If I instead was driving the 25 mpg Impala, that distance would have cost me $246.21, meaning the Bolt over Impala decision reduced my ‘fuel’ costs by over $130.

Given that Orlando Utilities Commission gave me a $200 credit on my bill just for buying an EV, though, and the well-reported lower lifetime cost to repair an EV due to fewer moving parts that could break (meaning maintenance could be 35% to 60% cheaper for EVs), these savings only prove to climb higher and higher.

Emission Calculations

The other big reason someone might be looking into the Bolt is to ‘go green,’ but there’s a lot of skepticism out there because electric cars are only as clean as the grid that’s charging them. So how has my Bolt’s emissions compared with the ICE alternative?

To start, the Union of Concerned Scientists have a terrific EV emissions tool that take your zip code and EV model and let you know how much CO2 is emitted per mile based on the local grid’s energy mix and the EV’s efficiency. For a 2019 Chevrolet Bolt in Orlando, they estimate I’m producing 155 grams of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) per mile driven.

Compare that with the 2019 Malibu Hybrid getting 46 miles per gallon, knowing that gasoline produces 19.6 pounds of CO2 per gallon burned (which is equivalent to 8890.41 grams). That math follows through to say our highly-efficient version of an ICE car emits 193 grams of CO2 per mile. So already the emissions I’m creating are 20% less than one of the most efficient non-EVs I could have chosen, but that emissions drop will only widen as Florida’s energy mix gets cleaner by moving away from coal and towards renewables. Again, going less optimistic and assuming I would be driving the 25 mpg Impala instead, the emissions would have reached 356 grams of CO2 per mile. That means my carbon footprint via the Bolt is 56% less compared with what it would have been with the Impala.

Conclusion

In the end, the simple result is that I do highly recommend this car, and if you’re interested in EVs generally then I encourage you to explore one. If you take it for a test drive, you’ll not be disappointed that you’re missing out on anything, and the immediate savings to your wallet and to your carbon footprint are real.

The transition from gas to electricity is not without its challenges. At every step of the purchasing process, for example, I found that the research I had done had me more knowledgeable about the function and features of the EV than those who were selling to me, which was a frustrating experience (fun fact: we signed all the paperwork on one Bolt after being assured it had the fast charging capability only to get ready to take it off the lot and notice that the charging port was the wrong one and it did not support Level 3…we ended up going to a different dealership).

There’s also the issue with the range being less than you expect, as I mentioned, if you’re driving on a highway and using the AC. The range drops even further if you’re in cold weather, though luckily I haven’t had to personally deal with that. But all that means is you have to shift your thinking of what it means to fuel up and make pit stops on long drives. Use one of the many tools that helps you find EV chargers (ChargePoint, Electrify America, and PlugShare are three I recommend), and find ones on your route that allow you a stop for dinner or quick shopping. But if you re-frame how you think about and approach your driving habits, you’ll realize it’s not so hard. As one Twitter follower of mine recently noted:

As a suburban commuter, the inconvenience goes the other way. I start every day with a “full tank” on my EV. When I end up driving an ICEV it’s a hassle to have to think about range. Didn’t I just fill this thing up last week… ugh.

Now if only the HOA would allow me to get solar panels on my roof, I’d be fast tracking my green transportation double-time! But that’s an article for another day…