By Linda Bell
The last new car my husband Steven and I purchased was 14 years ago. It was a Prius and, at that time, the hybrid technology was relatively new. At 300,000 miles, this car only recently had its one and only hybrid battery die. We decided this time we needed to go all the way, environmentally speaking, by just purchasing a 2018 Chevy Bolt. It is an all electric vehicle but can travel about 230 miles on one charge.
Though we told ourselves that we were getting it for around town travel, the very first thing we did with it, one day after purchase, was to travel to Grayton Beach Florida, approximately 300 miles from Atlanta for a family vacation. Our oldest son, Simon, was traveling from Chicago. He is a "techie" and we knew he would love to play with this blue tinged computerized golf cart.
Being complete novices in the EV world, we were a little nervous about such a long trip. So we decided, just to be safe, we should leave a day early and spend the night in Montgomery Alabama. There are apps that detail charging stations; we used PlugShare which indicated there were several charging stations in Montgomery.
So off we went, Bolt manual in hand and reading to each other in the car, since there were many features of the car that we did not understand.
After completing about half of the manual, we arrived in Montgomery at a Sleep Inn where our PlugShare app had told us there would be charging available. Sure enough, there was, we plugged in with no difficulty and headed off to dinner across the street. The next morning the car was fully charged and we set off for Grayton Beach. Voila!
We arrived at our condo, unsure of exactly how we were going to charge the vehicle while there. We pulled into the garage for the condo; lo and behold there were 110 volt outlets there and we promptly plugged in.
There are several ways to charge the Bolt. You can use a regular 110 outlet and, in fact, that is all we have in our garage at home. It will take approximately 50 hours to totally charge but we are retired and are not running out every day for long distances and don’t need for it to be fully charged at all times so this is sufficient for us at home. You can also charge using Level 2 charging whic is basically a 240 line and, as we have discovered, this is what the majority of chargers in the country are. This takes about nine hours so can easily be done overnight. There are also DC Chargers, though less prevalent, this would take approximately two hours for us to fully recharge. Since we would be at the beach for a week, the 110 outlet in the garage worked just fine.
After a week of beach fun with family, it was time to plot the return trip. We preferred to get home in one day so we needed to find a DC charger somewhere along the way. The closest one appeared to be about 200 miles away and others had commented onPlugShare that it was undependable; the next one was 30 miles further in Lagrange.
To give us a little wiggle room, we stopped in Troy, AL at a Nissan dealership; "Southern gentleman super car salesman", Donnie was gracious enough to let us charge for free, even though he said “You couldn’t give me one of them things”! After having lunch at a Mexican restaurant across the street, we were good to go. 200 miles later we rolled into the GA Visitor Center at the state line. This is where our problems began. After downloading the Greenlots app and following their directions, the door to release the charger refused to release. We called the number on the charger and a very pleasant worker tried everything she could do on her end but, alas, no opening door. By this time, several Visitors Center workers had gathered around but we are discovering that they usually know less than we do!
So, with only 40 miles left on our battery, we tooled over to Lagrange where another DC Charger was said to exist at a Chick-Fil-A. This one was a ChargePort so here we go downloading another app. This one, had it worked, would have cost $, all others had been free so far. But...guess what.... it did not work! An employee who, again, knew very little about it but called someone else who said “Oh yeah, it’s out of order”. Hmm....now what ?
OK, PlugShare says there is a Level 2 charger in a parking deck. We considered spending the night at the Marriott hotel connected to the deck but really wanted to get home so we calculated it would take 3 hours to get the 75 miles we needed and we would just tough it out. And we did and finally made it home.
So, we have realized that our original plan to use the Bolt around town is the most workable. We can take it on trips as long as we can be flexible with time and it will help if we're traveling between major cities no more than 230 miles apart!