Many newer EVs have top charging speeds of 100kW or higher in the lower half of the state-of-charge. The Bolt has a top charging speed of around 50kW in the lower half of the state-of-charge. But I can’t personally speak to whether they are “good enough” in practice. Would a newer EV help? It looks like a lot of the newer EVs are much quicker to charge. The Bolt takes a while to charge, and you still have to be willing to do some planning as well as put up with some time loss. However I still would not recommend a Bolt as the sole vehicle for most people who regularly take long trips. I definitely wasn’t sad that I declined the EV. But I made it a point after each hotel check-in to inquire if they had charging options on-site or walkable nearby and only 2 of 8 said they did – one on-site and one at a garage nearby. I was tempted but turned it down because it was too late to factor it into our plans. By chance, the rental company offered us a free upgrade to a Volvo XC40 Recharge on the spot. We did a road trip recently – 2,500 miles. If I had to limit my options to the minority with charging tech right now, it would often mean settling for a hotel I otherwise wouldn’t have. Moreover, on most trips I like to be picky about the best hotel that meets all our criteria. We ended up having to nursemaid the car while it changed as we had no other purpose at the shopping area. They were used to the question and they all just referred people to the local charging options at nearby shopping areas. Despite it being the Bay Area and despite calling half a dozen hotels in the area we wanted to stay in advance, not one of them had charging infrastructure on-site. That said, we tried it for a trip earlier this year, using Turo to rent a Tesla Model Y in the Bay Area for most of a week. I’m not sold on an EV as a rental car (wen traveling) yet, despite being all in on an EV for our next vehicle. But it might be fun to try out what’s out there next time we rent. We run our cars to the ground so we’re not in the market for a new vehicle yet. It’s gotten easier and easier every year. So we’ve finally gone ahead and gotten that installed.Īs for long trips? Well, we are motivated EV drivers so we’re also perfectly happy with the Bolt for long trips. Our overall conclusion is that we’re fine being a one car EV family (outside of the very exceptional family circumstances I mentioned above), but that we’d be happier with a level 2 EV charger at home instead of just the wall outlet we’ve been using till now. And once we were three minutes late to a tour because we did not allot enough charge to cross the Poconos and had to make an extra charging stop. Twice we had minor problems with a non-functional charger both times the solution was simply to move over a space to use the next charger over. It’s so much easier to merge when you can accelerate quickly no matter what speed you’re starting from. We also REALLY liked having the zippy, responsive little Bolt for merges and other mixed traffic flow situations. There are fast chargers everywhere now, they are all genuinely fast, and it’s easy to find chargers that are near the amenities I want on a road stop (which are bathrooms, caffeine, junk food, and somewhere to stretch my legs). We found that we did not have to plan nearly as carefully as the last time we took a long trip in the Bolt. Of more interest for this thread is that my high schooler and I used the Bolt to do a college tour, driving from NC to visit four mid-Atlantic schools (1400+ miles total). We have had a couple very serious family events come up over the past few months, and we ended up borrowing a car so that my husband could take extended time out of town to deal with things. The main problems were not relevant to this thread, being due to having only one car. I think I mentioned upthread that we’ve been experimenting with being a one car (EV-only) family since September, having sent the hybrid off to college with our daughter. what rental company is this? (Maybe they all have EVs now, we don’t rent cars much at all.) As an EV owner, renting sounds like a good way to try out different EVs.
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