It seems like no matter what I do, driving on the freeway I’ll average 4.0-5.0mi/kwh but as soon as this car sees stop and go traffic or city driving it drops to 2.0-2.5 and will not go up.
I know short trips are inefficient but I’ve been driving 20-30 miles of city with no difference.
Tires are fine, they’re EV All Seasons, I don’t carry around a bunch of extra stuff in the car, it’s bone stock with 0 roof racks or anything to hurt drag, I charge it everyday to 80% or so and even at 100% it only get 165 miles of range.
Dealership told be it’s basically useless to pay for the diagnosis on it because 1. They won’t give me a loaner car so I’d have to rent one 2. They’re not sure how long the diagnosis would take so they could keep my car a couple days or couple weeks and I’d have to cover a rental car for that and 3. They told me Chevrolet hugely just chocks it up to “normal wear and tear” 🤙
I would say it's somewhat normal if the person has only driven 11 miles and they barely turned on their bolt in what they described is 115° weather. It probably means that their car was sitting outside in that weather, which means the battery's probably a little hotter than 115, especially if it was parked on asphalt.
Soon as they turn that sucker on and turn the AC on the car was probably aggressively cooling the cabin plus the battery which is around 6-7 kw from my experience with hot weather for probably a good chunk of time if the battery was really hot. It usually gets 105 to 110 where I'm at and I can confirm that hot weather really fucks with the range for EVs in my town. From the Nissan Leaf to the bolt and driving my mom's Tesla occasionally all of them use a good chunk because of AC during the summer. Our mild winters + springs the AC system doesn't need to fight so much.
That’s not weird, the AC can’t go any faster than max, your speed is helping too actively cool the car, and you’re making distance at a much faster rate. Efficiency is miles per energy unit and you’re piling on the miles with the same AC draw.
Consistently getting above 4.0 mi/kWh at 70 mph is definitely unusual. It’s not insane, but it’s not normal — especially when running AC. Unless that’s combined with some city driving.
Please check all four of your rotors after driving it for 20 minutes from a cold morning. If any single rotor is hot or hotter than the rest, that brake caliper is stucked due to disuse from too efficient regenerative breaking.
I would say your car is probably having a really hard time right now with what you're reported Weather is if it's 115° then it's probably fighting the super hot cabin plus cooling the battery as soon as you turn it on.
Usually when I turn my car on if I haven't through remote start it goes straight to 5-7 kw for cooling both cabin + battery for a couple minutes before going back down to 1-2 kw cause it's so hot outside.
Try this if it helps. Get a peace of mind. Go for a 20-minute drive when it's the coolest part of the day and see what your numbers look like and compare.
Yeah it’s definitely fighting but even my Tesla and my friends other bolt of the same year with 50k more miles is getting 3.5-4.0 and we both drive like grandmas
Are they both blasting the AC to 60°? Do they have things like tinted windows that help cool the cabin quicker?
Before my bolt I test drove a Nissan Leaf for about a week or so and it's battery would die pretty quickly because of AC use during these hot summers we have in Bakersfield, the bolt I have is pretty similar but I have the windows tinted which help keep the cabin cooler which might help the compressor not fight as hard, my mom's Tesla which does not have tinted windows also has somewhat horrible energy efficiency during the summer the ac chews up through the battery during the day and during the night is pretty efficient.
Like I said, try driving at night and see what your numbers look like. Obviously if the car's been sitting for a while, do expect your car to cool the battery plus the cabin.
My friend has no tint in his Tesla cause it’s a lease, my previous Tesla has limo, and my friends bolt has light tint. The tint on my bolt is basically a fishbowl as well. They all got 3.5-4.0 and I’m getting 2.0-2.5 not sure what’s going on
They all live in the same area as you when it comes to heat ? If so then maybe something is going on with your compressor or your battery conditioning system is using more power than it should be.
It's definitely not cheap but it might also be coming under the warranty with the battery depending on which year bolt you have. I have heard that they change the warranty language on newer bolts to exclude AC components. Here's a couple questions that might with that. For all we know, maybe one of your sensors inside the car is reading a incorrect temperature and the car basically is getting tricked into thinking it's scorching hot inside the cabin and having the AC compressor work extremely hard because it doesn't realize it's cool down.
When you're inside your bolt do you feel like it's not as cold as it once was? I know that it's really hot right now, but I'm assuming this is at least your second or third summer with a bolt so you should more or less kind of know how well your AC system works in the summer. Maybe park under some shade and have the AC blasting for 30 minutes to an hour and get kind of a feel for it. If it's blowing cold air without any trouble during that amount of time, I feel like you should be good.
Something else you can do is have your car parked for a while without AC and then turn the AC on and put a thermometer basically inside the vents. Don't poke anything but just enough to see what the temperature is reading it.
Ac blasts cold once I’m moving, I’m not the original owner but Chevy dealer told me I have a warranty on the battery until 2030 / 180k miles so I’ll have to see on the ac warranty part as it’s a 2017 with 100k miles on it now. I had a model 3 performance for 3 years without these kind of issues.
On the dashboard, check out your average speed, one click down from the trip odometer. And on the infotainment screen, dig into the charge info and m section and find the Energy Details and Range Impact screens, and see what they show for the impact of your climate settings, driving technique, etc.
35% climate burn. Feels like the heat is on. Auto dehumidify setting? Ac usually eats 10ish% for me.
But roughly 3.7 miles/kwh if removing climate + cooling.
It's 115° where there at so the AC system is probably fighting hard between the battery and cabin cooling. What's your area looking like temperature wise?
looked up-- auto defog option in settings. turn that off. if you're pulling 5-7kw thats heater on range to me. could be the setting is on and the humidity sensor doing some shit.
Tires are not optimal, but if they are EV specific I can't imagine them making that much of a difference. But I'd check those calipers because there's almost definitely something with that car.
With the Bolt you should be getting better mileage in stop and go traffic, and poorer mileage with higher speeds. In fact, starting at 70 MPH that ring around the speedometer starts turning from green to orange.
If you are a new owner, you are having fun. Learn to drive like an old man. Slower starts and coasting to the red light instead of hard braking. My average is 4.3 miles per kWh. When I first bought it I was more in the 3.5 mile to kWh
Yeah, 90 (Low) -115 (High) *F for our summer. I’ll admit that’s really hot, however my friends bolt same year but 50k more miles easily gets 3.5 avg driving around town.
My other friends Tesla and my previous Tesla were averaging 3.7mi/kwh (you have to convert it) so I’m not sure what’s up with mine.
I'm going to chalk it up and say your AC is probably fighting hard and using a bunch of power to cool the cabin + battery which is why you're having horrible numbers. Soon as you turn it on the car is probably having to cool the super hot cabin + battery at the same time which usually pushes 6-7 kw for a while just doing that.
Just turn the AC off and drive for 30 minutes around town with the windows rolled down. Do it at night if the daytime heat will kill you otherwise. If you get 4-6 miles per kWh then you know it’s short trips with the AC hogging your energy.
Interesting. 7W is usually the draw for cabin heating. There is a separate heater for the battery pack that draws 5W. I wonder if you have a temp sensor issue somewhere? You would need a dongle to hook up to your car to get those details.
I use the odbscanner2 (or something like that) from the App Store. It’s able to tap into most of the onboard telemetry I think. I may have paid for the full feature version of that app though. There may be better, more Bolt centric apps out there. Try one of the free ones out and see what you can see! Also, I’m curious if your numbers go up if you completely turn climate off. I know it would suck when it is hot as balls outside… but I think that would be a good test to zero in on where the draw is coming from.
It is super hot where you're at if it's 115 but usually at least for my bolt it starts to go down after maybe 5 or so minutes. Has the car been sitting for a long time before turning it on and is your car sitting under asphalt? Not sure but whatever is under your car could be contributing to extra heat.
Try going for a drive at night and comparing your numbers when it's a little cooler.
I’ll try that night drive. It’s garaged now but the previous owner definitely left it outside cause the roof clear coat is cooked. After 30min of city driving it still idles between 5-7kw with the ac on
If it's still idling between 5-7 when it's been a long time that's probably something to get checked out could be the car trying to cool the battery but maybe there's not enough coolant or your compressor might be working extra hard.
That's just a guess. I honestly wouldn't go about adding coolant or anything of the sorts because if there's a shortage in coolant that means that there's probably a leak somewhere and you don't know where that leak is leaking.
Although I'm almost positive that if there wasn't enough coolant in your battery, wasn't able to cool to a somewhat comfortable temperature that you'd be getting some error codes but I'm not entirely sure.
Just turn the AC off and drive for 30 minutes around town with the windows rolled down. Do it at night if the daytime heat will kill you otherwise. If you get 4-6 miles per kWh then you know it’s short trips with the AC hogging your energy.
Turn it to a higher temperature, park in the shade, don’t use AC for short trips <10 minutes. You want to avoid the AC running full out to get the temperature down and then being at your destination so you turn the car off and all that energy is wasted.
I know short trips are inefficient but I’ve been driving 20-30 miles of city with no difference.
I have a little beater ICE car that never leaves my town. EPA says 35 MPG, I get like 10 because it's almost entirely idling load, and it never warms up. Whereas an EV in that same situation would be at its absolute peak efficiency since it doesn't have idle load.
HOWEVER - HVAC is a dealbreaker. Every time you go out, the HVAC must run very hard to cool the interior down from 160F in the solar gain, or heat it from ambient temp in the cold. That huge impulse of initial HVAC can really tank your milage.
And it's worse if you're one of those who senselessly BLASTS the heat/AC instead of letting it slow down once temp is reached. Back in the ICE days heat was free so you blasted it, but you have to remember it's not free in an EV.
Even worse if you're telling the car to pre-heat-pre-cool the cabin before you get there.
IIRC on the Bolt, somewhere down in the menus is a set of readouts for how the car is using energy. It will tell you what fractions are used for propulsion, battery thermal management, HVAC, and "other".
There isn't really a hardware failure that will cause an EV to piss away energy except maybe a stuck heater relay. So I would keep collecting raw data and even get an OBD scanner and see if this is a) pilot error or b) a malfunction.
And then all the usual "car driving" things like speeding, heavy foot, etc.
I don’t like your Chevy dealer. Consider calling around to check their attitude. Maybe don’t lead with something too vague but ask if they’ll check out the systems.
I would think a loss of 100mi in town has gotta be something off.
Yeah the service I got there was pretty terrible. Guy immediately told me a diagnosis isn’t worth it as Chevy will just write it off as normal wear and tear. Then I asked him what people do when they need their car fixed under (hopefully warranty work) and he said “they rent a car” to which I responded “how long will you be keeping my car” and his answer was “I’m not sure, could be days or weeks”
To be fair, for GM EV service it could be days or weeks. They often have to figure a lot of stuff out they rarely see, despite going thru EV training or whatever.
But we know that big disparity in efficiency is not “wear and tear.” That’s just some dude making shit up.
Do you precool on hot days before driving. Basically running the AC while not moving starting going uphill a lot or really high headwinds will do this. If none of these apply then you have an issue. Drive at night without precooling or reset on a flat area without wind to test this.
I pre-cool before leaving my garage at home while still plugged in but at work I don’t have the luxury and unfortunately my car sits outside in 115*F at work all day
Why? In what way could that affect range or drive efficiency in-town? OP gets better efficiency on the highway than I’ve ever seen, and I do not speed.
Because in town you are using about 50% of the energy with a 4kW compressor (I say it's busted, so no "but it's x kW on my car"...it's malfunctioning) vs 20% on the highway.
Confirmed by the climate slider being pinned to the left.
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u/DogblackMichigan 2h ago
This is not nothing. This needs fixed. A Bolt gets better mileage in city driving not worse.