I took my first road trip with a 2023 Bolt EUV over the weekend and wanted to share my experience.

Basics

• Northeast USA
• Around 100mi (160km) each way
• Overnight stay with charging at destination

Since getting my car, I’ve been limiting its max charge to around 80%, as I usually don’t drive more than 50mi (80km) in a day. Of course the night before this trip, I let it charge to 100% at home.

About 2/3 miles were on the interstate, so traveling around 70-75mph (120 km/h). My main curiosity was around efficiency loss at those speeds. I knew we’d have plenty of range buffer, but I was treating this trip as a trial run before we go for longer distances. We arrived at our destination with about 50% charge remaining, so there was definitely some efficiency loss, but nothing too drastic – my friend has a Nissan Leaf and warned me about highway speeds, but her experience seems more negative than mine was.

We arrived at our museum/destination with several Chargepoint stations, and my inconsiderate/oblivious self picked a bay that already had a car charging at it. As a result, I was charging at half speed for a while (and affect the other driver’s charge speed). After about 2 hours, they topped off and my car switched to faster charging. Total cost to charge back to 100% was about $10 - this included energy costs and parking time.

Overall, it was a very stress-free trip, and gave me confidence to try something longer. I also learned a few things for next time (especially about being a good EV citizen). For longer trips, I know that the Bolt has slow DC Fast Charging, so I’m hesitant to rely on that too much (also, the non-Tesla network is sparse), but I might try a few Fast Chargers just to test them out.