EV Adventures with our Chevy Bolt

The Chevrolet Bolt with its 238 mile EPA range was the game changer I was waiting for to become an all-electric household.  We already owned a 2015 Nissan Leaf, but we kept our 2015 Honda CR-V for longer trips.  In September of 2017, we drove our Honda to the Chevy dealership and asked for a trade-in value and we drove away with a beautiful red 2017 Bolt Premier.

We live in Basalt, CO and we needed a vehicle that could get us to all of our major local destinations:  Denver, Grand Junction, Moab, UT, etc.  We knew that we would have to rent a car or fly if we wanted to do any long distance road tripping, but we were okay with that.  We wanted to do our part toward reducing our dependence on fossil fuels as well as reduce our carbon footprint.

So now the adventure begins.  We love to do road trips to Denver for theatre.  So this blog post is all about how we turned our Denver theatre trips into a fun adventure with our Electric Vehicle (EV).  I hope that this will inspire more creativity and encourage more people to consider the move to an EV.

So let’s start with the route.  It’s about 180 miles to Denver from where we live.

So in the winter time with climate control on and snow tires, we tend to average between 3 and 3.4 miles per kWh (kilowatt hour).  Since the Bolt has a 60 kWh battery, that gets us between 180 and 204 miles.  So Denver is just barely on the edge of that range–so we can get to Denver, but then the battery is going to need a full charge.

In case you are unfamiliar with EV’s, there are 3 levels of charging:  Level 1, which is household current (120 volts AC) which takes over 48 hours to charge.  Level 2, which is 240 volts AC, can deliver a full charge in between 8 and 9 hours.  Level 3 charging is sometimes referred to as DC Fast Charging.  How long it takes to charge on a Level 3 charger is fraught with variables, but if you want to geek out with data on fast charging, here’s a great place to do it!

One of the cool things that we discovered is that many campgrounds have 50 amp RV sites.  Why is this cool?  Because there is a company that makes a Level 2 charger that can plug into one of these NEMA 14-50 outlets.  The outlets look like this:

But let me immediately put out a caveat.  Some RV campgrounds have 50 amp receptacles that do not deliver 240 volts.  So I like to bring along a voltmeter so that I can double check and make sure that they will work.  (I also call ahead, but getting a straight answer from camp hosts who may or may not know what a NEMA 14-50 outlet is and whether it has 240 volts can be a challenge!)  Here’s a photo of me testing the outlet to be sure that it is wired properly for my charger:

If you put the leads of an AC voltmeter into the two outside prongs, you should read something around 240 volts.  The company that sells the level 2 charger that we use is called eMoterWerks and it is called the JuiceBox 40 Pro.  The picture (below) is also a link that will take you to the company where you can purchase the charger.  FYI:  I don’t work for the company and I don’t get a kick back and I don’t own stock. I just like their chargers.

We got it with the full adapter pack and the carrying case:

And here’s the case with everything inside of it:

And finally a photo with the case all zipped up and ready to travel!

So once we discovered that we could charge our car at an RV campground, a whole bunch of pieces clicked into place for us.  What if we got a rooftop tent for our Chevy Bolt?  Then we could book an RV site with a 50 amp NEMA 14-50 service, and then we could sleep in our rooftop tent while our car charges overnight (remember that 8-9 hour level 2 charge time?)

We did some research.  We are both big guys, over 6′ tall, so we needed a tent that was long enough and wide enough for us to feel comfortable.  We decided on the James Baroud Grand Raid XXL tent.  It is 89″ long and 65″ wide.  Plenty large for the likes of us.  We especially liked this model, because it opens straight up.  We figured that there could come a time when we would want to charge in a parking lot and sleep in our car.  In that case, you don’t want a rooftop tent that is going to flop over the side of the vehicle and take up extra parking spaces.  EV owners would not be happy with us!  So here is a photo of our car with the James Baroud on top and my adorable husband peeking out after a restful sleep!  (The photo is also a link to the James Baroud website in case you are interested in more information – again, I don’t work for the company or own stock or get a kickback.  I just really like their tents!)

The tent comes with a memory foam mattress, but we found it to be a bit too thin, so we added an additional memory foam mattress topper and that makes all the difference in the world:

One of the really cool things about this particular tent is that it is quick and easy to set up, and it has a hard shell roof, so you don’t have to worry about rain, snow, or wind.  It’s very sturdy and it feels like you are sleeping in a tree house!  When you are ready to go, you pull it down and latch it and drive away.  Here’s a time lapse of us taking it down.  (Quick tip:  When you set up the tent, unlatch the back first and the front last.  Take down is the opposite – latch the front first and then the back.)

Time Lapse Take Down

Once it’s down, you’re ready to drive away!

In case you are wondering how this thing attaches to our car, the Premier model of the Chevy Bolt comes standard with roof rails.  Thule makes a nice rack system that bolts directly onto the rails.  Then the rooftop tent comes with 4 clamps with 2 nuts each that clamp onto the cross bars.  The clamps are on a sliding track so that they can accommodate different distances between the cross bars.

So for our Denver outing, we drove from Basalt to Golden on Thursday after work.  Then we charged overnight at our campsite at Clear Creek RV Park.  On Friday, we had our first theatre show in Denver.  After running around Denver for the day, we had traveled about 75 miles.  We stayed another night at our campsite and charged back up again.  Then we had an unexpected surprise – we discovered that our theatre show on Saturday was in Colorado Springs – not Denver.  OH NO!

We drove to Colorado Springs and luckily found a charging station at the University, where we were going to see our show.  We plugged in and saw an epic production of “Oklahoma!”  By the end of the show, our car was pretty well charged and the cost was $2.  Then we headed back to Lakewood (near Denver) for a Level 3 DC fast charge.  We plugged in the car at the Lakewood Nissan Dealership with the Level 3 charger and went across the street for dinner.  By the time we had finished our dinner, we had enough charge to make it home.

So once we got home, I brought up the energy usage for our trip, because I know that some of you will geek out over how much energy we used on our trip.  So here are some factors…  We have Blizzak snow tires on our car.  Nobody should take off on a road trip in Colorado over multiple passes in February without snow tires.  But snow tires *do* reduce your mileage.  In addition, it’s winter time, so we were running the heater.  Luckily, we had balmy weather, so we didn’t have to run the heater the whole time.  In addition, we had our rooftop tent adding wind drag.  Because of this, I limited our speed to 55 MPH even though the speed on the freeway was 75 MPH.  It’s hard to drive so slow, but if we drove any faster, we wouldn’t have made it.

So given those variables, here are the stats for the entire trip.  We traveled 566 miles and used 159 kWh of electricity.  If you do the math and divide 566 miles by 159 kWh, you get just a little better than 3.5 miles per kilowatt hour.  I was pretty happy with that!  For those familiar with the Chevy Bolt, I used the “D” mode instead of the “L” mode.  I know there is a lot of controversy over which mode is better, but I have found that when you are driving on the freeway, the D mode gets me a little better mileage.  I can’t explain it – but it’s true for me.  I put it in “D” mode and set my cruise control for 55.

So here’s a little bit of price comparison.  If we still had our Honda CR-V (which we LOVED–no complaints here) we would have stayed in a hotel and usually would have paid around $120 per night.  So for this trip, we would have paid $240 for 2 nights in a hotel.  We averaged 34 MPG, so for this trip, we would have paid an additional $50 in gas.  So in total, this trip would have cost us around $290.  Contrast this with our Bolt and rooftop tent:  We paid $86 in camping fees, $2 to charge at Colorado Springs University, and $5.11 at the Lakewood Nissan DC fast charger.  If you include our beginning charge, we have a 60 kWh battery at 9.5 cents per kWh, the beginning charge cost $5.70, bringing the total to $98.81 or a savings of about $191.  And we can enjoy the good feeling that we did not use any fossil fuels or add carbon to our atmosphere.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop me a line.  I’d also love to hear about your ideas and experiences!  Thanks for reading my article and happy EV-ing!