A long road trip in an all-electric car is still a novelty, even if Tesla and its expanding Supercharger network are making it more of a realistic possibility? for those who can afford a Tesla, that is. For those outside that exclusive club, today’s crop of more affordable EVs doesn’t offer much road-trip potential, with even the best among them allowing just over 100 miles of range, or barely enough to get from New York to Philadelphia before you need to recharge the batteries.
GM is thus rightly proud of its new Bolt EV and its 238-mile EPA-rated driving range. No matter how you look at it, that’s a big step forward for electric cars. To quell any skepticism about the accuracy of this number, Chevy sent me and a few other journalists on a good-old American road trip in pre-production Bolt EVs. The route from Monterey to Santa Barbara, California spanned approximately 235 miles. Sounds perilously close to that EPA range number doesn’t it" But Chevrolet representatives, especially Bolt chief engineer Josh Tavel, seemed confident that we’d easily make it to the final destination.
Conflicted about whether I should employ hypermiling techniques to get the most out of the car, or just drive it more spiritedly to fully test the impressive claim, I chose to do a bit of both. As per Tavel’s suggestion, my first move was to use the Bolt’s electronic shifter to put the car in “Low” mode, enabling the most aggressive level...