Wesley's Tool-Box

Since June 2018, I've been trying to drive my Bolt EV at every opportunity to personally confirm that an electric vehicle can rack up a lot of distance without much issues. One milestone I targeted is 100,000 miles (160,934.4 km) or just 160,000 km, since this is where all the car warranties expire. While I'm sure to reach that point this year, a more round number in terms of metric measurement - 150,000 km (93,206 miles) - has come to pass recently.

I know that there are already several instances of other electric vehicles surpassing two hundred thousand or more kilometers without major problems, so I had no worries about mine holding up. Still, I saw this as a good time to check up on the condition of the car before the government mandated biennial vehicle check-up is done in the May-July time frame.

On the battery front, things had been going really well. The current one is a 64 kWh version that was replaced for free due to the recall back in July 2022. So it's been in use for nearly two years. On one hand, it was disappointing to lose an opportunity to use the original battery up to its warranty limit of 160,000 km. On the other hand, this gave me a chance to compare the characteristics between the old and new battery packs.

And as it turns out, the new version seems to hold the capacity better than the old one. It started out at 60.61 kWh and the reported capacity hovered around between 59 and 62 kWh throughout all these months. With the car cruising past the 150,000 km mark, the capacity was at 61.19 kWh, which indicates almost no significant degradation. The old pack had a steady degradation of about 2 to 3 kWh at a similar time span and distance traveled, so that's a notable improvement in terms of capacity retention. A more detailed analysis of this might be prepared for either the 6-year anniversary or the 160,000 km mark.

You may need to type in words or sentences in the Apple Vision Pro from time to time, be it for searching something in the Internet or writing up a memo. If you need to write something long, the best way to do this would be to connect a Bluetooth keyboard like you see here. Tactile feedback and touch typing makes things comfortable and quick.

For short inputs, the integrated virtual keyboard that you control with the hand gestures is the way to go. The problem is, the visionOS only supports English as of version 1.1. The only other alternative is emojis, and you can't yet add another language or a 3rd party keyboard.

This is probably an artificial limitation set by Apple since the product was initially launched in the U.S. only. Still, it means that there's no native way of entering Korean text. Bluetooth keyboard follows the layout setting on the virtual keyboard, and there's no Korean language layout to switch to. In other words, it's stuck in English unless some workarounds are applied. So what are they?

One of the main reasons I developed a wearable computer two decades ago was to have a computer available for use while on the move. Since Vision Pro is also a computer you wear on your body, I wanted to see if it was just as versatile. So I brought it to a local park in the Travel Case and wore it at a bench as you can see above. The wearing process itself took about 90 seconds to complete, which isn't that different from my old creation.

Once the system is booted and ready for use, I can load up the Home View and launch apps, all of which are floating but "anchored" to the surrounding space. Although the default way of interacting with the elements in a window is via hand gestures, I can just walk up to the window and "touch" it to use it like a huge touchscreen. There's no haptic or tactile feedback, so it's a bit awkward. However, the audible cue does make you feel that there's a slight feedback and it helps.

Apple launched its first so-called spatial computing device called Vision Pro on February 2, 2024, only in the United States. As someone who had keen interest in wearable computers for quite some time, and is big fan of all things Apple, I had to get my hands on a set. So I was able to make it to Apple The Grove in Los Angeles on the launch day and do just that.

The trip wasn't easy, as the plane I took had one of the passengers falling ill mid-flight, causing an emergency landing in Tokyo Narita Int'l Airport and making the trip 6 hours longer than originally planned. Thankfully, I was able to arrive at the store before closing.

My Bolt EV has turned five this month, as it racked up more than 130 thousand kilometers on its odometer. It's fairly efficient and low maintenance, so I'll keep driving it as the primary vehicle for several more years. It definitely has some downsides like the poor fast charging performance, but I've gotten used to it. Let's see how it's been doing all this time. You can watch the YouTube video or keep reading below.

As you can see here, I generally drive about 1,500 to 2,500 km every month, for an average of 2,179.3 km. Lifetime efficiency is at 7.72 km/kWh, but it can get as high as 9 km/kWh in summer or drop to about 6.5 km/kWh in winter. As for the battery, it had been degrading stably for the first four years, then it was replaced with a new one. Interestingly enough, not only is the usable capacity larger by about 3 kWh, it's maintaining its capacity better than the original one. I'm going to be looking into this further at at later time.