Wesley's Tool-Box

On June 1, 2019, my Bolt EV had its first birthday. As it moved around more than 24,000 kilometers, I kept a detailed log to make continuous analysis of the car's conditions and characteristics. Many people including myself are interested in how an electric vehicle fares over the years, so this should provide some good insights.


I used to drive around 1,000km per month on average before getting a Bolt EV. But you can see that it has doubled since. Cheaper fuel costs was a major factor (less than 1/10 that of gasoline), with some "new car curiosity" thrown in. Efficiency suffered in summer and winter due to the extreme temperatures, which affects battery performance and climate control use. Largely speaking though, fuel economy had been improving because I've been adjusting my driving style to be smoother in order to go further before recharging. This proved to be helpful in long-distance trips.

The three lines at the bottom of the graph depict the battery capacity as calculated by various means. The battery degradation is a major concern for many, so I kept track of this closely as well. Going by the reported values, my Bolt EV originally had 58.63kWh of usable capacity (65.14kWh raw) and had 55.98kWh usable (62.20kWh raw) by 24,099.4km. This is a degradation of 4.52%. Assuming linear progression, the battery would have exactly 70.0% of capacity left after 160,000km. This is in line with the industrial average warranty and shows that my Bolt EV's battery is in a reasonably good condition so far.

So why did I have three lines here? It stems from the fact that the Bolt EV doesn't tell you its battery health outright. One of the Parameter ID (PID) readings from the OBD-II port (#2241A3) correlates directly with battery capacity, but interpreting the number has been up for debate. So I decided to find an interpretation that I was comfortable with.