238 mile EV range like my Bolt EV. This past weekend I took my family on a trip to the Philadelphia area to go to the Brickfest Live! Lego fan festival as an advance birthday gift for my son and daughter. After purchasing the tickets 3 months prior, I had looked in the area where the event was being held to scope out the charging station situation. As the trip would be a minimum 250 miles round trip, I would need to charge my Bolt at least once while in the Philly area. I noticed that there was a Hilton property listed on Plugshare that had a 240V L2 charging station (along with a couple of Tesla destination charging stations) that I could use to charge overnight. I thought to myself, "Perfect!". To top it off, I also noticed that there were several DCFC fast charging stations listed on Plugshare as well.
I was going to be staying in a charging station haven! Shortly after doing my research, I booked the hotel and that was that. Or so I thought. 1 ). The Guess-O-Meter (GOM) stated I had 233 miles of range, but I knew that was an overly-optimistic estimate due to the fact that number was achieved mainly through local city driving. During the drive up to Philly, it was raining decently the whole way up, so I had to use the defroster whic ate up some range. Combined with driving 65-70 mph on the freeway, the 233 mile estimate quickly disappeared. We arrived at the Brickfest location with about 60 miles of range displayed on the GOM. After the event, which was overall entertaining (if a tad nerdy), especially for the kids, we headed to the hotel, which was 10 miles away, to check in and figure out what to have for dinner.
After arriving at the hotel, about 50 miles remained on the GOM. After checking in to our room, we relaxed a little while discussing what to have for dinner. It was then I realized my first big problem: the hotel were were staying at did not have any onsite charging stations! It turned out the hotel I had booked 2 months earlier was DIFFERENT from the one I originally was going to book and looked up on Plugshare. Both the original hotel and hotel we ended up booking were Hilton properties, and I had mixed them up like an idiot! But no problem, I said to myself! I had seen those handful of fast charging stations listed on Plugshare previously, so I could still just quick charge at one of those before leaving for home the next day, right? 2 ). It turned out among those few DCFC stations in the area, none were actually of the Bolt-compatible CCS variety! All that was available were CHAdeMO-only Blink stations! So no fast charging options, no hotel L2 option, no nearby L2 station. Not even a 120V outlet, as I found out after chatting with the hotel staff.
The nearest CCS-compatible station was over 20 miles away, and even then its operational status was questionable at best, based off its Plugshare rating. I was in a pickle! Mind you, the whole time I was humming the “Everything is Awesome! ” Lego Movie song in my head, and did not want to let my wife in on the fact I was secretly semi-freaking out. The last thing I wanted to do was to give her the impression the Bolt was not suitable for a road trip. That is one reason I did not resort to some late night charging station searching like I read in other Bolt road trip reviews. My wife then asked me, “Hey, where is the nearest Lego store? Let’s go get some new Lego sets for the kids”. However, the Plugshare rating was 7.6, so there was a decent chance they actually worked. 10 miles and found both stations empty. I start the charge session.
