Road Trip from Colorado Springs, Colorado to Salt Lake City, Utah and Back

Things I learned about my car…so far…

So, to break in my new electric car, the Chevy Bolt EUV, I did a 1300-mile roundtrip road trip to Salt Lake City from Colorado Springs. Here are some things I learned along the way. Before the trip I set my battery to be able to charge to 100% which I only completely charged once during the whole trip. It is back to a preset 80% charge now that I am home.

My car is a magnet for nails and screws. The first week I had the car I got a nail in my sidewall, requiring the purchase of a completely new tire. Then, on the trip, the first night I was there I got a screw directly in the tire. I had roadside assistance come out to repair it and all seemed well. Then the next morning, it was low pressure again, so I took it to a tire shop in Utah which, very thankfully, was able to repair it and did so for free. It has held up since then and there have been no new punctures that I am aware of. I did, however, also had a rock hit the windshield and give me a dink which will be repaired for free (through insurance) on Saturday.

The trip:

I started at 583 miles on the odometer.

Going to SLC I planned out the route and where I would need to stop for charging. I gave myself some wiggle room, not truly understanding how mountains and speed would affect the range.

First charging stop was in Frisco, Colorado at a Walmart. There were four Electrify America charging stations there. A single one was working at 50kWh. There was a car finishing up so I got in the spot (after figuring out the other three stations were not working). I couldn’t get it to connect to charger, which was freaking me out, but after calling Electrify America, they walked me through how to use their chargers and it turns out that some of their stations have liquid cooling in the cables so they weigh more which means I had to hold it up for about twenty seconds during the initial plug-in until it made a clicking noise. Once it clicked, all was well. I charged it up but didn’t realize that once you hit the 80% range, it starts slowing down the charge significantly to preserve the battery. What should have been an hour charge turned out to be more like an hour and twenty minutes. This station will become important in the future. Electrify America - 94% for $20.81

I moved on and drove through the mountains to my night stop at a hotel in Grand Junction, Colorado which had a Level 1 ChargePoint charger at the hotel. Thankfully, this one was able to get me back up in the 90th percentile before I left the next morning. There were four charging spots and only me and a Tesla charging for the night which made it easier. ChargePoint 90%(ish) for $7.12.

The next day it was off to the halfway point at Green River, Utah which was the halfway point to SLC. Once again, there were four chargers but three were not functioning. I learned from my previous experience with Electrify America and had no more problems with the heavy cables for the rest of the trip. I grabbed coffee and a banana nut muffin at the coffee shop it was attached to and made a friend with the shop’s old dog. (I will return to this one on the way back and two were functioning by this point). Electrify America - 94% for $16.32

I got to the hotel in Salt Lake City and they had four Level 1 chargers for…FREE! So, I got to charge for three nights for completely free. Although they had two plugs per station, it was only me and one other electric car for any of the three nights. Forgot the name of the company for this charger - $0.00.

I drove around SLC to go to the Con and such but since I didn’t need to pay for charging, I don’t really have anything else to report and was in the high 90% charge range when I started my return trip.

Return trip:

On the way back I decided to make extra stops, more frequently.

The first stop was in Price, Utah, which was pretty much halfway between SLC and Green River, Utah. It was at a dinosaur museum and was…duh…duh…duh…FREE! $0.00 I filled up a little more than necessary but for free, why not? (Technically I could have gone in the museum to do a quick walk around, but I didn’t). The second stop was back in Green River, Utah, which was the halfway point between SLC and my hotel in Grand Junction. This time two chargers were working and I plugged in to charge and went across the street to get dinner. Electrify America - 80% for $8.16

Got to the hotel in Grand Junction, Colorado and plugged in for the night, again with no problems. ChargePoint - 95% (ish) for $6.98

Here’s where some stuff got my anxiety up. The next stop was going to be back at the Walmart in Frisco, Colorado, which I made it to with about 45 miles left of estimated charge. This was the problematic Walmart I ran into on the way out. Still only one charger was working but this time there were two cars in front of me, waiting to use it. Considering an 80% charge from low battery can take an hour or so at 50kWh, I was figuring I might be there for three or more hours. I looked around for chargers and there were some right behind the Walmart, but they were only Level 1. Instead of waiting, I took my chances and went there, albeit temporarily. By the time I got to 70ish miles on the charger I was wondering if the Walmart one was still busy but other folks were coming from the Walmart chargers and the line remained. This charger was free, as well, but I only stayed on it for 37 minutes to add 14 miles of range, bringing me to that 70 miles or so of estimated range. ChargePoint - $0.00

What to do? Wait three hours and hope to be done, or get home?

So…I ended up looking at my phone, A Better Routeplanner (ABRP), and the Chevy app to see if there were any fast chargers around that I missed. Not in town. The nearest one was 31 miles away in Evergreen, Colorado. With only 70 miles on the estimated range, I went back and forth debating and finally decided to bite the bullet and go for it. More about this soon.

After an anxiety-producing drive, I made it to Evergreen, Colorado with almost 90 miles of estimated range due to the regenerative properties of the car battery.

Went to the Target that the chargers were at, and it appeared that all four were working and had an average of 150 kWh. I went into the Target and milled around while it charged. Electrify America - 80% for $7.38 and plenty of miles to get back to Colorado Springs, and then some.

Final mileage was 1892 on the odometer.

So, adding together the price for electricity, and keeping in mind that three of the chargers were the more expensive Electrify America ones, I spent $58.61 for a 1309-mile trip. If I had done the same in my ICE (the term for Internal Combustion Engines that the Electric groups use), I would have easily spent approximately $208 for gas. And this trip COULD have been even less expensive had I stuck to the ChargePoint chargers which are way less expensive than the Electrify America ones.

The good and bad of hills and mountains

Ok, so how did I end up with 22 miles MORE than when I left the Walmart in Frisco, heading to Evergreen? Regenerative braking. By the time I got there, I had more miles than when I left due to the fact that the majority of the trip was downhill AND it was stop and go traffic for some of it, meaning I was going fairly slowly, allowing for even MORE charge buildupthan usual. Downhill portions of the trip were lifesavers!

I realized, after the trip, that I got a bit lucky. It was all new to me and I was estimating that I would have at LEAST 50 estimated miles by the time I got to charging stations. At the time, I did not know how much hills would impact the drive, even though I had read about them in forums. Uphills can be HUGE battery drains as the car is front-wheel drive and it is basically using the battery to pull the heavier car (due to the heavy battery).

When I left Frisco, Colorado to go to Evergreen, Colorado, I figured I would have enough to get there with about 35 estimated miles left on the charge. The anxiety part was that the first few miles were all uphill and my charge was draining much faster than I expected. I was to the point where I almost decided to turn around and go back to Frisco to wait it out. But I didn’t as I knew, due to the trip out there, that a lot of it was downhill between me and the next stop. After getting over that initial hump, it was much more relaxing as my mileage started going up mile by mile. By the time I was at the halfway point to Evergreen, I knew that it would be no problem getting there and was able to relax for the rest of that drive and enjoy the traffic backup knowing I wasn’t wasting gas.

I say I was lucky on the trip out there because I went up more mountains than I expected and hadn’t accounted for charge loss. The good thing about this, however, is that I knew the route for the way back and prepared myself for the mountains by making more stops for shorter periods of time which worked out great. I will do this for any road trip in the future as it really reduces the electric car owner anxiety which I guess is a real thing.

Weather and Climate Control

Thankfully the weather was pretty nice both to and from but one thing I would have to keep in mind if I did the trip in hotter or colder conditions would be the need to run climate control. I used my sunroof for most of the trip so it was not a problem but if I had to do the same trip with the climate control on, the battery would drain faster. Since I did have more miles than I needed for the last stretch home between Evergreen, Colorado and Colorado Springs, Colorado, I splurged and ran the air conditioning and used the cooling seats.

Speed

Here is where I learned a big lesson, which applies to ICE cars, as well, but I never paid attention to before…speed matters. In the case of the electric car, most forums say the best thing to do is to set your cruise control to 65. I scoffed at the idea, but it is a good one. On the first night of driving, I really wanted to get to my hotel as I had had a long day at work followed by four hours of driving. I was averaging about 80mph in a lot of areas. When my battery started draining faster, I slowed down to the 65mph and…it worked. At the 65mph speed, ANY downhill section was far more likely to regenerate the battery and it gave me plenty of range to get to where I needed to be. On the way back I wasn’t as concerned as I knew I would have more stops, so I did go 80mph or more in many straightaways, but you could see the battery draining faster that way. That extra pull has a fairly significant drain on the charge. So now I am more likely to go the average of 65mph if I am planning longer road trips or, at the very least, the speed limit.

Adaptive Cruise Control

This is my new best friend. I have never had a car that had adaptive cruise control before but now I don’t want to drive a car without it! I didn’t really understand what it was, prior to getting this car, and it was one of those things that I didn’t think about. For those unfamiliar, you set the cruise control to, say, 70mph to keep moving at that speed. If your car sees / senses another car in front of you going slower, it slows your cruise control down, even to the point of stopping, and then picks it back up when there is no more barrier to your speed. I, quite literally, went hundreds of miles never touching the brake or the accelerator and controlled my speed from my steering wheel column. It also allowed me to stretch my legs more often, which was a great benefit on this long trip.

Super Cruise

This was one of those features I didn’t really opt for but when my car came with it, I decided to keep it. Lisa’s car will not have it, however. What Super Cruise does is it takes the adaptive cruise control to a whole new level. On roads that have it mapped out, usually interstates, you can set your adaptive cruise control (up to 85mph only) and then click on the Super Cruise. When you do, it takes over the steering wheel and keeps you in the lane so you can take your hands off the wheel. Much like adaptive cruise control, in this case I was able to keep my hands off the steering wheel for hundreds of miles. The only time this became an issue is when I took a different route, based on Google Maps, than I had originally intended and instead of going down I-70, I ended up going down US 6 which did not have Super Cruise mapped out, so I had to actually…gasp…STEER for about 100 miles.

There were a couple of hiccups with Super Cruise but nothing that would scare me from using it again. The first was that when there were rest areas, sometimes the camera on the car couldn’t quite figure out that the pull off lane to the rest stop was a pull off lane so it would start moving you towards it, only to realize there was more road ahead and I had to take control of the steering wheel for a moment to be safe. The other one was weird as I was coming home from Evergreen, Colorado and around Ken Caryl, in the Denver area, it decided to stop working. I could have stopped and restarted the car, but I figured I would just drive the rest of the way. It was more of an annoyance than a problem.

For those wondering how it works, there is a camera in the steering column that watches you when Super Cruise is on. The steering wheel has a section that glows green when it is on. If you look away from the road for too long, the steering column blinks bright red and blares and beeping sound at you to take control of the steering wheel again. It gives you a fair amount of time to react. This is to make sure you aren’t watching a show, using your cell phone for too long, napping, or not paying attention to the road, since the function isn’t 100% autonomous. I did this once when I was spending too long changing from my Sirius XM to phone music and was paying more attention to the console than the road.

One thing that does get a little nerve wracking is when you are in Super Cruise next to a semi-truck as the cruise does keep you in the lane but is far more right-aligned than I typically drive so it always felt scarier when next to a big semi. Roads are being added on a daily basis, so I expect more functionality in the future.

The drive

Outside of the new flat tire, the rest of the trip was a solid drive. It was comfortable and even more so because of the adaptive cruise control coupled with the Super Cruise. For hundreds of miles, each way, I never had to touch the steering wheel, accelerator, or brakes. Being a new car, it was a nice smooth ride. Couple that with the quiet of the electric vehicle and it was a very pleasant drive. I never would have considered it in my ICE but was happy to do the trip in the Bolt EUV. It makes me excited about going out for a trip again sooner, rather than later.

Community

Everyone was super helpful at the charging stations. If one was down, we let others know. If there was a method to plugging it in, we let others know. We talked about our journeys, our charging, our cars, and more. At my station in Evergreen, Coloardo, I had one guy come up with an older Chevy Volt asking if it was worth updating to a Chevy Bolt EUV. After a decent conversation, I am pretty sure he was going home to order one up. There was just this fun sense of camaraderie being on the frontier of electric vehicles.

Price

I’ve always been an early adopter of technologies and was finally able to do so because of the price of the Chevy Bolt EUV (America’s #1 electric vehicle as of a couple of weeks ago). Between $7500 federal tax credit, $5000 Colorado tax credit, and my totaled Jeep Renegade (from the hail), this one came out to be just around $10,000 when everything was said and done and mine was the one with all of the bells and whistles, minus the red package. This is also why we are doing the same car for Lisa, which should be here next week, as the same benefits go for it and her trade-in should be about the same price as my totaled car. So, for two brand new electric cars, it should be just about $20K which is less than the price of a single new car.

Regenerative braking

One thing I absolutely LOVE about this car is the regenerative braking. When I used the one-pedal driving (which took me about five minutes to get used to), it put energy back into your battery. This works particularly well in cities and usually my 8.9-mile trip to work ends up with me only losing 1 to 2 miles of estimated range. (Side note: the trip back isn’t as forgiving as it goes back up the hills I came down to get to work). There is the one-pedal driving, which you just lift your foot off of the accelerator when you want to brake, coming to a slower stop. There is also a paddle on the steering column which you can pull on for a more dramatic stop and more energy regenerated. And if you need to come to a more immediate stop, there is still the regular brake although it does not auto-regenerate electricity. I wish all cars had single-pedal driving as it is so much more intuitive than traditional driving.

Wrap up:

The cons

1 - Charging stations are all over the place on availability, how many are working, and pricing. On longer road trips you might find areas like I did where there is only one fast charger in a 40-mile radius. My ‘fix’, however, is to now do more stops with shorter charging times at each, just in case you run into what I ran into in Frisco with the single charger working at Walmart. (We really need McDonald’s to step up and put chargers at all of their restaurants as you can never go too far without running in to one and you can get good coffee while there!)

2 – Hills can produce anxiety, especially as you get into the mountains. Small hills wouldn’t be as big of a problem, but I went through several popular Colorado ski areas which had a lot of ups and downs. I can say I was clenching up going from Frisco to Evergreen before I knew that it was mostly downhill.

3 – Maybe I just had bad luck but two flats in less than a month was no fun. I will be getting the insurance on it next week so any future flats will be fixed or replaced.

4 – It wasn’t often but every once in awhile my phone connection, even though it was plugged directly into the USB-C port, would putz out. It was a quick fix but if I was using Google Maps and it putzed out during a time with lots of turns, I might have been up a creek.

The pros

1 – At $58.61 I spent more than I expected to on electricity but that is because I went to the more ‘popular’ chargers which charged more for the electricity. Still, for a 1309-mile trip, $58 was well worth it.

2 – More frequent stops mean more chances to stretch your legs and go to the bathroom. They say you should do this every couple/few hours anyhow, so it’s just good practice and breaks up some of the monotony of the trip.

3 – No pollution

4 – Regenerative energy makes for a more pleasant trip knowing you aren’t spending money on the recharging your car does automatically. (When using single-pedal driving or adaptive cruise control)

5 – Random free charging stations!

6 – Adaptive cruise control + Super Cruise = avoid driver fatigue and have more time to see the view. My drive was particularly beautiful going across the mountains into the mesas and hills towards Utah.

7 – Community

I think that about does it. It was an ups and downs kind of trip but most of the downs were because of the flat tire when I was so tired already. Thankfully, a Survivor friend was with me and helped me through it and once things got entirely fixed, the rest of the trip was fun.

Would I go electric again? Absolutely, positively, without a doubt!

P.S. We get our Level-2 charger installed at the house on Friday. ($1000 is supplied through Chevy for the install so some places have it to where the install is free or close to it).