Chevy Bolt 2017 Charge Curve is inaccurate

Using the “Chevy Bolt 2017-2018 Upgrade 66kw”, the estimated charge curve often feels incorrect or inconsistent with reality in a few ways:

• The drop-off in charge speed that occurs after 50% SOC does not seem to be taken fully into account for charge time estimates

  https://insideevs.com/news/589169/how-long-charge-chevrolet-bolt-ev/

• The effect of battery temperature on the charge speed does not seem to be accounted for (The bolt will generally not hit its full 55kW charging speed unless the battery is at ~20-22C. It will not pre-condition before reaching a charger. I’m having trouble finding the specific charts I’ve seen in the past, but I have experienced this anecdotally)

This leads to inefficiencies in the ABRP charge plan in the following ways:

• The default settings will often recommend making charge stops to very high SOC, slowing down overall trip time significantly

• The charge time and trip time estimates for these plans with high SOC charge are often quite inaccurate, as ABRP assumes the target SOC can be reached faster than expected

• When actively charging, if the battery is cold, ABRP will estimate that the charge will take less time than actual, even when knowing the battery temp and current charge speed.

The first issue can be somewhat mitigated by setting Max Charger SOC to 60%.

An example trip:

With default Max SOC settings, ABRP recommends charging to 93% - despite the abundance of fast chargers along this corridor. It predicts this 9%-93% charge will take 1hr 26 min, which anecdotally feels like an under-estimate, and based on the previously linked charge curve would likely take closer to 1hr 35 min or more. At these high SOCs, the Bolt’s fast charge speed will drop towards 10-15kW, a far cry from its 50-55kW max charge speed between 0-50%.

When setting Max Charge SOC to 60%, the route ABRP creates adds an additional stop and shaves 12 minutes off of the predicted trip, though this difference is likely closer to 22+ minutes due to the fact that ABRP has likely underestimated the charge time required for that 9-93% charge session.

An example of the low temperature estimates:

In this example, a user starts a trip with low SOC, requiring a charge soon after. ABRP assumes the car will charge at or near its full 55kW speed only 4 minutes after beginning the trip, despite knowing the temperature. In reality, the car will charge at less than half that speed, making this closer to a 30 minute stop.

In this instance, I understand that it may be impossible to fully model how warm the battery may or may not be when arriving at the stop - but anecdotally, ABRP continues to estimate based on a full 55kW charge speed even once plugged in and receiving live data that is reporting the 1. current battery temp and 2. current charge speed kW value