Ipadjove, member of the Norwegian EV community, elbilforum.no found an interesting video where Josh Tavel, Chief Engineer of the Bolt EV, at 17:35 refers that the fast charge rate is 80 kW.

Charging at 80 kW is equal to charge the battery at 200 Amps and 400 V, which seems very reasonable and possible with the Bolt EV battery at 100 kW CCS fast chargers that are limited to 500 V and 200 Amps.

What doesn’t make sense is that Josh Tavel also quoted Chevrolet’s old figure of 90 miles range in 30 minutes charge, that seems more adequate to describe a fast charge at 50 kW rate.

But…

As I said it before, we have to take in consideration that GM has to under promise and over deliver, because virtually every CCS charger in the USA is limited to 50 kW and GM doesn’t want a class action lawsuit.

Since in Europe we already have a few 150 kW CCS fast chargers, Opel might soon reveal how fast the Ampera-e can actually charge.

If the Opel Ampera-e can maintain a stable 80 kW charging rate from 0 to 80 %, it may take less than 40 minutes to charge 80 % of the battery.

GM does have the bad habit of purposely limit its cars in the first year model year and unleash them in the second model year. Like it did with the plug-in hybrid, 2016 Chevrolet Volt that lacked ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control) that was introduced few months later with the 2017 MY. The kind of planned obsolescence that big corporations really like.

While I’m not sure, I think that GM is reserving few changes for the 2018 MY that could already happen. Simple things like a heat pump, more aerodynamic wheels or even faster charging (internal AC and external DC).

I’m very curious to see how will the Opel Ampera-e behave at 150 kW CCS fast chargers already available in Switzerland.

What do you think? Will the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV take full advantage of 100 kW CCS fast chargers? Or its fast charging rate is limited by firmware and will only be unleashed in the 2018 MY?