The Bolt is a, what, ten year old design, and it was built to a price. As it pertains to TFA, resistive heating and low-end charging unit don’t have much to do with battery chemistry.

Range is important because charges are unavailable in much of the country still

In terms of perceived heat per energy usage, heated seats are the biggest win. At least in my ancient Volt I can get things pretty efficient by focusing only on seat heating over cabin heating. The trade-offs are a lot of passengers get confused by that and some of them distrust it because a vent isn't blasting a bunch of air at them (which is hugely inefficient; but was "cheap" when ICE had so much free waste heat). Also, none of the models today focus on rear passenger heated seats, that's still seen as too much of a "luxury car" thing, which is weird (and inefficient).

In the Volt it was a lot of fun to play these sorts of micro-efficiency games because getting to 40+ miles of range on an estimated 35 miles of range battery was always exciting.

(ETA: The number of times I wished I could entirely lock passengers out of HVAC controls was quite high. Seriously what is it with some people and their wish to have loud obnoxious fans blast 70+ degree heat at them in winter? While they are in their winter coats? For a five minute drive?)

They think they need a 400 mile range Hummer EV for some crazy reason.

GM's own EV pickup also goes 400+ miles. But it has a massive battery and efficiency around 2 mi/kWh.

Some vehicles EPA miles are way off while others are spot on.

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-cons...

And maybe 200 if you're using AC.

They do - a range of 800 km is possible with CATL latest battery. And about 100 km of range can be added per minute, so it's now very close to adding range as fast as petrol cars.

To me that is the turning point and not using lithium is an added bonus.

Source https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250421-china-s-catl-...

Lot's of EV's (including mine) can charge from 20% - 80% in 20 minutes. I would not pay extra for any faster. It takes 20 minutes to shuffle the entire family through the bathroom and buy a coffee so faster charging wouldn't save us any time.

Some EV's take an hour to go from 20-80%. That's unacceptable. But below 20 minutes is very much diminishing returns.

And 99% of our charging is done at home, where DC fast charging time is completely irrelevant.

Battery replacement is never going to happen, save for an absolutely remarkable new battery technology. They’re too big and too integrated into the vehicles.

Most people want to charge at home as it’s significantly cheaper. More range makes sense.

NIO went this way. [1] I suggested it at the start of EV's becoming popular and HN was not a fan. My childhood toys were my inspiration. I could put them on the charger and wait forever or swap to a recently charged set and have instant gratification. Now if they could just build cars to be as durable and safe as my childhood toys most accidents would just be a fun way to meet people.

One of the reasons I like the idea is that instead of being on the hook for a crazy expensive battery pack I just swap it for one that in theory has been tested and when it falls below some standard it gets refurbished by someone else and I would never have to deal with it. This also opens up the options for swapping to newer generations of batteries such as 3D printed solid state for more than double the range, or same range with half the weight possibly useful for short-haul heavy duty trucks.

[1] - https://www.nio.com/nio-power