Our Chevrolet Bolt EV's AC Broke. Here's How Much It Cost To Fix!

If you were a regular on this channel, you know that one of the vehicles I have besides my F-150 Lightning pickup truck is this a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt Premiere. Technically it's my wife's daily driver, although we both work from home, but because of Some recent changes at her job, my wife now has to make some fairly long distance trips from time to time to visit clients in other parts of the country and plans to drive most of the time in our Bolt EV with the help of the AI ​​system. eat. which we installed in a previous video on this channel but a few weeks ago she commented that the air conditioning didn't seem to work anymore so we booked it and got a pretty big repair bill, let's talk about no one likes an expensive one. repair bill, but about a year ago this car received a replacement battery pack under GM's battery recall program and also got a new eight year, 100,000 mile warranty to go with that new battery pack, how Is that related to the air conditioning?

It doesn't work well for some cars like the Chevrolet Bolt EV. The air conditioning is used to cool the cabin, but it is also used to keep the battery nice and cool during hot summer weather and help keep it warm during really cold times. spells and given the fact that we are currently in a Heat Dome of sorts, we are expected to hit record high temperatures

here

in the Pacific Northwest over the next few days, we are currently under a fire watch and so many other nasty things that it makes sense to have a functional air conditioning system, as well as a functional conditioned battery pack.

I should point out that in the case of the Bolt EV t

here

are separate coolant circuits to keep the cabin cool and keep the battery pack cool, but as I say, if there is a problem with the cooling system it makes sense to have it checked the bad news is the bill of repair but let's talk about some of the symptoms we experienced where we took the car and what the remedy was, but while I'm going to do that, I'm also going to replace the air filter. Air filters are something you should replace fairly regularly on any car.

Of course, I'm talking about the cabin air filter because there is no internal combustion engine and for that I just have to take out the glove box. So while I do that, I'll tell you more about our air conditioning problems. The first thing they're going to do if they're going to take off the glove boxes, of course, empty them because the cabin air filter is behind them. and then you use a pair of pliers just to tighten here. I've already done it because you know the Blue Peter style narration, but this little piston here connects to your glove box there and once you've squeezed the end of this, it's just going to explode. directly and then you just have to squeeze here and your golf box will go down.

My wife first noticed there was a problem with the air conditioning system in her car when she got in to take one of our dogs to hydrotherapy and she noticed it. that there was a problem with the cabin not cooling down very quickly, it was a hot day, a really hot day for the Pacific Northwest and on his 20 minute, 20, 30 minute drive to the vets, when he got there, he said The car had almost reached a sensible temperature, she parked the car, took the dog inside and while the dog was receiving hydrotherapy, she took a walk around the block when she got back to the car, it was hot again so she knew there was a problem.

So next I'm going to reach in here and click release the little clip on the inside and then just slide the air filter out. Now I don't think we've had rodents in the car, sometimes we do, but very often we've seen some ships on top here, we've been very lucky as you can see the cabin filter is in pretty good condition, but this all shows all the dust and dirt this air filter has collected and it's definitely time to replace it. use Bosch air filters, the part number is 6091c, if you are interested, these are HEPA filters, they are better than the original AC Delco air filters.

There are also, if I lift this up, some signs that at some point a rodent may have gotten in here and I made a little bed, but nothing too bad, there's nothing to worry about, so let me take the new one out and I'll put the new one in, so I just put this back here, so there we go and then I put this cover on. I turn it back on and I make a fool of myself because it very rarely comes on the first time, you put it in and I just slide it back in and then I take this piston and I push it in again until it clicks and we have a new air filter.

We asked the dealer to take a look. Diagnosing the problem

cost

about $180,687. They did a system pressure test and found that yes, the air conditioning pressure was low if the air conditioning system is not at the correct pressure. in it so refrigerant will not effectively cool the cabin or the battery pack and in this case they traced the problem to a

broke

n compressor the compressor was working but it was leaking and that meant that the refrigerant was leaking from the air conditioning system and so both was not It did not work properly, the solution was to replace the entire compressor.

I'm sure by now you want to know the

cost

of this repair. The AC compressor had to be replaced, the coolant had to be refilled, and we had to pay a Chevrolet

bolt

technician to help. Do all that because, unlike a traditional car where the internal combustion engine drives the AC compressor through some type of belt or pulley, in electric cars, the AC system is usually powered by a special electric motor that It draws its energy directly from the main traction battery. package so the person who works on this car not only has to be certified in

bolt

s for all the high voltage stuff but they also have to be certified as an air conditioning technician and that costs extra money, you pay someone who has a greater set of skills.

It will cost more in the long run so we added up all the parts, the compressor itself was around 850,900 something like that, add the cost of refilling the refrigerant. The circuits for the air conditioning system, by the way, the coolant for the EV bolt are more environmentally friendly. friendlier than cars, but that refrigerant is also more expensive to recharge because at the moment not all workshops have access to the recharge material, which adds extra cost and then of course you have the actual physical work to do everything , the total cost for us barely reached 3,000 US dollars, which is about a thousand dollars more than the amount of money we still have to pay before this car is truly ours, so why do we bother?

A lot of people would look at that and say, I spent three thousand dollars on a car that I still own four. What's the deal here? Well the deal here is this car now has a nearly new battery pack with an eight year 100,000 mile warranty, everything else on the car is known to be in good condition currently and replacing the A/C compressor ensuring having the coolant circulate properly around the battery pack ensuring the cabin stays nice and cool ensures this car can stay on the road for many years to come we have no problems with this vehicle Overall it has been pretty reliable and this bill of Repair is the first major repair bill we have faced.

We have the coma AI system. Watch the video at the link below if you haven't seen our installation so this car. It has level two, level three driver assistance features, it charges well overnight, we can still use fast charging, yes it doesn't have NAX connectivity, but thanks to evgo and a couple of other charging station manufacturers, we have a kind of quasi connection and charging. It still does its job very well, it will be put into service on a couple of long distance trips in the next few months, so having a nice cool cabin and a battery pack in decent condition is a big deal for us.

I think it is also important to highlight it. that after an electric vehicle has finished, it's typically three-year, 36,000-mile warranty periods, some automakers offer more, it's still possible to keep these cars on the road, it's still possible to keep them running and let's not forget the carbon footprint of generating an electric vehicle which is the largest. part of the carbon footprint of that car, so the longer we can keep it on the road, the longer we can keep it running, the lower the cost per mile in terms of carbon and in terms of dollars and dimes, so So there we have it, we had a problem, we took it to a dealer and we had to pay a lot of money to fix it, but hopefully we'll keep our fingers crossed.

Orion will be fine for 20 30 40,000 miles or more before something goes wrong and in that sense we are done. with today's video, if you have comments, send us a polite note below, you can also leave a comment in the Discord chat room or if you are a Patreon supporter, you can do so there and if you want to support us, you can subscribe, hit the bell and Follow links to those who regularly support YouTube channel membership or a Patreon subscription. You'll also find links below to our Kofi Bitcoin store and giveaways, as well as our Mastodon and peer tube pages, if you haven't tried peer tube yet, give it away.

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