When I finally found a dealer with a Chevy Spark EV almost two years ago, (we live in California) it was 50 miles away from our house in Palm Springs, but up in the 'higher' desert about 2500 feet, on the road to L.A. Never having driven an electric other than one short test drive, I gambled that the car would have maximum range coming downhill, and fully charged goes almost 100 miles on a flat run anyway. None the less, I asked the dealer to charge it fully. The previous week of negotiations with them, looking for a car, was right out of a cheap movie. They weren't worried about details, they just knew they'd be rewarded for getting someone to sign a lease. They tried the 'bate and switch' lease arrangement, sending me a low resolution photograph of the lease I agreed to, and substituting another a few days later, but that all washed out anyway in the end. My concern was that the car have the "DC Fast charge" option, I'd investigated my options for months and had a good idea of what was going on. No one at the dealer had a clue what an electric car was. They couldn't get the concept that it didn't use petro products except for lubrication of a few bearings, and a 3.3 kw/hr charge controller, that should be a 6.6 kwh controller, was a foreign language.
The sales manager emailed me that he worked Sundays and would be certain to put the car on charge before he left for the day, so I could pick it up fully charged the next day, Monday.
In the darkness Monday at 5:00 pm, I pulled out of the lot with 71 miles showing, it should have read 81 to 90 or so if it was fully charged, but I just wanted out of there. Down hill is good, because 30 minutes later in Palm Springs, as I pulled into my driveway the car read 93 miles, it was now fully charged, it had charged itself with the excess electricity it produced coming down that 30 mile hill at 70 mph. (Cruise control)
Over a year later, I was looking under the hood one day, (now and again to clean away the dust) and I noticed the large red plastic/rubbery boot that covers the AC Delco battery positive post was askew. No reason for that, probably a machine was the last thing that touched it, unless.....
That's right! The sales manager didn't know about the 21 kw lithium ion battery. He'd charged up the wrong one.
They'd insisted the car would have the DC Fast Charge and it didn't, (which hasn't proven to be much bother here in Palm Springs, where the city has dozens of free chargers) so I pulled back the $2000 deposit and kept it. Chevy wanted nothing to do with it.
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