This weekend my wife took the Bolt to visit her mom’s house in Idaho. This journey is 142 miles each way. Even going 80mph the whole way, the Bolt has plenty of battery capacity to make it there but not enough to go round trip on a single charge. Even driving conservatively to where I can regularly get 280 miles to a charge, the Bolt is still about 44 miles short of making a round trip. Plugging in overnight on a 120 volt outlet provides sufficient charge to make the round trip but sometimes, depending on what projects her brother is working on, the garage outlet is not accessible. It’s also too slow for just a day visit. Adding a 240V outlet was the logical solution. That would work but still it would depend on the driveway being clear of any “projects” in work and accessible. This was not always the case. 

Most extension cords are only meant for temporary and intermittent use. If you are going to be charging on an L1 circuit like this for several hours at a time, you need a much more robust cord. Even then you are still limited to only charging at 960 to 1440 watts. This only adds back 3-5 miles of range per hour. This is just too slow. Add in the resistive losses of an extension cord and it will be slower still.