Bolt can absolutely fast charge, I've done it myself — the feature has to be added when purchasing, and it's limited to 55kW (~80% in an hour depending on conditions). The slower rate is partially how they kept the price down AFAIK.
Thankfully, DCFC is now standard! The rate isn't phenomenal, just as you pointed out, but this car competes with Civics. Many of those are purely commuter cars that might only very rarely do 300-400 miles.
IMO, having such a slow charge rate (Yes, 55 kW is slow) is extremely detrimental to EV adoption because it feeds into the narrative that it takes 45+ minutes to charge the car which just simply isn't true for any decent EV.
This is what frustrates me about EV makers that aren't Tesla. They frequently half-ass their EV and then get all Surprised Pikachu when they don't sell, and then they incorrectly just say "Huh people don't actually want EVs".
I'm not trying to sound like a Tesla fanboy (I own one, but I'm not a fanboy), but the Model 3 is the standard upon which any EV is going to be compared. If you don't support 250 kW charging with at least 250 miles of range, you're making a shitty EV that nobody will want. Sure, you can probably forgo the self-driving features, and the huge touch-screen interface is a bug more than a feature, but you cannot skimp on range and charging capabilities.
Yeah, I remember when Chevrolet bragged a lot about beating the Model 3 to market and how great it was. But it had optional fast charging of only ~50kw!
Their management really could not understand the idea that the prime consumer for this would be middle-class people in suburban homes, and that they'd want to occasionally road trip their nearly $40k EV. They'd imagine only people in urban areas would want them and then imagine this huge catch-22 around urban charging. Their early forays into charging partnerships all reflected that, with chatter about building lower speed urban locations.
Reality was so much different.
Having said that, prices have come down a _lot_ since that introduction. I think there are a lot of people who'd find it usable, given prices that are lower than a Civic with the current incentives.
I typically need to fast charge ~5 times per year. I'm in Portland, and my father-in-law takes us to Oregon Ducks football games in Eugene 3-5 times per season, and it's about a 220 mile round trip. In the early season while it's still warm, I can do that round trip without charging with no problem. But in the later, colder season, running the heat drains the battery more and I have to charge on the way back. We'll also visit my wife's best friend in Seattle once or twice a year.
For daily driving...well...I work from home, so I could certainly get away with the 110 outlet. Though when I got my car, I had a commute 30 miles each way. I could have probably still gotten away with a 110, but I got a 220 anyways. I can completely charge overnight, and that's good enough.
But like...charging time for road trips is blown way out of proportion. I've driven from Portland to Santa Clara and back. I think people hit Google Maps, it tells them a drive is 10 hours, then they hit ABRP or their Tesla's nav, and it reports 12 hours, and they think "wtf driving an EV is adding 2 hours", but they ignore the fact that the Google Maps estimate doesn't include any stopping. No restrooms, food, or gas. I found that during the entire road trip, only ~20 minutes total was spent actually just standing around waiting for the car to charge.
I had a guy on a Tesla forum one time that told me that an EV would be totally impractical for him. His reason was because he'd need to stop for so long to charge on a little trip of ~500 miles (maybe a little less) and there might not be chargers.
It turned out, he that little trip was along major interstates in California to Disneyland. They were already stopping 3 times for at least 15 minutes each in their gas car.
He still didn't want a Tesla. That's fine, of course. Horses for courses. :)
I never did figure out why he was on a Tesla owner's forum.
Look at Tesla, EVGo, ChargeAmerica, or just check out abetterrouteplanner.com to get a more complete picture of the charging network.
Chargepoint was the first to get a large charging network, but that gives them the disadvantage that a lot of their chargers are using the very oldest tech.
