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| I am sure I will get flamed for this one guys, but I actually OWN a Chevy Volt and have about 4000 mixed use miles on it. I will explain to you the actual numbers I (my wife) gets with the car. First, even on the coldest days of winter I still got 29 miles. During the fall we got as high as 35 miles on a charge. The number the Volt presents to you as the distance on the charge is based on an algorithm that averages the driving you did during the last charge cycle. We have a rapid 220V charging station at my house. It charges the car in 3.25 hours at 30 amps. The car has programmable charging features so it will actually charge automatically based on when electricity is the cheapest. For this reason I enrolled in the Residential Real Time pricing program through Com ED. It is available to every citizen of Illinois, allowing you to pay a market fluctuating rate for electricity. The majority of the charging is done at night so it is ready right before she leaves for work. Between 2 am and 6 am I pay about .02 kwh. At 5 pm I usually pay around .13 kwh. Its a big difference. Even when the car runs on gas it still gets around 40 mpg. We have a lifetime calculated average of about 95 mpg with the car including gas an electricity. We ALWAYS drive the car in Low. The only effect this has on the drivetrain is to make it regeneratively brake very heavily. So heavily that you virtually never use the brakes. The car also has a host of features that try to get you to maintain driving near peak efficiency. The climate control system can be made, if you want it to, to use a lot of energy. You can also choose to use the seat heaters and the climate in ECO mode that uses much much less energy. I will stress the most important point about the Volt,
It is remarkably efficient for people that drive less that 35 miles per day. If you are driving long distances each trip it is not going to help you much and you would be better off going with a diesel. My wife actually has the perfect commute, which is 35 miles each way. Her company lets her charge off 110V at work with the included portable charger. At the end of an 8 hour workday she has almost enough charge to make it all the way home with no gas either. Around town it is a no brainer. It costs nothing to operate. The battery actually never goes completely dead, so even when running on gas you get an electric assist when starting from a light because you are still regenerative braking. The gas motor also does not run continuously. We actually are saving about $200 per month compared to the Subaru Impreza she drove before.
I would make the comment that because Power= Work/Time and Work = Force x Distance and Force= Mass x Acceleration, the way you drive (accelerate and decelerate) a car will produce dramatically different milage amounts. You could get into any car and make it very inneficient by driving it in a certain way.
I know a lot of people hate the car because of political reasons, but it really is an incredibly efficent vehicle if you are matching it to the right type of driving. If you hate the politics, hate the politics. Fine with me. But it is also a really incredible piece of engineering that I am proud to own and proud that it was made by an American company. | |
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Chevy Volt Cost analysis one mans opinion
