Charging with Solar!

We are making power!  Progress Energy installed the net meter this past week and Southern Energy did the final check and turned on the breakers Friday afternoon.
Today (Saturday) I checked around noon and we were making 4.45 kW with a total of 12.5 kWh produced so far today!  So excited!  All 24 panels are showing online.

If the car wasn't charging right now I'd go take a picture of the meter feeding power to the grid...but right now the car charging is sucking up all our power generated, which that's ok because that's kind of like making your own gas for a combustion engine car  ;-)

Sad day.....

It was a sad day yesterday, even though we had some mechanical issues during the 7 1/2 months we had "lil red" we still enjoyed having it and will miss it, we had to turn it in yesterday and it was sad.
We were 40 miles shy of 10k miles, 9960 miles when we dropped it off.
So here are the final screen shots from the dash with the stats:
May be hard to see but in 9960 miles of driving, we used 54.4 gallons of gas, so about 183 miles per gallon.

The final stats screen, lifetime of 184 mpg down in the right hand corner. 

We look forward to adventures in the Electric world with the new volt, but we will still miss "lil red".

PV and EV, great combination!

When Southern Energy came out to take a reading of the solar panels we thought this might make for a great photo op of the PV panels, Thermal panels, two Chevrolet Volts plugged in, and their Southern Energy Prius.

Photo Op

I just thought this might make for a great photo op while moving the cars around.

Lil Blue

No your eyes are not playing tricks on you, that's a Blue Volt, it's Dawn's new 2013 Blue Volt!  We still have the red one for now...maybe a different story for another blog, but the blue one is awesome, sport wheels, leather, MY LINK!!!, a new safety package with lane departure and early crash warning systems, very cool.  Anyway, just wanted to post a quick pic, we have lots to do on the stats since they had to drive it all the way from Tennessee and used all gas, wow, 700 gas miles will be hard to get those lifetime stats back up, sounds like a challenge to me!

Oh no say it ain't so, we had to put gas in the volt so Dawn could go out of town!  I think this is only the 4th time we've put gas in it in the last 6 months with over 7300 miles of driving.  We went from April to June, and now from June to September, so about every 2 1/2 to 3 months.  In addition to only filling up every 2 to 3 months the tank is a max of 9 gallons, so it's usually around $25 to fill up.

On another note talking to a local dealer recently I've found out there are some nice lease incentives for the 2013 volts, you might want to check one out!

Been a while...

It's kind of been a while on a few things, been a while since I posted anything for one.  It's also been a while since there's been anything exciting happening with the volt, I mean we're still getting great economy, performance, and saving serious bucks on gas, also been a while since having any issues after getting back from service, but it's been a while since we've heard from any volt market research people, regional managers, or other volt "team" people as well.

I probably need to take a few steps back and tell a short story about requesting an attorney's assistance dealing with the NC Lemon Law process........we've had a couple of really really long service times, 1 month after we got the volt it was in the shop for 2 solid weeks, it's been in and out since and of course last month it was in the shop again for another 2 solid weeks.  While in the shop last time we counted up the days and out of frustration thinking this was going to be a big problem to have to keep putting into the shop, I decided to check around and inquire about the NC lemon law, I found an attorney and filled out the necessary paperwork, after a few iterations and sending over lots of shop records we got confirmation back from GM that they were looking at the claim.  Without going through the details about the process for the lemon law, basically they got 1 last chance to fix the car, so to my understanding now if the cars has another significant problem then the lemon law kicks in......however shortly after I signed paperwork with the attorney (nothing official from gm) I got a call from one of the regional guys saying they were interested in exchanging the volt with a new one because of the problems, say what!?!?  I would have never guessed that GM would voluntarily replace the car without any legal teams being involved, I would have never done the lemon law paperwork if I had any idea they would offer it, but of course the deal couldn't be done because I had legal representation....haven't heard from the rep or anyone from GM since....bummer!

In the meantime, all the way up until the time the claim was put through, I had been talking to various volts marketing research groups, gm reps, volt reps, all kinds of people but then it all stopped, I'm guessing it's from the claim.

So basically I'm still promoting the vehicle, still love the volt, would even entertain the idea of another if my wife and I continue having to drive separate instead of car pool, but yet GM doesn't (or can't) talk to me since I have an active lemon law claim, that's a shame.  There goes my chance of being in a volt commercial! It also might hurt the customer loyalty part as well since there are many other all electric models that are very enticing.

We'll, I'm sure this came out as a bunch of late night ramblings, but just wanted to blog about something and this was something I hadn't really brought up before.

BTW- since March 2012 we've spent $100 on gas for the volt, that includes $75 in April going on vacation, and we have nearly 6500 miles on it.  $100 is less than 1/3 what we used to spend on gas each month, still loving the stats!

Volt stuff

If you get a volt be sure you talk with your volt advisor, got home today and another gift from the volt advisor team. A eco friendly bag and a pen/flashlight/tire pressure set.  Thanks volt adviser team!

Leafy greens

Ok, not talking about salad :)
Dawns driving the Progress Energy Nissan Leaf this week.  Very nice experience being able to take the EVs on test commutes.
So far the range on the leaf has been good, we don't even need to charge it at home since its range is more than double that of the volt.  Overall though we like the volt better still, handeling and highway stability isn't as good as volt.  Sara likes it because you do sit higher than the volt, and the 5 person seating is nice as well.  We're still happy with our volt decision, but anyone wanting all electric you should check out the Leaf.

Guess who's back!

That's right, "little red" as Sara calls it, is back from service, freshly detailed and charging in the garage (ignore the mess in the background).  We spent $100 on gas in the rental car in a 1 1/2 week time frame for only a few hundred miles, to compare to the volt we've put only $75 total gas since buying it in March with a distance of 5200 miles, I think we like the volt stats much better than the rental car.  The rental car may have been a little more roomy but not enough to make up for $80 a week in gas, no thanks OPEC!!!

And to top things off, we got our 240v fast charger installed!  Yeah, full charge in 4 hours here we come!

Work in Progress

As you can see from the pictures from Saturday, the car is still being worked on, we miss "little red" as Sara started calling it, Mommy and Daddy miss the gas mileage as well, it's funny how after having the volt for just a few months it's now painful to put $40 of gas in a rental car and know it will last you only a week when for the volt $40 would last about 4 months.  Still exploring our options......hopefully find out something this week.

Shop Update

The Volts still in the shop, been just shy of 2 weeks, apparently they had to send another engineer to look at it. We still love the volt and EVs in general and everything they are about, but we're a bit frustrated with the time that this one has spent in service....all I can say is we're exploring all our options at this point.  So more to come on this one.

Shop Time

Yep, the volts back in the shop, they are trying to determine the cause of the Check Engine Light (CEL), so far we're starting day 4 of shop time and day 1 of rental car.
We still love the volt, the concept, and the great things that it can hold for our reliance on oil, unfortunately I think this particular one has some issues.


I did want to say thanks to all who follow and read our volt blog and don't let our posts about our volt being in the shop scare you from becoming a volt or any EV owner, just because we've had some issues please keep the following in mind:

• We've gone 2915 miles on 1 tank of gas
• We went 2 1/2 months between tank fill ups
• Our electric bill has only gone up about $20 to $25 per month (estimate)
• We went for 680 miles without using a drop of gas
• We went 98 miles all electric in a 24 hour period
• We're saving $250 to $300 per month from our previous gas car (makes our volt payment)

These stats make it a little easier to deal with some technical issues which I truly believe are NOT the norm, ours just likes hanging out on the service rack for some reason.

Remember, when you think about another car, especially a commuter car, "think electric".

The light we don't like

Yes, it's another check engine light, the light we don't like.  On Star diagnostics said it's another air related sensor, last one was a mass air flow sensor that they replaced, now we have something else.  I'm kind of curious if it's related to the excessive heat we've been having.
Will post again after it goes back in the shop this week.

Confessions of a Gas User Part II

OK, have to confess big time today, we not only used a couple of gallons, but we actually had to put gas in the volt today, it's been a little more than 2 1/2 months since we last put gas in, we've driven 2915 miles on the one tank of gas, that's not too bad considering the tank is only 9 gallons.

It cost me just shy of $26 to fill it up, 8.1 gallons, I ran it today until it starting yelling at me about being low on fuel.

So here are a couple of pictures of the volt sitting at a gas station, I call this a "rare photo op" since it's not often you see a volt at the gas station.   LOL!  :-)

Also while not really related to the car, notice the temp in the next picture, and no we didn't just get in the car, this was after driving for 20 minutes coming from southern wake county and watching it climb from about 105 in holly springs to the 112 you see below going up Glenwood, on the way home we saw 113 while going down 40 east....way too hot.

Personal Stats

We still haven't put gas in the car since we got back from Hilton Head (2 months ago), I've been tracking how much we're spending on gas for the volt separately from what I spend on my truck, not really anything to track with the volt when you don't have to put anything in it!  We spent $75 on gas when we went to Hilton Head which was about 18 gallons of gas, that's the only gas we've put in the car and we still have about 3 of those gallons in the tank.

I'm sure everyone's getting tired of hearing how little gas we use, it's a no brainer that we use far less gas, so here are some stats that I've run on my own based on the stuff I've been tracking:

To be as energy/cost efficient as our Volt:
A Car that gets 30 mpg the gas prices will need to be $1.49 per gallon
A Car that gets 50 mpg the gas prices will need to be $2.48 per gallon
At current Gas prices ($3.22) a car would need to get 65 MPG

Anyway, just wanted to throw some of these stats out, obviously these are stats that I've calculated based on our driving conditions and everything else, just like the disclaimers that everyone puts, your results may vary  ;-)

OH NO SAY IT AIN'T SO!!!

Another check engine light!  This time the diagnostics said something about battery coolant issue (i think), so it's back in the shop again today to have that looked at and finally the brake popping noise and trunk latch to be fixed as well.  I know Dawn's getting frustrated with it being in the shop but the way I see it is we can deal with some shop time for cutting edge technology and major reduction in gas consumption, the technology will only be getting better so we're still happy with our Volt.

UPDATE:  On-Start and John Heister quickly diagnosed that the mass air flow sensor (gas engine) needed replacing and ordered a part for it.  So it initially sounded worse that it did.

Updates....

Haven't posted in a while, here are some updates on various items that I've posted about before and some new ones that might be of interest:

Breakfast with Volt reps and owners:
I met with some Volt reps and other Volt owners for breakfast.  Very interesting hearing from the owners and Volt reps.  Lots of discussion about why some people are reluctant to accept EVs and why those of us who have volts love them.  Had a great time chatting with everyone and comparing notes about electric range, charging habits, home charging systems, gas used, etc., the biscuits were pretty good too!

Tax Credit/Rebate:
I previously posted some info to watch out for dealing with the tax credit/rebate, end result is "Talk to your tax person"!!!  Looks like the way the tax incentives work that most anyone can take advantage of the tax incentives, so check it out with your tax person first, first meaning BEFORE you commit to the car, it also helps to understand it early in the year in case you need to make adjustments with your tax with holdings, instead of waiting for a refund the following year you might want to adjust your tax with holdings so you have more in your pocket now rather than refund in the spring....everyone will have their own situation with taxes so just make sure you understand everything ahead of time.

Home Charging Station:
Right after we got the volt in March I applied for the Progress Energy sponsored home charging station and got accepted, we've now had an assessment done and waiting for the installation in a couple of weeks, can't wait!!!  Wow what a great program Progress put together for providing the charging stations for those lucky enough to get on the list, significant savings!  I think out of pocket we'll be about $100 mainly for taxes, not bad considering it would cost me out of pocket 10 times that just to buy a charger much less have an electrician come out to run a new 240v outlet in the garage.  Very cool, very excited!  maybe we'll be able to get a level 4 for electric miles in 24 hours (110 miles)...rapid charge > deplete > repeat!

As for stats, we're still doing good, we're about 2300 miles on our current tank of gas with about 3 gallons left, been over 2 months now since we last put gas in the car....that feels great!  Be sure to check out our latest stats at voltstats.net

That's about it for now.

Next Achievement

We're working on our next achievement level on voltstats.net which is total miles driven on the same tank of gas, we're up over 1800 miles now since our last fill-up and if we can make it to 2k that will be level 2, what's also neat about that is the time between fill-ups, we haven't put gas in the volt since April 9th, nearly 2 months ago...and we still have half a tank left!  I might have to get the manual out to remember how to put gas in it by the time we fill up again.  ;-)

Actions/Reactions from others

Another thing happened today that I thought would make for a good blog topic, the actions/reactions from other people.
So far we've had a few our of the norm things take place, here are some examples of what driving a volt has triggered that with an ICE wouldn't happen unless it was possibly a Ferrari or some other exotic show car.

• Taking a picture of the license plate "PLUGITIN", multiple times.
• A guy signing to his deaf kid what the license plate says and then giving a "thumbs up" (yes it was a thumb and not a finger)
• A long conversation struck in a parking lot mostly about "how it drives" and not anything about how energy efficient it is.
• Someone taking a picture of the Plug on the side of the car while it was charging at the public charge station (today which triggered this blog topic)

Haven't had anything funny happen yet, I'm guessing I'll eventually get asked something like "what kind of electricity does that thing take", or "how do you change the batteries", or "were the batteries included"......I will definitely make a dedicated post for something like that.

VoltStats.net Achievements

We just completed our 3rd level for Electric Miles without gas....we had some extra driving today and had to use .2 gallons of gas, not bad for going 680 miles without using any gas!!!
Here's a screenshot of the latest achievements on voltstats.net

Maybe after we win the Lotto

Saw this parked outside a local coffee shop, maybe after we win the Lotto we can head to a local coffee shop at 10 am in our Tesla with the top off....

We have TWO Volts!!!

We now have a second volt, it's the funny greenish color (Viridian Joule Tricoat)!!!!

OK, so those of you who notice things in pictures real quick you'll realize that we don't park it on a wood grain floor...that's because this is a 1/18 scale volt that the Volt Adviser Team sent us, not really sure why, but it's pretty cool and will sit nicely with my 1/18 and 1/24 scale corvettes.

As seen below it even comes with a little fast charger (which sara has already broke) and is highly detailed, has a portable charger in the trunk just like the full size.

Stats Update:
As for the full scale 1:1 red volt, our stats are doing better now that we got it back, they had to replace a Battery Regulator.  We actually feel like the range and miles per kilowatt hour are doing better than before it was serviced.  We're back up to about 109 MPG lifetime, we're currently working on our latest achievement award in voltstats.net for miles driven without gas (over 400 miles), we also haven't put gas in it since we got back from vacation in April.

Anyway, thanks for reading the blog, sorry you have insomnia or such boredom that you have to read my mess, but thanks anyway!!!

Dawn picked out her license plate, we had all kinds of "cool" ones picked out but many we just didn't know if people would understand them, this one was pretty straight forward and simple, surprised someone didn't already have it, I do start singing that air freshener song though from the commercials.

She originally wanted to get something like SIPNGAS for the volt and for my truck GASGUZLR, that would have been funny to see them parked next to each other, I still might get something for my truck, we'll see.

Red is Back!

We got the red volt back today!  Battery Regulator is what they had to replace.  They also did some recall stuff and a full detail, but the check engine light was from a Battery Regulator.  Only thing is I won't feel it's completely fixed until the next time we take a longer trip like when the issue first came up, so watch for more posts.

As for stats, we've got some work to do to make up from the 700+ miles we drove on gas while on vacation, we're down to about 91 MPG overall but I think we can get back over the 100 MPG mark pretty quick with just a few weeks of battery driving.

No Volt....

We didn't get our red one back, they have extensive testing they have to do on it which takes a lot more time than a traditional ICE.  Maybe something this week.......
In the meantime here's a pick of the white Volt we've been driving while ours is in the shop.  I've noticed a lot more strange looks and people asking questions due to the 4 foot long "Volt" label on the sides.

Getting Volt Back???

Crossing fingers that we might get our red volt back tomorrow, after being in the shop nearly 2 weeks.  They replaced a Battery Regulator after getting a GM volt engineer onsite and over-nighting the part, if the validation tests are good tomorrow they'll get it detailed and we'll pick it up....they also performed some "voluntary updates" aka recalls for stuff like the charge cord, battery reinforcement update, airbag felt for noise, and something else I think.  Also had them look at the trunk because the thing has to be slammed to shut it and this demo/loaner one you barely let it go and it shuts under it's own weight.  I'll definitely take a pic of it all cleaned up and ready when we get it back.

Volt in the Shop Status

I meant to post something Friday but just a crazy busy weekend.  The status as of last week is that the local service department spent time on the phone with the Volt engineers trying to determine what the problem is.  By Thursday they had determined that a Volt Engineer would be needed onsite at the local dealership.  Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's something anyway.
So far the loaner demo traveling billboard white volt has been doing just fine, I don't think we've used any gas in the last week, we actually squeezed nearly 46 battery only miles out of it on Wednesday when we had an offsite meeting and that was with tires slightly under-inflated.
Whether ours is in the shop or not we still like the volt and we understand that with new technology there come new problems, we just hope we don't have to start calling ours a "yellow sour fruit".
Hopefully I'll have better news about our sporty red one sometime this week.

In the shop

Now that vacation is over we dropped the volt off at the dealer to have the check engine light checked out.  As mentioned we had the check engine light come on after driving for about an hour on gas.  The light stayed on for two days and Sunday went off.  Monday on the way home it came back on after an hour of driving on gas again...kind of see a trend starting here.  We dropped it off at the dealer after getting back in town for it to be looked at and have some "voluntary updates" (aka recalls) done.  The service manager who is great worked out providing one of thier demo volts for us to drive for the week.  No word yet on what's going on with it.
As for the latest stats, the vacation basically killed our stats, but we still saved a ton on gas, average for the trip was 41 mpg because we couldn't charge at all over our 700+ mile trip, the following is from the trip meter that I reset right before we left.

Our overall stats are 1645 miles, 19.4 gallons used, and 84.8 mpg.  I still think these are great stats and after a few weeks of all battery driving I'm sure we'll get it back up over the 100 mpg that I'd like to maintain.

I'll post again soon hopefully with a fully repaired volt.

Check engine light update.

After 3 hours at the service dept they said its some kind of electrical charging error code, but don't really know what to do o fix it without digging into the system.  So they said we "should" be good to drive it and just need to take it to our local dealer when we get home, well probably end up driving a loaner next week.  Hopefully our next post won't be from the side of the road in SC somewhere....

Check engine light!

Well, unfortunately we only made it about 100 miles into our first long trip and the check engine light came on, fortunately we were about 20 miles from a chevy dealer in Florence SC so we're now hanging in the service waiting room...I'll definitely be adding the final details to our "issues log"....to be continued.....

Latest Stats...possibly the best for a while.

We've had the volt for nearly 3 weeks and now we're about to take it on a 320 mile drive tomorrow, so obviously we'll be burning through some fossil fuels.  I wanted to post our latest stats before they go downhill after the weekend. Currently 933 miles and only 2.1 gallons of gas have been used which is more than we expected, the electricity we've used I don't have a total from my kilowatt unit, but the volt stats rate it about about $36 of electricity used, although I've been able to charge on some public charge stations, at the dealer having work done, etc. so really I've spent probably less than $30 on electricity so far....getting a little "mathy" here, but that's equivalent to about 8 gallons of gas in cost, so we went for 933 miles for the cost of 10 gallons of gas without actually having to burn 8 of those gallons...make sense?  Anyway, the picture speaks for itself, the next post after our trip will probably have a lot more gallons of gas and bring our stats down considerably, so we'll have to make sure we get a lot of battery only miles in when we get back into town!  Hope everyone has a great Easter Weekend!

Current Issues

Just wanted to list a few notes about items we've encountered so far, some issues, some just preference items for future versions of the volt, other are just heads up on options when purchasing, basically a few items for the readers of this blog to be aware of:

RemoteLink:  this is the SmartPhone App that allows you to check charge status, remotely lock/unlock etc., all those functions work fine, the Alerts are apparently having issues.  I had to call tech support, they've been working on it for about 2 weeks now and just last night got the Reminder to Plug In working, we're still waiting to get the alerts for Charge Complete and Charge interrupted.  So still more to come on that one.

MyLink:  not really an issue other than we were mis-led by supplied literature with the car to think that we had it.  MyLink is the in car ability to stream music and control apps on your smartphone through the in dash controls, it also has much better voice control over the standard bluetooth ones.  I'm currently requesting information from GM about why we got the literature but not the feature.  bottom line make sure the MyLink option ($100) is listed on the Window Sticker and validate it's on the head unit before you purchase.

Front License plate:  Don't get this option, apparently it doesn't remove cleanly without leaving holes in the front bumper, I now have in hand some plastic plugs which I'll be attempting to paint with very expensive paint from GM to see if I can hide the remaining holes....I'll post my attempt at bodywork later.

Air compressor:  wow, I feel kind of stupid on this one but my excuse is I didn't want to break it.  Since the car doesn't have a spare they include a tire sealant and air compressor to fill a punctured tire.  I wanted to test it before going out of town for the first time, I pulled it out and the switch to go from tire sealant to just air compressor wouldn't turn like the manual said, so pushed down on it but it wouldn't turn....so I took it to the dealer (and had front licence plate removed) and they showed how you have to push down real hard on the switch to get it to turn....so I D 10 T on my part for that one (but I do know how to change a tire if there were spare one ;-)

Dash Controls:  lots and lots of buttons, lots of buttons, there are button galore, you can actually get lost in the buttons, did I mention there are lots of buttons?  I'd say some simplification could be used and some streamlining of the buttons.  We know the main screens we like to use but it's difficult to get from some of them, we like the Energy Usage screen but it difficult to get from it to the Audio Source screen, there's a Source button but don't be fooled, pressing it will change the source, if you just want to see what song is playing you have to hit the home button, then pick "now playing" on the screen, so there's no single button way of getting there.

Trunk and doors:  especially the trunk, you have to slam them to get them shut.  The trunk is actually annoyingly hard to shut, I may have to ask the service department to take a look at it to see if something can be adjusted.

Happier driving....

We noticed something after a few weeks of driving the volt, after getting to work or home we seem to be less stressed from the drive.  We are hanging out in the right lane and concentrating more on maximizing our battery range rather than trying to zig zag in and out of the idiots that plaque the roads.  Hopefully this will continue and not just be a fading side effect of a new car, I did find myself hypermiling in my truck today, we won't talk about that gas mileage that's for my other blog called "maximum gas minimum mileage" :)

Latest Stats

For the latest stats I think this picture speaks for itself, pretty easy to do the math on this one.

Dawn also got another achievement on voltstats.net yesterday for going 63 miles in 1 day on electricity, the battery capacity isn't that high she was just able to charge it between driving various places.

Tax Credit (edited)

I'm editing my post about Tax Credit, I'm waiting for some additional information from the CPA I use for tax questions, she's extremely busy right now so might be after the rush of the tax season.  Reason for editing is I don't want to steer someone in the wrong direction, I've been informed by others that there may be some conflicting info about how the 7500 federal tax credit works with refund vs. no refund etc...so more to come, I'll post the final tax credit/rebate info after I talk to my tax lady.

Confession of a Gas User....

My name is Brian, and I used 6/10s of a gallon of gas today.... I feel like I need to make a confession or join a support group of something after using barely over a 1/2 gallon of gas today!!!  We drove for more than 300 miles without using a drop of gas since getting the volt over a week ago, but today we had to go to a different work location, then to our regular office, back home, and then I had to drive to Lillington and we could only charge for about 1 hour on a slow 120v outlet, so I had to use some gas, we drove a total of 75+ miles today and used 0.66 gallons after depleting the battery.   As for the car running on gas engine it definitely switches from electric to gas with very little notice other than a little engine noise, the performance is still good and stable as when running on battery, it also switches back and forth from gas to battery as it regenerates the battery.

We're still on target for our personal goals of our weekly work commuting to be totally electric and the overall gas mileage to be better than 100 MPG for the life of the car, so we're still on target after 1 week (lol) even though I had to use a little gas.

What about the power bill?

I'm sure all the skeptics are saying "your electric bills going to be sky high, blah blah blah", while my electric bill will be higher it won't be sky high.  I dug out my Kill-a-watt meter the day after we got the volt.  I've been monitoring our usage for the past week, as of tonight we've used right at 50 kwh charging the volt, so lets do some math, if the current price with various taxes and other fees is about 12 cents per kilowatt hour, I think we've used a whopping $6 this week....oh no Mr Skeptic, $6 is going to break the bank, run for the hills, crush all the electrics!  We spent that in 1 day getting to work and back with our gas car.
So we saved some cash, but beyond all the cost savings think about all those gallons of gas that we didn't burn, the gallons we didn't have to pump into the tank, the gallons of gas a big oil truck didn't have to deliver while burning it's own fuel, the gallons of gas that had to be refined at some oil refinery, the gallons of gas that had to be transported most likely all the way from some foreign country that we had to export US dollars to to get.....instead we used US american made electricity in an american made Chevy Volt.
Guess what... we're still happy with our decision.

Week One

So we figured we'd reduce our gas consumption through a typical work week, we didn't realize that we'd make our first week without using any gas at all!  Since March 17th the day we got the car we've gone over 200 miles without using any gas.
A great place to see stats for other Volt owners (some nearly unrealistic) is at www.voltstats.net, our stats are at this link http://www.voltstats.net/Stats/Details/725
Currently we have just reached 300+ miles, total gas used is 2/5s of a gallon and that was before we bought the car.
We're still very happy with our decision to get the volt, it's one of those things you have to run the numbers on, test fit it for size, and if the shoe fits just get it and wear it, after one week we're still happy that we did, hopefully we'll still be saying the same thing years from now.
See the below stats from the console today:

As you can see, even Sara is getting into the PlugIn routine.

Running the numbers

We decided to do research to see if an EV would fit for us, we ran all kinds of numbers, cost cost cost, until we were blue in the face, it's very important to make sure you don't just focus on numbers, make sure the car fits your lifestyle.  For commuting to work, getting groceries, running across town for dinner on date night, short trips to visit family over a long weekend, the Volt just fit more than a pure EV.  We already decided that our annual trip to see Mickey Mouse we wouldn't squeeze into the Volt, our second car a Ford F150 (now called Big Gulp) fits more than enough for us to go on a week long trip or we could rent a larger car if necessary.  So all this we decided the numbers looked good, and since we drove the car for a week through work we were familiar with the size, we were really interested in talking to some dealers.  I tracked down the cars on the dealers lots that had the options we wanted and set out to talk to them about them.  After a few visits to the dealers we ended up back at Boulevard Chevrolet in Lillington.  Lee, Bruce, Clint and the entire team worked with us to get what we felt was a great deal on the terms that we had hoped to fit our scenarios...so as of Saturday March 17th we were driving home in a Red 2012 Chevy Volt!

Final Results on our Test Commute with the Company Volt

I'm impressed, my Chevy Volt test commute this week from Monday to Friday has forever changed my thinking about our dependency on foreign oil...I drove a total of 174.7 miles during my commute, due to depleting the battery only one time I used 0.3 gallons of gas, that's right, less than a third of a gallon.  That makes my gas mileage for the week 582 miles per gallon!  The one day that I depleted the battery I drove 42 miles on electric alone, I then drove another 12 miles and used about 0.3 gallons (it was actually slightly less but the system rounds up).  Even paying for the extra electricity to charge the car you're only talking about a few bucks to "fill it up", additionally having the gas engine, you can still drive to Disney if you want and still get around 40 to 50 miles per gallon.  The market still seems like it's in the early stages of these types of cars but with these kinds of stats it's very hard to overlook them.  We will definitely be running some numbers in the very near future.

Midweek Update on the Volt Test Commute

UPDATE:  as of day 3 I've been able to achieve more than 300 miles per gallons!!!  I've driven well over 100 miles so far and only used 3/10 gallon after the battery was depleted on my Tuesday afternoon commute, if only all cars could get even 100 mpg it would change our entire dependency on foreign oil.

It's Electric!!!

Progress Energy this week started a program that let's employees test commute with some of the plugin hybrid chevy volts and all electric Nissan leafs.  I was one of the first to sign up and I get to drive the chevy volt all week this week!  Day 1, trip from work to house was 14.5 miles and was all electric, didn't use a drop of gas and still had enough juice for about 20 more miles....very cool, at this rate it would slash our typical commuting gas expenses to pennies on the dollar.

Our short History of EVs

Back in 2009 when the Nissan Leaf was first being announced I actually decided to get on the waiting list for it, put a refundable deposit down and waited.  The more I heard about targeted areas and everything the less it sounded like we'd be able to get our hands on one even with the deposit.  We decide to cancel the reservation, then we were able to test drive one at a local test drive event....we were seriously thinking we should have kept the reservation!  We got over that quickly because we just didn't see replacing one of our cars with a limited range EV working out, so we heard about Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) or also know as Extended Range Electric Vehicles (EREV) which were not limited to range due to having a gas engine to power if the battery runs out.  Since the PHEVs were coming out in the next few years we figured we'd just shelf the subject