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