If you follow my blogs, you know that about three weeks ago I picked up a Chevy Volt. Randy Jackson at SunPoweredEVs has been trying to convince me to go all electric for nearly a year. On paper, the economics of buying a Volt looked too good to be true so I stopped in at Simpson Chevrolet in Garden Grove where I met Jason and Thomas. On paper the numbers were just too good to pass up. Keep in mind I have been driving a 2003 Ford F-150 Supercrew Lariat 4x4 that gets 14 MPG highway, city, off road, or in the snow, it doesn't care, it just gets 14 MPG period. It is the best truck I have ever owned, and still in perfect condition so I wasn't in the market for a new car.
Looking at any small car looks great economically when you spend $600 a month on gas at 14 MPG. Electric cars have been pushing the envelope of economics to the point that some people made fun of Elon Musk for "Teslanomics". Mr. Musk included time at the gas pump. Personally spending time to pump $600 worth of gas each month at the pumps, I can't agree more, Musk nailed it my time is worth money.
Plugging in at home is so easy. If Jerry Brown didn't already have a $4.5 Billion surplus to hide from the taxpayers, I am sure he would be coming after my electrical connection to tax it. It really is oddly cool to pull up to my house, plug in and walk inside knowing I'll have a full charge in the morning.
Needless to say after meeting Jason and Thomas, I drove a Topaz Blue Volt home.
There are now at least four Volts, three Tesla Model Ss and six Leafs in my neighborhood that I know of. Two houses with Volts have solar that I can see. Clearly I am not the only one who likes skipping the pump.
I get the same three questions from everyone I meet when driving the car or when they find out I have it. They always ask "Is the Volt all that?" The simple answer is a resounding "YES". Would I buy another one? Maybe. If you have one Volt, clearly the second car should be a Leaf or a Tesla, but that is just my opinion, and that is also my plan after the solar panels go on the roof. With any luck Nissan or Tesla will send me one to test and write about.
The next question they ask is simply "Why?". The answer is very simple. The Volt fully charges itself every night. Even though it can't go as far as the Leaf or Tesla on a charge, three days a week I can go all day on the 42 miles I get out of each charge. One day a week I plug in at my destination and get enough of a charge to make it back. Once a week or every other week I am not near a charger and need to use a little gas. That will explain the three gallons listed below.
When I do use gasoline, Chevy says the Volt gets 38MPG when your batteries run out. The Volt is very well built, has nice seats and has a great technology package. The voice control in the Volt isn't quite as easy to talk to as the Ford, but it has OnStar if you really get stuck. The XM radio smokes the system in my wife's Mercedes ML CDI which was very surprising.
I don't know how Bose did it, but the XM is tolerable. FM still sounds better than XM, but I might actually pay for the XM in the Volt. I wouldn't pay for it in the Benz because the sound is quality is so bad. When listening to FM or iPod music the Harmon in the Benz Rocks, and the Bose is 95% as good in the Chevy at half the price. Overall the car is very well built, quiet and very comfortable to drive.
The final question is, "Ok how much gas and electricity do you really use?" Until today I didn't have a good answer. I hadn't seen an electric bill, and how do you describe using one gallon of gas in a week, two gallons in two weeks or three gallons in three weeks instead of $150 of gas each week?
Today I have an answer that is accurate enough to share. I must say though that we are on "Tier One" electric rates because I have an all LED house with the latest low energy use appliances, gas water heater, gas furnace, gas dryer. If you are a "Tier 4" or "Tier 5" electric customer, your numbers will be closer to break even on electric v. gasoline costs. If you are "Tier 4" or higher now, you should have solar, so get to it.
In my case moving from 14 MPG to 38 MPG would be justification enough to get a new car. That reduces my driving costs 73% in gas alone. Learning from the training at the Chevy dealer to use the "hold mode" when cruising the freeways when I don't expect to be able to use battery only for the day and "L" mode when on city streets, I am running "100% efficiency" according the the little video game built into the Volt.
Here is the scoop as of tonight:
589 miles driven, about an equal mix of highway cruising at 65-70, stop and go highway in LA traffic and surface streets aka "city" driving.
3.0 Gallons used for 120 miles, $12.00 for 120 miles = 10 miles per dollar or 40 MPG, beating the EPA estimated 38 MPG by the way.
$34 in electricity for 469 miles = 13.8 miles per dollar (I don't have a way to calculate MPGe so I won't fake it.)
If electricity is compared to gas on a straight cost basis, not energy content basis, I am getting 55.2 MPG with electricity on a dollar for dollar basis. This is about 28% more cost effective than gasoline. Saving 28% and plugging in at home is a deal and a time saver if you ask me.
My wife and I are very happy with the new Chevy Volt and are now in the process of getting bids on a new roof to go solar and reduce our cost per charge even further, and get ready for a pure electric car.
Got a Volt? What are your REAL numbers? Got a TESLA or LEAF? Let me know how much you spend to charge them and how far you really go.
Even without "Teslanomics" accounting for my time at the pump, the Volt is still basically free when compared to driving my old F-150. Think about what you are driving, is now the time to switch to electric?
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Thank you for your insights.