Does Your Volt Have Bugs? Mine Does...

Overall my Chevy Volt has been great for the last five and a half months, but is isn't perfect by any means.  This week has been a challenge, in fact the last three weeks have really been odd.

In previous posts, I talked about the issues with valet parking and auto charging when the alarm is set and the auto lock feature is on.   If you valet and autolock the car, they can't even get to the charger after the key is hung in the key rack.  

That is just one annoyance.  We also discovered that if you send an address to turn by turn, cancel before it loads and try and send it to the  "in dash Nav" it locks up the whole system.  I figured out how to fix it, but I am not giving that secret away.  Chevrolet says this bug will be fixed next time it is at the dealer for a software update.  Why can't the Volt by like my iPhone and update while I am asleep?

Speaking of the iPhone, upgrading to iOS 7 changed how the Volt and the iPhone get along.  The feature that allowed me to play music over bluetooth no longer works.  Pluggin in with a USB cable which didn't work before, now works brilliantly but my phone won't work on handsfree when the iPod mode is active via USB. What didn't work works and what did work doesn't.  

Another interesting issue that has popped up is related to the clock.  For whatever reason it can't keep time.  Each week it is almost a full minute off.  Why doesn't a GPS equipped car use satellite time?

This leads right to the next question.  How come a GPS equipped car can't tell if I am plugged in at home on an electric schedule or away and commercial chargers?  I shouldn't have to tell the car I am at home so it should charge between 12 and 6 or I am at a parking garage and paying to charge so it should charge now should I?  I paid for 4 hours at a blink charger only to find out I left the car in delay mode and didn't charge it at all.  $4.00 down the drain.  I don't know who was being more stupid, me or the car.

The single most annoying system in the Volt so far is the "anti collision" system.  There is a button on the steering wheel to turn it on or off.  I think it is a placebo.  With the system off, when you exit the freeway, it sees that you aren't following the lines and starts yelling at you.  Once on the offramp and in between the lines again it is fine.  Even with the system off, it will turn off the cruise control automatically.  While this doesn't sound like much, I have learned that I can get three to five more miles out of the battery in "L" instead of "D".  The problem is when the cruise control turns off and you are in "L" you are already in the first level of regenerative breaking.

On the highway, the guy behind catches up awfully quick for no reason.

Cruising on the freeway about once every 15 miles the car will "see" a potential collision and turn off the cruise control.   Most of the time I have no idea what it "sees".  Tonight I was in the second lane, with no cars on either side or in front of me for at least a quarter mile, and it beeped and flashed and turned off the cruise control as if I was about to hit another car.  All I can figure was fog on the camera lens as I got closer to the beach?

I can't imagine what the "big brothers" at Progressive are seeing if they get the data from a car like mine.  They must think Volt Drivers are high risk idiots trying to hit another car every 15 miles or so.  Thankfully I have USAA, and they don't try to raise my rates based on phantoms that the car thinks I am going to hit.

The last funny bug this week has to do with the lights.  The car has a new habit of going into night mode when I go through tunnels and not going back to day mode for well over a minute when we get back into the sunshine.  More than once I couldn't see a turn on the NAV screen because it was still dimmed into the night mode.  Sadly I am a GPS cripple, which means I can't find my way home from the corner without my magenta line and the checkered flag on the screen.  I turned the voice off because it interrupted my music.

Another funny bug, the tire pressure monitor will come on with a different tire each time I add air.  It will show that they all have 31 psi for example but one will be yellow.  Even when they warm up and all show 33 or 35 PSI it stays Yellow.  When I pump up to 36 they all turn green.  Within a week, usually in the morning, one will be yellow.  Over the last four weeks, each tire has turned yellow at least once.

I wonder if the guys at GM are laughing their butts off, or think I don't care for my car and am trying to hit everything in site?

So how is your Volt doing?  Don't worry Chevrolet, we still want another one.  Slate Grey if you have a spare sitting around.

So After 5000 Miles Is The Chevy Volt Still Cool?

Today I cross the 5 month mark living with my Chevy Volt.  It also crossed the 5000 Mile mark, so how is it doing?

My wife and I don't argue about it quite as much.  She could have driven it today and didn't, but that was more of a logistics problem.  I made the mistake of putting the big Bosch Wall Charger on the same wall where she parks her car.  I effectively made our garage and drive way only one car wide.

If it wasn't so hard to move the wire to the other side, I would move the charger.  Live and learn.

So how much gas have I used?  22 Gallons total, and I stopped paying for the crazy expensive Blink chargers too.  The best part was changing my home electric plan and programming the car to self charge when power is really really cheap.

So what other bugs and tricks have I learned?  To begin with I figured out that when I can't make it round trip on electricity alone to use the generator only at highway speeds.  This has kept my gasoline mileage at 50.2 MPG according to the trip computer.  This is way better than the 38 MPG on the sticker, and I am not hypermileing or putting along at 50 on the freeway either.  This is 50 MPG at California Highway speeds.

The other two bugs are the "auto lock", which I like but when I valet the car they can't charge it because it locks and the keys are put away.  So I guess this isn't a bug, just something to get used too.  The other thing is the "auto charge time".  Somehow the GPS should tell the car it is home.

When I valet the car and press "charge now", it only works until the valet moves the car and then it goes into delay charge mode again.  I have to reprogram the car every time I go to the airport.

So far those are the only bugs, the Chevy Volt is still fun to drive, and I really like the money in my wallet that isn't going for gas.  I know the state is going to find a way to get it someday, but for now.  I'll take it.

Living With The Chevy Volt - Is There Still Life After 4000 Miles

Four months into life with my Chevy Volt, and I am still learning about the Volt in every way.  Learning about the XM radio, the best ways to charge, and wondering why they didn’t put nitrogen in the tires.  

The biggest change this month is the addition of my home 240V charger.  This addition has highlighted a flaw in the Onstar - Volt notification system.

 Instead of the Volt Charger that offered a $200 discount from GM, I chose to upgrade and get a Bosch 30 Amp charger in case we wanted to get a battery only car like the Honda Fit.  I also am hoping when my lease is up in three years that the new Volt might need more charging power available than the 15 AMP charger GM was offering through Bosch and have even more electric range.  I bought it directly through Bosch for $500 less than the electrician wanted.  

The faster charging time really comes in handy, and I am using even less gas because of it.  Now my average is over 224 miles for each gallon of gas used.  174 of those are pure electric and the remaining 50 miles are on gas.  Yes, I am really getting 50 MPG on gas even though GM and the EPA say it only gets 38.  

The trick is to manually manage the drive modes, which I understand are new to the 2013 Volt.   When I know I can’t make an entire trip on electricity, or I know the destination charging fees are higher than the cost of using gas, I’ll run the gas on the highway as soon as I hit 40MPH until I’ve run gas for the number of miles that I was going to be short on battery range.  I am sure the “hypermilers” are getting even better milage with their Volts than I am.

As a side note, my calculations figure that $1.00 per hour of commercial electric charging is about the same as $4.25 per gallon of gas.  I am a tree hugger, but a thrifty one, so I will use whichever energy source costs less.  Blink has this figured out, since they charge members $1.00 per charging hour everywhere.  The trouble with Blink is if you can’t get back to unplug, the meter keeps running even though you don’t use any electricity.  

When I pull into Chargers like Seal Beach that are $1.00 per KWH which equals $3.37 per charging hour, I don’t charge.  Obviously when I find free charging like South Coast Plaza Offers, I jump in.  Some free places though are so popular like the two chargers at Bella Terra, I quit trying.  

The little glitch where the car stopped charging lasted two days is fixed. No one knows why, but we did “reboot” the car and it is back to it’s old self.

I also changed my home electric plan so I get really really cheap rates from midnight to 6 am.  With the 120V portable charger, it takes over eight hours to charge so that plan was pretty useless.  Now that the car knows to start charging at midnight, and is done between 3 AM and 4 AM every day, it is even easier on my wallet.  This is also where the car is a bit annoying.  It sends me a text and an email that it has "stopped charging due to an interruption".  Well duh!  I told it not to charge until midnight.  It still does it every time I plug in.

So the glitch here is you have to temporarily override the charging schedule when you plug in at a commercial charger.  I found out the hard way that Blink will still charge you $3.00 if you are plugged in for three hours even if you aren’t charging because you left it in “delay charge” mode.  

I dropped the XM traffic subscription.  More than once a freeway would be closed late at night and the XM would show it as the fastest route home.  Even funnier, my wife beat me home a couple of times just sitting in traffic while I was detouring all over town taking the “faster” route.  Now I leave the GPS route planning in Eco mode and it works perfectly.

The only other place I would change the programming logic is in the charger port alarm.  If the car is fully charged and it is plugged in to 240V, the alarm shouldn't go off.  The next person should be able to unplug your car and charge.   As far as I can tell the only options are alarm on and alarm off.  When the 110V is plugged in, I can see the charger alarm almost making sense, but does anyone really think that will stop somebody from taking your charger?  I etched my license plate into the charger and still don't think that will do anything to deter a determined thief.

So far, the Chevy Volt is still fun to drive and my wife is still taking it every chance she gets.  The magic hasn’t worn off yet, I’ll let you know where we are at five months and 5000 miles.

240V 30A Power Max

240V 15A Voltec Charger

4000 miles and My Chevy Volt Goes Stupid, Or at Least It Made Me Look Stupid

So here we are at month four in my life with my Chevy Volt Plug in car.  I was on track to set a record month of zero gas usage.  I had found electric charging everywhere I went for the month, and had hoped to post a picture of the dash reading 1000 miles 0.0 gal gas.  No Dice.

It all began when I attempted to outsmart myself by installing a Level 2 240v charger.  The faster charge rate of the Level 2 240v PEV charger allowed me to switch my electric plan to a plan with really cheap night rates for charging the car.  Just .09 per KWH.  Well below my lowest "Tier 1" rate on the old plan.

After programming the car with the rates and what time I depart my house, I put the car to bed and sure enough the next morning it was charged and ready to go.  The display said it started at 12:00 am and was complete at 3:48.  Charging at these hours cuts my charge cost in half at home.  So far it was a great start.

Then like many days, I headed off to Wally Park at LAX.  Normally the Valet's do a great job of parking the car, and using the portable charger in the car to plug it in.  When I return the car is charged for the trip home, and I don't feel bad paying the extra money to valet park.  When I got back this time,  the car had a range of 8 miles.  Exactly what it had when I dropped it off.  The Valet's insisted they had it plugged in.

Arriving in my garage after getting 44 mpg on the way home using gas, I realized that the valet didn't know to change the mode from delay charge to instant charge.  I felt pretty stupid for arguing with them about the car not charging.

Note to you Chevy Volt software guys-

Please add a line of code - If Location not equal "HOME", then Charge Instantly "YES".

This should be a no brainer, but I guess they didn't plan on me driving 30-40 miles each way.

The next day, I don't know what happened, no body does, not the Volt people, not OnStar, and maybe not even the Volt itself.  I got home plugged it in and the little lights started blinking green, indicating that it was plugged in and not charging.  This is what I expected since it was programmed to delay charge at 12:00 am.

Much to my surprise when I jumped in at 9:00 am, the car was not charged.  It still had a range of zero since I had driven home from LAX on the gas generator.  At midnight for whatever reason it didn't charge.

Last night I didn't quite trust it, so I went ahead and manually started it charging at 10:30 pm.  Tonight I will try and let it charge on it's own again since I am not going anywhere on Tuesday that I am aware of.

I'll let you know how it goes.  For now I am pulling the Volt out of its third place position on my list of my favorite cars for making me look stupid and being stupid all in the same week.

Have You Ordered Your Free Car?

Well Have You?  Did you know you could get a free car?  I did.

Would you like to know how?

Like many things, the answer is simple, but not easy.  

Currently auto companies are under legal mandates to sell a number of zero emissions cars.  Electric and Natural Gas are the two energy sources that fit this bill in California.  There is also a mandate on Electric car sales.

Tesla, as a 100% electric car manufacturer, isn't making money selling cars, rather they are about to announce a profit because they sell electric car credits to manufacturers who don't yet make electric cars or who don't sell enough on their own.  

So how does this help you get a free car?

Chevy needs to sell Volts.  Honda needs to sell electric Fits, and Nissan needs to sell the Leaf.  For whatever reason people aren't buying so rebates are flowing.

With the rebates you can lease a base model of any of these cars for $0 down and $299 a month for 36 months.  That is a total of $10,764 to drive the car for three years.  If you have the income, Uncle Sam will give you a $7500 tax credit.  That leaves $3264 out of your pocket over 36 months.  The state of California will rebate $1500, and you can get another $1500 to add a charger to your house.  Now you are down to $264 plus the charger.  

Honda is now including the charger, and the dealer kicked back the $264 to make the deal work when I picked up my Volt.  

There you have it, a car for three years that doesn't cost me anything.

It gets better.  Charging at home the Volt runs about $2.00 for 40 miles, half the price of gasoline if you get the 38-40 mpg most are getting when they run gas.  My record is 60 mpg on gas, and my monthly savings on "energy", that is my new combined gas and electric bill are $300 a month less than they were before I got the Volt.

My Volt is money in my pocket.  What are you driving?

Follow up note: You have to be careful when you lease a Volt, the dealer can take the $7500 Federal Tax credit and build it into the lease without telling you.  When you lease a car, the leasing agency is the first owner and normally gets the tax credit.  Electric Cars can have the Tax credit assigned in certain circumstances.  So watch your paperwork and talk to your tax advisor.

The Real Cost of A Chevy Volt - 1000 Miles Completed

A month ago almost to the day I brought home my Chevy Volt.  I have a bit of an issue because I look at electric cars as an economic issue, and my friend Randy Jackson of sunpoweredevs.com looks at them as a strategy and freedom issue.  I really want us both to be right.  I find it ironic that it took a GM car to get me to drive an electric car when it was Cadillac that killed the electric car in the late 1920's.

Up until the 1920's you had to hand crank your gasoline car to start it.  Then Cadillac invented the electric starter and the gasoline powered car quickly surpassed the electric car in sales.  People go for cheap and easy.  Batteries back then weren't cheap and they weren't easy because of the limited range.

I believe that most consumers are going to go for the solution that provides the most bang for the buck as we say.  Wal-Mart proves it every day.  We want more for less, environment, made in China, it really doesn't matter and the sales of cheap imported products at Wal-Mart and Target prove it.

For me, acquiring the Chevy Volt was strictly economic.  I was looking for a new car and wanted the most bang for my buck period.  On paper, the Chevy Volt looked like a bargain.   After spending $1800 to put a new rear end in my F-150, and spending an average of $489 per month on fuel for it.  The first 1000 miles each month was costing me nearly $300 each month in gas.  The lease on the Volt is $399 per month.  With the tax credits and rebates, the Volt is essentially free, as would be a Nissan Leaf.

Admittedly, the Ford Fusion energi is a far better looking car and the sticker price is about the same as the Volt.  The problem is that the Ford only goes 16 miles on a charge before using gas.  The Volt can travel about 44 the way I drive it. My record is 48.

Since the Fusion Energi has smaller batteries than the Volt, the rebates and tax incentives are lower making the Fusion more expensive until those rebates and incentives expire.  For whatever reason, the Fusion lease programs carried a much lower residual value adding $150 or more to the lease rates with the same amount of money up front.

So I have a Volt.

As of yesterday, I have driven 1000 miles in the Volt.  Doing that I used $30 of electricity at home and $5.00 of electricity from Charging stations along with 5.3 gallons of gas according to the computer.  I also have learned about a big frustration with electric car charging.

The city of Seal Beach for charges $3.37 per kWh to charge your car. A Volt gains about 10 miles for each hour of charge, and according to the City of Seal Beach charger, I used 1 kWh in 20 minutes of charging.  That is $3.37 for 20 minutes of parking and 3.3 miles of range added to the car.  If it isn't obvious, that is crazy expensive.

Here is the rub.  The Volt gets about 10 miles for each hour of charging on a level two charger.  According to the best information I have it charges at a rate of 3 kWh on a 240V level two charger.  The simple math at home is .28 x 3 = .75 for 10 miles.  Gas at $4.00 per Gallon and 40 MPG that I am actually getting is $1.00 for 10 miles.  Easily 25% more cost effective to use electricity at home.   At a ChargePoint station charging .25 per kWh it is even cheaper.

South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa is the clear winner, I found a nice covered charging slot that allowed two hours of FREE charging.  Guess where I spent $1100 on a new Mac Mini?  Thank you South Coast Plaza for getting it.  Free parking and Free charging.  I don't think electric cars should get free electricity everywhere, but how nice is it to add a few solar panels and get customers to spend money in your center by giving away $1.50 in electricity?

To put this in perspective, assuming straight rates and Level two charging at 3 kWh, parking and charging in Seal Beach is $10.11 per hour.  The space right next to the charger is free.  Charging at home on Tier 3 rates is $.84 per hour.  The City of Seal Beach is asking for $9.37 in profit every hour!

The Grove in Los Angeles has some pretty pricey parking too, and charging there as a Blink member is $1.00 per hour.  With validation, I get two hours of charging and parking for $2.00.  In Seal Beach that would be $20.22 while my gasoline powered friends parked right next to me would be parking for free.  Maybe there should be a way to "validate" some electric charging when the people really spend money.

If the city of Seal Beach wants the sales tax from my business, they are not encouraging me to stay long at $10.11 per hour for charging are they?

At $4.00 per gallon and 40 miles per gallon, charging at $1.00 per hour is about the same cost economically speaking since I get about 10 miles of range per hour of charging.  At the normal retail level, electric and gas cost me about the same.  When you include the annual fee for Blink, it is actually more expensive slightly.  At some point electric rates have to go down because states are going to tax electric cars for the fuel tax they aren't paying.

It is all about balance, if electricity costs more, people will stop buying electric cars plain and simple.

This economic problem has created another issue.  Electric cars that plug in and don't actually charge.  I noticed that two of the there electric chargers in Seal Beach were occupied by other cars, and when I read the charger they were not actually charging.  I was the only guy dumb enough to pay $3.37 per kWh I guess.

I would think that cities, attempting to encourage use of clean electric vehicles would charge .20 or .30 per kWh, and $1.00 per hour of charging at most like the Grove and Carl's Jr. locations do.  Why is Seal Beach charging so much to plug in?  Don't they want my business and tax money?

Speaking of Carl's Jr., I stopped in for lunch, plugged in and walked over to the Citadel to get a pair of Jeans.  The Citidel hasn't installed any chargers yet, free or otherwise.  Fortunately, the Carl's Jr. Manager was very nice and just asked that I don't stay for more than 2 hours even though the other two cars in the Blink charger spaces were not electric at all.

So far I have found two Carl's Jr. locations on my way home that have Blink Chargers.

Economically speaking, I won't be plugging in at a City of Seal Beach location until they get reasonable with the rates.  Gasoline is way cheaper and parking isn't that big of a deal on weekdays.  If the City Council wants to say the chargers failed, they are doing the right things to make that happen.

South Coast Plaza on the other hand will keep getting my business as long as there are free electric spaces even if only for two hours at a time.  Talk about getting it.

At the end of the day, after 1000 miles, I haven't filled the tank so I have to trust the computer in the Volt when it says I have used just over 5 gallons of gasoline, $5.00 in paid electric charging and two hours FREE at South Coast Plaza and my electric bill that went up $30.  Round up and call it $60 for 1000 miles v. $289 for 1000 miles in my F-150 and the Volt is clearly the economic winner.  Just in case you think the F-150 isn't a fair comparison, I also have a Mercedes SL that also gets 14 mpg in the real world.  I just don't drive it enough, And the Volt is saving a few miles off of that car too.

And yes, the Volt is fun to drive, has a great stereo, and navigation that is better than the SL or my wife's ML.  My favorite feature is sending an address from my phone to the car so I don't type it in at all.  The voice command part stinks.  Ford is the hands down winner here.

The real monthly cost of driving a Volt 1000 miles is $399 for the lease, and $60 for the gas.   The F-150 or the SL would be $289 for gas alone.  Is the Volt a winner?  Yes.  Is electricity the winner?  Yes, that is as long as you don't charge up in Seal Beach.

The Volt at the Airport - No Chargers!

Chevy, We Have a Problem - Retail Electricity is EXPENSIVE

Yesterday I wrote about my experience to date with my new Chevy Volt.  One of the reasons we selected a Volt was the ability to use gas when a charger wasn't around or we didn't have time to charge the car.  I argued that a Leaf could make 90% of our trips in one charge.  The Tesla is just a smidge out of our budget now since we need a new roof and want to add solar at the same time.

My wife won the argument with this simple rebuttal, she said "Ok, so I get finished at 11 pm at Fox Studios and then have to go find a charger because for some reason I am four miles short of the battery needed to make it home.  Do you want me to find a charger at midnight and stand next to the car for 45 minutes?"

We got a Volt.

In my post yesterday, I didn't really explain to much about the three gallons of gas I used so far.  The reality is I only needed to use one of them.  I could have charged up at Blink or chargepoint quite easily instead of using the other two gallons.  So why didn't I just plug in?

The answer is in my wallet and is simple economics.  At my house I pay .13 or .16 per kWh.  At A chargepoint station after paying $25 per year membership, I can charge for Free, $1.00 per hour or .25 kWh.  Each station is different and you have to look at an app to see which each station does.  Some chargepoint stations are only 120V 12A also.

The Blink stations I have seen are all $2.00 per hour for non members and $1.00 for members.

Since I used dollars per mile yesterday, I will use that method today.  Using gas, I am getting 10 miles per dollar and electricity at home I get 13.8 miles per dollar.  If I hit tier 4 at .32 per kWh, I might be at exactly break even.  For now the savings is well worth plugging in.  When I go solar my savings should be greater.

At a public Blink or Chargepoint station using the better 220V 30A plug, the Volt is limited in its charging capacity.  I got 8 Miles added after an hour, so how does that work out in miles per dollar?

8 miles for $2.00 for non members is only 4 miles per dollar, making gas 60% more cost effective.
8 miles for $1.00 for members is 8 miles per dollar, making gas 20% more cost effective
4 miles for $1.00 for members on a 120V 12A station makes gas 60% more cost effective.
4 kWh for $1.00 for members at Chargepoint was nearly 14 miles on my range meter,  making electricity almost 30% more cost effective than gas.  This is very close to the dollars spent at home. and the .25 per kWh chargers are the ones I look for.

So as a member for $1.00 you might get 4 miles, you might get 8 miles or you might get 14 miles with a Volt.  For the $30 per year at Blink and $25 per year for Chargepoint, it is more cost effective to drive on gas then it is to pay for electricity.

Now, that said, I did find several FREE Chargepoint Chargers for members and even a few at civic locations for anyone. WallyPark at LAX is offering FREE charging if you valet park. That is just enough to get me to Valet.  If WallyPark LAX starts charging for plugging in, then I'll go back to self park and use gasoline to get home.

Unless I find free Blink chargers anywhere, I am not sure I will pay the $30.00 for Blink next year.

Thankfully several studios my wife and I work at allow free charging as well.  For now Disneyland is looking the other way if you find a wall plug in the Mickey and Friends garage and plug in.  I only live 10 miles away so if I stay at least two hours, I can top off.  Looking at my credit card bill this arrangement is definitely in Disney's favor.

Like most electric car owners I have already met and talked too, I don't think I should get a free ride or free electricity.  Plugging in and charging up just needs to be cost effective to keep the trend growing.  Since a Leaf and a Tesla have faster charging capability, hourly rates might be more effective for them.  Volts tend to charge a little slower, making the free or .25 per kWh stations the only way to save money.

Popular Mechanics magazine stated that a Leaf at .38 per kWh was only .026 per mile in energy costs.  I don't know how that works out, but they claim it does.  This means a Leaf charges at a rate to get 38 miles of range added in an hour while the Volt is only getting 8?  Is the Volt charger that slow, or did I get bad charging stations?

Any Leaf or Tesla Owners want to pipe in on how much range you get with a 1 hour charge at a level 2 station.  For that matter any Volt drivers getting more than 8 miles per hour when plugged in at a public station?

Week Three Driving a Chevy Volt In The Real World

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?

Can A Car Change Your Life?

Many of us need a car to get to work or school, and to get places on the weekends to go play, but is a car really that important to our lives and more importantly to our success?  Isn't a new car just a status symbol to tell other people that you got it because you can?  

After reading The Millionaire Next Door, I have been quite content to drive an F-150.  I am on my second one and have logged over 200,000 worry free miles between the two of them.

The human mind is a funny thing.  Henry Ford is reported to have said "It doesn't matter if you think you can or you can't, either way you are right."  

One of the training methods employed by the military is to take everything from you as a civilian, dress you in clothes that don't fit and tell you that you are garbage.  After a couple of days of this and seeing yourself in the mirror, you start to believe that you are garbage.  It worked very well with me since I didn't even have a high school diploma.

Over time you get in better shape, get your uniforms tailored to fit, and you begin to make it through challenges you were failing just weeks before.  Your self image improves quickly, building your self esteem.  The more you succeed, the more you feel like you can do.  The military depends on this phenomenon to take regular people and create heroes every day.  

When I was going to college, I worked at Macy's in mens suits.  As a broke college kid and enlisted military member, $300 for a sport coat was crazy big money.  Because I felt it was too expensive, I couldn't sell the coats either.  I was wearing a Montgomery Wards polyester coat that I paid $19 for on sale.  Finally my boss set aside a very nice sport coat, and waited until it hit the clearance rack and then he made me buy it.  I felt different.  My sales jumped off the charts. 

That was then, this is now, I know how all of this mind stuff works so it won't work on me.

Last week I picked up a 2013 Chevy Volt.  Initially I got the car because it made great economic sense given my work life and travel requirements.  Chevy was offering a lease deal that was about half of what I was spending in fuel for my F-150.  In a pure monthly cash flow sense the Volt wouldn't cost me a penny.  In fact it might save me money by cutting my overall monthly expenses.  

I did get a little specific with the color and options since I do spend a lot of time in my car.  If you think about it, a 3 year 36000 mile lease says I will be in that car for 36000 miles if I use every mile they give me, and you can bet I plan on it.  Even on a good day in SoCal, if I average 60 miles per hour, that is 600 hours in that seat and I bet the reality will be closer to 1800 or maybe 2400 hours with LA traffic.

I started thinking about the car like a mattress.  Realizing how much time I would be in it, I decided I wouldn't go for the cheap seats.  I ended up getting the fully loaded Chevy Volt to get the good seats.  Lucky for me, it was the last day of the month so the dealer made a great offer, giving me a discount that covered all the extras.  I got the newspaper deal and the loaded car. 

Anyone who has ever bought a new car knows that it isn't as easy as sign here, and go away with your new car.  It took several hours for the bank approvals and all the paperwork to get finished.  Driving home, I was glad the leasing process was over, it was nearly 10 at night and I had to been up since 4 am and yet I felt good driving home.  

My wife pointed out that the Volt is the first new car I have brought home for myself since 2003.  Hers is a 2008 and much nicer than my truck.  My truck was looking good for it's age but it has seen better days.   

From the time that I was 16, I got a different car almost every year.  Sometimes it was because I made a bad purchase decision and the car fell apart, other times because I found something I liked better.  In two cases, I totaled my cars and in one case somebody wanted my car more than me.  Some 30 cars had passed through my garage until 2003, and then for some reason I stopped buying cars.  I don't have kids, I don't know why, I just stopped getting new cars.

I have been driving the same F-150 with an occasional weekend outing in my old Mercedes SL since 2003.  Given the economy, I would think this is normal to keep cars this long, but kbb.com says the average ownership of a new car is at an all time high of 71 months.  I am clearly past that at 123 months for the F-150, so I guess it was time.

Is It OK To Enjoy an Economy Car?

After driving a four door F-150 for over 10 years, the Volt is a funny little electric car with a range extending gasoline engine.  I don't know why it makes me smile.  It just does.  It isn't sexy like my 1966 Mercedes SL is, it won't carry my dogs or paddle board like my truck does, and so far I can only go 48 miles on a full charge of electricity and charging is painfully slow if I don't want to use gas, which I don't.  That is part of the challenge and maybe a little of the fun.  

The smile I had every time I drove my big F-150 in 2003 was now back as I unplugged the Volt in the morning and headed to work.  It was still there when I logged 46 miles on battery when the car started the morning with 38 miles on the range estimator.  The smile was still there when I got home and burned 1.1 gallons of gas driving the 48 miles back home.  Yes I know the Volt only gets 38mpg on gas, but I am just telling you what the car is telling me.

I bought the car for purely practical purposes, and yet I am enjoying it.  According to the other Volt owners I have already talked to, this part is normal.  One traded in a Mercedes C class, another a Chrysler 300, and another a Prius.  

In five days my Volt tells me I have driven 204 miles, and used just 1.4 gallons of gas.  Actually the ap on my iPhone that is talking to the car right now is giving me the information.  The car is in California and I am in Washington D.C.  It also says I still have enough battery to make it back home from the airport without plugging in.

There is something that makes me feel good about it.  I can't put my finger on it, I just know it is there.  Maybe just driving something new and shiny is improving my self image and bolstering my self esteem.    I sure hope my mind isn't that easy, but it really does look that way.

Much like my experience joining the military, already one good thing has lead to another.  My wife pointed out my wardrobe was about the same age as my truck and maybe it was time to upgrade from the three button suits since I have a new car, so I did.  We took the Chevy Volt to the local mens store and she found a salesman to gang up on me and bring my wardrobe up to date.  

One new Chevy Volt, four new suits, and in five days, already I have new work I didn't expect and have met some cool people I might not have met.  This is the kind of change I like - Positive Change.

Picking Up The Chevy Volt At Simpson Chevrolet