Living with a Chevy Volt

On May 12, 2018 I purchased my first plug-in hybrid. I plan to post what it is like to live with the Chevy Volt.

[myvolt-blog1]

1031 miles so far on my Volt and I have yet to add gas. I have used about 1/3 of the 9 gallon tank and have a range of 248 gas miles left. I am quite impressed with these numbers!

[myvolt-blog1]

I finally used some gas to see what mileage is like. I was at 48 mile when the lower right hit the 1 gallon mark. That is pure hybrid miles mixing battery and gas, while not lowering the charge level. It's been awhile since I have fully charged due to the slow 120v charger that came with the car. So I am definitely going to invest in a 240v charger since my garage has 240 in it. So 48 miles per gallon of mostly highway driving, some in rush hour traffic, isn't bad at all. I am not sure what the 199 MPG means on the left, but my guess is that is the total MPG for all of my driving, which is mostly in all electric mode.

[myvolt-blog1]

These are the stats after using up a full charge. Still no gas used after 2 weeks of ownership. Almost 70 miles on a single charge of mixed driving, highway, 2 days using air conditioning, and my usual lead foot style. I was using regen at all times. Looks pretty impressive so far.

[myvolt-blog1]

Traveling at higher speeds uses the battery a lot more than driving around town. For a longer highway trip I set the mode selection to "Hold". This saves the battery and uses the hybrid mode which is a combination of gas and electric engine use. Estimated fuel economy when in hybrid (Hold) mode is 42 MPG. I assume it might be a little less than that driving higher speeds on the freeway which is what I like to do. The speed limit here is 55 so you can see how I like to drive....😀 BTW, photo was taken automatically and I set it to take rapid shots so I could choose the best ones later. So the answer to your question is, no, I was not driving and taking pictures with my phone.

[myvolt-blog1]

Today when I plugged in I had gone 39 miles on ½ a charge. That is almost 80 miles on a single charge!

So far I am very impressed with the mileage I am getting. I do use the regen (one pedal driving) mode and even the regen paddle on the back of the steering wheel. Brakes are rarely needed to slow down and adjust speed.

[myvolt-blog1]

I have yet to use any gas after driving my Volt for 11 days. I plug in overnight on my standard 120 outlet in my garage. It takes about 13 hours for a full charge, but I have yet to deplete the battery entirely.

I am getting about 70 miles per full charge. Most of these miles are in the city and not a lot of them are on the highway. When I do drive on the highway it uses the battery much quicker and the range drops rather quickly. So my guess is that pure highway driving on a full charge would be around mid 40 miles. It is likel the EPA figure of 53 miles on a charge comes from a combination of city and highway driving.

When driving I have been putting the shifter into L, this is the one pedal driving mode. I really like being able to control the cars speed this way and only braking when I really need to stop.

More about mileage in my next post.

[myvolt-blog1]

Performance is one place my Volt shines. Most Hybrids, Plug-In Hybrids, and Electric vehicles don’t have very good acceleration. The most popular hybrid, the Prius, does 0-60 in well over 10 seconds. Being that your average car and SUV does 0-60 in 7-8 seconds, this is very slow.

The Volt does 0-60 in 7.5 seconds (tested by Car & Driver). That certainly isn’t sports car speed, but is pretty quick. What is fun is that the power is instant. So when driving around town and starting from a stop it has instant power and takes off quite quickly. Once I was doing about 20 MPH and a mashed the gas to see what would happen and I did a big front wheel burnout. Certainly not something most cars can do unless they are higher powered sports cars.

But not only is this car quick for a plug-in hybrid, it handles really well too. There isn’t much lean and it takes a lot to get it to break loose when going into a corner. This makes the car really fun to drive!

It is nice to not have to sacrifice driving pleasure while going mostly electric.

[myvolt-blog1]

One of the first requirements for me when I was shopping for a car was that my bicycle fit in that back. The 2nd Generation Volt has a hatch in back instead of a small trunk. So it's easy to fit my mountain bike (27.5+ full suspension) in the back as long as I take the front wheel off. Happy trails!

[myvolt-blog1]

I purchased a new Chevrolet Volt and decided to create a blog to tell others about my experience with it. This is my first post of many. Hope you enjoy what live is like with a plug-in electric car.