Ladies and gentlemen, it's official -- I'm buying a Chevrolet Volt. The deposit is down, the order is in GM's system, and come November or December, I'm getting one of the first Volts in the country.
Two weeks ago, GM finally announced the sticker price of the Volt: $41,000. That's a high number, even after the $7,500 federal tax credit, and it sent the fanboys into a tailspin of despair and vicious criticism of GM. There are lots of reasons why GM might have set that price point, which I won't go into here. But what was really interesting was the second part of the announcement: the leasing terms. GM will lease the car for $350/month for 36 months, with $2500 down. Those are lease terms that you'd see for a much cheaper car, more like $20K-$25K, and show that GM is actually subsidizing and encouraging the lease. So that really got my attention, and within days I decided it was time to start contacting Chevy dealers.
Why I am buying a Volt
1. I'm uniquely qualified to get the word out on the electric car revolution. I am an electrical engineer, I've been into automotive technology since I was a kid, and I care about energy policy and the environment. It appears that it's my job to get out in front on this one.
2. I want a choice. Pure battery electric vehicles (BEVs), which the Volt is not, have only an electric drivetrain and consume no gas ever. I do think think that they are the long-term future, but for the next few years they aren't good enough to be your sole car, since they only go so far before you have to charge for many hours. Three years from now, public charging infrastructure (think fast charging stands at gas stations and shopping centers) will be far more widespread and that's when a BEV will start to make sense as my sole car. But for now I still have to rely on that gas engine backup. The Volt gives me the flexibility of fueling either via gas station or plugging in at home. I'm paranoid about gas price shocks (and gas shortages, panic-induced or not), and the engineer in me wants desperately to protect against that single point of failure, and wants some redundancy via the two different energy ingest modes.
3. Performance. Electric vehicles go faster! This is less true for a more modest car like the Volt, but even this little car is going to change some minds simply by me stomping on the accelerator. A poor man's Tesla! Wheeee!
4. Reduced maintenance. Electric motors aren't just far more efficient than gas engines, they are far simpler and more reliable. The gas engine is simply not going to get used that much, except for long trips, and that translates to less maintenance requirements.
5. I'm buying American for the first time in my life. Heck, this is the first American car for anyone in my entire extended family (lots of VWs, some other Japanese and Germans cars). GM, this is your one chance to show me that you're not still a bunch of knuckle-dragging scammers. And indeed GM has been doing far better in quality ratings in recent years, and they appear to be doing a stellar job engineering the Volt. Also note that the Volt is really being built in the US (at the Detroit Hamtramck plant), not an overseas rebadge (like the Pontiac G6) or a Chinese import (as they are rumored to be doing soon for another model).
6. GM made it an easy decision with their cheap lease terms. Now, I'm the last person you'd expect to see leasing a car. I've always bought my cars,and kept them for a decade minimum, long after they were paid off. Leases are stupid, right? But in this case, GM has decided to make the Volt lease a huge bargain. The $350/month rate got my attention, and made me realize that a three year lease is perfect for me right now. That's because unlike my previous car purchases, I have no plans to keep this car for a decade. It's just a short term (3 year) solution until there's more electric cars on the market. And yes, all of the car makes are furiously working on them.
7. After the pricing announcement two weeks ago, I quickly realized that this car was going to sell out. And in fact, today, there are rumors that not only has the Volt's 2011 model run sold out (before a single unit reaches any dealer showroom!), but now dealers are starting to take sales on the 2012 model run. My 10-year clock has run out on my current car and I don't want to wait beyond the end of this year or early next year. So committing now puts me with the earliest of the early adopters, but ensures that I won't be stuck waiting until late 2012.
8. This hedges my bet on the future electric car market. All of the manufacturers are working on their models, but it's going to be another year or two (or three), and in some cases (like the Tesla Model S sedan) it might cost $75,000 and have extremely limited availability. This isn't my ideal car, but this gives me some breathing room to let the market mature for three years.
9. I'm not made of money, but I'm doing well enough. The car I drive is pretty much the one thing I splurge on (as I did in 2000), and otherwise I'm pretty frugal. So let me spend some money on a new toy :)And here come the political intangibles ...10. For a change the US is actually leading the world in technology policy when it comes to electric vehicles. We are ahead of Europe and Asia in encouraging the shift to electric cars, and I want to be on the front of that wave.
11. Energy independence, both national and personal.
12. Pollution and global warming. Only a fool still believes that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is still a debatable matter in science. The data is in, it's fact, move on, and you might want to start thinking critically about the "news" sources that are telling you it's still a debate. Actually, I do think it's too late (1992 and Kyoto was our last chance) and we're well past the tipping point, but I'm going to hope and do what I can anyway.
13. Geopolitics. We need to stop sending tankers full of cash to oppressive governments of the Middle East. And where do you think the Taliban and Al Qaeda get their funding from?
Those are all the reasons why I am buying a Volt. However, there are also reasons ...
Why I shouldn't be buying a Volt
1. Atlanta is not one of the launch markets, and so I'm actually buying the car from a dealer in northern Virginia (Washington DC is a launch market) and taking it home. Yeah, a 9 hour drive. I am frankly taking a big risk in doing this, because for a long time yet there won't be any Volt dealers in Atlanta that can service the car if anything goes wrong. That's actually not strictly true, because GM says they will have dealers around the nation (not just in launch markets) that will be trained in Volt servicing. But, really, until they actually start selling the car in Atlanta, I'm jut not going to get decent service. I can look forward to a lot of blank stares from the local dealership, and in a worst case, I could be looking at having to flat-bed the car back to Virginia if something goes catastrophically wrong. Hey, I'm an engineer, I think up worst case scenarios for a living!
2. It's a version 1.0 product. Never buy the first release of a product. And in this case, it's a whole new class of product, so this is doubly true.
3. GM has done a fantastic job of being open about the entire development process of the car, but you could also see it as well regulated hype. This could be a colossal boondoggle on GM's part, and I'm getting suckered into it. Oh well, I'll have a lot of company, because this car is selling out before it's even in the showrooms.
4. It's a pretty small car. It officially only seats four (meaning you can not squeeze three into the backseat) which just belies the fact that it really is a little smaller than your typical compact sedan. On the other hand, it's really loaded down with standard features, things like premium sound and OnStar connectivity that would otherwise put it more in the Cadillac class. Which leads me to ...
5. I have not actually seen the car with my own two eyes! It's nowhere to be seen, although any week now I expect the first production units to start appearing at various demo events around the country. So all I've done is a read about it for the last two years, especially the reviews of the last few months when GM had the press come out to various locations to see it and drive it. I am totally relying on those reviews.
I have this saying that engineers live three years in the future. At any given point, we are typically working on technology that will make it to widespread use in about three years. So, since 2007 I've been seeing a lot of activity in electric car development, and it's finally starting to come to fruition with the first large-scale production cars coming to market this fall.
I really do believe that electric vehicles are critical to the future of automotive technology. But talk is cheap, and at some point you have to start putting asses in chairs and showing people what you're talking about. So my mission is now to get people into the car, show them how this technology is different (and yet the same!) from all previous cars, and have lots of long talks debunking all of the myths that somehow have crept into people's heads.
In all seriousness, most folks wouldn't see this as a particularly noble move as it might appear I'm making it out to be. It's not like I'm deciding to devote myself to working on third world infrastructure or lifting inner city children out of poverty. But it's a critical incremental step that I think we need to make if we seriously want to stop screwing up the planet, both environmentally and politically, like we have been for the last century.
By December, I should have the car, and I'll happily show it to whoever is interested. Lunch or dinner will be on me!
For now, Happy Birthday to me!
See also my previous entries about Electric Vehicles, as I have studied this technology for the last two years:
part 1 from Sept 2008: my first thoughts on EVs (though rather dated by now)
part 2 from April 2009: I test drive a Tesla Roadster!
part 3 from Jan 2010: the Nissan Leaf roadshow comes to Atlanta