Exactly one year ago today, on December 22nd, 2010, I took delivery on my Chevrolet Volt. I was lucky enough (although you make your own luck) to get one of the first in the country -- mine was in the very first batch that was released from the Detroit factory.
So here we are, a year later. What a year! From minor appearances on TV and in newspaper articles, to taking friends out to lunch demoing the car, to enjoying the thrill of driving the car itself, the year has been incredible! I have been looking forward to driving a real, solid, high-performance electric car for most of my adult life and it's truly amazing to have finally reached that milestone.
The photo above is from a demo event I was at last week -- taken by the reporter who wrote the story for the local paper. I've been to dozens of events like this, and have handed out hundreds of copies of my little fact sheet to anyone who shows interest and asks a lot of questions.
The Volt leapt out of the gate, winning dozens of awards including a sweep of all the major awards including Motor Trend's Car of the Year, Car and Driver's 10 Best, and so on. One group even called the 2011 Volt the "Collectible Vehicle Of The Future".
How about the numbers?
- My average fuel consumption over the past year is 86 MPG. That represents a combination of A) nearly zero gas consumed for regular daily commuting, and B) long road trips, when the car gets 37 MPG. As you can see on this graphic, in months where we didn't go on a roadtrip (like August) or I didn't even need to drive to the outlying counties much, I got hundreds of miles per gallon.
- My electrical efficiency is around 35-45 kWh per 100 miles, or 350-450 Wh/mile. Those are numbers that won't mean anything to most people, but that's basically the same kind of measurement as MPG in a regular gas car. It's a measure of how efficient the car is in converting stored energy in to motion. Lower is better (opposite to MPG) and my numbers are on the high side, because I drive with a lead foot and don't scrimp on the HVAC. But even a wasteful electric car is still far more efficient than nearly any gas car on the road.
- I've driven about 5000 miles under electric power (around town in Atlanta) and about 3200 miles on gasoline (roadtrips to NJ, WV and AL). Those 5000 miles electric were practically free.
- It costs me 25 cents of electricity to recharge the car every night. One shiny quarter. I don't drain the battery down all the way with my every-day driving, but even if I did the cost to charge would be 60 cents.
- I don't spend money on gas anymore (in Atlanta) and my electric bill originally went up about $20 per month. And now that I have switched to a smarter electricity rate plan, the monthly increase is only $10 per month.
- I have 300 foot-pounds of torque and every stoplight is an opportunity for pure joy.
I suppose I should spend a moment talking about the (now tiresome) question that many people lately ask me when I mention owning a Volt: what about those car fires they've heard about? Heavy sigh. The whole thing is frankly amazing as a study in how nobody actually reads news anymore, they just look at headlines, and those headlines are often written by staffers who aren't really reading the article either! Or worse, are trying to mislead or fan flames. So to speak.
So, that said, here are a couple articles (which, uh, you should actually read) that describe the actual situation rather well:
[After describing the crash testing that resulted in some Volt batteries catching fire weeks after the crash ... ] If you ask us, even just one day is plenty of time to safely exit a vehicle that’s in peril of burning. And get this: We’ve even heard of [normal gasoline] cars catching fire during a crash. ... We’ll also point out that the above incidents [in a test lab] are the only two known conflagrations resulting from Volt accidents; no Volt owners have had their battery packs go up in flames from real-world events—but that didn’t prevent some bogus media reports from stating such.
http://www.plugincars.com/car-fires-recals-and-politics.html
[After listing plenty of specific fire hazards in recent gasoline cars ... ] All of these fire-related recalls are just what I found from the past two years, and I’m sure there are more because I hardly looked. Most of these recalls were completely missed by the press or at the best casually mentioned in the nightly news. Why is that? Why are two Volts that had fires weeks after being crash tested so much more dangerous than all of these recalls where in some cases cars burst into flames while people were driving them? I didn’t even mention the famous Ford recall in 2009 when Ford recalled 14 million vehicles because over 550 of them caught on fire, many of which while people were driving them and in some instances even burned down some homes.
No Volt owners have had any problems with battery fires, there hasn't been a recall, and the NHTSA is still giving the Volt a 5-star crash rating.
I have been pushing to show this technology, one to one and in person, to as many people as possible, for a full year now. The fundamental reason why I have been pushing it like this is because I knew that sooner or later the inevitable success of EVs would start to really threaten the bottom of line of the current vested interests (e.g. the oil giants, companies that profit from endless oil wars, etc.) and that's when the misinformation campaigns would begin in earnest. Let me be clear: they are lying to you, and you should simply ignore them.
You've probably heard of the documentary "Who Killed The Electric Car, a 2006 review of what happened to the first wave of EVs that came out in the mid to late 1990s. This year the sequel came out, called "Revenge Of The Electric Car", and it came to Atlanta a couple weeks ago. I'm biased of course, but it really is a great movie, and you should see it. Here's a great quote from the movie from automotive journalist Dan Neil:
"There comes a point when you know too much. For me, knowing what I know, and having been where I've been, gasoline-powered cars have started to become very, very bittersweet for me. And I've been saying goodbye, in my head, for about a year now. What I want is a car that I can live with, that goes fast and is fun and is clean. Because that's where the imagination is, that's where the inspiration is at, that's the future. "
Any regrets? Not a one. The car has been fantastic, GM delivered on their promise, and I am more committed to electric vehicles than ever. After years of driving only imports (Volkswagen, Honda, Audi) I'm as surprised as anyone to be this satisfied with an American car.
When my Volt lease ends in December 2013, I plan to move on to my next car (which will likely be a regular purchase again) and it will certainly be an electric. The big decision I have to make by then is whether it will be a pure electric, or a "range extended" electric like the Volt I have now.
It's nice having the gas engine there as a backup, but it adds significant cost, weight and maintenance complexity to the car. I may decide that a 100-mile range pure electric car is good enough for me, even for "suburb days", and I'll just rent a car for the one or two times a year we go on a big road trip. And I might not even need to do that rare rental for roadtrips, because in the last year thousands of public charging stations have popped up all over the country (the map here is from the excellent carstations.com ) and that's a trend that is accelerating. Or I may stick with GM and get the new Cadillac with the Volt drivetrain! Yeah, you heard me, Cadillac.
These are strange and exciting times!