Thief said:
shafferb0b1 said:
For any electric car geeks out there, so far the Volt has average 111 "miles per gallon". Trips of 40-50 miles are all electric, gas generator doesn't kick in until the batteries are done in. In all for today's trip of about 45 miles, I used 9.1 Kwh of battery power. Electricity here costs 12cents per Kwh, so that 45 miles cost me about $1.08, which if you were to compare to gasoline at around 4 bucks per gallon, equates out to about 170 "miles per gallon" in actual cost. I find that quite acceptable.
Personally, I don't think I'd buy an electric only car unless it had 400 - 500km (250 - 300mi) of range with easily swappable batteries so I don't have to wait several hours for a recharge. I do like the idea of a range extended electric but find cars like that boring. Though I do thank people like you who care for the environment enough that I get to keep driving my gas guzzler that averages 16mpg.
OK, so it's a bit boring in normal mode, extremely quiet though, great stereo/bluetooth/ipod/iphone connections and OnStar so that your car has it's own little phone number, isn't that just preshus! On the other hand, you can put it into Sport mode, which basically takes the cap off of how much juice the batteries can expell at one time, and the torque of that electric motor really snaps your neck back. "Sport" doesn't do ****e for cornering of course or handling, or a ton of other things. My electric company out here in the boonies supplies my electicity totally from solar, so really in the 1300 miles I've drive the car so far, I've only used about 17 gallons of gas. I'll take that as a trade off anytime. But I agree, electric's aren't there yet, but I'm an "early adopter of damn near everything", and I'm much more pleased than I though I would be. Very comfortable car, good solid ride, best made GM thing I've owned. But you're right, it ain't perfect, but it gets closer to what actually is a useable plug-in electric than anything else. Even when I take a longer trip in it where I'm on the gas generator the whole time, it still gets about 45-47 Mpg, which ain't bad for a 4400 pound car. Too damn expensive for lots of folks, but they've got one heck of a leasing plan to try and get a bunch of 'em out there.