You do know it still runs on gas once that charge wears off right? Your still using their product unless you only drive 30 miles a day and then recharge it every night without using any gas. Once you get into the gas engine you will be averaging about 40mpg and could have bought 2 Toyota Corolla's and had money left over for gas for a year for the price of this Volt. Agree on Fox news bashing the car but they also bash the President and I don't see him put on hiatus. Chevy did a horrible, and I mean horrible job advertising this car. The avg American now is generally a moron that knows more about the cast of Jersey Shore than their own elected officials, all they know about the Volt are 1 minute commercials that don't really explain a thing and just confuse people more. Whoever was in charge of marketing should be kicked to the curb yesterday, the Nissan Leaf commercials mocking the Volt could have been a great way for Chevy to get back showing a Leaf dead ont he side of the road running out of charge and having the Volt give them a lift or something and explain the 30-40 mile electric range of the Volt combined with the safety backup of hundreds of miles of gas generating power, not a word out of Chevy to refute them, dumbasses! They deserve to have the car fail marketing it the way they did. I was really digging the car but it's too expensive, the battery pack tunnel runs thru the car so you only have 2 seats in the rear limiting me from carrying all 3 of my kids, and after owning this Cobalt I don't trust Chevy to screw together a $40k car with any sense that it will have good quality.

 

My cousin has only put gas in his Volt once so far.
He took delivery in late March of last year. The dealer filled the tank before delivery.
He put gas in it around October or November of last year. And not because it was empty, he just thought the tank should be full as we headed into winter.

I'll have to ask him how many gallons of gas he's used in it.

So if you don't take it on long trips & charge it up every night, it should NEVER need gas (except that the engine cycles once in a while to burn the gas so it doesn't get stale).

 

Buying ANY new car rarely works out in the favor of the buyer saving money.

If my car gets 20MPG and I drive 25 miles each way I'll use 2.5 gallons per day. If my car got 25MPG I'd use 2 gallons per day. Even at $5 gas that's only a $2.50 savings per day. If you worked 365 days per year you'd "save" $912.50. Or ~$1000 @ $5 per gallon. Meaning if you only keep said car for 5 years it's not worth paying more than $5k more for the better mileage.

Now take into account that we aren't at $5 gallon gas yet in most places and it makes even less sense to pay for good MPG.

 

I agree with most of what you said after that. I understand how the car works, and I would love to tell the gas companies to shove it while I roll by on a charge. I drive to and from work twice a month, and don't drive much when I'm home. It would be a perfect fit for me if I didn't have student loans to pay back, or I'd order one tomorrow.

 

For reference, there were 1023 Volts sold in February vs. 478 Nissan Leafs. we all know which car has a higher price point and various "headwinds" in recent months.

Reference point #2-The first generation Prius went on sale in 2000 in the U.S. and sold 5,800 cars the first year, 16,000 the second year, and 20,300 the third year. The rest is history. If you had written the obituary for it after the first year (or 4 for that matter since it was year 5 before it crested 50,000 units) well, you would have been premature (and wrong).

The "old" GM would have kept cranking them out, regardless of inventory levels and I think we can all agree that was a bad thing. Aligning inventory with current demand is probably a pretty good way to run a business.

 

Make sure he puts stabil in the tank, and I would recommend running the tank under 1/2 full in the spring and fall and refilling(winter/summer blends)

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for pointing this out. People seem to forget that new technology take time to catch on.

 

...and gas was "dirt cheap" back then. The national average in 2000 was around $1.75/gal (in "today's prices" see chart below).

That was my first full year of college, I remember it being around $1.10-1.20 here in SC.

http://zfacts.com/p/35.html

 

Don't forget the Volt requires "premium" fuel. I just checked yesterday and at least one station in my hometown is selling premium for $4.759/gal.

 

Really? Why would they do that? Does the higher octane gas last longer? or are they just recommending that grade of fuel because they no it is going to sit around in the tank for a while?

 

They do that so they can run more compression and have a more efficient generator most likely.

 

The engine in the Volt is set up to take advantage of premium which supposedly improves mileage by 5-10% over regular. And I think they assume premium is more stable over a longer period of time.

 

The generator is a 16 valve I4 with a 10.5:1 compression ratio. Surprisingly it's not a direct injection motor, but does have cam phasing. I would assume that's why it requires premium gas.

My Camaro sat in a non climate controlled garage in northern Indaina from September of '10 to October of '11. I threw a new battery in it and drove it 5 hours to Kentucky, complete with flat spotted tires. The old stale gas ran OK, but got poor mileage till I filled it up again. It's been fine ever since. I don't think gas "goes bad" as quickly as some people think. And the flat spots worked their way out after about 30 minutes on the highway.

 

That, and they sell fuel stabilizers everyday almost everywhere.

 

With all due respect, get your head out of your backside. I have said here that I agree that some of the criticisms lobbed at the Volt from the politically conservative side are erroneous and embarrassing. But Americans aren't completely stupid either. The non touchy-feely emotional people know a poor economic deal when they see one. And unfortunately, that is what the Volt is (along that line, whoever decided to make the Volt's gas engine a 'Premium Fuel Only' motor should be drawn and quartered). People don't need to hear rhetoric to analyze the numbers and come to the same conclusion. Volt's struggles can hardly be blamed on some political party.

I am hoping the Volt program leads to Volt 2.0 and beyond, because that is when further battery R&D will allow the car to go further on a charge, and most importantly, have a lower MSRP and therefore make a significant impact.