The first Volts hit the market in December 2010, so by now you easily find them used. If you do test drive a Volt, put it into Sport mode! Price should not be a factor, especially when you consider the gas savings. See the “EV market” fact sheet (left side of this website) for the actual price now, after tax credit. GM fixed this in the 2nd gen Volt.Īn additional excuse used to be that the Volt was too expensive, but that was at launch in 2011, and the price has come down since then. You can not fit five people in the car, not even three kids in the back, because there’s a hump in the middle of the seat, and there is no middle seatbelt. – For the first generation Volt, model years 2011-2015, the rear seat can hold two people, period. Note though that the rear cargo area is bigger than it looks it can carry just as much as any typical hatchback. – It’s a hatchback, not a truck, so you can’t carry lots of cargo. There are really only two excuses to not get a Chevy Volt: Forget about charging at work or at public stations - the whole point of the Volt is that you charge at home, on a regular outlet, and have a fully charged car every morning. That is better than any hybrid on the market, and the Volt is WAY more fun than hybrids like the Prius. For a 150-mile roundtrip commute, you would drive a third on electric (no gas), and two thirds on gas (at 40 MPG), and your resulting daily efficiency would be about 60 MPG. So for example, for a 100-mile roundtrip commute, you would drive half on electric (no gas), and half on gas (at 40 MPG), and your resulting daily efficiency would be about 80 MPG. It has an electric range of just 50 miles (40 miles for the older Gen 1 model), but after that the gas engine “range extender” kicks in. The Volt is perfect for people who have a commute of 50 miles or less. The Volt does qualify for the federal tax credit, as do all electrified cars with a decent size battery. That state tax credit ended and now the playing field is level again. So, in Georgia, Volt sales were initially somewhat depressed compared to nationally, in favor of cars like the Nissan Leaf and other pure EVs. The Volt did not qualify for that state tax credit, because it can be fueled with gasoline (again, see the fact sheet above if that surprises you). Until July 2015, Georgia offered a pretty generous tax credit of $5000 if you bought (or leased) a pure electric car. I believe the Chevy Volt is the best car for someone who is completely new to EVs and nervous about taking the plunge into a pure EV.įor the first 4-5 years that the Volt was on the market, the situation in Georgia was distorted somewhat by the state tax credit. And they did it in 29 months while the company they worked for was falling apart around them. A bunch of Midwestern engineers in bad haircuts and cheap wristwatches just out-engineered every other car company on the planet. … for the moment, we should suspend our rancor and savor a little American pride. To quote WSJ’s Dan Neil, writing about the Volt upon its launch in October 2010 : It’s a little complicated to understand on paper, but once you do, it’s brilliant, and GM did a virtually flawless job in designing and building it. You can still see that barebones website at where I have a fact sheet that explains the car. Back in 2010 I created a simple website to introduce people to the car, because it was a complicated, new kind of car that required some explaining, and I would get lots of questions about it. It was one of the first Volts in the country (in the first batch that came out of the Detroit factory) and was in fact the first Volt to arrive in my home state of Georgia. Then again, you would be stepping into the future in a very cool piece of engineering, the sort of vehicle that could lead us to less dependence on oil and to lower emissions.My first EV was a Chevy Volt that I owned from Dec 2010 to Dec 2013, back when this wave of EVs was just starting. On one hand, that's a lot of money for a car of the Volt's size and performance. As lessee you don't get the $7500, but many locales have electric car rebates to cover the $2500 or significantly more. The smart move is probably the $350 per month lease for three years with $2500 down. You do get a $7500 tax credit from the feds and there are other local credits depending on where you live. That would be $41,000, which you can option up by some $3700. What the new choices face are such factors as the low price of gasoline, the good old internal combustion engine becoming evermore efficient and slow-go battery development. They are, however, items on a growing, interesting menu of automotive options. So the Volt is a nicely normal, reasonably agile small sedan, but is it The Great Automotive Savior? No, but neither are pure electric, hydrogen, CNG, diesel, or fuel-cell vehicles.
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