What is the cost of electric in your area , and is it cheaper at night when you normally charge it ,
When a bigger percent of electric power is solar and wind the night rates might go up.....
What is the cost of electric in your area , and is it cheaper at night when you normally charge it ,
When a bigger percent of electric power is solar and wind the night rates might go up.....
2002maniac said:I would like to see more maths from Mr Duece. How much is this car costing to own so far?
I should sit down and figure it out with gas and miles and $/kwH but it's a moving target. I think we're at 28k more miles since we bought it 13 months ago. I finally changed the oil even though it still had 23% oil life left on the monitor just so Mrs. Deuce wouldn't have to potentially worry about it this summer. Deucekid#1 is about to take her driving test in it. Insurance is still cheap, it uses about $20 in gas every two weeks. We're going to drive it into the ground.
I feel like I should do an update on this car. After about 35k miles this car was draining Mrs Deuce's will to drive. The world was becoming dreary and sad at the prospect of getting in and chasing those last few miles before the gas engine kicked on. I love my wife so we bought an ND Miata and that has become her daily and she's happy.
So let's sell the Volt, right?
Except at right about the same time kid#2 got his permit and requested to learn on the Volt before transferring his skills to a car with an actual transmission. We're about a month into that and it's going well. For the last three weeks he drives the 20 miles home from school with me in the passenger seat every day. He quite likes the car and enjoys driving. All during this time he was also hatching a plan to get out of most of his last two years of high school by attending the local community college, getting an Associates degree in computer something or another, and only having to attend actual school for a couple hours a day because he can get high school credit for the college classes. He's been accepted to the program and they're just working out a couple of wrinkles in the program to guarantee that when he walks across the stage in a couple of years he's getting his diploma and his degree. I'm proud of him. But what does that have to do with the Volt?
He attends a magnet school thingy (which is why his high school is 20 miles away) and the community college has two campus's that are even further away than that and that means his commute is looking to be something like 75 miles a day for two years. He ran the numbers and figured out that driving the Volt will save about $100 a month over driving the crappy Subaru. And honestly, Mrs. Deuce isn't super happy about the idea of him driving 1500 miles a month in a $500 Subaru with 280k miles on it. Soooooo...... it looks like the Volt has a high likelihood of staying. Yay. In the mean time The kids schedules have shifted again and I can now make ALL the school runs again which means I'm driving 120-150 miles a day so I've parked just about everything and I'm throwing miles on it for the soul sucking cost savings. Yay again.
I once bought a CT200h new. THinking the MPG savings over my then fleet average of 11MPG would really help the wallet. After 16 months and 33K miles, I kicked that car to the curb harder than men kick out a BBW out of their bed in the morning, after a long night of drinking. Never again, will I own a soul sucking car. It isn't worth it to me.
That's very interesting to me. My lease '14 Volt was a delightful appliance that I enjoyed every single day of the 36k miles I put on it. Quick enough, weird looking enough, luxurious enough, and frugal enough to tick most of the boxes. Made the commute interesting in that depending on how I treated the thing, sometimes I got to work with more mileage than when I left home.
Then again, I was coming from a lifted jeep, lowered del sol, and a thoroughly farkled Suzuki DR650. Each did maybe one (or one and a half) things well so I guess anything quiet and shiny and not needing wrenches thrown at it consistently would have left a positive mark on my psyche.
Interesting to hear (and congrats to Kid#2 on what sounds like some promising years ahead!). I am coming out of 10 days with a Fusion Hybrid loaner car and while I've never driven a Volt, I suspect I'd feel similar about both. The Fusion Hybrid was mildly rewarding in displaying how efficiently you could drive it, but it was seriously soul-sucking. But the cost savings at ~40 mpg were pretty nice. But man it was boring and kind of slow.
The major manufactures haven't' figured out yet how to make a nice, comfortable, fun, hybrid or electric...
In reply to FunkyCricket :
It's nice and comfortable, but it's not fun. Maybe that's all we can ask for? It does get great mileage.
Meanwhile my totally irresponsible politically incorrect mode of transportation continues with the more smiles than miles per gallon......(ctsv) .....mantra......y'all only live once 
759NRNG said:.y'all only live once
You only die once... You have the opportunity to live everyday
In reply to mazdeuce :
I think you are brilliant. I don’t know anyone who has actually owned one who has a serious complaint about them.
While mileage between charges varies, with the engine it really doesn’t matter.
In reply to frenchyd :
The car is spectacular if you like/are indifferent about it. We're right about to cross 40k miles since we bought it. Two kids learned to drive on it. I've changed a couple headlight bulbs, had a tire that was leaking at the bead fixed, and done one oil change. For all of that I make a $170 a month car payment. If I was any sort of normal this would be the best car I've ever owned.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
As a transportation appliance it has to be an excellent deal. It’s not intended to be more. Suitable for the vast majority of people.
Which you would think the General would promote, but I suppose GM has always dropped the ball on their 'good' cars and isn't about to change.
Good to hear your kid is really getting his use out of it. I'm all for people buying something they *have* to work on for the sake of frugality, but even my cheap ass would balk at a nearly 300,000 mile Subie when I daily 75 miles.
You've put 40,000 miles on it.. and it's not your only car. We've probably put 10,000 miles on our daily driver in that time. And we live farther from work than I'd like.
The major manufactures haven't' figured out yet how to make a nice, comfortable, fun, hybrid or electric...
I just posted a couple hours ago about a Cayenne Hybrid that does 0-60 in 5.2 and does all the other things a Cayenne does like tow a large amount and handle more or less like a sports car. I just sold a Highlander Hybrid AWD that was comfortable and just as quick as my 4.5L v8 Cayenne, although still not as fun because it didnt handle as well or make cool noises (other than tire chirping). Also, the only reason i never bought a Volt was because i accidentally drove a GS450h that also did 0-60 in 5.2 and had a fantastic interior and bought that instead.
If you want a fun or fast hybrid, they're out there.
I'm thinking of trying to get one of these later this year. At the current rate it would be my 4th car, but function as DD.
I'm happy to see the report of boring - it can't be more boring than my 2000 Expedition, and it's guaranteed to be more tech-friendly and updated inside. Can't wait (if all goes well)
In reply to classicJackets :
It's different than an Expedition. It does corner flat, and mashing the pedal is kind of fun if you ignore the range you lose when you do it. It's in that same range of not inspiring at all though. I suspect you'll like it more. If it's boring it might as well be cheap and boring.
Having said that, it's every bit as nice inside as my 2014 Cadillac was. There is a reasonable case to be made that the Volt was the highest quality car GM was building post recession.
More autocross!
Kid#2 has his permit, has been driving, and I finally convinced him that getting up early on Sunday was a good idea. We had a blast. It was cold and rainy and our normal 140-160 car field was 80. 3 of the 10 novices that pre-registered showed up. Combine his first event with us in the Volt (literally the slowest car there) and he finished.....last. The course was long, fastest cars in our heat in the high 60's and I came in at a cool 83.4. He was only 7 seconds behind me at 90.6. The big thing is that he improved from 108 seconds down to that 90 and he was still taking massive chunks of time off until his 5th and last run.
We did kind of maybe overdrive the front sort of. Maybe.
So that cost me two new front tires. Awesome.
In better news, the Volt is a hatchback and we stopped by a friends on the way home to grab another set of Miata wheels. As I explained to Mrs. Deuce, The proper number of wheel sets for a particular car is n+1 where n is how many wheel sets you currently have. Now the Miata has four. Thank you Volt!
Hey Seth:
It is not a soul-sucking exercise if you turn around and spend the commuter car gas money you have just saved on:
or on another one of your vehicles.
(I wonder if that little nurse "Elissa" who was featured on the early commercials as "never having to fill the gas tank" , still has her Volt ? Ditzy, but kinda cute...)
In reply to Agent98 :
Yes, it saves $200 a month in gas over driving one of the fun cars in the fleet, and to be honest, it's a spectacular car to teach the kids to drive.
mazdeuce - Seth said:In reply to frenchyd :
The car is spectacular if you like/are indifferent about it. We're right about to cross 40k miles since we bought it. Two kids learned to drive on it. I've changed a couple headlight bulbs, had a tire that was leaking at the bead fixed, and done one oil change. For all of that I make a $170 a month car payment. If I was any sort of normal this would be the best car I've ever owned.
I’ve got friends my age who have similar type cars, ie, transportation not toys. They buy and use them just like you are doing while saving their time and energy for their toys.
Once they are paid for they keep them as back up’s or for mundane driving like grocery shopping, or guests use etc.
The remarkable thing is 10-15 years after it would have been sold off it’s developed a cult following of their own. Which makes them worth more now than they would have gotten back then even adjusting for inflation.
VW Beetles, Morris Minor Woodies, Ford Cortina.
For decades those cars quietly were driven around. Needing relatively little, providing good value and reliable service. Allowing their owners other pursuits and saving payments.
Staying on topic --
Seth -- if and when the battery pack ever goes out, is it still a functional car? years down the road hopefully. Because i heard the Prius would not stay running with a bad battery pack.
I have heard that Chevy has never replaced a Volt battery for degradation, not sure if that's true. If it is, I think it's mostly because they only allow you to access 65% of the capacity and they can just set the software to continually allow the advertised 35mi electric range even as the battery slowly degrades (as all batteries do).
My Volt has 120k miles and still routinely takes a full 10.5kWh charge and gets 37-40mi range. One guy is up over 400k miles on his. So the battery does degrade, but the car will probably die or be sold off long before it needs replacing. I do love my Volt. It gets great mileage and is free for me with my solar. I have replaced 1 $75 CV joint and done 1 oil change in the 20k miles I have owned it. It's fun too. In sport mode it's very quick, but I find that I am more interested in getting good range than racing from light to light.
One guy did replace his battery pack himself on the forums. I think be paid $1700 or so for the replacement battery from a yard.
I'm pretty sure they won't run without the battery. At it's core it's an electric car, just with a generator that it lugs around. Sort of. I'm a bit sad that they discontinued the Volt but I accept the idea that fully electric cars with a 200+ mile range are cheaper to engineer and sell than ones with 40-80 miles and a gas engine on board, and that most people want one or the other, but not both.
Will it be a collectors item? I doubt it, certainly not mine which is among the rougher examples that I see. Looks like we'll keep it and keep driving it for the foreseeable future.
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