Anyone own a Chevy Volt?

It is just as likely for me to get a Chevrolet as it is for me to get an Apple product.

@JLeslie I don’t own one, I know a person that has Ford Fusion Hybrid. They are extremely happy with it.
Why did you start with the Volt? It isn’t the highest rated Hybrid/Electric, they have had recalls in the past two years. They require an at home charging station either 120 or 240 Volts.

My daughter’s fiance got one last week. He is a car mechanic, and is crazy happy to have it.
So, week one and no problems.

@Tropical_Willie Because the way I understand it the Volt primarily works off of electricity for fuel, even at higher speeds. The gas in the car is a back up if you run our of charge. The Ford Fusion you don’t plug in and I think over 45 MPH you are using gas primarily. But, correct me if I am wrong.

@JLeslie You are almost correct about the difference between the Fusion and the Volt. It is not necessarily speed that determines when the Fusion uses the gasoline engine. It is battery charge and required power.
The Volt is basically an electric car and uses the gasoline as a range extender. The engine is used to charge the battery if you need it on long trips – or in cold weather. The Fusion has a smaller battery with lower output the gasoline engine when it needs more power. The Fusion has a 275 V NiMH battery with a power output of 25kW. The Volt has a superior 320–350 volt Li-Ion battery with a peak power output of 130–140 kW and 45 kW continuous. If electricity is cheap in your area the Volt is the way to go.
Time will tell if these batteries will last.
Also the Volt looks a whole lot sportier than the Fusion.

@JLeslie
As @LuckyGuy said the Volt you plug in and the Fusion you put gas in. You need to plug in the Volt for 8 hours or more to a 120 volt outlet or put in a 240 volt circuit for a 4 hours recharge. The 240 volt charging stations cost from $500 to $2000 plus they should be installed by a licensed electrician.

@LuckyGuy Do you happen to know, does one feel more underpowered than the other? I drove a Fusion years ago, it felt pretty good. I don’t remember the 0–60 on it. I like the look of the Volt also.

Is the price of the cars reasonable? Or, do they jack up the price because there is a tax break. That pisses me off is that is the case.

I have heard from people that the Volt is not doing well in sales. I fear it is because it is a Chevy, not the technology. I tend to not buy American cars, but we did buy a Ford truck about a year ago and I love it, but it has been in to service to fix a couple things within months of buying. One thing in my opinion should be done better, but they don’t have a way to fix it. We have owned a couple Corvettes in the past and I have to say they gave us no trouble, I just have a mental block.

The dealer in town has one Volt, price listed is $43,000.
The Ford 2013 Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid is now offered by Ford.

Unlike gasoline engines, electric motors produce their highest torque at 0 rpm. From 0–30 or 40 mph electrics are fantastic. they can be made as fast as you want. For the vast majority of your driving neither car will feel underpowered. You will not be racing on a track and need to rapidly go from 60 to 80mph will you?

The prices are high because the cars are expensive to make. Take a systemic look at them. You are carrying around heavy batteries in addition to fuel tanks. The Fusion has a 17 gallon tank! The additional weight means you need a heavier frame and body construction to support it. The heavier frame means you need heavier brakes to stop the vehicle. The heavier vehicle requires more complex and heavier transmission. They both need complex transmissions so they can capture the braking energy and put it into the batteries. You are also hauling around heavy electric motors in addition to gasoline engines. To make the electric motors and transmission efficient and have a reasonable size there are more permanent magnets inside those vehicles than at the North Pole. The electrical switches to control the power flow are expensive, high current, high voltage devices that need protection. The batteries either use Nickel or Lithium – both or which are limited resources and are not sustainable if everyone were to switch over. The ECM is complex but that only raises the price slightly. The algorithm work to fully optimize the performance that is expensive and must be amortized over each vehicle. And so on…

I agree with you about the mental block. How many times have you had your “foreign car” serviced. I’ll bet just as often – or more. Look at how people accept the Honda timing chain issue, i.e.“replace chain/belt at 100k miles or risk destroying your engine”. If GM did that there would be an uproar.

Do not buy either of these cars because you think you will save money on gas. If you wanted to save money on fuel you should buy a 80’s diesel Rabbit.

Here’s how you should decide. Look at the Volt and drive it. Now ask yourself if there was a BMW or Honda or Toyota sticker on it would you buy it?

@Tropical_Willie Yeah, the prices seem very high to me, that’s why I ask if they are jacked up and maybe the dealers make a lot per car. That bothers me for a few reasons. One reason I don’t like it is it makes the car cost prohibitive, especially to people who have less money. They could really benefit from cheaper fuel costs, but if their taxes are low or none existent the tax benefit doesn’t mean much to them. I’d rather the manufacturer make less profit per car and no tax write off. Plus, I am sick to death of the government funding big companies. I don’t mind the goverment helping with research dollars, but I do mind paying food stamps and welfare while business pays a ridiculous unliveable wage to workers (not the case in the car industry) and giving student loans just so tuition can increase, and tax write-offs so companies can charge more for a product. But, in the case of the electric cars I don’t know how much profit the companies are making on each car.

@LuckyGuy I have never had my Japanese cars serviced for something not working in the first 5 years of their life. Never. Many cars I only owned 3 years. The car I had the longest was an old Stanza, and after 5 years I needed to start doing a couple things for wear and tear. Eventually it died after 10 years. My German cars need to be serviced as much as my American. My Porsches needed little things done, although my VW nothing after 2 years of owning it. Mind you, I am talking about things not working well within the first few days or months of owning the car. The emergency brake was horrible in my new Ford from day one. Not the brake itself, but setting it was a flimsy thing that didn’t catch well, felt loose. When we brought it in they said it had a lot of complaints, eventually it was changed by Ford, and a better one installed. How did that even make it to market? The heated seats don’t heat evenly, one butt cheek and side of your back is much warmer than the other. I guess when they test drove it in MI they had their big parkas on and couldn’t perceive the heat difference well. I still feel like most car manufacturers don’t let enough women test the cars, and don’t let people who usually don’t own American test the cars. Just my opinion. I lived in MI for years and they were quite clueless about the rest of the coutry and how we think about cars. I would assume that has gotten a little better.

The profit isn’t there for most limited production automobiles. The most likely auto company to go out of business is a making ONLY limited use/production cars. If all hybrid automobiles that are on the market were made by an unknown manufacturers there might not be any cars to choose from. Tesla Motors has backers from Mercedes Benz and Toyota.

@Tropical_Willie I think that is because the research is expensive. What I wonder is how much it costs to produce the car and what they sell it for? I also wonder if they are thinking in terms of only selling a few so they price it higher to cover costs. If they sell triple at a lower price they might make more, because setting up the production is expensive.

The cost of “One of Kind” batteries that pass all the Highway Safety test are astronomical. (Replacement batteries for a Toyota Prius are $4500, one of my friend’s daughters bought a USED Toyota, no extended warranty, with labor the estimate was $5100). The additional chassis and brakes cost more than regular. It just like houses “cookie cutter” tract homes are less costly, every one is just the other and construction cost per house are less because of reduced variability.

@Tropical_Willie It isn’t one of a kind, it is made on a production line, unless I am guessing wrong, and it is a guess, an assumption. I don’t think it is hand made like an elite luxury car like a Bentley.

It is made only for the application it fits. The Prius battery is different from Volt, Fusions and Lexus. The build is limited production not an “only one in the world”. Here’ an older article about Hybrid Battery Costs

Well, again, the more they sell the lower the price would be from what I can tell. You are talking quanitity affects price. From the article it souds like the battery lasted a lot of miles.

@JLeslie Look at the car systemically. Even in high volume it can’t be as cheap as a single engine powered car. Even with the best, most advanced production batteries on the market, the Volt is hauling around 435 pounds of a dead weight battery. That adds cost well beyond the price of the battery. See my comments above.
The planet is not making Lithium salts in abundance. There is a limit.

Remember when people were making biodiesel from cooking oil? The makers boasted that they were saving the planet by using cooking oil from restaurants. That was a great idea and the demo worked well – for a couple of cars. It soon became apparent that there were not that many restaurants throwing out cooking oil. The supply was so limited it was barely enough to fuel the demonstration cars. The process was never capable of being scaled to handle large volumes of vehicles.
Maybe GM has found a secret strategic source of Lithium that will be enough to supply millions of cars. But I’m guessing not. The Volt you see is the Volt you are going to get. Don’t expect the price to drop like computers and monitors.

@LuckyGuy I drive a VW that gets just over 30 MPG, which I think is pretty good. I use regular unleaded in it, not a hybrid. For now I am satisfied with that. But, I love the idea of being able to solar charge a car, that is what really nterests me about the volt more than anything. But, your points about the lithium I had not considered. Because, as you say, it is in limited supply which I had not really considered. Also, I like not having to take from the earth. But, even with solar I guess the materials used to make solar panels are taking something from the earth? I know very little about the science. Where is the lithium? What countries?

@JLeslie
Why not get This VW?
It gets 235mpg.

@ragingloli I had not heard of that car. I wish it wasn’t so low to the ground and sporty, but I understand that probably helps the aerodynamics.

@JLeslie Lithium is found in brine with concentrations from ~0.01% to 1.0% wherever you have salt lakes. Bolivia seems to be the hot setup now (according to Bolivia) . They say they have enough to last 100 years but that is like saying the Tar Sands in Canada are good for 100 years. The cost and energy required to extract it gets higher and higher until it is not worth doing.

The battery technology on the Volt is wonderful. State of the art… but it is still only a 17kWh battery and only uses about half of its capacity to extend life. Let’s call it 10 kWh for easy math. What does that mean in the real world? Well…where I live elelctricity cost 12 cents per kWh so 10KWh where I live will cost $1.20. That will have the same motive energy comparable to ½ gallon of gasoline. That 435 pound battery only holds the energy equivalent of much less than a gallon of gasoline!. Sure, you can recharge it from the sun but you are going to need a lot of sun and lot of time. How long will it take to charge it? Let’s do the math.
Figure in Florida, sunlight is worth 1 kW per square meter at full sun. With a 1 square meter solar panel you would need 10 hours of full sun to get 10kWh, IF the panels were 100% efficient. Right now 15% is considered good. 20% is incredible. So you would need 50 hours from a 1 sq m panel. Add more panels. How about 4 meters by 1 meter of panel? That would take 12 hours. Where will you put the 12 feet x 3 ft panel? How much will installation cost?
Eventually there will be common batteries much better than Li-Ion. I don’t know what they will be. I just know there will be. They must, if we want electric cars to be widespread.
Maybe they will be made from common materials like silica – dirt, sand. Who knows.
They just don’t exist today. Neither do 100% efficient solar cells.
It’s really hard to argue with the laws of physics.

@LuckyGuy I just threw away a pamphlet of a company here in FL that puts solar on roof of a car port. Connected to the grid so you sell back energy to the power company when not using it to charge your car, or whatever else you might plug in. It said you should breakeven in about 3 years. That was usuing the standard 1,000 miles a month I think? I could be wrong. Let’s say it was more like $15k a year in miles, which is a commonly use number, so that would be 4.5 years if my math is right.

@JLeslie I’d be very suspicious an anyone saying you could break even with solar in 3 years. I don’t care if you live at the equator. Are they assuming you get the installation for free or heavily subsidizing it with tax credits?

@LuckyGuy I don’t remember those sort of details. Maybe they were making an assumption of some sort of net effect since you sell the power back to the utility company? Not sure. I am in St. Pete, FL, which has a tremendous amount of sunny days.

@JLeslie I decided to do some math. The volt’s range is 40 miles on batteries. Say you do that 300 days per year. That 40 miles costs you one battery charge $1.20 (best case) or $360 per year for electricity. If you had a similar car that got 40 mpg you would spend $1200 for gasoline. So using electricity is saving $840 per year over gasoline.

Now let’s look at the required solar charging system, PV. To charge the system fast enough to get at least 12kWh into the battery every day while it is parked at your house. That requires a 5 kW system. Typical cost of a 5kW system is $15,000. Source The estimated size of the system on your roof would be 15 ft x 15 ft. minimum.
So the system costs $15,000 and will save you $840 per year. That is no 3 year payback. If money is worth 6% the payback is “never”. If you pay cash and interest rates are zero (the absolute best case) the payback is 18 years.
A 5kW system will not leave much to sell back to the power company. Besides, with net metering, the power company only pays the high rate up to the value you use. Any extra you make they pay a fraction – less than 25% of their sell price.
Be very careful if you are doing this for economic reasons. If you are doing it for environmental reasons and/or the coolness fun factor, that is ok.

@LuckyGuy I think the cost for the solar was much less. Hmmmm…I’ll see if the pamphlet is still at the tops of the trash.