Brought home a Volt.

[GoCougs]

+1

It's right now the most "common sense" of the electrics.
I figured out a Leaf for me wouldn't even make it to work and back- Unless I didn't go out to lunch or do other errands because I might not have enough juice left to get home..

SOMEDAY when charging is available everywhere we might see some more electric cars...

We're a Mr. Fusion-type of breakthrough (or the outlawing of ICEs) away from seeing more electric cars. Tech will continue to advance in both finding fossil fuels and making ICE-powered cars more efficient.

[2o6]

I love driving the Volt.

[280Z Turbo]

We're a Mr. Fusion-type of breakthrough (or the outlawing of ICEs) away from seeing more electric cars. Tech will continue to advance in both finding fossil fuels and making ICE-powered cars more efficient.

2 more years

[280Z Turbo]

I live in an apartment. There is no good way for me to charge an electric car.

[GoCougs]

I live in an apartment. There is no good way for me to charge an electric car.

Demand your state makes a law that all apartments provide a power outlet to charge electric cars.

[2o6]

Demand your state makes a law that all apartments provide a power outlet to charge electric cars.

I would not be shocked if this happened.

[Speed_Racer]

I would not be shocked if this happened.

Nice pun.

If I were to go electric, I'd choose this:

[Laconian]

I would not be shocked if this happened.

It's happened in my city. New commercial and high-density residential buildings are required to have some percentage of spots be electrified.

It did juice demand for the cars in my workplace.

[SVT666]

The electric grid is pretty taxed in most places as is and 80% of electricity in the US comes from coal burning power plants.  Electric cars don't make sense from a GHG point of view, but for the individual they make a lot of sense if you only use it for commuting.  If I drove a Leaf to Vancouver from here it would take two days, whereas I can do it now in 4.5 hours.  That's why the Volt and cars like it make so much sense. Before I ever consider one though it should have a 100 mile range with ICE backup or else it does me no good.  But, I would never trade a Mustang for one.  That's just silly.

[MX793]

I live in an apartment. There is no good way for me to charge an electric car.

Buy a gasoline powered generator, plug it into the car, run it overnight in the parking lot.

[ChrisV]

Actually, the grid is only taxed during the day, At night, the power plants are underutilized, and charging at night actually makes the whole grid more efficient. Southern California Edison did a huge study on it, and they found that EVs plugged into the grid make it more efficient as they can actually be used to "even out" the load if they are plugged in and already charged (and since most of them only take 4-8 hours to charge from dead on a 240v system, that leaves a lot of time plugged in and not actually drawing juice). SCE found that they could replace half the gasoline cars currently in southern California with EVs and not tax the current grid at all, and in fact it would make the power plants there more efficient due to a more even draw. This is supposing they use a smart charger, their smart grid and the ability to do two way electric flow. You can even get credits on your bill for that.

And tell your apartment complex that the building can get tax credits for installing a charger or two.

We used a public charger today. Just found it on the phone app, used the phone app to set up the charging session (and do the billing) and then end the session when we were done shopping. Worked slick.

[Rupert]

It's happened in my city. New commercial and high-density residential buildings are required to have some percentage of spots be electrified.

It did juice demand for the cars in my workplace.

Well, at Google, I wouldn't expect much resistance.

[Rupert]

The electric grid is pretty taxed in most places as is and 80% of electricity in the US comes from coal burning power plants.  Electric cars don't make sense from a GHG point of view, but for the individual they make a lot of sense if you only use it for commuting.

I believe it's more greenhouse-gas efficient to power the car with a coal power plant than with an ICE.

[SJ_GTI]

Wow congrats! Can't wait to hear more about your experience with the car. 

[AutobahnSHO]

I think the plug-in Prius might be a better fit, since it has range enough for my lil' commute but it splits the difference in terms of price.

Of course, then I'd be driving a Prius. Gah.

The ONLY Prius I'd drive is the V. Rest are just bleh.

[AutobahnSHO]

We're a Mr. Fusion-type of breakthrough (or the outlawing of ICEs) away from seeing more electric cars. Tech will continue to advance in both finding fossil fuels and making ICE-powered cars more efficient.

and/or stuff like this.   put charging pads all over the place, charge a buck or two for usage- like Chris' experience just paying with the phone.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/3/3721914/utah-state-university-induction-charging-bus

[Morris Minor]

For those interested, the Volt has a long Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevy_Volt

Congratulations, Chris.

[GoCougs]

and/or stuff like this.   put charging pads all over the place, charge a buck or two for usage- like Chris' experience just paying with the phone.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/3/3721914/utah-state-university-induction-charging-bus

Inductive charging is quite inefficient however.

[ChrisV]

Hmmm. looks like it's only a software solution away from being able to recharge the batteries fully while driving on the gas engine. Tried out hold mode on the highway the other day. It'll grey out the battery charge remaining at the point where you went into hold mode, and show the range remaining if you go back to full electric. I noticed that occasionally the engine would rev a bit more and pretty soon there would be a green bar above the hold location on the monitor, indicating additional charge, then the engine would go back to idle and it would use up that additional charge. What that tells me is that it's actually charging more than it needs to drive on on the highway, then using that excess to continue to drive. Would be cool that if you got down to say, half charge that you coud go into a recharge mode on the highway that would bring it back to full charge for use at your destination. Of course that would probably mean running above idle for more of the trip, making for crap fuel mileage for the trip. As it is, when I go into hold mode, I tend to only get about 40 mpg, so I try not to use ti too much (long highway trips are where I'd use that).

[AutobahnSHO]

Inductive charging is quite inefficient however.

You keep saying this. Yet "the system is up to 90% efficient even if the driver is up to 6 inches off target" with a TEN INCH AIRGAP.

That seems downright magical to me.

[280Z Turbo]

Hmmm. looks like it's only a software solution away from being able to recharge the batteries fully while driving on the gas engine. Tried out hold mode on the highway the other day. It'll grey out the battery charge remaining at the point where you went into hold mode, and show the range remaining if you go back to full electric. I noticed that occasionally the engine would rev a bit more and pretty soon there would be a green bar above the hold location on the monitor, indicating additional charge, then the engine would go back to idle and it would use up that additional charge. What that tells me is that it's actually charging more than it needs to drive on on the highway, then using that excess to continue to drive. Would be cool that if you got down to say, half charge that you coud go into a recharge mode on the highway that would bring it back to full charge for use at your destination. Of course that would probably mean running above idle for more of the trip, making for crap fuel mileage for the trip. As it is, when I go into hold mode, I tend to only get about 40 mpg, so I try not to use ti too much (long highway trips are where I'd use that).

Learn to use paragraphs.

[Raza]

Very cool.  I didn't think they sold the Volt in any color than Blend-into-Traffic Silver.  I like that blue. 

My stance on hybrids is well known, but of all of them, this is the best one.  The system is genius and it's the first hybrid or EV that I think actually makes sense as a car and not as a fashion statement.  Big fan of the Volt (for other people, obviously I'd never buy one for myself ).

Congratulations!

[GoCougs]

You keep saying this. Yet "the system is up to 90% efficient even if the driver is up to 6 inches off target" with a TEN INCH AIRGAP.

That seems downright magical to me.

I keep saying it because I'm involved with it every day here at work (the product my company makes is inductively charged).

Hard wired charging systems are close to 100% efficient, so a 10% efficiency loss is large. I would have to see data though as typically inductive charging is 60-70% efficient.

[Vinsanity]

the Mustang was a daily and it really wasn't any fun to commute in

I feel ya. This is how I felt about the s2000. So although I'm not a huge fan of the Volt in particular, I can't blame you for rationalizing this decision. Congrats.

[Vinsanity]

If someone stuck a gun in my face and forced me to buy "green" the Volt would be it.

Sadly, I thought about it a few times, and my choice would be the Camry hybrid. It almost seems like a "what blunt object would you choose to kill yourself with?" type of question, but to be honest, if I weren't a car guy, I'd probably be driving a Camry hybrid...

[ChrisV]

The Volt is actually fun to drive, though, which is one of the reasons it is gracing the driveway. It's quicker than the MINI Cooper, and actually feels a lot like a silent E38 (though more luxurious, ironically). I just couldn't get behind any of the regular hybrids, as they are still gas cars with electric assistance, even the plug in versions.

Plus, I love this:



The lifetime MPG is low because the car was delivered from Richmond VA to Baltimore last friday running mostly on the gas generator. I've used pretty much no fuel since I've got the car.

Oh, and the insurance is $30 less per month for this car than it was for the Mustang...

[Gotta-Qik-C7]

I want one of these as a DD one day!

[MrH]

I hate that "250+ MPG claim".  It's so disingenuous to put things in terms of miles per gallon when you're not using gallons of gas, but electricity instead.  It's like having a MPG read out on a car running on compressed natural gas "LOL, YOU WENT 10K MILES ON ZERO GALLONS OF GAS: INFINITY!"

[Laconian]

I hate that "250+ MPG claim".  It's so disingenuous to put things in terms of miles per gallon when you're not using gallons of gas, but electricity instead.  It's like having a MPG read out on a car running on compressed natural gas "LOL, YOU WENT 10K MILES ON ZERO GALLONS OF GAS: INFINITY!"

I bet you could sell a h4xxed firmware to gullible hippies that changes the "250+" to "500+". Dude, so much more ecological!

[ChrisV]

I hate that "250+ MPG claim".  It's so disingenuous to put things in terms of miles per gallon when you're not using gallons of gas, but electricity instead.  It's like having a MPG read out on a car running on compressed natural gas "LOL, YOU WENT 10K MILES ON ZERO GALLONS OF GAS: INFINITY!"

The point is, it has a gas engine so how far do you go on the gas you're using in the gas engine? That's how far. It's not disingenuous at all. It's simply a measure of how far you went and how much gasoline you used to do it. You won't see that sort of readout on a pure EV as they don't have gas engines that run occasionally. Yesterday, because I put it in hold mode to hit the highway, I was running the gas engine quite a bit and the readout said 89 mpg. Because that's what I got for that trip.

If you put it in pure EV mode and compare cost of a KWH to gallons of gas, then, at present rates, you're going 40 miles on 80 cents worth of electricity, giving the equivalent of 120-150 mpg as far as costs go for the EV portion of the use. But since it can't know how much electricity costs, it can't calculate that out and give it to you. Only how far you went and how much gas you used doing it.

I bet you could sell a h4xxed firmware to gullible hippies that changes the "250+" to "500+". Dude, so much more ecological!

Possibly. I calcualted it out, if I ONLY commuted in the car daily, I'd only run on EV mode and the gas engine would only run to keep things warm and use up the fuel in the tank (it's programmed to run throough a tank of gas per year in order to keep the fuel from going bad). Doing so would net me the equivalent of 1200 mpg. the readout would never show that, however, so maybe a version of the software that would read actual calculated equivalencies would be popular with the hypermilers and geeks on the Volt forums. I dunno. I don't really care, as long as I'm barely using gasoline (especially as gas prices rise this summer).