If I’m reading this right the mi / kWh for today’s trip was almost 5. In fact for the trip down it was 5.07 mi / kWh. If I’m not mistaken that’s pretty amazing electric efficiency. And for gas, that’s 49 mpg. If you consider I still had 2 miles range left that I generated with gas, it’s 52 mpg. Also not too shabby.
The vast majority was slow and go - under 40MPH, with moments as high as 65 MPH. Lots of 0 kW gliding.
I managed this driving on back country roads at night a few weeks back, utilizing hypermiling techniques like "pulse & glide". I was also driving under the speed limit when there wasn't someone right behind me. This is by no means how I would normally drive it. It was more of an endurance test to see how far I could push the Volt's battery capabilities. While it's short of the 111.9 miles that Wayne Gerdes achieved when the Gen 2 Volt first came out, I'm still happy I was able to get 101 miles entirely on electric. I probably could've driven it a little further, as I can normally use 14 kWh, but I didn't want the gas engine turning on and showing up in this picture lol. My EV "guess-o-meter" shows around 65-68 electric miles during my normal daily work commute. It could probably go above 70, but traffic going home is faster, and sometimes I feel like driving it a bit more spiritedly when I still have over 50 miles on it for my 20ish mile trip home lol.
The last 3 long trips in my 2013 Volt have turned out like this. Only variance is a slight one in the number of miles per kwhr This is a mix of city, rural suburb, country highway and 35 ish freeway miles
I flirt with 7.x mi/ kwhr At speeds around 40mph, however it needs to be perfectly flat and wind free , any incline and I need to bleed speed to maintain efficiency.
Every Volt owner I've spoken to is absolutely enthralled with theirs. For my next car it's looking like it's between Chevy Volt, Hyundai Ioniq PHEV, and Kia Niro PHEV. Both the Cadillac CT6 PHEV and Tesla Model 3 are very, very nice. Both also cost about ~$20k more than what they should. If Lexus made a comparable car, I'd have purchased two already and likely been mulling over a third. I think Toyo is just now beginning to realize they made the wrong bet when they went for the extra hydrogen subsidy money instead of developing more PHEVs. This post would be about 10,000x more relevant/fitting in the Model 3 thread.
The Volt is a compact car, so if you shuttle 3-4 adults around, it'll be a tight fit. If it's just you in the car 90% of the time though, it's a blast to drive. It still puts a smile on my face every time I drive it, and when I visited my sister who lives 4 hours away, it ran just fine on gas. Most of my normal commute is just to work and back of around 40 miles though, so it's essentially an EV for me. If you do a lot of freeway or heavy traffic driving, I highly recommend getting a loaded one that has ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control) on it. It makes stop and go traffic or accordion-simulator mode on the freeway (cars speed up, then slow down, then speed up, etc) much more bearable. The Ioniq hybrid (they didn't have a plug-in version, which I hear is hard to find outside California) felt kind of like a slightly faster Prius when I test drove one. But I did like that it had Android Auto/Apple Carplay capability, something Toyota seems to be slow at integrating into their cars for some reason. It offers a lot of cargo room too like the Prius. I thought the Niro (non-plug in version) was pretty nice. If you can live without All-Wheel Drive, then it's not a bad compact SUV. Only thing I heard about it that would've turned me off is the lack of an electric heater, meaning in winter time the gas engine will be running even when I have a full battery. I heard Kia will be releasing an all-electric version within a year or two. Hyundai is also releasing an all electric Kona, which is rated for 258 miles, beating the Chevy Bolt EV by about 20 miles. Definitely keep your eyes on those if you're looking for a more electrified vehicle. They have fairly long warranties as well in case you're worried about the cars taking a dive in reliability later on. Alex on Autos has some decently covered video reviews on youtube for all of these vehicles, so check them out if you want some more thoughts on them. And definitely test drive them all before you make a decision.
The service dept, OPEC, and Big Oil thank you for your continued patronage. They'll be requiring more tribute from you soon though, because we had it too easy at the pump for the last few years, and now they need to refill their coffers.
