Tomorrow (July 15) is the anniversary of my purchase/delivery of the Chevy Volt.  Here is the data from the first year:

Usage – I turned out to be a very average driver this past year, putting 12,248 miles on the Volt in the first year.  Of those miles, 8,346 were driven on battery power and the other 3,902 were driven when using the gas generator to provide electric power.  Overall usage, then, was 68% electric.

Fuel Consumption – I used a total of $232.85 worth of electricity to charge the car for the entire year.  Altogether, I burned 119 gallons of gas for the 3,902 miles I drove under gas power, or about 32.79 mpg for gas-powered miles.  At 32.79 mpg, the electric miles would have burned another 255 gallons of gas.

Savings – If I had purchased the additional 255 gallons of gas at the average price over the past year of $2.70 (yes, I keep track), that would have been an additional cost of $688.50.  Subtracting the electric cost of $232.85 from that, I saved $455.65 in fuel costs.  In terms of gas alone, the vehicle has averaged 103 mpg for its lifetime.

This is a fun car to own and drive.  Currrently, I’ve used 1.4 gallons of gas since the last time I filled up and have driven over 600 miles on that 1.4 gallons.  If I filled up today and used a gallon and a half, my mileage for this tank would be over 428 mpg!

Tomorrow the Volt will have 4 months on it. Here is the data so far (one nice thing about the Volt is that it keeps most of this data for you. The remainder is easily calculated).

To figure overall gas savings, we’ll take the average price of gas over the last 4 months ($3.30) and calculate how much gas we would have had to use to get the same number of miles in a 25mpg car (our Honda CRV), less the amount of money spent on electricity over the period.

Electric Miles: 2,858
Gallons Saved: 114.3
Money Saved: $377.19
Electricity Cost: $99.03
Net Money Saved: $278.16 (over 4 months)
Annual Money Saved: $1,112.64

There is also another factor. Even though the car has almost 4,000 miles on it, the engine only has 994 miles. Engine maintenance (oil change) won’t be due for a long time. The electric motor requires no maintenance, so this car will have a significant savings in service also. We’ll save that for a later report.

I have driven the Volt for 1,000 miles now. Here’s the data on my first thousand:

Percentage Electric: 76%
Overall mpg: 152 mpg
Total fuel saved: 33 gallons ($118.47 at current price of $3.59 per gallon)
Total charging cost: $24.96

That’s a net savings of $93.51 in fuel costs for the first 1,000 miles.

Actually, I think I can do much better than that, as this first thousand miles included 252 gas miles (two trips to Champaign, one to Effingham, and one to Tuscola). My experience so far has been that I use gas only on those trips. In daily driving, I don’t exceed the 40 mile all-electric range. Still, I filled up the first of August and have only used 4 gallons this month so far, doing my normal driving, including the aforementioned trips.

How does the Volt work? It’s fascinating and unique: Try this video for a summary.

I decided to fill the tank today, even though it is more than half full. The tank holds a little over 9 gallons of fuel, and I put 3.072 gallons it in to top it off. Normally, I would probably not keep a full tank in the car unless I was planning to go on a trip, but I just wanted to top it off to start tracking fuel consumption. In all, the car traveled 554 miles since I got it (with a full tank), so that’s a little over 180 miles per gallon when doing the straight calculation. Of course, for a more accurate picture, the electricity costs of charging must be factored in. The easiest way to do that is to take the cost of recharging and figure out how many additional gallons of gas that would have purchased and then do the math again.

According to the Volt itself, it is using 31 kwh of electricity per 100 miles driven in all-electric mode. On that first tank of gas, I had 448 electric miles and the balance (106) in gas-powered miles. So when running on gas only, I got 34.5 mpg. When running on electricity, it used 138.88 kwh (at 31 per 100 miles, multiplied by 4.48). Multiply that by $.09 per kwh and you get $12.50. The EPA says that 33.7 kwh is the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gas (in terms of BTUs generated). That means that using 138.88 kwh is equivalent to burning 4.12 gallons of gas.

Now, add the 4.12 gallons of EPA gas to the 3.07 gallons I actually used, and you get 7.19 gallons total. Now divide the total miles driven (554) by the adjusted gallons used (7.19) and you get 77.05 mpge (miles per gallon equivalent), which includes the use of electricity to get a real equivalent to a gas-only car. It is the mpge number that should be used to compare with non-electric or hybrid vehicles, as that factors in the charging, where a straight simple mpg equivalent does not.

Better than a Prius? It depends. If you drive mostly highway miles where you would far exceed the initial 40 per charge and end up with a high percentage of gas-powered miles, the Prius would do better, at around 50 mpg vs. the Volt’s 35 mpg. But if you drive it like I do, on electric only 80% of the time, then my mileage, factoring in the charging costs, at least for this first fill-up, would be 27 mpg (more than 50%) better than the Prius. So it depends on your driving patterns. We’ll track this over time and see how this first fillup compares to averages in the long term.

Schneider Electric EVLink (indoor)

The electricians showed up today to install the new 240v charging station for the volt. While this isn’t the greatest picture, it shows how we decided to install it. We had the electricians run a dedicated 240v 40amp circuit to a wall receptacle in the garage. Then they wired a pigtail connector to the charger and we simply plugged it in to the outlet. That way it can easily be removed, relocated, or whatever, in the future. Then they mounted the unit and the cord receptacle, plugged everything in and it works. I can’t wait to do my first charge from empty to see how long it takes vs. the 120v charger that comes with the car. Yesterday, we completely drained the Volt and it took 10 hours to recharge it to full last night. I’m hoping the 240v charger will cut that time to 4 hours or less. The availability of such a quick charge makes electric driving even more feasible if you can add to the charge during a couple hour lull in using the car during the day. It would also make it easy to return late and night and leave early in the morning with a full charge.

Here’s the new 2014 Chevy Volt, purchased on July 17, 2014.

We purchased a new 2014 Chevy Volt two weeks ago today. So far, it is a marvelous car. It’s very well engineered and it has enough gadgets, data, and settings to satisfy any data wonk or gadget geek (like me).

What is a Volt?

A Chevy Volt is a plug-in electric vehicle that has a gas generator for backup. It’s also known as an extended range electric vehicle. It operates exclusively on electric power, either supplied by the large (16 kilowat) battery pack, or by the gas engine that runs a generator. The gas engine does not charge the batteries. They are charged by plugging the vehicle in at night, either into an ordinary household 120v plug (charger interface is included with the car), or by installing and connecting to a 240v EV charging station (NOT included with the car). For me, the 240v charging station was around $699, plus the $350 my electrician is charging me to run the circuit. Using the 120v charger, the Volt will charge (from completely drained) in 10-14 hours. With a 240v charger, a completely empty battery will take about 4 hours to recharge.

The Volt’s gas engine will only turn on to generate electricity when the battery pack reaches a certain minimum level (usually after about 36-40 miles of driving). Or, one can put the car into “hold” mode, which will force the generator to provide the electricity, even though the battery pack might still have power remaining. This mode was put in to allow the driver to make best use of the battery power. For example, I went on a 100 mile round trip that was about 70 miles interstate driving. I put it into “hold” mode on the interstate and used battery power when I was off the interstate, as the battery is much more efficient running the car at speeds below 50 mph. Cruising on the interstate at 75 mph is no strain on the car either, but it does take a lot of kilowatts to do it. It’s more efficient to supply them from the gas generator than from the stored battery.

Volt-generated Data

I mentioned that if you like data, you’ll like the Volt. The car keeps all sorts of data that can be displayed in the car or accessed on the Internet via the Onstar link that is built into the car. Here is my data for the first two weeks of driving the Volt:

Total miles driven: 524
Miles driven on battery (electric miles): 417 (80%)
Miles driven on gas generator (gas miles): 107
Total fuel used: 2.8 gallons
Miles per gallon: 188
Kilowatt hours per 100 miles: 34
Cost for electricity (at my current electric rates): $12.76
Total fuel cost for 524 miles (gas at $3.49 per gallon and electric charging cost): $22.53
Fuel cost per mile: 4 cents

As a point of comparison, my Honda CRV, which averages 25 mpg, would cost 14 cents per mile for fuel. With my driving habits, however, it is conceivable that I could have a much higher percentage of electric miles, thus taking the per-mile fuel costs down even more. I’ll check back in here later and post more statistics, which will obviously become more realistic the longer I drive the car.

Driving Habits

To get the most out of the car, you have to adjust your driving habits. I have made it a challenge to see how many miles of all electric I can get on a single charge. Although GM advertises 36 miles, I have consistently been above 40 miles on a charge. The high so far has been 44 miles, but I think I can get it higher. The key is letting the regenerative braking work for you. When the car is coasting or coming to a stop, it uses the kinetic energy built up by the car to put some small charge back into the battery. This is called regenerative braking. It doesn’t add a lot, but can add a few miles per charge if managed properly. I am learning how to use it in my area, which has a few small hills, to maximum advantage. My goal is to get to 50 miles on a charge and I think it’s doable. I’ll post more here in a few weeks