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Chevrolet Volt Is Managing To Withstand The Test Of Time With This One Stat

An interesting article from HybridCars.com shows that the Chevrolet Volt is the reining champ of fuel efficiency for the past 4 years, who knew?

The Volt earned an EPA rating of 37 MPG while in gas-only operation, which can be a bit misleading. It actually has a rating of 62 MPG for gas-plus-electric. These numbers are the reflection of an “average daily drive,” and make it the most fuel efficient car you can buy here in the states.

Technically, the BMW i3 REx gets better fuel economy with a rating of 88 MPG. However, the REx was built for cities, and it’s little (optional) 650 cc engine is just a temporary backup to get you home. So when looking at cars that can travel longer distances when necessary, in terms of efficiency, the Volt still shines brightly.

Despite the Volt’s runner-up ranking in the EPA’s “Top Fuel Sippers,” the Nissan Leaf outsold the Volt for the month of June. We hope it’s high “utility factor” will better its chances for success for next month, and make up for any doubts consumers may still have about the Volt.

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Comments

  1. What’s eve more impressive is:

    tepid number of buyers
    x mileage = a handful of drivers
    getting exceptional, coal-driven fuel efficiency.

    Sure, the battery is pretty useless after you’ve used 1/3 of its’ life, and there’s one recycling facility in Ohio. And a replacement is only $2000+.

    But coming in second – that’s better than coming in third!

    Reply
    1. Its sad that there are still so many misinformed and unenlightened individuals out there. For someone that picked up enough news to find this article you really missed all the fanfare about GM putting old Volt batteries to use powering their data centers.

      I would also like to see your data that supports your battery life statement. Whats 1/3 of a Volts battery life? I’m at 112,000 miles, charge every night and still get 44 miles on my range. Others report similar results. My 2003 Honda needed a $3500 engine rebuild after 147,000 miles so what is your point? Everything has a useful life and needs maintenance.

      When electric car batteries start showing up more in scrap I’m sure the market will respond with more recycling centers. If you haven’t realized it by now the country pretty much runs on supply and demand.

      The Volt is a great car and its too bad more people cant get beyond the rumors and their fear over it. The car is fun to drive and it has saved me over $300 a month in gas. That saving is even factoring in my electric consumption.

      Do yourself a favor. Stop being a drone and get informed. Actually go test drive a Volt or a Leaf to see what they are all about. Crack open Excel and create a spreadsheet like I did and calculate your gas usage and what an electric car would really cost you. My Chevy dealer helped a lot on that. Estimate 14-16kwh of electric usage to charge the battery a night. Multiply that by your local rates. If you don’t drive like an idiot you will get 35-45 miles of range out of that charge. When you start realizing your only spending a couple bucks a day to drive around it might change your mind.

      Reply
    2. OP: You’re such a cynic!!! Where are the cold, hard (factual) numbers you’re alleging?

      Reply
  2. I own a Volt, and I think it is an exceptional car. I am really impressed with GM.
    I think the electric-first gas-second approach is the best way to get to electrification of vehicles until battery technology improves and comes down in price.
    That said, I feel that I am at near-full electrification already. With 40 miles of range, more than 80% of my miles are electric, and I have averaged about 180 MPG each of the past 6 months. I could have done better, but it has become our family’s main car. We leave the SUV at home every chance we get (which is most of the time).
    As for coal, it makes only 40% of the electricity produced in the US. And even if it was 100%, it is still less polluting than gas. Plus, it is made in America.

    Reply
  3. I was taking a beating when gasoline was nearly $5 per gallon, around 2006/7. My daily commute between two ranches my wife and I have here in Texas is 90 miles round trip and when driving my 2500HD 4×4 pickup, often I was at the gas station at least once per week and paying $100 (and more) to fill up the tank.

    And then I read news that GM was in the process of designing an electric car. I read all I could find and as I was doing so, Oklahoma Oilman T. Boone Pickens comes onto the scene with his TV campaign exclaiming that we as a nation were exporting $400 BILLION each year, to a region of the world where oil is produced (the same place where Osama Bin Ladin was from) and it was as if a light bulb went off in my head.

    My grandparents had a six square mile ranch in Pecos County, Texas and oil was depleted from it a long time ago. Oil is “history” under my two ranches in two different counties between San Angelo and Abilene, Texas (it was gone before I bought the first ranch 20 years ago.) And although oil is gone in many places, the winds blow here night and day and fast forward to 2015 and Texas is now the wind-energy capitol of the United States.

    As my “light bulb” went off when T. Boone Pickens said we are making “foreigners” filthy rich, it also shed illumination on how an EV could play a big role in getting me from one ranch to another without that $100 per week gasoline bill that was eating up my wallet.

    Light bulb number 2 goes off. The first president Bush buys his son Neil Bush a Chevrolet Volt. I look into the specs and GM suggests a Volt could get you down the road about 35 miles on electricity and then the small gasoline engine comes on-line and the car continues down the road. I discovered that GM LIED because I bought a 2012 Volt, drove it 27 month and put 27,000 miles on it, and on most of my commutes (45 miles to “Ranch B”) I was able to make the entire trip on a single charge without the engine ever coming on-line. In fact, if you do a Google search for “Dusty Voltstats” you can see that my 2012 Volt indeed racked up all those miles and used 42 gallons of Jihad Juice the entire time I owned it.

    That “off the shelf” Volt worked so well for me, I decided to order a 2015 Volt all decked out with every whistle and bell Chevrolet had, and in the color of my choice. If you do a Google search for “Dusty Too” you’ll find I’m a tad over 15,000 miles and I’ve used something like 10 gallons of Jihad Juice in this new Volt.

    And for the EV bashers who troll the news and post these highly uniformed and misleading rants about electric cars, I saw you probably are not much different that whiners from about 150 years ago who complained about them “new fangled steam engine trains” that replaced the horse and buggies. Back then, “whiners” were saying if you rode a train, the speeds they got up too would destroy brain cells (no joke, people believed that back then)… And for all the whiners complaining about EVs today, I suggest you get on the “electric bandwagon” because this is the future…

    As a life-long Republican myself, a Vietnam war vet (I volunteered, I wasn’t drafted) I believe driving an EV and reducing my consumption of “Jihad Juice” (which is a term I coined long ago) is the most patriotic thing I’ve done in a long time, especially in light of the fact that ISIS is selling black-market crude oil (about $200 million each month) as they finance their war and behead people, destroy antiquities and pollute their own perverted ideology.

    Both of my Volts have worn a bumper sticker I designed reading… “Hey OPEC… Kiss my gas cap! I Drive a Chevy Volt”… and I’m sticking it to OPEC one electron at a time in my own “hole-e war” and by HOLE, I mean plug your wells, I’m getting off your oil.

    Reply
  4. I just found one of those bogus liars posing as a pseudo journalist who if was alive “150 years ago” as I mentioned above (people who thought riding in a train destroyed brain cells) and if you “sample” his malarkey at the below link, I suspect you too will think the “journalist” who wrote this in regard to the first generation Volts and what is in store for 2016, well, let’s just say this poor fellow is in need an enema.
    http://autoomobile.com/news/2016-chevrolet-volt-praying-for-no-bugs/10024119/

    Reply
  5. N22Tango – Thanks for putting up that awesome post!!! I don’t have two ranches to commute between, but my 25 miles-per-day round trip between home and work is going to be perfectly served by the new 2015 Volt I’m picking up in about a week. I’ve been thinking the very same things you mentioned for years now, and absolutely love the idea of “patriotically” fueling up with home-grown electricity (which is becoming more and more renewable-sourced by the day) rather than the Jihad Juice we’ve been hooked on as a society for the past 50 years. Whatever your stance on global warming, there are plenty of other benefits that accrue from not burning fossil fuels and filling the sky with harmful combustion products, especially those that impact the health and well being of people and every other creature that crawls, walks, swims, or flies. And keeping more of Americans’ hard-earned $$$ in this country where it can benefit all Americans rather than sending it abroad where some portion of it will be used to harm us is frosting on the proverbial cake! This is the right thing to do in America, NOW, and with the Volt, the only compromise at all (and only for the time being) is the somewhat limited seating – some folks just need more places to put butts when they’re driving, and that will be fixed in the coming years as Voltec is proliferated across GM’s lineup. What GM has built in the Volt is paradigm-shifting! In a few years, as GM (and Nissan and Tesla and various “follower” manufacturers) educate regular folks about the benefits of electric propulsion, most thinking people will look back with incredulity at America’s former addiction to gasoline and wonder why we didn’t start on this new path long ago. It’ll be great being among the vanguard of mindset changers starting next week:)

    Thanks again for your enlightened, helpful post, and enjoy your own 2015 Volt. I suspect you’ll be in the market for a Gen-2 soon!

    Reply
  6. The “tepid” sales of EVs does not imply the EV is not catching on. Quite the opposite. The more important fact is that people who buy EVs do not go back to gas-powered vehicles. They love their EVs! As long as we are putting 10,000 new EVs on the road each month, and none of these buyers are returning to gas vehicles, the EV market is significantly chipping away at the gas vehicles market. It’s just easier to disguise the slowly-growing leak in the gas vehicles boat. The big negative to owning an EV (aside from price, which is coming down) is that you need a garage to store it. I park on the street, so although I would love to buy an EV and it would save me money to do so, I have no place to keep it. And so I, like many others, am STUCK with my gas-powered vehicle.

    Reply

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