One of several displays the Volt provides
Last night, I slogged through chill rain and traded my Toyota Prius for a new Chevy Volt.
The Prius has been utterly reliable, with no major breakdowns in 119k miles and after 7 years all of the batteries are still working within specs. It's returned just under 50mpg (and I mean just under -- 49.88) over the life of the vehicle. I'll definitely be sad to see it go. Now we'll see if the Volt can do better.
Having come from the Prius, you'd think I'd know what an electric vehicle feels like. After all, the Prius can move on electric motors only, gliding around parking lots and startling pedestrians who don't hear it creeping up behind them. But if you give the Prius any encouragement with the accelerator pedal, or drift above 30mph, the regular gas motor kicks in with a gentle thump and soft growl.
The Volt is not like that. You press the "gas" pedal and… it goes faster; smoothly and in eerie silence. The Prius had a CVT, so there was no clank and jerk of gear shifts (other than the slight thump of the gas engine kicking in or out), but even on the Prius you could feel the ratios changing as the CVT played the belts in and out. In fact, with a little foot action, you could get the Prius to give you more or less oomph when trying to maximize mileage. There's none of that with the Volt. For all the world it feels as if there is no transmission. The connection between pedal and speed is absolutely direct. Digital. Not the least feel of something between my foot and propulsion. Combined with the silence of the operation, it feels something more akin to being pulled by a rope than driven by a motor.
When I picked up the vehicle, it had only about half a change on it, and I piddled that away trying it out. So last night I also got a sample of what the Volt is like when it's gas engine is running. Odd. That's what it's like. Chevy ads may emphasize that you can treat the Volt like any car, and I suppose that's true, but it definitely feels different. When the gas engine is running, the behavior of the car is absolutely the same as it is when running off the batteries. However, you can hear the sound of the engine whirring, and that sound is absolutely disconnected from your foot. You press down, the engine sound doesn't change. You let up, the engine sound doesn't change. The engine is just trying to juice up the batteries, and seems to be uninterested in what you're about at the moment. The performance of the car is unaffected, but getting use to that disconnect between sound and action will take a bit.
The Volt comes with a charging cable for 110v outlets. I plugged my vehicle in last night when I got home, and the display informed me it would be fully charged by 3AM. So when I headed out this morning around 6, I pulled out the plug and drove off with a full battery. The display indicated I could expect 38 miles of electric range (I don't know if that took into account that it was 44 degrees and drizzly). The first hundred yards was up a very steep grade, and the display immediately dropped to 37, which worried me, but as it turned out I made the first 5.1 miles to the Interstate having ticked only 2 miles off the range. Driving at 70+ mph definitely drew down the battery more quickly and the next dozen miles on I-55 took 16 off the range. However, once I slowed to around 60mph, the range and depletion rate seemed to be aligned, and when the Interstate emptied me back onto city streets I was once again able to travel more than indicated. By the time I reached the parking lot, I'd travelled 33.8 miles (about 2 more than normal, since some roads were blocked to accommodate World Series events). The display showed 3 miles remaining. So overall the car did a pretty darn good job of guessing how I would spend those electrons.
Now if I could only find somewhere to plug it in at this end!