When does my Volt get to join the party?
 

Sorry if this has been beaten to death. But how many times do I have to fill up my Volt before it is one of the cars on the Volt "list"? I have owned it since June and filled it up twice and I am not on the "list" of the 64 existing Volts on Fuelly yet. I see some people on the list of 2013 Volts with 3 fill ups so my guess is that my Cyber Volt will be up there in a couple months but it would be cool if I knew that to be the case instead of just guessing.
Kind of proud of my 304 mpg, plus a whole lot of electricity, of course.

Welcome Ziv, it takes 3 fill ups to show in the listings. Can't find the link in FAQ right now. Took mine 3 to show up.

Thanks for confirming my theory!
 

I couldn't find the answer anywhere so having it confirmed is useful. I only use a gallon or two every month so it may take me nearly a year of driving the Volt to get it on the list. I may just top off the tank with a couple gallons so my Cyber will show up sooner.
Thanks for the info, Hypermarquis!

You've only done 600 miles since June? I thought with a car like that, you'd be taking advantage of the economy and using it more often?

Unless you can account for the electricity used, posting "gas mileage" is useless and misleading. It is as if your car has two fuel tanks, and you only post the fuel you put into one of them.

https://www.fuelly.com/faq/20/not-lis...rowse-vehicles

Charon, that is true to some extent, but given that I haven't put gasoline into my Volt since September, if memory serves, it is probably worth noting just how many miles Volt drivers get from a tank of gas.
If it helps, I use 90 cents to completely fill my battery up and that gets me 44 to 46 miles most days. So I pay around 2 cents a mile.
My Volt has used almost 12 gallons of gasoline, though, in the 5900 miles it has been driven, so that makes the total price per mile driven more like 2.2 cents.

Draigflag, I have been trying to get my business back up to speed and haven't really done much but work, work out and read for the past year. I have put less than 6000 miles on my Volt and less than 2560 miles on my 350Z in almost a year. I am loving both cars though. The Volt is just a super cool car to drive, and not having to fill up with gas in 7 months is kind of cool too.
And the 350Z is just a great road trip car. I don't take it to the track but I do love hitting the back roads with it, though I don't get time to do that too often. I did get 30.9 mpg with my 350Z on a roadtrip to Morehead City where I was forced to drive at 62 mph for a couple hours. That was kind of interesting in a slow developing sort of way.

If you just wanted to brag about how little gasoline you used, why didn't you get a Nissan Leaf or a Tesla? Then you'd have burned no gasoline at all.

I am proud that an American car like the Volt makes it so easy to go so long without using gasoline, so if that is bragging, I am down with that. I didn't get the Leaf because it isn't an American car maker, and one of the reasons I like to drive all electric is that I am using All-American (99.9%) electricity instead of gasoline, nearly half of which we import. And since oil is a fungible good, buying Canadian oil is nearly as bad as buying Kuwaiti, Saudi or Russian oil because we are indirectly supporting the oil prices by buying gasoline. Plus, the Volt lets me drive all day when I want to, something the Leaf most definitely does not.
Nearly everyone on this site is here to chart their gas mileage and there is a lot of competition in that, Charon. So why are you busting my chops for being proud of using around 12 gallons of gas to go 5900 miles? :)

I also have a 350Z I love to drive, and there my lifetime mpg is around 19 mpg. I like to drive fast and efficient, and my two cars give me the ability to do both, albeit not at the same time. But I did get 30.9 mpg on a road trip once in my Z.

I think I should top off my tank even though I only need a gallon or so, just to be able to get onto the leader board for Volts. I won't be in the top 10, probably, but I like to support the home team, and Chevy is the home team for me, and my stats are fairly good.

Driving an American car is somthing to be proud of??! News to me! ;)

Draigflag, that is why I like my Volt so much. A lot of us look down on American cars, and for good reason in a lot of cases. But the Volt is simply better than any other car out there at the price point. Not even close. The Leaf is limited utility vehicle but the Volt is a full utility car that is actually fun to drive. And it uses American electricity most of the time, not Jihadi Juice.

In the Volt, an American car company has jumped out in front of the competition, and in the Tesla, Musk has done the same thing albeit at a higher price point. And the best part of this tale is, GM and Tesla appear to be making their next generation cars even better than the ones we can buy today.

I haven't been able to find specific information, but what I found seems to suggest the Volt contains about 40% US content. My Toyota Tundra is 75% US. You might want to check the window sticker that came on the car, if you still have it, just to be sure.

I'd have to say almost any American car beats the crop of British, French, and Italian ones. If you have data that PROVES differently, show it. And I am not referring to the artificially high fuel economy ratings, most of which would probably be halved in the real world in real traffic with ordinary drivers.

If you beleive that Charon, you'd beleive anything! American cars are utter trash in every possible way, just ask anyone who doesnt live in the US, absolute joke.

Once again, no PROOF. Only opinions.

Charon, I have a picture of the Volt domestic content part of the window sticker from last year and it was up to 45%. Not great, but now that Brownstown is actually assembling packs (and using some American parts that used to be Korean), instead of playing Pac-Man, that number should be over 50%, but not by much, admittedly.
But that is just one more way the Volt continues to improve. The EPA All Electric Range (AER) going from 35 to 38 miles was a big one, as was getting the MSRP down from $41k to $34.9k so that the net price is down to $27.4k even before you make a better deal. You can get a Volt for less than $25k pretty easily now, which is pretty incredible for as great a car as the Volt is.

Lets look at every aspect of a car then. Economy? You've already mentioned this, instant fail for US cars. Big thirsty engines mated to a dated auto tranny means any attempts at saving fuel are pointless. The US market barely has any diesels on offer either, still don't fully understand why, even if diesel was $8 a gallon, getting 60 MPG would still be cheaper than getting 25 MPG in a gas powered car. Even some Euro race teams are starting to use diesel racing cars in endurance races, so fuel stops are not needed as frequently. It would also appear that the term hybrid is used a marketing tool for people who think they are going to save the planet by buying one. Pretty sure I saw an ad for an Escalade hybrid in the US that advertised economy of 15 MPG. Really? 15 MPG in a hybrid, Volvo have just released their own plug in hybrid that gets 150 MPG, that's 1000% more than the Caddy.

You really do get what you pay for with American cars. They are built cheap, so they are cheap to buy, it's that simple. US manufactures aren't willing to invest any decent engineering or technology into their product, that's why American cars haven't really changed apart from how they look, in the past 40 years or more. Big lazy engine up front, with an old fashioned auto tranny from the 70's, it's a recipe for fuel indigestion. Lets not forget the cart style leaf suspension. People outside the US are left scratching their heads on a daily basis, how do Americans get so little power from such a huge engine?When you look at some of the Sporty stuff on sale here, we can get over 400 HP from a 2.0 litre, US cars seem to need double that capacity to match the figures, if they were just willing to take a leaf from someone else's book, they could get just as much power but save fuel too.The term "power to weight" obviously means nothing to US manufactures. There's no sense of passion or prestige with US cars, about the best thing you can buy there is probably a Corvette for less than $100,000, of which has been criticized time and time again for it's cheap build and poor driving manner. Compare that to Bugatti Veyron, over $1,500,000 and they still loose money on every car they sell, that's just the dedication and commitment they invest in the engineering to make a masterpiece of Automotive design.

What about reliability? Americans think their cars are reliable, and in the US they are. There's a reason for that, the roads. Most of the US road network is made up of vast highways. Smooth and straight, the car's do very little work cruising up and down day after day barely ticking over. You try driving an American car in rural Romania and see how long it lasts. Take a peek at the surveys carried out in the UK every year, and you'll see that Chevrolet comes last year after year, 27th out of 27 with the Spark being voted the worse car ever in 116th place. The 3 other top selling GM cars came 92nd and 105th for customer satisfaction. The results speak for themselves.

Looking at the Nurburgring lap times, there are only 5 US cars in the top 50 (no points for guessing what they are) but again, huge 7.0 or 8.0 litre engines. Look at the other cars topping the list, some of them have 2.0 litre engines. Don't even mention NASCAR, how much skill does it take to drive in very big circles? I'm guessing there's more time, money and engineering goes into a single wheel nut on a F1 car than an entire NASCAR. As for rallying, Americans sent over
who they thought was a driving GOD, Ken Block. What happened, he crashed numerous times and came last with 0 points. It's very hard to argue your point when Americans do a very good job of showing us how bad their cars and their drivers are.

You mentioned British cars, last time I looked, Jaguar/Land rover were doing pretty well. In fact Jaguar came 1st in that survey I mentioned, and Land Rover came 6th.Give me a Bentley, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Range Rover, McLaren, Lotus*over a*rental car*Vette any day.*Maybe you ought to watch this video to help you realise just how much Britain contributes.

https://youtu.be/vmcmqTAu6b8

I am going to make no attempt to counter, one by one, your clearly anti-American bias. But I will point out that Aston Martin, Jaguar, and Rover (Land Rover and Range Rover) were owned by Ford for some years. Jag and Rover are now owned by Tata of India, as is a goodly part of Aston Martin. Lotus uses Toyota engines. I didn't bother to look up the others. Feel free to do so for yourself. I can see no further need to respond to any of your posts.

Some of you might find this interesting.https://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motora...213610506.html

The Cadillac SUV 4WD hybrid got 20mpg city and 23mpg highway. The 15mpg number might be for the non-hybrid. The 150mpg number for the Volvo XC60 PHV includes electricity from the wall. An early EPA proposal for PHV mpg calculations gave the Volt a 230mpg rating. What do people that can drive their PHV all on electric get, infinite or zero mpg?

Someone's knowledge of automatic transmissions and American engines hasn't left the '70s. Same with the suspensions. The only non-truck currently sold with leaf springs is the Mustang, but that's changing with the next model. I think the Crown Vic had them, but production of the fleet model stopped in 2005. I don't think Ford bothered changing the design since the '90s. Why bother when only taxi fleets and police departments were buying. Low price was important to the buyers.

There are some fine Interstates in the US, but most of us don't do our daily driving on them. Pennsylvania was the first state to put in paved roads. In many areas, the dog leg turns going around farmers fields still exist. Some of the pot holes go down to the original concrete pavement. But I concede our roads are in better shape generally. They have to be considering that a private car gets driven nearly twice the difference in a year as one in the UK.

As to British cars, well, um, let's just say it isn't their British divisions that Ford and GM looked to when they felt the need to poach something from Europe.

Another data point: My 1980 Buick Lesabre (full-size B-Body platform is GM equivalent to Ford Crown Victoria's Panther platform) has coil springs at all 4 corners. We're talking 34 years old here. It wasn't special, leaf springs were abandoned in most applications four decades ago, even full size rear wheel drive.

I'm not even sure the Mustang uses leaf springs. I just assumed so because it still uses a live rear axle.

Out 2001 Crown Vic had coil springs all around, as did our '89 Town Car. The Lincoln Town Car, the Ford Crown Victoria, and the Mercury Grand Marquis were essentially the same car. Air suspension was an available option on some models.

Are you attacking him? Who said he was bragging? Seems to me he asked a reasonable question.

Just filled my fuel tank up to see how my Volt is doing so far this year. 2481 miles and I needed 1.99 gallons. And I filled until it clicked off three times.

The Volt may not have as much rear seat legroom as I would like, but it is a fun car to drive and using American electricity to power it the vast majority of the time is pretty darned cool.

And VX Arky, maybe I was bragging a little bit. When an American car maker gets it right, a little boasting isn't too terrible a thing.

Buy American when possible. The job you save may be your own.

Here is a link to my Voltstats page showing my miles driven and the mpg.

https://www.voltstats.net/Stats/Details/3381

Do you guys get any grants from the governement? In the UK the government gives buyers £5000 about $8500 towards an electric car (but not hybrids)

I leased the Volt, so I don't get the $7500 tax credit directly. Ally Bank gets it. But the lease price reflects the tax credit that Ally got. If we keep buying more electric/PHEV/high efficiency cars every year, the reduced demand for gasoline will push the price of gas down. And given the ongoing increase in the US fleet efficiency, that is already starting to happen. People that drive F-150's are paying less for every gallon of gasoline because there are millions of Prius/Prii out there. And the Volt/Leaf sales are helping as well.
Plus, even a "coal fueled" Volt/Leaf/Tesla is cleaner than almost any other car on the road.
So we are making your gas cheaper and your air cleaner. :angel:

I wouldn't be sure about the price of gas coming down. Our goes up and down all the time but not by huge amounts. It is pretty cheap at the minute at just over $10 a gallon (UK gallon)

I wouldn't be so certain about the air being cleaner either. Hybrids and electric cars have huge batteries do they not? Have you seen the process involved in mining, distilling and processing all the chemicals and the effect it has on the surrounding climate? I'm guessing from the battery making process alone, it would take decades to break even with the carbon footprint!

If the impression of dirty mining for traction batteries is due to the Sudbury nickle mine in Canada, that damage was done was done decades before the Prius showed up. Nickle is a major component for stainless steel. So most of the blame is on everyone, that uses or depends on; flatware, surgical instruments, food processing equipment, kitchen sinks, sanitary countertops, non-hybrid cars, etc. The batteries for the Prius and other NiMH using hybrids was a tiny percentage of this mine's output.

These and the lithium batteries will have a usable life in the decades. At least 10 years in a hybrid. After their capacity has dropped too far for vehicle use, they have a long life in stationary power uses such as UPS units for cell towers. Toyota is already building units from old Prius batteries for peak shaving at their dealerships in Japan. That will save them money and reduce emissions.

Once the batteries are truly dead, they can be recycled for lower emissions than the initial mining.

If emissions and landscape destruction from mining is a concern, look into what it takes to get Canadian tar sands out of the ground, and to the point where it can be shipped to the refinery for gasoline and diesel.

Any sizable decrease in demand will reduce the price of gasoline, even if it isn't apparent to those of us who don't make a study of it. It may mean that the price of gasoline will only go up 5% instead of 10% over the next few years, but lowering demand will impact gas prices. If the US was still using as much as we did 8 years ago the price of gas would be much higher than it is today.
And the pollution from building a battery one time is much less than the pollution of burning tank after tank after tank of gasoline, especially since the battery materials will be re-used and then recycled. It isn't even close, unless you use comparisons of the type that claim a HMMV is greener than a Prius.

My point was that people think switching to electric is greener, it may be, it may not be but it's just a different type of fuel. One could argue that electric is some cases is obtained through the burning of fossil fuel anyway, so as a direct comparitive, it may not be classed as cleaner, just different.

Demand might be dropping in the US and Europe, but the middle class wanting its own cars is going to be growing in India and China.

Do you use a fuel stabilizer? Doesn't gasoline go "bad" after a few months, especially if it's diluted with ethanol?

Gasoline going bad after a few months is rather exaggerated. Something with a carburetor might suffer after the fuel ages for 6 months or a year or something. You'll get a lot more time with a modern fuel-injected computer controlled engine that compensates for changes in fuel. In my experience, lawnmowers are very sensitive to fuel age though; old fuel that will run my carbureted car won't run a mower.

I know ethanol is the devil and such, but when you have old fuel that has some water in it the cure is ethanol. I don't think it'll be an issue.

Anyway, the proof is in the pudding, eh? Ziv's fuel gets pretty old. Any lameness, Ziv?

The Volt's computer is said to be programmed to start and run the gas engine every so often, even if it isn't strictly needed, just to make sure to use the gas in the fuel lines. Presumably that will keep the injectors and pumps from gumming up.

PnnyPnchr, as the HolyCow and Charon have pointed out, stale gas doesn't seem to be a problem. I use a gallon a month, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less, and it really hasn't been an issue. As Charon points out, the Volt is engineered to prevent problems from occurring due to the lack of gen-set use, so every 3 months or so the gen-set comes on automatically and runs until the gasoline engine is warmed up. It ran for around 10-12 minutes when it happened to me and it took around 0.2 gallons.
Some Volt owners don't use the gas gen-set much, and they keep the gas tank only a quarter full so the gas doesn't stay in the tank/sealed bladder as long.
Also, the Volt gen-set will run if the temperature goes below 15 degrees, so I figure I will continue using around a gallon a month as long as I have the Volt. So far I have had my Volt for 11 months and it has used 13 gallons of gas, 3 of which were used by the dealer before I got it. So in 11 months I have used around 10 gallons, which is kind of cool.
Criswell keeps their Volts with just 3 or 4 miles of range in the battery. When you test drive the car, they have you drive 3 miles down the road, turn around and start heading back to the dealer. When the gen-set kicks in most drivers don't notice it if they have the radio/stereo on. I think it is really noticeable but then I was waiting for it.

Similar Reliability Study
 

Here's another similar study on reliability of car brands. It was inspired by the aforementioned Yahoo article.

https://www.mojomotors.com/review/mos...le-car-brands/

Thanks for the link, Sammy. That is a nice endorsement of Chevy, Dodge and Ford. Obviously, Honda and Toyota are viewed as being great value as used cars but it is cool to see some American cars in the top 5. The Volt has been winning JD Powers awards for 3 years now for dependability, so hopefully it will be in the running soon. Given the tax credit situation it probably won't though. If you run the depreciation study against MSRP the Volt will depreciate like crazy. If you run the study by the actual net price people paid, you will have people saying you gamed the numbers.
Anyway, cool link!

May I suggest googling tar sands or gulf of mexico oil spill to compare how wonderfully clean oil is these days. That is before transport, refining, transport, delivery etc. Many of the tankers circling the globe are getting through up to 200 tones (not gallons or litres) of fuel per day just to move the stuff from A to B.