Chevy Volt ownership experience

[dwiggins]

Greetings

In this thread, I'll make posts from time to time about our Chevy Volt.

We haven't taken delivery of the car yet, so I'll start with the story thus far.

My wife and I were at an ALMS race at Road America (Elkhart Lake, WI) last August. She's been thinking about a new car to replace her Honda Element. Now that we have fewer large dogs that needs to be hauled around, there's no need for a big box on wheels with a rubber floor. She'd been looking at cars like the Mazda 3, Ford Focus, and the Chevy Cruze.

We were there at the Chevy exhibit at the track, looking at the Cruze. The wife looks across the exhibit and sees the Volt and is intrigued. She hadn't been that interested in it until she saw it in person. She talked to the Chevy rep for a while, sat in the car, and it moved to the top of her list of cars to check out.

After we returned home, we hit the Chevy dealership nearest the house on the next Saturday. They had a demo Volt, but it was locked up in a service bay for some reason, and they couldn't get to it for a test drive. The sales guy was very apologetic and told us to come back Monday and he'd have the car cleaned up and he'd let us take it home for a few days. We did so, and during the few days we had it, my wife used NO gasoline. Her round trip commute is 34 miles. When she got home at night, the car would show 4 miles remaining on battery power. The high temperature during the demo period was over 100? F most days.

If you haven't ever looked at a Volt close up, it's a nice car. Not nice for a Chevy, nice full stop. The demo car we had is a 2011, with the Dark Grey metallic paint. The interior is black leather, and it has the dark center stack and interior accents. In 2011, the only option package available was leather seats, so this car is loaded. I grew up in a BMW family, and this car is as nice as any of the BMWs we has growing up. It's nearly as nice as my 2001 M Coupe.

So, we are going to buy the demo car. The 2012 model has less stuff in it standard. To build a 2012 that's equivalent to a 2011, it ends up being a couple grand more expensive. The dealer has to keep the demo car for 6 months, but that time is up next week, so we'll go pick the car up 7 days from now.

While we've been waiting, I've been looking into home charging stations. The car comes with a 120VAC charger, but it turns out that the Dallas/Ft. Worth area is one of the areas where there is currently a DoE sponsored program, the upshot of which is we can get a free 240VAC charger, including installation. The electrician comes out to do the site survey tomorrow. It'll be a Blink charging station, and it's supposed to cut charge time from 9 to 4 hours.

So that's where we are so far. Once we get something to take pictures of, I'll post a few. Also, if you have questions, post 'em up and I'll answer them once we have the car, unless I already knew the answer from the demo.