Living with an Electric Car

A little over a year ago, this Chevy Volt came to live by the river with us. It was our second electric car, the first being a 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle that had been converted to all electric. That VW and some solar photovoltaic panels, made it pretty nice to drive by a gas station after years of no choice except who was selling gas the cheapest. We had friend with a Volt we test drove and liked. What we liked about the Volt was that it was all electric drive until the range was depleted and then a gas motor came on to run a generator. There are also simple mode changes that let you save some battery range or share the range with the generator for more electric current when climbing hills. Something you do a lot around here. We have found that unless we leave the valley, we generally have enough electrical range to do what ever we want around here, so the nine gallon gas tank, if we were just around Salida and BV, could last for as much as 1200 miles.
       I have been using google alerts for accumulating articles on electric cars for a number of years. I also have a subscription to Green Car Reports. Between these two sources I have watched the evolution of the electric car industry, lusted after a Tesla, marveled at what BMW has produced in the i3 and the i8. Seen BMW build a state of the art carbon fiber plant in Washington State. Watched the beginnings of Tesla's and Panasonic's giga factory in Nevada. So a lot of what the Volt could do was not a mystery to us. But in my reading it was apparent that the electric car industry as a whole was struggling with selling the cars. Somehow even test drive was not always convincing. But the electric car industry could sell these cars if people had a little time in them and this has been our experience. The Volt is a complex car with a lot of ways you interact with it. The possibilities of regenerating braking becomes clear when you drive US285 to Denver and have only used 2.8 gallons of gas.
      A Boeing F35 strike fighter has something like 7 million lines of computer code. The Chevy Volt has 10 million lines of computer code. So it takes some getting used to the ways you use all the cars features. Chevrolet has struggled, I think, with there marketing of this car. Even so they have the highest approval rating on the Volt of any car they have sold in the history of the company. For us, here by the river, this past year has been one of learning to driver a little differently. Of marveling at the capabilities of the car and being challenged to use as little gas as possible. It is said of Volt drivers that they don't have range anxiety, they have gasoline anxiety!
     It is going to be fun to see what the future will bring in electric cars. There drivability is so much easier than internal combustion engines (ICE) and we prefer to drive our Volt rather than our ICE truck. Just check out Tesla videos on YouTube and you will see what I mean. In the meantime, I think I will go on a long drive in our Volt.
Will by the River