2011 Chevrolet Volt: Dollars and Sense?

"At that rate it cost me $4.16 to fully charge the Volt the previous night, a price that got me 25.8 miles the following morning"

.....and it can be all yours for only $41k MSRP.

Those two devices that are suggested to lower the bill cost more money. Who knows how long before it starts to pay for buying those devices. For someone who has to climb a hill or mountain everyday it doesnt sound like it would save a lot of money. A movement towards an electric future has to begin somewhere so I give GM kudos for starting it.

How did you calculate $0.31 per kWh? $259.12/1,131 is only $0.229. Am I missing something?

It looks like you used nearly the same amount of electricity in Jan. '10. Were you "fired up" after that bill?

That's awful! We pay around $0.09 per kWh. I guess my rate would make the Volt make more sense.

You have to remember that the average cost per kWh in the US is less than half that.

Excellent post. EV advocates love to rave about the positives but rarely talk about the negatives of EV ownership. It will be interesting to see what the Leaf does to your electric bill.

I could have told you this would happen as soon as you said you were going to charge the Volt at staffer homes. In a place like California, you absolutely have to use time-of-use metering and charge overnight or else you will be punished with extra-ridiculous electric bills. But that's a California thing, where the rates are so tiered that they amount to rationing, and the rate structures are so complicated they would make a tax accountant beg for mercy . In most of the rest of the country, power rates are flat or only slightly tiered, even still time of use metering is almost always available, and the rate structure can be described on a single piece of paper without the use of fine print.

Yes, this is unpleasant on your electric bill, but you face the highest electric rates in the world, at least on a marginal basis, and are on the worst possible billing plan to allow for EV charging. This is not representative of what a real customer would experience, because it's not representative of how real customers will charge their vehicles. That said, Chevy (and Nissan) dealers in California better be telling their newly minted EV owners up front that they need to change to time of use or separate metering for the car.

Plug those Christmas lights into the kill-a-watt and tell me how long you run them per day and I'll tell you how much of your bill was due to the lights. They draw a lot more than you might think.

wow, those rates are absurd. Volt will have little appeal to cali residents who are interested in low operating costs. In addition, a 50 mile commute that involves climbing a mountain isn't really the ideal situation for a Volt.

Karl,

What makes you think you would get better than 10 mpg in another 4000 lb car on that uphill climb?

I bet it is still 1/3 the cost if you compare apples to apples.

Well while the kWh's isnt bad. 1100 is kinda low down south. 1100 here in Texas would run you about 170. That being said that would be a fairly normal bill. My parents in a BRAND NEW house 3 years ago got at $500+ light bill.

If this is your high, consider it cheap. While I may pay a lot less than you per kWh (.062) my avg in summer is 250-300. Thats keeping the house at 78 at night, 81 during the day. Winters are 64 at night and 68 during the day.

Also how much $$$ is the car at fault for. I think your boss said a killawatt was in the car, how many did it use?

"At that rate it cost me $4.16 to fully charge the Volt the previous night, a price that got me 25.8 miles the following morning. Even my math-challenged brain can deduce the obvious: driving the Volt up freeway hills after charging it at typical Southern California energy rates is an economic disaster. Image putting $4.16 worth of (non-premium) gas in almost any economy car. You're probably going to get more than 25.8 miles out of your investment."

What the heck are you smoking?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Gas is $3.59/gallon in you area according to this:
http://blogs.insideline.com/roadtests/2011/02/2010-ford-raptor-ouch.html

$4.16 equates to 1.159 gallons of gas.

25.8miles divided by 1.159 gallons = 22.26MPG

But let's say the Raptor got premium gas. So let's say regular costs $3.39/gallon. That same $4.16 equates to 1.228 gallons

25.8 miles divided by 1.228 gallons = 21.02MPG.

Now let's take a look at the rest of the fleet. I think we can pretty much surmise that Canejo grade is a worst case situation for fuel consumption. Comparing 21MPG-22MPG against the "worst" column, the Volt pretty much tops everything except the Prius:

http://blogs.insideline.com/roadtests/2011/02/big-list-of-fuel-economy-january-2011.html

Do you have an axe to grind or something?

Wow, I paid $268.00 last month for all utilities, elec,gas,water and sewer keeping my house between 72 and 74 degrees while it was below 0 outside.

I would like to see how the '04 Prius would fare while going up that mountain.

Perhaps the Volt needs an "off" switch for the battery in cases like this. Maybe it wouldn't save any money, but, well, gasoline is everywhere, but the charger is back home.

Wow, that's expensive electricity. Chevy advertises an average of $1.50 per charge. That, with a very flat commute does make for great miles per dollar. But very interesting to see this worst case scenario.

when you pay .31/Kwh the Volt isnt going to make a lot of sense. That's just the way it is- fortunately most of us pay far less than that and would find the Volt more economically sound. We just had a rate increase to about .10 per KwH. By my standards that is a staggering electric bill. A bad month for me is anything in the $130-$150 range.

Doesn't the Volt have a "mountain mode" specifically for uphill driving? If so, how would that have affected the range?

7driver,
If you read he clearly states, "...in almost any economy car" I think you missed the word economy. Oh and the word CAR.

All you chevy sack riders need to chill out. All this post is doing is showing you a worst case scenario. I'm sure if he takes the same route home it would be a different story as going down a huge hill will have the opposite effect. But we'll have to tune in next time.

@tehnighthawk

No I didn't. Canejo Grade is pretty much a worst case situation. Back calculating the math, the Volt did it with 20-22MPG equivalent. The Kizashi's worst tank according to the January fuel log was 15MPG.

I wish I could get anywhere near 25mpg, try 17.5, with a four banger.

I'm with blackngold1000. $259.12/1131kWh = $0.229/kWh .. a far cry from the 31 cent figure.

1 + 2 = 76

I was educated in America, forgive me.

so what is the real figure in California? This is the 2nd time the actual numbers provided in reference to charging the volt didnt seem to line up with that electricity rate.

Karl has already explained that $0.31/kwh is his marginal rate. His first tier rate is probably well under $0.20/kwh, but as you breach each tier, the rate goes up.

California sucks for power costs. The irony is, it sucks in large part due to the same greens who will push for ZEV mandates and want to buy cars like the Volt for their greeniness. Their resistance to nuclear and new power plants marginalizes the value of the Volt for about 10% of the US population.

This is a little misleading, because if you drive any car up a hill it's going to get terrible MPG (or whatever unit).

Your bill shows you use lots of electricity so it's not the car...the real world test is HOW Much out of pocket did you pay for you drive and compare that with a gas powered vehicle.

I would think that on severe hills it would switch to gas, but it still saves money running on E-only. Why do you think that the goal is to save the battery. The design is simple...use battery and then switch to gas when empty. Recharge.

If you live on a mountain the most efficient transportation is a donkey.

I swear some of the information online is really only meant to confuse people.

"I swear some of the information online is really only meant to confuse people."

10+ years ago only people who were capable of understanding sarcasm, irony, inuendos, and general BS were on the net. Now any bum with a library card is throwing their 2 cents in on everything just to prove their opinion is the right and only one. This FAD is over..... see yah.

Powering off......beeeeyouuuuu.

Don't you just love "green" technology? What a load of pure BS.....

how is it BS? Confused.

See, my problem isn't with testing the car under every possible circumstance. No, my problem is with people using this as an opportunity to dismiss the car.

State of California + electric vehicles = FAIL.

Something I never thought about before this blog; if charging your Volt bumps you into a higher tier then you are obviously paying more for all your non-car electrical needs. In other words, in addition to paying for the electricity that you put into your car, you also have to pay a higher price than you would have to keep the lights on in the house. It would be interesting to know how that would factor into the true cost of owning a Volt.

Edmunds is getting absurd. This guy has the Volt for 4 days a month, and when his electric bill gets pushed to the next tier he's blaming it on the Volt, but then sort of admits well I suppose it could have been the Xmas lights?! We have no way of knowing how much of his bill was due to the Volt and how much was due to everything else in his house. And .31cent/kwh...good golly... the epa site says the average for California is 0.15/kwh. What is this guy running a particle accelerator in his garage? Don't be afraid to install a few CFLs and turn the computers off once in a while Karl.

Further you can see a steady upwards trend in his electricity usage which clearly has nothing to do with the Volt, but rather to the fact that people just keep buying more electronic goodies and they use more and more power.

Really I expect better from Edmunds. I almost have to think he's posting this just to get his comment levels up. Come on Karl, admit it... you guys are paid on your comment count...aren't you? I am getting better than 250 mpg and have had to make zero changes to the way I drive, other than plug it in when I get home and plug it in when I get to work, and that is less time consuming and cheaper than pumping gas.

This car will never make sense to me. It costs over 2-1/2 times a certain Korean economy car and is nowhere near as efficient. You could drive the same distance on appoximately $1.90 worth of gas. The Volt will NEVER pay for itself with that level of "efficiency".

Just one more reason to consider moving to America.

I live in OC, have a pretty good sized 2-story house, 2 kids, wife, and an electrically heated jacuzzi. With the Christmas lights on every night (they were on a timer to run from 6-11 p.m.) our electricity bill for January was $120.

Since I would be in a lower tier the Volt would make more sense to a person like me, especially since I would wait until 11 o'clock when I went to bed to plug it in. Most of my neighbors are amazed at how little our utility bills are, but it's not rocket surgery. LED Christmas lights, train your kids (and your wife) to turn off lights and close fridge doors, etc.

I can never reach EPA mileage in my commute, as it's short and down a hill and up another (both ways, of course). At least with a plug in like the Volt or Leaf, with a 3 mile commute I could go 3-4 days between plug-ins. This would make (more) sense financially.

Another clueless tester.

This is why the electric companies, especially in California, will make or break electric cars and plug in hybrids. You can still charge cheaply at night, but the tiers will catch you eventually.

I would like to see a test of other cars and see what kind of mileage they get on that hill as well. I would guess they would get pretty poor mileage as well.

The way this becomes a win for the consumer is to go solar, if possible. California is going to have to upgrade its infrastructure anyway if more people buy electric cars or plug in hybrids. The problem is that the people of California don't want to pay for anything. I see lots of brownouts in our future.

"This car will never make sense to me. It costs over 2-1/2 times a certain Korean economy car and is nowhere near as efficient. You could drive the same distance on appoximately $1.90 worth of gas. The Volt will NEVER pay for itself with that level of "efficiency"."

Which car can drive 2.7 miles up a 7% grade and still return EPA highway? I think you know the answer. Considering he took a 30% efficiency hit using that route to commute, this seems perfectly in spec with what the car delivers for all-electric range normally (35-40 miles).

Let's assume your commute was 37 miles round trip to make the numbers fit the Volt's normal all electric range in a climate like CA.

At 31 cents/kWh you would be getting a cost-equivalent of 30mpg over that commute, using $3.39/gal for 87 as a comparison. Do people currently drive things that average less than 30mpg? Uh, yeah, I think they do. Would it take a long time to "break even" if your current car gets 29 or even 25mpg? Of course. Financially, I would never justify it, either. But the thing is, you used ZERO gasoline (in my example). You can't do that in anything but a Leaf or Tesla. That is reflected by the computed miles per gallon, which would show "250+" for that commute.

And that example was for one of the worst rates anyone will see. At 16 cents/kWh, still above the national average, that 37 mile round trip commute would have cost $2.15 for an MPGe of 58.4mpg. So...yeah, the Volt may never make sense "to you" which is what you said. It may make financial sense to SOME and it will almost always use less gas than anything other than a Leaf or Tesla (since they can't use gas) for anything resembling what the majority of Americans use their car for.

OK, a little sanity and a few facts here, folks. I'm with the same SCE utility company as Karl, the reporter, I'm expecting to take delivery of a Nissan LEAF in April, and I've studied the rate structures carefully.

The readers were correct who said that Karl's experience is not representative of a Volt owner's real life situation. With ZERO extra expense to the homeowner, the utility will supply a meter that can track usage times and you can switch to a Time of Use rate. The rates for charging late at night are in two tiers, ten cents and sixteen cents per kWh. With a rate plan like that, Karl would be charging his Volt at sixteen cents per kWh, or about half of what he is seeing now.

Now, to be fair, these time of use rates come with a downside, extra high rates during peak hours of 10 am to 6 pm weekdays. This isn't too bad if you aren't home during these times on weekdays anyway. And in fact, if you have solar power, this is a major boon because you get a credit to your account at those high rates (55 cents per kWh!!) for power that your system generates during those peak hours. Admittedly, if you do use a lot of air conditioning during midday hours and/or you don't have solar power, your best choice might just be the standard rate plan that Karl has.

We have a solar PV system that makes more power than we use (due to conservation choices in our home) and we expect to be able to drive our LEAF about 8,000 miles per year without using any net grid power, and more than 10,000 miles per year at no power cost at all due to the benefits of generating power during peak hours.

And as for the Christmas lights, Karl needs to go with new LED Christmas lights and sh**can those old style lights that are incredibly wasteful. The difference in power usage is shocking (no pun intended).

boomerguy says:
05:08 PM, 02/14/11

We have a solar PV system that makes more power than we use (due to conservation choices in our home) and we expect to be able to drive our LEAF about 8,000 miles per year without using any net grid power, and more than 10,000 miles per year at no power cost at all due to the benefits of generating power during peak hours.

And how much did your PV system cost?