After 4 months of driving my Volt, these are my numbers...

I blogged with a frenzy of posts in late February and early March.  Now that I am 4 months in (well, 2 days short of it, but close enough), I wanted to give you my statistics so far and other important information.


In short:  The Volt has been everything I had hoped it would be, and has actually exceeded my expectations.  I have made arrangements through a change in parking at my workplace in order to charge during the day.  I am paying for ALL of my electricity.  As a result, I rarely, if ever, use gas.  I am driving at the rate of about 20-23k miles per year in the first 4 months.


All the graphs and pictures you are about to see are courtesy of voltstats.net.  Voltstats, through an API with On-Star, polls owner vehicles (those that have given them to permission to do so) several times a day.  This data is polled straight from the car's computer.

I started letting voltstats.net collect data about 3 weeks after I had the car.  The blue line is miles powered with the gas generator.  The green indicates miles powered through electricity only.  You will notice that since January, I have driven less than 100 miles on gas.  As of this blog post, 95% of all my driving has been electric.

MY COMMUTE IS 70 MILES A DAY.  THE ENTIRE COMMUTE IS ELECTRIC ONLY.

I am highlighting this point, because many people criticize the Volt's electric range when compared with other cars.  The 40 mile range is entirely satisfactory to virtually all drivers, especially those that get access to charge at work.  Any more battery size, in my case, would be virtually unused and a waste of my money.

Above are my actual MPG readings over the past 4 months.  Since I started tracking late in January, it doesn't show much for that month.  In February, when it was cold and I had to use the heater, my range suffered.  I would get about 33 miles on a charge, and come in about 2 miles short to work, running on gas.  That was going uphill.  On the way back home, I typically would make it, even with the heater, without using gas.  That is why my EV% is lower in February.  When things got warmer, my range shot up dramatically.  Since March, I am getting consistently over 40 miles a charge.  That is with the air conditioner.  The air conditioner doesnt affect range like the heater.  Notice my EV percentage is nearly 100%.  In fact, I went over 45 days without burning a drop of fuel.  When you go 45 days without fuel, this is what the Volt wants to do:

Needless to say, this is what all Volt owners hope to see.


So, how do my numbers compare to others in my state?  Let's examine that.

I am leading the charge with 640+ MPG.  If I add up the others, and average, we get a NC fleet average MPG of 200 MILES PER GALLON.  Why is this important?  Because when you look at the various bogus payback calculators and articles for electric vehicles (especially the horrible one on the New York Times), they HEAVILY underestimate electric mile percentage.  They have many other problems in their calculations, but that is a big one.


How does North Carolina compare to the 800+ national users participating in voltstats.net?

North Carolina is beating the national average.  The national average is 121 MPG with about 70% of all miles being electric.  There are over 4 million recorded electric miles for the Volts being monitored on voltstats, with about 5.8 million total miles.


Some of my personal achievements:

I drove over 2,800 miles without burning a single gallon of gas between 3/7 and 4/23.  I was finally forced to burn a little when NC has a cold front come through, and I was forced to use a little heat.

Still going on this one.  I suspect I'll get over 10,000 miles before I go through a tank of fuel.  10,000 miles. 

How many miles have I managed on a single charge?  Over 50!

I get more than 70 miles electric all the time.  I get 95 miles every week all electric when I come home from work, plug the car up, and then go to the bowling alley two hours later.  So yeah, the Volt only has 40 miles per charge.  SO WHAT? 

So, in my situation, what did all these electric miles cost me???

~6200 ELECTRIC MILES COST ME ~$120 IN ELECTRICITY.

In summary, while the Volt isnt for everyone, it certainly can make a difference. 

Volt MPG and Statistics: 350 MPG and climbing

Today marked my 2 month anniversary of my Volt purchase. I now have 3500 miles on a car that I took deliver on January 7, 2012 with 8 miles on the odometer.  As for gas usage, the dealership filled the car, so I started with 9.5 gallons in the tank.  I have burned a little over 9 gallons to date, but those gallons were burned on the way home from the dealership and during the first couple of days when I hadn't made arragements to charge at work. 

My wife complained every day when she saw the low fuel light when I drove for 2 weeks with a single gallon left in the tank.  She said she would call the news reporters if I ran out of electricity and gas and ended up stuck on the side of the road, so I decided to purchase 3 gallons of fuel to shut her up ;)  As it turns out, with the Volt, to end up on the side of the road, you have to run out of your initial electric range, run your gas tank dry, and then it gives you one final chance with about 10 miles of range in reserve electricity.  It truly takes an idiot to end up on the side of the road with this car, or someone in a really bad situation. I have burned maybe a half a gallon of 3 gallons added that was pumped in exactly a month ago.
The next two pictures are data collected at voltstats.net.  Voltstats uses an On-Star API to poll my car multiple times throughout the day to gather usage data.  This is actual data from my car and is precisely accurate.  I found out about voltstats a few weeks after I purchased the car.  As a result, you will notice the data collection starts after I had already traveled a few hundred miles.

The Green in this graph represents electric miles.  The Blue in this graph represent Gas Miles, or what is known as Charge Sustaining miles, since the gas motor is used to keep the battery charged at 30%.  If you notice, the blue hasn't increased much at all in this graph.   I have been traveling about 70 miles a day round trip to work.

This graph is my monthly MPG.  January is the lowest as the weather was cold, and I would generally run out of electric range about 2 miles from work (I would get about 33 miles of electric range).  I would burn about .10 gallons of gas to go 2 miles.  I'm not sweating the 300 MPG, however.  As you will notice, I achieved over 800 MPG in February, and in March, and I haven't burned any fuel whatsoever.  I am averaging about 45 miles of range in average temperatures of 63F. Voltstats seems to record no fuel burned as 999 MPG.

This picture is a snippet from my electricity bill.  There are a lot of variables that go into an electric bill, but I am posting this so you can see that the car hasnt spiked my usage.  I am comparing the first two months of having the car to the previous year without the Volt.

My lifetime MPG is currently exactly 350 MPG.  It is going up every day as I 'work off' the first week of a lot of gas driving.  I expect to be over 500 MPG by the end of March.

I am using 34 kwH per 100 miles traveled.  This number actually takes into account the total amount of energy required to replenish 10 kwH of of usable charge.  This number is normally around 13 kwH.

To calculate what your electricity would cost, take the electric only miles you plan on traveling in a year, and divide by 100.  Take that number and multiple it by 34.  Take that number and multiple it times your electric rate.  For me:

22,000 miles / 100 * 34 * .06 cents=$449.  That means I will spend about $449 to travel 22,000 miles.  If you were driving a regular car, $449 would get you about 119 gallons at $3.75 a gallon.  If your car got 30 MPG, you would go 3592 miles.  That means the Volt can go about 6 times the distance for the same money in fueling cost.