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Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle?
- Thread starter PrivatePilot
- Start date
By comparison, that means the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight were also failures in their first generation.
Indeed.
Anyhow, I might as well get this out of the way, in the interest of full disclosure since I believe in telling the whole story, not just the good parts.
My wife's Volt just got back from the dealer after experiencing a transmission issue that was specific to (but not exactly common) 11's and 12's. Luck of the draw would have us being one of those who had the pleasure of experiencing it, but hey, I've always said that I'm the poster boy for Murphy's Law.
It was a fairly straightforward fix with everything in the car (the side pan of the tranny just needed to come off to access it, all done through the drivers side wheel well), so 7 hours of labour plus parts and it's back again and all is well.
Unfortunately this happened just a few months outside of having blown the 160,000KM warranty that would have covered it, but again...Murphy's law.
It is what it is.
Anyhow, moving on - we passed the official 1 year point since we bought the car and I have some firm hard numbers now on the ownership over that period vs her old car.
She drove just over 40,000KM in that first year of ownership just lapsed, and the year before she drove her old Chrysler 300 just under 39,000KM, so very similar driving patterns in the end. The 300 used 4485L of gas over that mileage, and the Volt used 1599L over the last year we've owned it, returning an average of 3.9L/100KM for the year.
Although I'm still very pleased with 3.9L/100KM, it was higher than we anticipated due to her employer not providing access to a charging solution as was originally expected, in which case it would have been about half that, so in the range of 1.9L/100KM over the full year. It also creeped up as I expected over the winter as she relied on gas more - last summer for example she was averaging about 2.5-3.0L/100KM - still spectacular.
The charging solution is still a work in progress (and there's reason to be hopeful it will still happen, possibly soon) but I'm not counting our chickens before they've hatched. Even if it never arrives the car has saved us a ton, and mine is saving us exponentially more yet as I'm 99% EV miles.
So, the Volt saved us 2886L of gas, and based on $1.20L gas, that was a $3463 saving in gas over the first year of ownership. For more perspective, someone driving a 15L/100KM pickup, SUV, crossover or gas-pig car (like my old Magnum I sold when I bought our second Volt) would easily save close to $5000/year in gas.
Looking back through my earlier posts in this thread I mused about the reality that my wifes Volt would entirely pay for itself (in gas savings alone) in about 3 years of ownership (vs her old car, or one like it), but that was using the expectation of charging at work. Based on these real world numbers (and no charging at work inside the first year) it looks like that reality is now 4 years.
I'm happy with all those figures - still a huge win.
I haven't, but I'll start that now. Will see if I get it done today and will post it in a separate link.
Well, mark my words, some on here would say 4 years vs 3 years is a failure!
Oh, no doubt. Waiting for the inevitable trashing on the needed repair as well..because, ya know, no other vehicles on the face of the planet experience these sorts of things either, right?
We just hit about 2500km on the Volt and finally had a longer trip that required mostly running on gas, from home to Bancroft and back. To date we've done 2484km with 2076km electric and an average mileage of 1.3l/100km. I expect that we'll probably only put gas in the Volt about 3 times a year unless something pretty drastic changes. Can't complain about that at all.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
The cost argument will be different for everyone -- just too many parameters.
Using the numbers here, my driving 24000km/year, and my choice of the Chev equivalent ICE car (a Cruze), the Volt would cost more over it's lifetime.
Fuel costs @ 1.20/l Cruze $2000/year vs $700 for Volt. Volt saves me $1300/year
Capital costs amortized over 5 years: $23000 Cruze, $33000 Volt. Volt costs me $2K more per year.
Total cost over 5 years: Cruze saves me $3500.
That's close enough to call it even in my books. If you keep a Volt for 8 years (my average) it's a break even proposition for the KM I drive each year.
Using the numbers here, my driving 24000km/year, and my choice of the Chev equivalent ICE car (a Cruze), the Volt would cost more over it's lifetime.
Fuel costs @ 1.20/l Cruze $2000/year vs $700 for Volt. Volt saves me $1300/year
Capital costs amortized over 5 years: $23000 Cruze, $33000 Volt. Volt costs me $2K more per year.
Total cost over 5 years: Cruze saves me $3500.
That's close enough to call it even in my books. If you keep a Volt for 8 years (my average) it's a break even proposition for the KM I drive each year.
Your math assumes both vehicles have the same value, zero, at the end of the amortization period.
I don’t think that’s accurate.
But yes, everyone’s math will be different.
Do you think gas will still be $1.20 3-4 years from now?
!) One thing I can tell you, there WON'T be a shortage. http://business.financialpost.com/c...ains-an-estimated-80-bln-barrels-of-tight-oil
2) as for posting the "thousands saved", just factor in repair costs as well. its a GM, you will need it. (see Volt transmission failure in PP post a few posts back)
Oh surprise surprise, I wasn't disappointed. Forgot to read the last line though I guess.
Of course all other vehicles and manufacturers are immune to mechanical breakdown, especially Honda. I've heard they don't even sell parts for them since they are invincible.
Oh, wait.
Well, to start, kudos for posting a realistic fuel consumption number for the Cruze - I just checked fuelly.com (real world fuel usage stats) and your numbers show right on. Certain people here (*cough*) like to quote those mythical EPA numbers that nobody on the planet actually achieves in real world driving, versus the real world actual consumption figures.
But the fuel consumption figure for the Volt is based on what though? I won't burn $700 in gas on MY Volt inside maybe FIVE years since my driving is entirely inside the electric range. This year I'm on track to burn maybe $100-$150 in gas for the entire year with my driving patterns.
24,000KM a year times 365 days a year comes out to an average of 65KM per day. A first gen Volt will cover between 3/4 to all of that mileage in a day depending on time of day on electric alone.
A second generation Volt will come home with anywhere from 20-40+KM still in the battery depending on the time of year. So your total gas costs would be a few dollars - the car would insist on running Engine Maintenance Mode once every 40-ish days for about 10 minutes. Not $700/year at all.
And lets not forget residual value, as was mentioned - looking at Trader.ca:
5 year old Cruze is worth about $8500-$11,000 with 125,000-ish KM on it and it has zero warranty.
5 year old Volt is worth about $16,000-$18,000 with 125,000-ish KM on it and it still has 3 years and 35,000KM of warranty left.
8 Years old with 200,000KM the Cruze is going to be worth $2,000-$4000, the same as any other econobox with high miles. An 8 year old Volt, even with the same mileage, will very likely still fetch at least twice that. 2011's (7 years old, as close as we can get at this point as that was their first year) are still getting $12-$14K depending on options and mileage.
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1) I didn’t ask if there was going to be a shortage. It’s become incredibly clear that the price and supply of crude is but a small factor that influences the price we see at the pump.
2) All vehicles require some maintenance and repairs.
3) I doubt you’ll directly reply to these comments. Instead you’ll move the goal posts again with comments or statistics that are irrelevant.
Your brand fetishism even extends to your sarcasm. It controls you entirely.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
That's the cost of electricity at my house, delivered off peak, all in including HST - not gasoline. I'm assuming zero gas as that would be a fair goal for me. For the Cruze, I have first hand data -- my car which shows a long term average of 6.9l/100km. For the Volt, I assumed 85km driving required 20kwh of electricity at a cost of $0.124/kwh, which works out to just under 3 cents/km. 24km x 0.03 =~$700
That's true today, there is no way to know the future value of a Volt purchased today. I didn't want to include this because you cant predict the future value of a Volt, and if you base it of historical depreciation the result is chilling for Volt buyers. A 5 year old Volt was about $40K out the door new, the Cruze about $20K. The Volt sells for $14K today meaning it depreciated by $26K (that's more than the total cost of the Cruze) compared to the Cruze depreciation of $11K.
Will Volt's depreciation rates improve in the future? Who knows.
85KM does not consume anywhere near 20kw of electricity.
That’s the first issue.
I got 6.5KM/kwh on my drive to work this morning, even with the heat on eco and my heated seats on. That 85KM would consume 12.5kw, accordingly.
That’s the first issue.
I got 6.5KM/kwh on my drive to work this morning, even with the heat on eco and my heated seats on. That 85KM would consume 12.5kw, accordingly.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
Good info -- I don't have a Volt so I collected my info from Chev specs. I also learned the Volt usable range is calculated off the battery's usable energy 12kwh, not it's capacity 16kwh (Chev literature doesn't make this clear). Also remember your car's meter is showing you what was used from the battery. Volt's charging efficiency is 85% meaning each kwh from the battery costs 1.18kwh from mother hydro.
If you maintain this efficiency, energy cost for 24K/year is $520/year for the Volt.
Usable capacity varies from model year to model year. Both our 11 and 12 have 10.5kw usable, and in ideal conditions I’ve personally driven 70km on that for a consumption of 6.6km/kwh.
Between 5.5-6.0km/kwh is typical for most unless you’re driving like Mario Andretti, although it’s reasonaly easy to exceed that with some basic hypermiling techniques.
Between 5.5-6.0km/kwh is typical for most unless you’re driving like Mario Andretti, although it’s reasonaly easy to exceed that with some basic hypermiling techniques.
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