In which I ponder a pointless consumer decision

[Ghoulish Delight]

GM is making it difficult for me to ignore the Volt.

Once we finished paying off our last car, I was pondering replacing my 10 year old Mazda 3. Still a serviceable car, with very low mileage for its age. But it's still at an age where I will shortly have to start putting money into it.

In examining my driving habits, and wanting to jump on the clean-air bandwagon, the Volt appears to be my best option. Most of my driving is local, well within its ~40 mile pure battery range, but I do occasionally need to make trips 120+ mile trips in a day for work.

The Prius plugin is the other option, and in a lot of ways they are a toss up (with each having advantages in some areas, disadvantages in others). But the general consensus is that the Volt is a higher quality vehicle.

All that had been idle window shopping, I have no good reason to spend the money.

Then GM sends an offer that puts the lease price at $200/month.

Damnit.

Now I've got to start doing the math. Gas savings over my standard driving + if we switch a lot of the family driving from the CRV to the Volt = ~$80/month. Score. Volt still qualifies for a carpool sticker. I can probably put an arbitrary value of around $15/month on that. Suddenly it's only costing $100/month. Then there's the state kickback that I think still exists of $1500.

Throw in the continued depreciation of continuing to own my car and it's starting to look stupid not to do this.

But then things get annoying. How much is it going to cost to plug this thing in? If we just plug it into the wall as-is, it's not a great deal. Would be close to paying a gallon's worth of gas price for a gallon's worth of driving distance. Of course, that driving distance is beyond what my current car does, so it's still better, but not much.

There's the "EV" plan from Edison that gives discount rates for off-peak electricity usage. Problem is, I work from home, CP stays home - we'd be boned as the on-peak rates are WORSE and we wouldn't be able to shift much of our usage.

The other option is to install a separate circuit and meter for charging. Would save on the charging, but do I want to spend the installation money and go through possible permitting hassle? To save how much, exactly? To even calculate the difference would be a PITA.

That's the biggest frustration at this point. I don't even KNOW if it's a good idea or not. It may be an awesome deal where I'm essentially getting the car for free once I calculate all the savings. Or it may screw me where I might as well have purchased a luxury car due to extra costs.

Most likely, somewhere in the middle it seems. It's not going to be miraculously cheap, but it would be a GREAT deal for a brand new car. But I don't need a brand new car.

But I WANT a brand new car.

Hmmmm....

[Kevy Baby]

Get a Tesla: they're pretty

[Alex]

I sat in a Volt today at Test Track in Epcot. Was not particularly impressed with its interior.

[Morrigoon]

If it's about clean air, don't forget to take into account the current local sources for our electricity. Are we nuclear? wind? coal? (I think we're a mixture, but specifically what I'm not sure)

[€uroMeinke]

Mostly Natural Gas - which burns cleaner than gasoline

[Ghoulish Delight]

And centralizing the burning of fuels, rather than distributing combustion across millions of small engines buys efficiency.

If the interior is cheap, that would likely be a deal breaker.

[lashbear]

Plug it into next-door.

[Snowflake]

Well, I typically drive Prius here in SF (city car share), love it. Holds a lot, roomy comfort and efficient.

[katiesue]

Are there any groups/message boards of current Volt owners where you could get some information on what people are seeing as their actual charging costs?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by katiesue

Are there any groups/message boards of current Volt owners where you could get some information on what people are seeing as their actual charging costs?

Yeah, I've looked around. I have a good idea of how much electricity it takes. The complicated part is in what that amount of electricity costs as it's a function of time-of-year/time-of-day/location/rate plan/overall household usage. There's no "this is what it costs to charge" answer, the only thing for it is to sit and do the math, recalculating past bills against the various rate plan options, and then getting an estimate on what it would cost to install the 2nd meter.

That's the point where I decide my time isn't worth that and just accept the default "Slightly cheaper than gas but not as cheap as it could be if I optimized my rate plan etc." option. Which puts a bit of a dent in the overall savings.