6th Aug 2019, 09:57

What do all the batteries cost for this car? Or do you unload or scrap it? How do you fare in a broadside accident with all the battery acid?

6th Aug 2019, 16:43

Again, I'm not crazy about the Volt or any other hybrid. Never owned one, never will. Therefore can't answer that question.

6th Aug 2019, 16:52

My friend on earlier comment rides his bike as much as possible. The area is very bike friendly. They do own 2 cars as well. So they use them on bad days and winter. There is a 7 1/2 % tax as well as yet an additional annual tax on new cars in Ct. A very expensive area to live, and if you have a motor vehicle, plan on the crazy tax consequence.

7th Aug 2019, 12:19

So, "quality in life" means spending $8000 on a bicycle?

Tell your friend I have a bridge for sale, if he's interested.

7th Aug 2019, 15:42

In referral to loss of battery capacity, I'm the guy with the 150,000 mile Volt. I have noticed an approximate 2 mile drop in range. That said, I'm not if it's due to the battery or how my wife and I have changed our driving styles. We used to drive the car back and forth to work and it was almost all on the battery. Typically we would get between 37-41 miles on the battery, which was enough to get to work, charge, then drive home in the afternoon.

But over the last year my wife likes to take the car on long trips to go camping and hiking, sometimes driving 100's of miles, meaning it's almost entirely using the gas engine. The range shown on the dash is calculated per driving habits so that rate has gone down since she started doing that. Now we get between 35-39 miles. It's likely that the range has changed because it's now calculating the overall usage of the car between pure gas and pure EV driving.

As far as battery replacement, the usual amount seems to be between $3,500-$5000. That said, very few of the batteries have actually failed. The same is true for batteries in other cars like the Prius, Leaf and Tesla. The reason is that unlike a typical battery system like in your cordless drill with a few cells, car batteries have sometimes 100's of individual cells, all contributing individually. Redundancy is built into the car's computer and battery management system to compensate in the event of one or more cell failures. If even 10% of the cells were to fail in the typical EV of today, the owner would likely not even be aware of it. In the event of a total battery failure it depends on how old the car is. For whatever reason EV's become DIRT CHEAP pretty quickly, even after just a few years. We bought ours when the car was 2 years old for almost 60% less than it was new. If we were to sell it now, we would be lucky to get $5,000-$6,000. So it's probably not worth replacing the battery in it.

That brings me to my last point: As used EVs are so cheap, they make an excellent value for those who don't mind something slightly used and whom have long commutes. These are pretty great commuter-mobiles.

7th Aug 2019, 16:11

Don't know a lot about a Chevy Volt. But was seeing some used ones on different dealer car lot web sites for about $10,000 to $16,000. Also knew that several web sites said Chevy was losing about $30,000 to $50,000 on each one of those they sold new, because they were expensive to build and had very low sales. So there is value there for getting some bang for your buck for someone. But for me it came down to my local electric utility company Edison, which has a crazy tier electric usage billing system which I was afraid of in using a electric car plugged in overnight. But if someone has an area that has fair electric rates, then it looks like a good value vehicle if nothing goes wrong with that electrical system.

9th Aug 2019, 12:36

I use that logic with our in-ground pool. 220V pump that the electric timer runs mostly at night off peak. I suspect it saves some energy. My son has a 39’ Beneteau Sailboat that has 8 solar panels for power anywhere. I have a solar panel that plugs into my cigarette lighter to fully charge a car battery at times when parked away from an electric outlet. So I guess you can manipulate electric with the panel idea. My son in law has panels on his home. Last month his bill was around $35.00. Might take 10 years to get the investment back on panels and no tax credit at the moment. Seems simpler than the car idea, and no work or plugging in everyday.

9th Aug 2019, 23:20

Yeah, plugging one in is probably the most annoying part about owning a Volt. Must really put a strain on the human body.

10th Aug 2019, 17:46

My wife would probably rip the cord off rushing to get to work in the morning.

1st Jul 2020, 01:32

Nah, she can't harm it - the car will not shift out of Park with the cord plugged into the car.