On the Night of the First Refueling of My Chevrolet Volt

I finally convinced myself, earlier this month, to upgrade from my reliable high school automobile (a ‘97 Geo Prism) and bought a Volt because electric cars are awesome. (Cue the They Might Be Giants: let’s all drive an electric car / come on and take a ride in my electric car.) Tonight I refueled my Volt for the first time. I love this Volt.

For the curious I used almost exactly 8 gallons of gas in about 15 days of driving. All of the usage of my Volt’s gas generator (unlike the hybrids, the Volt’s electric motor always does the driving) was on the return trip of my work day commute. If I could manage to convince work to install a 240V charger I’d not need gas except for road trips…

In High School when everyone was talking about sports cars or muscle cars or trucks/SUVs, I was even then researching and following electric vehicle news. My first car (and the only one I didn’t chip in to pay for, heh) was an electric: a Delorean— the Back to the Future Part II themed power wheels with even a fake plastic Mr. Fusion. The Volt is what I very much wanted to spend years of indebtedness to major financial institutions for. After years of research, the Volt really is the coolest car I could afford and is my “green sports car” or “spaceship” in comparison to the Prism that has served me well for most of a decade. It is the kind of awesome car that Back to the Future Part II hinted that I might own in 2015, and I just hope that there will be a nice discount on hover conversion in a couple of years.