I Have Never Before Loved a Car as Much as I Love My Volt

I have owned a Vega, a Chevette, 3 Suburbans, and an Impala. But in December of 2020, we bought a 2017 Chevy Volt. I tell all my family regularly how much I love my car! I have also never had to spend so much time learning about how a car works.

For the first month or so, I would take out the manual after parking and read about another feature or use the index to find out how to . . . do whatever I wanted to do that I couldn't figure out. For a while, I joked that my phone and my car were smarter than I am!

The Volt is a hybrid and that is perfect for me! When we got it, the lifetime average was 163 miles per gallon. (This picture shows 160 mpg because it was a month after we bought it.) I'm guessing the previous owner had a short commute and mostly ran it on electricity. I've driven it hundreds of miles - sometimes in one weekend! When I do a lot of highway distance driving, I'm sad that my mileage is so "bad" - only 40 mpg! Louie has to remind me that only my Chevette ever came close to that kind of mileage. (Also in this image, I had only driven 9.6 miles. But it didn't use a drop of gas. Short commutes and in-town driving along with warm weather make this car almost gas-free!)

I'm really glad we bought it in December and I got used to it during a cold Minnesota winter. That helped keep my expectations low. This car definitely prefers summer weather and city driving. Last summer, there were several times when I put in 7-8 gallons of gas (the tank holds a max of 8.9 gallons) and I had traveled over 1,200 miles since the previous fill! That is one of my favorite things about this car! Whether the gas prices are high or low, it just doesn't cost much to fill it up.

Sadly, my lifetime average is below 100 miles now. But it doesn't make me sad to think about road trips to Michigan, Grand Marais, Strawberry Lake, Green Bay, . . . and I love that I don't have to worry about finding a charging station and waiting until the car has enough power. I could just treat it like a gasoline-powered car if I wanted to.

It isn't primarily gasoline powered, though! My typical routine is to plug it in when I pull into the garage. I can leave it to charge at 8 amps or set it to 12 amps. It tells me what time it anticipates being fully charged. The charging cord is easy to unplug (if the garage isn't too messy) and take with me if I want. The first few months we had it, I tracked the difference in the increase of our Xcel energy bill and the decrease of our "transportation" budget. We definitely were saving money on powering this car! The comparison got a bit muddied by the increase in Xcel rates soon after, but overall I believe this is more economical. And I love it.

It's fun to drive and peppy. It has encouraged me to be a more careful driver instead of acting as though I'm driving a sports car because I can see how quickly I'm draining my battery if I do quick starts. The battery is recharged during braking and coasting. (I've also been reading more articles about things like regenerative braking and the difference between a Volt and a Prius.) Technically, the Volt is considered a PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) but I am still trying to understand the technology.

I'm shocked that Chevy stopped making the Volt after the 2019 model year. I think they were ahead of their time with this car. I now understand why our friend Marty Coddington raved about his Volt. (He and his wife have owned at least three that I know about.) I have enthusiastically gushed to many people about my wonderful car! I really, really, really wish that Chevrolet would bring this back. I would be 100% up for buying another one . . . though that may not be for another decade or so!

Maintenance is so easy. I check the oil regularly, but the dash system also shows me the "oil life." So far, Louie has changed it twice for me . . . after about 16,000 miles. That is so bizarre to me! I used to make sure the oil got changed every 3-5 K and I would check it for level and color. Now I check it, but it's that lovely caramel color and doesn't go down. I realize that the battery technology means that the internal combustion engine doesn't get as much of a workout, but this is crazy!

I love my car!