Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Chevy Volt: First 60 Mile EV Day


Just had the first sixty mile day on battery only in my Chevy Volt. It happened yesterday which was very warm and balmy for the first day of spring in Huron County, Michigan. First I drove most of the way across the county -- from south of Harbor Beach to Pigeon. The driver information screen (above) showed 41.4 EV (Electric Vehicle) miles and just one tenth of a mile on gas.

I was pretty excited about hitting the 40 mile mark. I cruised into McCormick Motors and rounded up my sales rep, Marion Shetler, just to let him know that the Volt made the 40 mile mark on battery power. At 1:12 pm, I arrived at my office and plugged the Volt in to a 120 outlet for the afternoon.



My daughter, also a Volt owner, let me know late that afternoon that her Volt had hit 60 EV miles for the day. She plugged her car into a charging station when she arrived at her day's destination and picked up extra charge.

"Wow," I thought. "Now I have a new goal. A 60 mile day!"

I unplugged the Volt around 6 pm and saw another 14 or so miles accumulated via the 120 charge during the afternoon. I did the quick math (14 plus 41.4 plus some regen miles = 60!) and planned to take the Volt to Bad Axe (our county seat) for a quick supper.


Back from supper and plugging in, the screen above showed the day's travel via the plug-in Chevy Volt. I drove a total of 79.1 miles. 60.5 were EV miles; 18.6 were gas miles and, yes, the day's miles per gallon registered 155 mpg. With gas ranging in price from $3.89 to $3.99 a gallon in the county, that's pretty impressive.

More importantly, a whole lot of carbon emission is NOT going into the air when I drive the Volt on electric. And, might I add, part of my travel yesterday was driving through the Harvest Wind Farm near Elkton where 32 wind turbines are producing electric power for the grid here in Michigan.

It's pretty cool to be a part of green energy here in Michigan.

More Volt posts:
Volt video by Clark Ramsey
Driving in Cold Weather
Second Tank


Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler



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