The Mast-Head: Doing My Part

The last time I looked, I was getting 100 miles to the gallon. This is not entirely fair to the purely internal combustion vehicles on the road, though, since we are talking about my Chevy Volt. As the name implies, it runs mostly on electricity from massive batteries, turning to its small gas generator when the stockpiled power drains down. Since it is just about Earth Day as I write this, I figured it was time to check the stats.

As I had been told at the dealership, Volt drivers tend to get a little nuts about their cars. Indeed, there are times I find myself reluctant to go on an errand if I know I’ll have to draw fuel from the car’s tiny tank to cover a particular route.

It has been a little bit more challenging than I had expected to maintain my enthusiasm about the Volt, however, given that gas prices were nearly cut in half since I got it in the fall. Still, the joy of almost never having to stop at a filling station is sweet; it’s astonishing to think about how many hours I have wasted over the decades while pumping gas into one vehicle or another.

But in terms of its impact or lack thereof on the environment, there is much to be proud of. In the latest report (somehow passed from the car to my email inbox), my driving a Volt instead of a traditionally powered vehicle kept more than 700 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

Data from the Environmental Protection Agency appears to back this up, estimating that the Volt, taking upstream electrical generation into account, produces about half the emissions of an average new car. Thing is, my daily drive before the Volt was with a lumbering Toyota Tundra, so we can assume that the level was a whole lot more than that. The old beast is up on blocks at the dealership now, waiting for a full frame replacement, thanks to a recall for rust.

Meanwhile, I tool around in the Volt, which, as I discovered on Sunday, is big enough to fit a seven-foot surfboard inside. I don’t know if I am saving the planet exactly, but by the numbers, I’m doing at least a small part.