The Mast-Head: Volt’s Got Voltage
Our kids are sick of hearing about my car already. And what kid wouldn’t be? Parents are, almost by definition, annoying when you are between, say, 10 and 17 years old, especially if they ramble on and on. But, hey, I just got my first electric vehicle after thinking about it for years, and I’m not ready to shut up yet.
Truth is, I don’t even really understand how the thing works yet. It’s a 2014 Chevrolet Volt, leased from an eponymous dealer up the road a bit whom I really shouldn’t plug in print. I would take it to the Tyler Valcich Memorial Car Show at the American Legion in Amagansett on Sunday to show off, but I figure I ought to be able to speak with some knowledge first.
What I do know is that it goes about 38 miles on a battery charge, enough to get a daughter or two to ballet in Bridgehampton and home again to Amagansett at a whole lot less cost than my old gas-guzzling pickup truck, and there are enough buttons and options on the touch screen to keep our 4-year-old Pokemon fan of a son happy.
I’ve kept my 2000 Tundra for fishing, surfing, hauling boat stuff around, and going to the dump. It’s paid for, and at about 172,000 miles, it might last another couple of years easily.
By the numbers, the Toyota should not be driven daily, getting as it does about 13 miles to the gallon and costing about $10 for a round-trip ballet run. That and my other travels had added up to about $100 a week for gas.
The Volt, on the other hand, seems to take about $1.80 worth of electricity from the PSEG grid to go the same distance, if I understand my most recent bill’s mind-boggling rates correctly. And, though the Volt has a small gasoline engine under the hood, it is mostly used to recharge the battery when it gets depleted. In about 150 miles of driving, it has come on only once and only for about a mile before I got home.
So far, I am happy with the new vehicle, and pleased that I’m not blowing a hole in the ozone with tailpipe emissions the way I was in the Tundra. We will see how things go over the long run, but right now, it’s looking good.