News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

After buying my Acura MDX a year and a half ago, I had buyer’s remorse. One comment I made below this post was that I could have bought a Chevy Volt instead, since it looked like I was going to keep my Honda mini-van anyway. Well, I finally did just that. I traded in my Acura for an electric car.

I’ve been following the Volt since it was just a concept car at Chevy, several years ago. It caught my imagination right from the start: A plug-in electric car that had a back-up generator on board that would power the car if the batteries were exhausted. This solves the main kick against electric cars — range anxiety.

There are a few things I’m going to miss from my Acura. It was a very nice car. I will miss:

-Adaptive Cruise Control (I used this all the time, even around town)
-Blind spot detection (I also depended on this a lot)
-5 Adult + 2 Children carrying capacity (But I have my van if I need to carry more people)
-Rear seat air conditioning
-All Wheel Drive (never used after the first six months)
-Crash Mitigation Braking System (which I’m glad I never had to use!)

But here’s what I get with the Volt:
– Cost per mile around 2.5 cents, vs 25 cents in the Acura
– Acceleration (The Volt is the fastest car I have owned from zero to 45)
– Maintenance schedule:
   + Every 7500 miles rotate the tires
   + Every two years change the oil
   + Every 55,000 miles change the engine air filter
   That’s it! Even the brake pads don’t wear, since braking is mostly regenerative.
-Keyless entry and start
-Remote “start” (starts the climate control)
-Smart phone “start”, and charge monitoring
-OnStar
-Designed and built in America
-Just plain cool

According to Consumer Reports, the Volt has the highest owner satisfaction level of any car on the market, with the Porsche 911 running second.

I’ll post some pictures when I get a chance.

That’s how much electricity I bought from SRP this month. There is a $15 service charge each month and some taxes added on that, so my total bill is $19.21. Last March I paid $116. I would have been net negative this month except for a couple of cloudy days.

As I’ve mentioned before, March and April are the best months for solar power, since the days are getting longer but the temperatures are mild so there isn’t much (any) need for heating or cooling. I’m sure my July and August bills will be substantial.

So far the system is exceeding the estimates of the company that installed it.

Here’s a graph of our power usage from SRP so far for the Feb 22 – Mar 21 billing period. We’re just about breaking even, as the days get longer and warmer. We’re getting more sunlight and therefore more power, and using less for heating.

The days stand out when we do laundry or a lot of cooking, though clouds can also force us to buy more. There are several of those nice days when we sell power back to SRP.