On the way back from my overnight stay north east of Pittsburgh today I paid a little attention to the Energy Information for my demo Chevrolet Volt.
Admittedly I’m not the…. slowest… driver on the road and I don’t like to get stuck behind anyone overly slow. If I modified my driving habits just a little I’m sure these numbers would improve.
Either way – with typical driving – over 90.7 total miles I got 61.4 Miles per gallon (MPG) which is so much better than the 20 something I get in my 2003 Suzuki.
About half my distance was covered using just the battery (43.3 miles) and the rest using gasoline (47.5 miles).
Used only 1.49 gallons of fuel and 10.2kWh of electric.
I left the charge on charge overnight last night – just plugged it into the 120 line. She was good to go at about 5 o’clock this morning.
When I was ready I quite happily unplugged and went on my way.
Luckily the ride from Brookeville to Pittsburgh – initially at least is rather hilly.
The Volt has no problem whatsoever going up hill. Going down hill the Volt’s regenerative system puts a little back into the battery. I found that it turns into something of a game seeing how many miles you can put back into battery while going down hill.
Of course, if you lean on the accelerator a little, just speeding up or overtaking, your energy efficiency drops dramatically and you see the miles left in the battery vanishing.
Keeping an eye on the energy efficiency meter in your main cluster helps a little bit.
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