AutoblogGreen

30 miles/day *52 weeks *5 days is less than 8000 miles.

You pay 50cents/mile in gas? Delivering mail in a Kenworth?

If you were driving a honda Fit that would be about $1000 in Gas/year.

$20000 more spent on a Volt will save you $1000/year... That makes financial sense. Heck you could probably invest the $20000 you save and it would pay for your gas in returns...

You buy this car to be a Pioneer, you don't buy it to save money.

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PeterG,
First of all, mail is delivered 6 days a week, not 5. By my calculations at $4/gal (the price when much of this driving took place) Edward's wife is getting around 10 mpg.

Second, the driving patterns used for delivering mail are not the most efficient. It's not hard to imagine that a vehicle weighed down with mail, stopping and starting with lots of idling, will get just 10 mpg.

Third, don't be such a jerk. Edward wasn't conducting a scientific study. Cut him some slack.

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Peter G and SRUE:

First off....I owe you both an apology as when I did this posting last night it was late my time and I was a 'bit' off on my comments. So to try and set the record as straight as possible let me try to clarify everything.

My wife does indeed work for the Post Office part-time as a Rural Courier and does it 5(Five) days a week - her dad use to do it more a few years back! She indeed does have as SRUE said a lot of 'stop and go' driving. She stops at the box, puts the car in Park, gets out and goes around the car to put the mail in and then returns to the car to continue on to the next box doing this around 80 times in the course of her Route. There are days she can hardly move in the car for mail and others not as bad - thank goodness :-)

Now comes the part I goofed on last night in my posting. Being late and tired, no excuse though, I tried in my head to do some conversions and used the wrong figures - converted 50 Miles as Kilometers thus my 30 Miles.....so sorry as where I live we use the metric system so I inadvertently used the wrong figure. :-( So her travels are each day around 80 KM (50 Miles) when it is completely averaged out over the week as she also works elsewhere some nights and on weekends plus the personal things we do on the weekends ourselves. We now spend approx. $320US per month on gas and are paying around $4.96US a US Gallon (1.31US a Litre). So with that being said we will go over the 40 Mile Range of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt somewhere between 10 and 15 miles per day thereby using 'maybe' 2 (Two) gallons a week at the most for the extra which at the price we are paying now would be around $40US per month.

If that is the case, and I will insert a strong IF, as I said in my original post I believe that the car would pay for itself in the time I mentioned. Inasmuch as Peter mentioned her using a Kenworth (sometimes I wish :-) as people wouldn't be tempted to pull out in front of her or cut her off) the car we use at present is a compact car but because of the work that my wife does it uses more than its fair share of gas. The car we now drive we got in 2006 at $25,100US plus tax. The next car I was considering sells here for around $29,000US (which by the way sells in the United States for around $22,000US). Therefore I figured if we saved around $275US a month in gas then over the next 5(Five) years the amount saved would more than cover the additional upfront costs for this Volt.

Peter, you said: "You buy this car to be a Pioneer, you don't buy it to save money." And you are in part right - I would love to be able to afford this car when it comes out and be one of the first to endorse it and I have no problem with you saying that at all!! Not saving money? My reasons for purchasing this car for my wife and I are two fold: to save money - YES! Because if this car wouldn't in a reasonable time return the extra initial investment it would not be worth buying. We just as well go out and buy a Honda Fit as you suggested - and who knows we might end up doing that before this is all said and done! :-) But my other reason is to use less fossel fuels and pollute less and if the 2011 Chevrolet Volt or any car be it a Plugin Hybrid or Pure Electric that is produced between now and then can do both.......why not?

So, I hope this might clarify my earlier comments which were done in haste and not as accurate as you quickly picked up on and as SRUE said: "Edward wasn't conducting a scientific study. Cut him some slack." Hopefully, both of you will!!!! :-)

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so true...

bump!

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worse even is that GM has about 16 months worth of liquidity left to keep this up. maybe the bankruptcy watch will come back to light if this meager attempt at rebooting the company works.

OR

they can just get a bail-out from Bush and the oil industry...


Russian Roulette anyone?

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I'll play the game!

Lets see, statistical order of car purchase reasons:

1. Design & Looks
2. Performance & Power
3. Price & Affordability
4. Utility & Usage
5. "Brand Alliance"

And the winner is: JAPAN!

Sorry GM, do not pass GO. Straight to the Bankruptcy Court!

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No Scatter, I'm with you. The concept was just plain silly looking. This is better, but really not all that compelling to me.

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Of course that being said, I don't buy cars for the way they look. I buy cars for a) reliability b) fuel economy c) price and d) driving characteristics (not necessarily in that order).

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I agree. This is much better than the concept which looked like some strange hot wheels car.

Though I hate that they kept the high belt line and tiny windows, and strange door sills.

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This car isn't ugly, it's just bland. Personally I think that is worse. An ugly car becomes endearing over time, especially if it functions as advertised. Boring cars fail to inspire. If you are going to create a game changing car at this price point you should couple it with distinctive styling.

Car manufacturers regularly seem to forget that people do not just choose a vehicle for its performance.

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Exactly!

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