It's been fun, and it keeps being fun! I'm racking up the free miles, getting better as it broke in, and I broke in in the sense of knowing how to get the most out of this - both in fun and miles per charge. I've decided to keep track of my stats insofar as the car makes it easy. Trip meter A was set Jan 1, 2012 (I picked up the car in October 2011, and drove it using too much gasoline, since I didn't have the amount of solar panels required to keep up then). Trip B was set Jan1, 2013, and reset after I took these pictures of the car's recorded stats.
We can do a bit of math and figure out the yearly numbers from the data in these pix, and a movie I took of the same.
As you can see, I used 10 gal of gasoline in 2013, but still attained more than 250 mpg. I bought the last tank around July, so it's "summer gasoline", eg, has a lower vapor pressure and more energy than "winter gas" does - it's a better deal per dollar. I took only a couple of trips outside battery range, never really running the engine past about 2 quarts of gasoline per - and didn't see the so-called 40mpg doing that - more like 20 mpg. But that's deceptive too, as sometimes not only does the engine not warm up fully and get to max efficiency, but it's also charging the batteries - net - in mountain mode. A couple times it was dodgy if I could climb that last long steep hill as I got home, and went ahead and went into mountain mode a few miles earlier to put some extra charge into the batteries for that, and wound up with net extra in the batteries when I hit my driveway. No one has figured out how to report those numbers accurately so far - it's a pretty hard problem - if I've got X in the battery - how much came from the engine, how much from the plug? After a time, how to update that (which to amortize and so on).
At any rate, last year, I did 342.7 mpg...could be worse. The engine force-ran in "maintenance mode" once - I used it enough to avoid that mostly, and once in "it's too cold" mode, for a little while. It really was too cold, and since the waste heat helps heat the car, I didn't mind that one like many Volt owners obsess about - hey, for once you're getting all the energy in gasoline - the waste heat, and the shaft power running a generator to the batteries.
My average for 2 years wasn't quite as good, as that first one I used more gasoline while installing the new solar array, instead of just having it leaning on the walls half the year, and me not knowing how to drive the car as well as I do now. On top, I ran gasoline more than required, as I wanted to break the engine in and get that assembly lube (about 50 weight net) changed out for real synthetic 5W-30, which I've now done.
Crunching some numbers here: 8150.4 (miles in both years) - 3427.1 (miles in 2013) = 4723.3 miles in 2012. Yeah, I don't drive that much. Even my truck used less gasoline than my mower and tractor - I hardly drive it other than to take out the garbage (or buy lumber to mount solar panels).
Subtracting the gasoline we get 28.3 gallons used in 2012, or 166.9 and change mpg net. That was with the thick oil...and a little less driver restraint and knowledge of how to get the best out of things. Not shabby, even so.
For the pukey total life miles. Well, not all are mine - the dealer's salesman put on 100 miles himself, and at that time, I didn't even have the solar panels on the ground wired up, so I could rarely charge the car at all - other than at the dealer when I bought it, this car has *never* been charged from grid power, just solar.
We see 10747 on the odometer total, minus 8150 recorded on the trip meter, so that interval between October 2011 and Jan 1 2012, was 2597 miles I don't have detailed record for. We'll have to calculate from the life miles per gallon. We are showing 127 mpg lifetime.
10747 total mile divided by 127 = 84.6220472441 total gallons of gasoline. Now we subtract 2012 and 2013 - 36.3 gallons and we see that I burned 48.3220472441 gal of - gas from Oct (early, don't remember the exact date) through December of 2011. In that period I drove 10747 - 8150.4 miles = 2596.6 miles ( a lot for me, I was showing this off to everyone, and using mountain mode a lot to put energy into the batteries with some round-trip loss so my victims could try it all-electric) for a pretty horrible gas mileage number 2296.6/48.3220472441 = 53.7353060992 mpg - still better than a Prius (and a heck of a lot faster, quieter, and better handling) even under those rotten conditions - little to no access to electricity. The numbers kind of stink, but just try this with a Leaf or Tesla. You'd still get infinite miles per gallon - but almost no miles at all, it'd be a driveway ornament. Yes, I'm a true believer in having that efficient gasoline engine still - even with the added weight and complexity. It makes the Volt possible as an "only car" whereas with the others, not so much. I could drive the Volt to, say, Tesla headquarters, while they drove one of theirs here - and I'd get to theirs first, even though the Tesla has performance more like my old Camaro - you have to stop and charge it. Even with superchargers, which don't in the main exist yet along that route from VA to CA - I'd beat them handily in average MPH. Even if we were both speeding. The Volt limits at a "mere" 100 mph, but obviously that's the computer - it's like hitting a wall, it's still pulling hard, then oops - that's all I'll give ya.
It's going to take awhile to get up to the reporting limit it seems - I've got to drive a heck of a lot of all-electric miles (which is now the norm) to get up to the limit at 250. I'll have fun doing it, though, and now I have the electricity, even in winter, more often than not - I only have to go out for groceries as things stand, mostly, anyway, and if the weather is truly nasty - well, that's why I also have that 4wd big truck - safety wins over money for that, even though the Volt has shown itself to be a pretty good snow car, heck, it's still got the new on it and doesn't have a heck of a lot of ground clearance, so if it's deep - truck.
Here's a couple vids I took at the same time I took the pix.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftU--ogG2Kk
Note that the extra power consumption per mile on a standard trip in winter DOES NOT include my running the heater - I didn't. I preheated the car on shore power with a portable ceramic "foot warmer" heater and didn't use the car's heat at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83WnrZYcOuk
In this vid I show the sorry winter sun at noon here. I have trees to the south, both on my own land, and across the road (which I can't cut). These shade the main array to some extent till around 2 pm, by which time the sun is way over to the side and not that long before setting near the winter solstice around here.
This is therefore my worst period of the year for energy. As a bit of backstop, that building behind my main one also has two racks of my oldest panels, and at least they aren't shaded after about 10 am...but those are old, and not many and not as efficient as the new ones. Their main value is that they put out power at a time earlier than the main array, when the homestead batteries need it most.
And, oh yeah, happy new year to all! It's been a mixed year here - good on fusion and cars at least. Hope everyone (myself included) does even better in 2014.