Our Chevy Volt/Electric vehicles/One car families

In 2014 we bought a brand new Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid electric car.  We have never looked back.  I’m sad they rolled out the last ones in 2019.  We have found it to be a great vehicle for a one-car household.  How it works is we plug in the Volt every night and get about 39 electric, no emission miles on the car.  In Sacramento county with our driving patterns, that’s plenty to get us where we need to go and back.  But, and this is the key, if we NEED more in town or on a road trip, after that 39, it kicks over to using gas (I’ll explain more about that in a minute).  That means we never have to worry about running out of electric charge or frantically look for a place to charge or plan on having a delay while we refuel.  

It’s much easier for us to get away with only one vehicle than most households.  My husband bikes to work and I work from home.  Plus we live in a cohousing community where neighbors feel fine about lending cars at the drop of a hat.

 Why many dealerships don’t want to sell you an electric or partial electric vehicle
The Chevy Volt, as I understand it, is, unlike Priuses or many other hybrids, an all electric engine.  It is not a dual electric engine and internal combustion engine.  It all runs off the battery.  When we switch over to gas power, the gas is used to recharge the battery.   I am told that an electric engine has one or two moving parts and an internal combustion engine has hundreds of moving parts.  This means that there is a lot less to go wrong and a lot less to repair.  Car dealerships make a lot of their money on repair work not just on the original sale of the vehicle.   If you don’t breakdown, they don’t get you back.

Knock on everything but we are coming up on six years of ownership and driving a Chevy Volt, including many long car trips.  We have NOT had anything go wrong.
 Our NEXT One Car will be All Electric
When the timing is right, we will buy an all electric vehicle.  By then, at least in California, the infrastructure and increases in technology will better support having that be our only vehicle.  We’d like to be able to go on road trips and reliably find places to recharge easily and quickly.  The Chevy Bolt is an all electric vehicle that seems quite wonderful too.  Friends of ours have it and they seem to already be enjoying it for long trips.
 Families and Electric Vehicles
Purely anecdotal (like all my musings) but the Chevy Volt has almost no leg room in the backseat so it would work for families with very small children or empty nests.  We waited until our children were out of the house before we bought the Volt.  You can take short car trips with 4 adults but any longer than 30 minutes is rough—especially in our long-legged family.
 Our next door neighbors have an all electric minivan that they carpool in.  Seats at least 6, maybe 7.  They seem to like it.