The Calculus.

This is my first new car purchase, so the decision wasn't made without considerable thought.  My old car, a 2001 Hyundia Accent met an inauspicious end just shy of the 200,000 mile mark.  My motivations for getting a Volt were both pragmatic and emotional. I will share them with you here:

Milage

I'm certain this is the top reason anyone considers a Volt.  Initially, I would have preferred an all electric car, but that would have left me with the choice of either getting a Nissan Leaf or breaking into the Henry Ford Museum and stealing the last EV1 in existance (if you haven't seen Who Killed the Electric Car, it's worth your time).  But in a sense, the Volt is an all electric car.  It just has a portable, gasoline powered generator in the trunk in case the battery runs down.

The Leaf has a larger battery with a range of about 100 miles.  The Volt has a smaller battery with a range of around 40 miles.  The advantage is that generator.  I know how often I forget to charge my cell phone.  Sooner or later, I'm going to do that with the car no matter how far I can go.  But a 40 mile range still serves my purpose of commuting since my work place, Beaumont hospital is within range (27 miles).  I work a 12 hour day and it takes 10 hours to fully charge the Volt using its 120v power supply.  I figured if I plugged in at work, I could easily drive back and forth with a full charge each way and never need to buy another gallon of gasoline.

  

There are just two problems with this plan:  first, one Chevy dealer told me the Volt automatically runs through one tank a year so the gasoline doesn't turn to lacquer.  Fair enough.  Also, the hospital said security was not the department that decides how electricity was used and the corporate office still needed to consider whether or not they would let me plug in to one of their lamp posts (more on that later. stay tuned). 

When last I checked, electricity is .11 cents per Kw/Hr.  So, you could say the first gallon I use after plugging in only costs about a buck.  Or you could say that if I took what I spent on gas and fueled my car with electricity, I would get upwards of 280 MPG.  When the gas generator kicks in, I'm told the car still get 37MPG.  In other words, in a worst case scenario, my milage drops back down to what it was when I was driving the Hyundai. 

I can live with that.

Cool

OK.  So, here's the emotional reason to buy a Volt.  It really is a neat toy.  I know I said this is my first new car, and maybe everyone feels this way when they get their first new car, but this doesn't feel like a car.  This is something completely different.

First of all, you don't put the key in the ignition.  There is no keyhole.  You keep the key fob in your pocket and press the button on a center console covered with touch sensative icons.  When you push this button, there is a sound effect of an anti-matter phase inverter coming on-line. 

When you put the car in reverse, it feels like you're in neutral and rolling downhill except that you are clearly on flat ground.  When you put it in drive, there is a faint hum from the electric motor but loudest sound you hear is gravel on the pavement crunching under the tires.  Once on the road, the laws of relativity kick in and there is no way of telling how fast you are traveling without looking down at the speedometer.  (70 mph.  Hmmm. Better watch that.)  Driving a Volt for the first time is a truely disorienting experience.  I'm surprised they don't make you pass a road test on a closed course before you take it out.

These are the flying cars we were promised.

Environment

This is perhaps the most complex motivation on my list.  I'd like to think that if we all switched over to cars that didn't emit CO2 today, we could stop climate change and the subsequent effects, but I don't.  After seeing the size of the arctic ice cap this summer, I'm certain that the sun beating down on that newly exposed, dark water underneath  has us locked into a feedback cycle that will be hard to break.   The roof on the green house has already been sealed shut and the best thing one could do right now is start investing in beach front property in Orlando.

Even if the on board generator never kicked in, the Volt is not a carbon neutral vehicle.  The electricity has to come from somewhere and that place is probably kicking out its share of soda bubbles.  Anymore, that juice is most likely coming from a power plant using natural gas extracted using a nasty process that has become very popular of late, hydrolic fracturing or "fracking".  The only thing that puts out more carbon is coal and the only thing that puts out less carbon is nuclear.  Pick your poison.

So why bother?  What's the alternative?

Either we keep sending men and women off to die in the desert to get control of oil or we continue slopping the stuff around the gulf coast until we can get a decent po' boy sandwich anyplace and THEN we send our guys off to die in the desert.  If you think the XL pipeline is perfectly safe because it's nowhere near the ocean, you should talk to some of my friends along the Kalamazoo river.  The nice thing about melting the ice cap is that once all the polar bears are dead, there won't be anything left to protect and the oil will be easier to reach through the unfrozen soil.

The question is not if we can stop global warming but rather how bad do we allow it to get for our children and grandchildren?  After all, they will be the ones dealing with its effects while simultaneously choosing which nursing home we'll be staying in.  The Volt is not a panacea, but it is a quantum step forward in breaking our addiction to oil and a far more efficient use of energy for the purpose of transporation.




Currently, there are no "clean coal" power plants, but if carbon sequestration is ever going to become a reality, it will happen in a building and not in the trunks of our cars.  The waste from nuclear power plants may be with us for millions of years, but if we don't survive another century, that might not be such a big problem.  I don't know if man-made earthquakes are reason enough to stop fracking, but if your drinking water catches fire, you are clearly doing something wrong.  And both gas and nuclear power producers are going to have to agree to serious regulation and oversight if they expect us to believe they are serious about solving the problem.

While power plants do produce CO2, they are far more efficient than the millions of tiny, mobile power plants we have in our cars today.  As was explained to me by a neighbor and Ford engineer, cars make the most CO2 right at start up while power plants start once and run continuously.  Electric cars would most likely charge while we are sleeping and power plants have the most capacity (in fact, the Volt has a feature that allows you to delay the charging period so it occurs during off peak hours).  And traditional cars burn fuel whether they are moving or not while electric cars only make use of their energy on demand.  So, while a traffic jam won't be anymore pleasant, at least you won't be creating smog while your dinner goes cold. 



But the best thing the Volt does by moving from hydrocarbon to electric propulsion is that it opens transportation to a world of sustainable power sources.  Serra Cheverolet in Southfield, the dealership where I bought my car, is a great demonstration of this fact.  You can see the two 117' wind turbines from the freeway (they have foam rubber windmills for promotional schwag.  They're cute but don't make good paperweights).  Around back, they have a long car port covered with solar panels (pictured above) that keeps their Volts charged.  This may be the most exciting development of all.

Can you imagine a car port like this where you work?  Can you imgaine these solar panels on your garage charging batteries all day so you can transfer the juice to your car while you sleep?  How about some of those fancy shingles on your roof, keeping your house cool while you sell the electricity back to the power company? 

Where else could we put these panels?  Factory roofs?  Over park benches?  The Arctic?

Solidarity

Last fall, I took part in Occupy Wall Street demonstrations both in New York and here in Detroit.  Later, as the movement took shape and added significance, I worked with the Occupy Our Homes organization which fought foreclosures and evictions in the wake of the housing crisis.  In both instances, union membership played a key roll. 



At the time, I could tell people that when I bought my  Hyundai, every penny went to an American.  And it did.  I bought it used.  If I got out the bill of sale, I could tell you the guy's name.  It was a snappy comeback I could use in a parking lot, but it was harder to explain to 60 members of UAW 600 when they're coming out to support what I was doing. 

This may sound like an emotional reason for buying a car, but it's actually more logical.  When the autoworker in Detroit suffers, we all suffer.  When they do well, they can purchase products, thus increasing demand and, as a result, actually create jobs.  It is not only for them to succeed, but for myself that I make this decision.  I love this city and I want it to come back and to become what it was meant to be, the home of the best vehicles on the planet.

There is a economic axiom that if you pay for something, you get more of it.  I believe this to be true.  That's why I want General Motors to know that they don't sell cars in spite of their unionized workforce; they sell them because of it.   Union members don't just support our community, they are an integral part of it.  And when we went through our darkest hour, they stood up for us. 

I want to see more of that.