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Comment by cmrdporcupine | Hacker News Reader

Well, I love my Volt. Maybe it will be a collectors car some day. Amazing piece of engineering. I charge at work and at home and use gas about once every two months.

I don't have "range anxiety", I have "range requirements"; no way I'm going on an 8 hour drive to go skiing in the Adirondacks or in Vermont with a pure electric.

A pure BEV won't meet my needs.

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Admittedly it is still a small compromise, but I’ve done 8 hour road trips in my Tesla to go snowboarding in Vermont and having to stop and charge adds under an hour to the trip. The Volt does seem like a great car, but to me it’s not worth the maintenance/space/reliability compromise of a gas engine in exchange for not having to take a relaxing break every few hours when I’m road tripping; obviously my values may be different but to me the extra time spent feels pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

There is no maintenance or reliability compromise. Go look at owner's reports.

I had a Leaf for 4 years and had no scheduled maintenance. The only thing I had to do was rotate the tires, put air in them, and put washer fluid in.

I assume the Volt requires at least an oil change every year?

No, it only needs an only change when the number of hours logged on the motor necessitates it, or every 2 years, whichever comes first.

I've had my Volt for 2.5 years, almost 70,000km. Have done one oil change. Only one visit to dealer, which was oil change and some cleaning of the brakes since they barely get used.

Soon you'll be able to. Range anxiety goes away with time and planning.

Fast DC chargers are going to be everywhere in the near future. They're already on every major highway except i94.

No offense, but deep in the mountains or out in rural northern Ontario, etc. where I'd like to go... will be the last place that DC fast chargers will go.

I'm a big fan of the EV movement, I'll own a BEV someday, but I feel that GM and EV-boosters in general have thrown the Volt-type range extended EVs under the bus. It is an amazing technical achievement and with the right marketing and product development could take the market by storm.

(I don't consider the Volt a PHEV, btw, but a range extended electric vehicle. It is the only "plugin hybrid" on the market that can operate purely electric without using the gas engine. And even when the gas engine kicks in, it performs like an EV.)

Electricity is everywhere. You'd be surprised at how many things are already using that capacity right on top of the mountains. It'll eventually be built out there too. Especially with the declining price of equipment needed to set it up there too.

> (I don't consider the Volt a PHEV, btw, but a range extended electric vehicle. It is the only "plugin hybrid" on the market that can operate purely electric without using the gas engine. And even when the gas engine kicks in, it performs like an EV.)

Not true at all: Prius prime, Pacifica Hybrid can all run on the battery without the engine.

I can get 30 miles on my Pacifica hybrid without the engine turning on, I even drive it at highway speeds without the engine turning on.

No, you are not telling the whole picture. Those cars cannot run 100% on the battery, because the moment you hit the accelerator hard ICE kicks in. If you're gentle on the accelerator or avoid high speeds on the highway, yes, you can avoid the gas engine. But you have to work for it. It's almost impossible to drive those vehicles for extended periods of time without using the gas engine.

The Volt is designed explicitly so that the gas engine is never necessary. Top speed, hardest acceleration, etc. all is the same experience as a 100% pure battery electric vehicle. Until you run out of battery. And then it meets all the same performance characteristics, but with the ICE involved.

> or avoid high speeds on the highway

I constantly drive 75mph without ever using the engine. I even merge on extremely steep inclines without ever using the engine.

Yes, it turns on for hard acceleration, but that's not the kind of thing you need to do in day-to-day driving.

Honda Clarity PHEV is essentially the successor to the discontinued Volt (if you can get past the looks!)

I drove my Model 3 from Cannon (very far in Northern New Hampshire) to Cape Cod (south of Boston) just stopping to charge once.

BTW, if you can do a minivan, my other car is a Pacifica plugin hybrid. It has some problems charging off of 240 volts, but it does about 30 miles on a charge. I almost never use gas.

Our other car is a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Not as good of a system as the Volt, but it's decent enough for reducing our CO2.

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