Well, we have just completed a 400km+ round Christmas trip in the Volt and it continues to impress. Although possibly not in the way you might initially expect.
Where it can potentially use literally no petrol around town – as long as you do under 60km – it will inevitably use petrol on a long road trip. And while it is still economical, it is not startlingly so.
Over the course of our trip down to Otorohanga and back up to Auckland, with a bit of day-to-day motoring in between, the Volt averaged 5.2L/100km both ways on pure petrol engine usage, with an ongoing average of 3.3L/100km since we picked it up.
Now, while 5.2L/100km isn’t exactly stunning, the on-going 3.3L/100km average is pretty damned impressive and given that most Volts will spend their lives around town with occasional long trips (like most cars, in fact) you would have to be pretty picky to not be happy with that…
The lifetime average for our Volt is sitting at 2.3L/100km after the trip, after spending the rest of the time we have had it welded to the 1.8L/100km mark. This strongly suggests that this particular Volt has spent a lot of its short life around the city.
Now that we are back in Auckland – and have no foreseeable or planned trips coming up – the Volt will go back to being used mainly on electric power, so the averages will plummet again.
What impressed most on the trip, however, was the passing power of electricity. With 370Nm of torque available from a ridiculously low 250rpm (yep, there’s no “0” missing there – that really is supposed to be two hundred and fifty RPM) the Volt rockets past slower traffic with a contemptuous ease on the open road.
Thank you electricity; you make video games possible, you cook food faster and now you make saving petrol fun as well.
