After a lot of deliberation, my family has decided to pursue buying a 2015 Chevy Volt rather than the Nissan Leaf or Toyota Prius Plug-In.  We are not done yet, but here’s why we have settled on the Volt for our electric vehicle:

• We actually think we will get almost as many electric miles on the hybrid Volt as with the electric-only Leaf.  The Leaf has an 80-mile range on electricity, which is impressive, but it’s short enough that there would be several occasions when we would have to take our other car (a 2008 Prius).
• Related to that, is the fact that while the charging station infrastructure is improving all the time, it’s still not at a point at which we could say, “Let’s take a 200-mile trip and get two or three charges along the way.”
• Furthermore, and this is perhaps a minor point, we thought that there might be some nasty days in winter when we just would not want to be charging a Leaf because we had to.  With a Volt, we could run the car for days on gasoline if we had to – even though it’s our plan to keep the electric battery charged as much as possible.
• The plug-in Prius gives you just 11 miles on a charge compared to the 38 miles you can get on a Volt. We love the Toyota Prius.  Today, we have two – a 2002 and a 2008.  But over the course of a year, the Prius would give us about 4000 miles on electricity and the Volt could give us over 10,000.

To help guide our search for the right vehicle, we went through Consumer Reports and its Car Buying Service.  The best part of that service was learning how much below the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) you should be able to pay.  This is great information to have as you negotiate with car dealers.  What we did not like, was how Consumer Reports has teamed up with Tru-Car, which allows you to go on-line and specify what kind of car you want and get bids from dealers in your area.  Since doing that a few nights ago, we have learned that dealers often ignore what you asked for and use the opportunity to try and sell you whatever cars they have on the lot.  No, I do not want to buy a Cadillac.  More to the point, we have learned that 2014 Prius Plug-Ins are not available in our area and that 2015 models will likely be available in about a month.

So, where does this leave us?  Armed with the information provided to us by Consumer Reports, we are going to try and get ourselves a 2015 Chevy Volt at a price below the MSRP.  But if the dealers give us headaches, we will look at the 2015 Prius Plug-Ins when they arrive in September or October. 

I’ll keep you posted!

P.S.     We are also following media reports on how Chevrolet, Nissan, Toyota and Tesla are all planning to roll out new generation EV’s by late 2015 through 2017.  A lot of the reports are speculative, but it’s clear that the companies are making technological progress and that government policies (rebates for consumers and infrastructure expansion) are supportive.  And it’s equally clear that the companies are competing hard with one another.  That’s a good thing.  So it’s tempting to sit back and wait until one of those companies comes out with an affordable five-seater that gets 100 miles or more on a charge.  But we are not going to wait.  The cars available this year are excellent and we want to do our part to send a signal to the market.  And when the 2008 Prius needs to be replaced, we will have another opportunity to buy a great new car with much less environmental impact.