My 2016 Chevrolet Volt Premier: 3,700 Miles Per Tank — Getting Rid Of Range and Lease Anxiety

By the spring of 2020, I could see the end of my Bolt lease approaching.

I absolutely loved the Bolt. In many ways, it was the first electric vehicle I had owned that felt completely free of compromises. It had enough range to comfortably handle my life, it was fun to drive, and it had fully convinced me that electric cars were the future. But there was one thing I was getting tired of: leasing.

After leasing a Volt, a Spark EV, and then a Bolt EV, I was growing weary of watching the odometer. Every road trip became a math problem. Every extra mile carried a tiny bit of guilt. I found myself worrying about wear and tear, lease-end inspections, and whether I was getting my money’s worth out of the vehicle. I was ready to own something again.

Then COVID happened.

Almost overnight, the world shut down. The Governor of Oregon ordered schools closed, businesses sent employees home, and suddenly routines that had existed for decades disappeared. Courtney found herself trying to teach kindergarten over Zoom, which went about as well as you might imagine. Meanwhile, I spent about a month working from home, providing remote support to teachers who were suddenly trying to reinvent education from their living rooms.

After about a month, though, I went back into the office. Our technology office was a large room, so my boss and I could easily spread out far enough to feel comfortable. We were both doing the mask thing, and there weren’t many other people around the district offices anyway. More importantly, I was going stir crazy. I’d been working since I was fifteen years old, and I genuinely enjoy the rhythm of getting up, going somewhere, and having a place to be.

At the same time, I knew I needed to start thinking about what would replace the Bolt.

The nice thing was that our Ford Escape handled all of our out-of-town travel. Whatever replaced the Bolt only needed to be a great commuter car. But I had established some criteria. It wasn’t going to be leased. It was going to be used. And we were going to pay cash for it.

I considered buying a used EV, but at the time they still felt a little risky to me. Leasing an EV was one thing. The battery was always under warranty, and you never owned it long enough to worry much about degradation or long-term reliability. But battery technology and charging infrastructure were evolving so rapidly in 2020 that I wasn’t sure I wanted to commit to owning a full EV yet.

So I found myself pivoting back toward plug-in hybrids.

One vehicle that seriously caught my attention was the 2017 Ford Fusion Energi Platinum. I found one in a deep burgundy color with a white-and-brown leather interior, and it looked fantastic. I had helped my grandmother purchase a brand-new 2013 Fusion Titanium, and I had always thought it was one of the best-looking midsize sedans Ford had ever built.

The problem was the Energi’s electric range.

Twenty miles or so sounded a little underwhelming compared to what I had become accustomed to in the Bolt. Still, I liked the idea enough that I went and test drove one.

Hard pass.

The battery pack consumed a huge portion of the trunk, and more importantly, it completely changed the way the car drove. The extra weight in the rear made the car feel noticeably different than the standard Fusion, and in EV mode it was painfully slow. It was one of those rare situations where a car looked absolutely fantastic on paper and in photos, but completely failed to win me over once I got behind the wheel.

So, to the surprise of absolutely no one, I found myself looking at Chevrolet again.

The second-generation Volt was a massive improvement over the original car I had leased back in 2012. The technology was better. The interior was nicer. The build quality felt substantially improved. Most importantly, electric range had increased from roughly 35 miles to 53 miles. Fifty-three miles was enough to handle virtually all of my day-to-day driving without using a drop of gasoline. Yet unlike a pure EV, I could still point it toward Portland, Central Oregon, or anywhere else without having to think about charging. Once the battery was depleted, it simply became a very efficient hybrid that could return over 40 MPG on the highway.

It turned out that June of 2020 was the perfect time to be buying a car. Because of COVID, people simply weren’t driving. Commutes disappeared overnight, vacations were canceled, and dealerships suddenly found themselves sitting on inventory that wasn’t moving. Looking back from just a year or two later—when used car prices would go completely insane—it feels almost unbelievable.

While I would have loved to find another Kinetic Blue car to match my beloved Bolt, I was willing to compromise on color if the right deal came along. One thing that wasn’t negotiable, however, was trim level. This time I wanted the nice one. I had no problem leasing base-model vehicles, but if I was going to own this car for years instead of leasing it, I wanted all the bells and whistles. That meant it needed to be a Premier. Fortunately, I found exactly what I was looking for.

Oddly enough, it was at CarMax.

The car was a 2016 Chevrolet Volt Premier in Diamond White Metallic with roughly 50,000 miles. The price—about $14,500—was thousands less than similar examples I was finding elsewhere. The buying process was refreshingly simple. There was no negotiating, no pressure, and no games. I wrote them a check, signed a few papers, and drove away. After years of traditional dealership experiences, I finally understood why people liked CarMax.

While I had originally wanted another Kinetic Blue car, the Diamond White Metallic quickly won me over. The color was absolutely stunning in person. In bright sunlight it genuinely sparkled, and before long the car had acquired a nickname. Sparkles.

One feature I was especially excited about was the automatic parking system. This was the first vehicle I had ever owned that could parallel park itself. You don’t have to do much parallel parking in Tillamook, and I was reasonably competent at it anyway, but the technology fascinated me. The day after bringing the Volt home, I drove out to Oceanside and found a parking spot that was smaller than I would have attempted myself. I pushed the button, followed the prompts, and watched the car neatly slide itself into the space in a single smooth maneuver.

Magic.

I think I only used the feature a couple more times during my ownership. As it turns out, living in rural Oregon doesn’t provide many opportunities for self-parking technology to show off. A feature I appreciated much more often was the rear cross-traffic alert system. When backing out of a parking space, the car would warn you if another vehicle was approaching from either side. It sounds simple, but once you’ve lived with it, it’s one of those features you miss when it’s gone.

The Volt drove very well. It wasn’t as quick as either the Bolt or the hilariously torque-heavy Spark, but it was still plenty responsive. While the second-generation Volt was rated for 53 miles of electric range, mine rarely showed much more than about 47 miles on a full charge. That was still perfectly respectable, and whatever degradation had occurred remained remarkably consistent throughout my ownership.

The gasoline engine, on the other hand, was a massive improvement over the original Volt I had leased back in 2012. It was smoother, quieter, and far better integrated into the driving experience. Even so, after spending years driving pure EVs, I still found the transition slightly annoying whenever the gasoline engine started. Once you’ve become accustomed to the complete silence of a battery-electric vehicle, even a very refined gasoline engine feels a little intrusive.

The one part of the car that wasn’t in great shape was the steering wheel. The leather across the top was cracked and worn. Since I had become a huge fan of the heated steering wheel, I wasn’t interested in covering it up with an aftermarket wrap. Fortunately, I found a brand-new factory wheel on eBay for about $100.

Getting it installed turned out to be more difficult. I took it to Tillamook Ford, but they were hesitant to work on an electrified vehicle they weren’t familiar with. Once I tracked down the factory service instructions and handed them a copy, they agreed to do the job. The result was fantastic. The new wheel looked and felt brand new, and every time I got behind it, the interior felt just a little bit nicer.

The Volt ultimately served as my commuter car for about three years, and it fit that role perfectly. Most days it quietly shuttled me between home, the school district office, and various district buildings. It was comfortable, efficient, and completely unremarkable in the best possible way.

It also became my preferred vehicle for visiting Roby’s locations. One of the biggest advantages of the Volt was that it completely eliminated range anxiety while still allowing me to do the vast majority of my driving on electricity. I could drive to Astoria, Lincoln City, McMinnville, Newport, or Florence without giving charging infrastructure a second thought.

What surprised me most was how liberating it felt to stop watching the odometer. After years of leasing vehicles, every road trip carried a little voice in the back of my head reminding me that every mile counted against a lease allowance. The Volt was mine. If I wanted to drive to Astoria, then Newport, then McMinnville in the same week, I could do it without doing any mental math.

One weekend proved exactly why owning the Volt instead of leasing another EV had been the right move. Roby’s was replacing routers at every location, and because the new VPN system wouldn’t talk to the old one, I had to swap all of them in one push. That meant starting in Astoria, then hitting Tillamook, Lincoln City, Newport, Florence, and McMinnville before ending back home in Tillamook.

Depending on how you count the drive to Astoria to begin with, it was somewhere around 440 miles and over ten hours of driving in a single weekend. In the Bolt, I would have been thinking about lease miles the entire time. In the Spark, the trip would have been impossible. In the Volt, I just got in and did the work.

Just as importantly, I didn’t have to think about charging. There was no planning charging stops, no wondering if a charger would be available when I arrived, and no adjusting my route around infrastructure. The battery handled the local driving, the gas engine handled the highway miles, and I simply focused on getting the job done.

Not having to watch the odometer and not having to think about charging was every bit as freeing as I had hoped it would be.

That didn’t stop me from charging whenever possible, of course.

If a location had a Level 2 charger, I was going to use it. If they didn’t have a charger but happened to have a conveniently located 110-volt outlet, I was probably going to use that too. I treated every tank of gas like a personal challenge.

How far could I go?

How long could I avoid visiting a gas station?

If memory serves, my personal record ended up being somewhere around 3,700 miles on a single tank of gasoline. Obviously most of those miles were electric, but it was still deeply satisfying to watch the odometer climb while the fuel gauge barely moved.

The Volt wasn’t as exciting as the Bolt. It wasn’t as futuristic. It wasn’t even as much fun to drive. But as a tool for covering lots of miles efficiently while completely eliminating range anxiety, it was remarkably hard to beat. In many ways, it represented the best of both worlds.

By 2023, however, an unbelievable opportunity presented itself.

Between strong used-car values and government rebates on certain new vehicles, I found myself in a position where upgrading to a brand-new car would cost surprisingly little out of pocket. It was one of those opportunities that doesn’t come around very often, and one that was very difficult for a car enthusiast to ignore.

But we’ll have to save that story for another time.

Next week…

The German tank.