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As part of a promotion with Chevrolet, Klout gave me an electric/gas hybrid Volt to drive for a couple of days. It was a lot of fun! I really enjoyed the comfort and instrumentation. It had OnStar and video backup. Really nice.

There are three drive modes, one for in town economy driving, sport for power and speed, and a mountain drive for hilly terrain power. All worked great. The sport mode was very responsive and fast with good pickup.

It is eerie at first driving in the silence. The electric motor is so very quiet. The gasoline motor kicks in when needed, all automatically. You can drive to Vegas and back for $40 worth of gas, and not need to recharge.

Recharging was simple. I just plugged it into 120 v inside the garage. An electronic anti-theft device protects the cable. It recharged completely overnight, at a cost of about $2.00 in electricity.

We drove to Hollywood and back (about an hour) without the gasoline engine kicking in at all.

The one thing we didn’t like about this otherwise wonderful car is the windshield view.

Because the hood dips down out of sight, looking out the front seems disconnected from the road–like looking at a video–you don’t really know where the front of the car is…parking is also a little difficult because of this.

Klout and Chevy made this whole event effortless. They delivered the car to my driveway, and then picked it up two days later. I was not required to say anything at all about the car unless I wanted to, and I do, and I think it is a really cool piece of equipment.

More info here: Chevy Volt

If you have any questions about the car, I will answer them as best I can.