{"id":8069,"date":"2012-09-02T00:18:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-01T17:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/?p=8069"},"modified":"2012-09-02T00:18:28","modified_gmt":"2012-09-01T17:18:28","slug":"my-electrifying-experience-with-the-chevy-volt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/my-electrifying-experience-with-the-chevy-volt\/","title":{"rendered":"My Electrifying Experience with the Chevy Volt"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Lori Cunningham (@WellConnectdMom)<\/span><\/p>\n

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I was offered the opportunity to try out the 2012 Chevy Volt<\/a>, as a result of my social media ranking at Klout.com<\/a>. \u00a0On Friday, a black Chevy Volt was dropped off at my house for my four-day city driving adventure. \u00a0We’ve all seen electric cars, they’re nice but nothing to really look out. \u00a0This was the opinion I held in anticipating the arrival of the Chevy Volt. \u00a0Honestly, I didn’t look up ahead of time what the car would look like, I figured I’d already knew. \u00a0Surely it would be a small car with an abrupt back-end and\u00a0very\u00a0conservative.<\/p>\n

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To my surprise, a man drove to my driveway in a sporty black Chevy Volt. \u00a0What? \u00a0This car didn’t meet my\u00a0expectations\u00a0of an electric car, it way surpassed them. \u00a0Can electric cars truly be energy-efficient and cool looking? \u00a0I truly had a mind-shifting experience as I needed to reclassify in my mind the category electric cars can be in. \u00a0The Chevy Volt was sporty, had a hatchback, and was very low to the ground. \u00a0Wow, I haven’t had a low to the ground car since before kids. \u00a0Memories of driving fast around tight corners came flooding back to me.<\/p>\n

My kids were the first ones in the car, fiddling with things and listening intently as the gentleman told me how to use the car and plug it in. \u00a0He said it would take approximately 11 hours to charge the battery fully.<\/p>\n

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This is the charger that plugged into our electrical outlet with the\u00a0other side plugging into the car. \u00a0The battery charge should last about 30-40 miles. \u00a0After the electricity has been depleted, the car runs on gas.<\/p>\n

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My daughter loved “charging” the car. \u00a0Putting in the charger is even easier than putting in the handle for a tank of gas. \u00a0Once the charge had begun, a green light on top of the dashboard turns on to indicate charging.<\/p>\n

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As you can see the car is pretty roomy. \u00a0The back seats fold down to provide extra storage. \u00a0However, my kids did report that there is not much leg room when the front seat is pushed all the way back.<\/p>\n

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The main console screen shows a lot of information. \u00a0Here it says that I have the capability of utilizing 250 mpg but on average since the car was first used, it is getting 60.5 mpg, since it’s being driven using gas quite a bit. \u00a0According to the Chevy Volt’s website, people who charge their Volt frequently and avoid using gas are getting up to 900 mpg<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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This diagram shows you the batteries that are lined up, going through the center of the car. \u00a0In this instance, I have used 30% of my battery.<\/p>\n

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They Chevy Volt gives you an indicator to let the driver know that they are driving the most efficiently as possible. \u00a0The little green ball on the right of the screen is supposed to stay in the center. \u00a0If it goes above or below the center, you are driving as energy as efficient as possible. \u00a0It’s kind of like you’re playing a video game while you drive, ensuring you keep the green sphere in the center.<\/p>\n

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You can see from this picture that I did not brake very well, \u00a0as I was breaking too abruptly. \u00a0Oops! \u00a0You can also see on the right my battery indicator showing I have\u00a0approximately\u00a019 miles left before my battery drains…depending upon my energy efficiency in driving.<\/p>\n

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I have to say, four days with the Chevy Volt were not enough. \u00a0It’s really a fun car to drive. \u00a0At one point, I left the kids at home with Dad, hopped into the car, and drove a local road with some sharp corners to “test out the car’s maneuvering skills.” \u00a0It was fun hugging those corners. \u00a0Driving around in this low to the ground car, I felt like I was in my 20’s again. \u00a0Now I understand why people going through their mid-life crisis like to get sporty cars, it reminds them of their youth! \u00a0Thank you to Klout.com<\/a>\u00a0and Chevy Volt<\/a>\u00a0for letting me borrow the keys to the car for this fun weekend!<\/p>\n

* \u00a0I was lent a Chevy Volt as a part of the Klout Perk program from Klout.com. \u00a0I was not required to post an article but decided to anyways to show how electric cars are fun as well as energy-efficient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Klout.com awarded WellConnectedMom.com with the Klout perk of driving an electric Chevy Volt around for four days to experience first hand what an electric car can do when powered by Chevy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[747,6,14,20],"tags":[464,1297,1296,1298],"class_list":["post-8069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cars-2","category-dads","category-moms","category-technology","tag-car-tech","tag-chevy-volt","tag-electric-car","tag-energy-efficient-car","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/p-content\/themes\/atahualpa342\/images\/articles\/2012\/08\/Chevy-Volt-2012-31.jpg?fit=3264%2C1840&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}