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Independence, MO —
Ben Anderson might have found his ideal car.
He gets around a lot with his job delivering Chinese food across Independence, so good wheels are a necessary expense. He’s also long had an interest in electric cars, and when General Motors rolled out the Volt in late 2010, he had already been keeping up on its development for years. Late last month, he took the plunge, becoming apparently just the second person in Independence to buy an all-electric vehicle. The pricetag is up there – $48,000 for what’s considered a four-seat compact – but he’s saving gasoline and money, reducing pollution, and sparking conversations all over town.
“I get comments almost every other delivery,” he says.
Besides, he likes it.
“It’s not just the green,” Anderson said. “I was fascinated with the technology.”
He sees other benefits as well. Instead of putting gas from foreign oil into his foreign car, he’s using locally generated power for an American-made car. There’s less maintenance for things such as oil changes. Electric batteries eventually have to be replaced, but electric motors just go on and on.
And it’s getting people to think and talk, and maybe one of them take the plunge, too, hastening the day when electric cars are common and the support network for them is filled out.
“I notice people gawking at it all the time,” he said.
Technology and finances drove his decision.
“That guy there – he had done his math before he came in,” says Stan Adkins of Cable-Dahmer Chevrolet, who sold Anderson the car.
Anderson had to fill up his old Toyota Matrix about every other day, and it got about 24 mpg. As of Friday morning, he had put 2,718 miles on the Volt, which an in-dash calculator tells him would have cost $377.58 for gas with the Matrix. Put another way, he was spending $22 a day for gas but now it’s $6 or $7. The cost of electricity in Independence, lower than the national average, comes to about $1 for an overnight charge, said Paul Mahlberg, deputy director of Independence Power & Light.
Anderson is happy with the 65 mpg he’s gotten so far, given his driving patterns. He plugs it in to a 120-volt outlet at night and sometimes doesn’t get a full 10-hour charge. Installing a 240-volt outlet – just four hours for a charge – could bump that to 70 to 75 mpg, he figures.
Ben Anderson might have found his ideal car.
He gets around a lot with his job delivering Chinese food across Independence, so good wheels are a necessary expense. He’s also long had an interest in electric cars, and when General Motors rolled out the Volt in late 2010, he had already been keeping up on its development for years. Late last month, he took the plunge, becoming apparently just the second person in Independence to buy an all-electric vehicle. The pricetag is up there – $48,000 for what’s considered a four-seat compact – but he’s saving gasoline and money, reducing pollution, and sparking conversations all over town.
“I get comments almost every other delivery,” he says.
Besides, he likes it.
“It’s not just the green,” Anderson said. “I was fascinated with the technology.”
He sees other benefits as well. Instead of putting gas from foreign oil into his foreign car, he’s using locally generated power for an American-made car. There’s less maintenance for things such as oil changes. Electric batteries eventually have to be replaced, but electric motors just go on and on.
And it’s getting people to think and talk, and maybe one of them take the plunge, too, hastening the day when electric cars are common and the support network for them is filled out.
“I notice people gawking at it all the time,” he said.
Technology and finances drove his decision.
“That guy there – he had done his math before he came in,” says Stan Adkins of Cable-Dahmer Chevrolet, who sold Anderson the car.
Anderson had to fill up his old Toyota Matrix about every other day, and it got about 24 mpg. As of Friday morning, he had put 2,718 miles on the Volt, which an in-dash calculator tells him would have cost $377.58 for gas with the Matrix. Put another way, he was spending $22 a day for gas but now it’s $6 or $7. The cost of electricity in Independence, lower than the national average, comes to about $1 for an overnight charge, said Paul Mahlberg, deputy director of Independence Power & Light.
Anderson is happy with the 65 mpg he’s gotten so far, given his driving patterns. He plugs it in to a 120-volt outlet at night and sometimes doesn’t get a full 10-hour charge. Installing a 240-volt outlet – just four hours for a charge – could bump that to 70 to 75 mpg, he figures.
That full charge is good for about 35 miles, and then the gasoline engine kicks in – “Half the time, I don’t even notice,” Anderson says – generating electricity as needed. Together, a charged car with a full tank could get well more than 300 miles, and the Environmental Protection Agency puts it at 93 mpg, or 37 mpg if running on gas alone. It’s fun to drive, Anderson said, and runs like “a really beefy four-cylinder or a weak six-cylinder.”
Adkins says those figures mean the car is ideally suited to someone with a commute of 15 or maybe 17 miles a day.
“Theoretically, they’re not going to spend a dime on gas,” he says. (Actually, he hastens to add, the car is programmed to burn off at least one tank a year just so you’re not driving around with old, unstable gas.)
In general, the savings pay off for the owner in about seven years, but Adkins says buyers will want to sit down and do their own math.
“That’s an important conversation to have, because it’s a case-by-case deal with the Volt,” he said.
Cable-Dahmer has since sold a second Volt. Overall, GM sold almost 2,300 of them in March, almost triple the number from March 2011, though sales fell back last month. Anderson and the other first 200,000 people to buy all-electric cars also get a federal tax credit of $7,500.
The next big challenge is building a network of charging stations available to the drivers out and about during the day.
“Here is the Midwest, there’s not enough support,” Anderson says.
An effort to get stations built is under way in the metro area, and Mahlberg, Adkins and Independence EDC President Tom Lesnak, who test drove a Volt for a few days, are working to find ways to get stations in Independence. That could be at the hospital, a movie theater or at a mall, maybe even a library. Or you could plug in at work and at the end of the workday have a fully charged car. The obstacles are less about running a few power lines than about how to meter the power and pay for it.
“I’m willing to swipe a card or pay a meter. ... Anyplace I spend an hour,” Anderson said. Even an hour of charging is another three miles of gas-free driving.
Mahlberg – who also test drove the Volt and liked it – says electric cars fit well with city’s power-generating capacity: The highest overall demand is during the day, and most charging is overnight. For now, the city is still trying to figure out what its role in all of this is.
“The utility is very excited about the electric vehicle and the rollout of it,” he said.
Mahlberg and Anderson both underscored that electric cars are in their infancy. The next big step, they said, is the car that goes 300 miles on a charge – and no gas.
