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The Volt announcement is interesting to me, because honestly, the battery life specs are perfect for me. My average daily commute? < 7 miles. So the Volt's battery range is over 5x what I normally drive. (If I had showers at work, I'd not drive except when weather forced. But in FL, if you're riding a bike to work over hilly terrain, you need a shower.)

So really, under normal conditions, I'd rarely, if ever, exceed the battery range for the car. (Seriously, I have a 1996 Camry 4Cyl. I fill up about once a month.) It's really a perfect fit for most of my daily driving needs. Why won't I get one?

The price.

Again, I fill up about once a month. A little more than that, so I sometimes fill up twice a month. If we go with say, $35 a tank, and say, 18 fillups a year, in just gasoline, I spend about $630 a year in gas. This is not a lot of money. Meanwhile, even if we allow the $7500 enticement discount I've seen, that's still a $32,500 car. If we go with a *0* percent loan for 60 months, that's still $541.67 per month to save less than $700 a year. The economics aren't there.

That, by the way is a problem for all these kinds of cars. If you don't have a gas-sucking monstrosity to replace, and you don't have a long commute, then while you will tend to get the best mileage from the Volts and Priuses of the world, they're far harder to justify. Again, a Prius' lowest starting MSRP is $22K. That's still $366.67 a month for 0% and 60 months. To replace less than $700 per year. If I was still in KC, and filling up once/twice a week? That's $3640 a year, or $303.33 a month. The economics get better, but ironically, that's the kind of driving that that is getting me the best possibly mileage out of my car, and the worst mileage out of the Prius.

It's a shame, because I like the idea of the Volt, it's just until that cost drops like a rock, there's no reason to get one.

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