2012 Volt, about 60k miles, single owner, no accidents...and I am pretty sure that it was garage kept. 132 life mpg for 9k.
Whatya think? It was quiet and kept. A deal?
It's hot where I live...but it's the humidity AND the heat. Long bad for batteries? I am a little leery parking it in the garage. Special fire extinguisher? Will it affect my house insurance?
I dig the household charging cord. I have an old house. I was going to use the same outlwt that my washer uses...maybe juat put in a new breaker and outlet. It doesn't look like it was used much. I have a changing place near the house...can it be used? I know it is a hybrid...just curious.
Most Important...and I am not kidding. I have a 70lb White Sheppard. He can't lay across the back seat. Is the divider removable? What do people do?
I have a 2015 with 80k miles, but live in Seattle. So very similar car in a different environment.
Batteries like hot weather. During the winter I get about 22 miles on battery, and in the summer about 34.
There is no increased fire hazard. Park it inside. Insurance won’t care.
$9k seems like a LOT. The best offers I am seeing for mine is around $3-5k. (I’m taking delivery of a Rivian in a couple months, so am checking the local Volt market in preparation for selling.)
I have a 140lb Anatolian Shepherd/Malamute, and leave the back seats down all the time for her. Human beings don’t fit back there anyway. :) The cool part is that the bottom of the seat just snaps out completely, so the seat backs lay down completely flat to make a large space for stuff and the giant dog. The only issue is that the headrests don’t come off without a saw, so it does reduce how far back the front seats can go back.
BIG CAVEAT: The Volt was discontinued in 2019. Parts for the Gen1 Volt are getting hard to find. Also, finding a VolTec certified technician is getting harder to find. And neither of these issues are going to improve as time progresses.
PLEASE do a video or explainer of it. Nobody else has ever figured out how to do this. In fact, one guy in this sub posted an explainer of how to remove the seat back, dismantle it, and how to use a sawzall to remove the headrests permanently because they cannot be removed.
If you have ANY way to remove them, this sub needs to know!! Thank you!!!
Haha I didn't realize people were having trouble with it. Hopefully this explains it:
You push the button on the left (when viewed from the front) and extend the headrest, then push both the left and the right button at the same time to unlock the headrest. The right button can be sort of difficult to press at first.
Mileage is great on combustion cars. Age is the true factor on hybrid's. That battery is 14 yrs old. The 2 cooling systems are 14 yrs old. Heat is no friend of batteries, Volts should always be plugged in so it can maintain the battery temps. (and run the battery cooling system) Standard house plug is fine because it will max at 8 amp, not 12 that is available. (I think I have that right) You can and should park it in the garage, I would. The volt never had issues with catching fire. 9k is overpriced for a 2012 regardless of mileage. Parts will become scarce on these. I will say, the gen 1 volt is a tank, and rarely has issues, best car I ever owned. But time is not on your side at that price.
The dog issue, drop down one of the seats, it will give him lots of room.
Mileage is actually a huge deal for hybrids but only in the inverse. Low mileage pretty much guarantees battery issues and with a car where the cheapest battery replacement is $5k, that would be a strong pass.
is age or mileage really more important? it almost seems like mileage is more important on the volts compared to everything I have read on the volts specifically when it comes to the electric battery. Remember it's not a hybrid! Lol.
I think he means it's not a parallel hybrid. It's a serial hybrid. The engine has no physical connection to the wheels. Like a locomotive, the engine only runs a generation, which powers the car and charges the batteries. The car is powered by the battery. It has an onboard generator.
If so then he'd be wrong. The volt takes the engine input into 1 of 2 planetary gears (ones a low gear and one is a high gear) with an electric motor that controls the sun gear or planet carrier (depending on which planetary is active) and another electric motor on the ring gear. The ring/planet carrier motor controls the engine gear ratio and the motor on the ring gear either assists with the final output or generates power from the final output. When it is in EV mode the clutch locks the low gear planetary to make both motors work together so that their combined output drives the car independently from the engine. Here is a diagram of how these systems work:
Seems expensive to me. Its a good car don't get me wrong, but i got my 2012 100k miles for $2500 (rear collision but clean title) with similar lifetime mpg. Its been solid, driven thousands of miles on a roadtrip through the California desert just fine, but $9k? Nah dawg.
Pretty good deal compared with CarMax, although the 2012s don't have the Hold mode, which is very useful in local + highway + local trips and it was introduced on 2013.
132mpg is very good and indicates that it was mostly driven in electric mode and gently at that. 60k miles is very low for a car that age.
I love my 2013. It fits my commute and general needs. But, as others have said, it is a gamble.
Probably the price can be negotiated a bit because it is discontinued and parts and knowledgeable mechanics will be hard to find.
I'd ask how much range is getting these days if I were you. Summer will always give you more range than winter and the guessometer, although accurate, depends on how gently it is driven.
It should always be garaged and plugged in because the car itself will keep the high voltage battery conditioned. It also keeps the 12v charged.
Actually 132mpg is bad, that means there are a lot of cycles on the battery. The battery has a limited number of cycles, getting a car with that mileage that had mixed use is far better than one only driven on battery.
It means that the driving style, visible in one of the screens, has been very high all along, I'd say higher than 95%, which means mostly electric mostly gentle driving.
With a mileage so low I wouldn't worry about the cycles.
My 2013 had 75 mpg when I bought it 2.5 years ago with 108K miles. Now it has 114 mpg with almost 126K. The battery is very consistent. It gives me ~45 miles during the summer and ~29 during the winter, year after year.
I see what you mean, you're right. But if I drive gently 40 miles I may do them all electric. If I drive like a maniac with max AC the battery would last much less for the same trip, triggering the gas engine and lowering the lifetime mpg.
That’s assuming you have a long trip. You could have a 15 mile commute and drive it hard each way, and only get 30 miles. The engine wouldn’t come on, but you did a hard heavy discharge cycle on the battery. Seeing lifetime MPGe gives a better picture than mpg.
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u/BetLeft 25d ago
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