"The average person drives between 10,000 and 15,000 miles and spends between $1,000 and $1,500 on gasoline per year. In comparison, the cost of electricity to power Model 3 over the same distance is up to three times lower. Over the six year average length of car ownership, that's between $4,300 and $6,400 in gasoline savings.
We've assumed a fuel economy of 28 miles per gallon for a comparable gasoline powered sedan, for example, the 2017 BMW 3 series. We've also assumed the national average of $0.13 per kilowatt-hour for electricity and $2.85 per gallon for premium gasoline over the next six years."
I dunno, I find it dishonest. Any electric vehicle shopper knows that gasoline is a major cost-driver and reason to buy electric instead.
The Chevy Volt is currently $33,520. Then gets a $7500 Federal Credit (and unlike Tesla, Chevy hasn't run out yet. If your Tesla 3 is delivered in January 2019, you only get $3750 in credits). AND it mostly won't use gasoline (50-mile all-electric range == good enough to not use gasoline in over 99% of my expected drives)
It almost wants me to walk into a Tesla showroom and show them their press release and say "I'll take the $33,200 model. Here is my check."
The back pedaling and hand waving would be entertaining.
The Volt, BMW i3, and basically any other car with a range extender periodically run the engine in "maintenance mode", because it's good to circulate fluids, burn off some gas, and take some load off the battery for a while.
If you need to store a car for more than a month, you should top off and add a bottle of fuel stabilizer before driving home.
It appears that the Volt will detect the gasoline going bad (or at least, puts it on a timer and then assumes), and forcibly burn it off roughly once a year. Before doing so, it encourages you to use a bit of gas.
To be honest: this is the first link from a search engine. So its not an issue I've looked into very strongly. Nonetheless, it seems like GM has already figured out a procedure for "stale gas" issues.
https://forum.quartertothree.com/t/volt-gas-goes-stale/69063
So it seems to be a timer of some sorts, roughly on the order of ~once a year or so.
EDIT: I found a video on youtube showing the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEe4Rkg4GfA
The author of the video notes that you can drive the Volt just fine. He just had a camera handy and stay'd in his garage in this case however.
* Keep the tank full of gas: air space is prone to condensation
* Avoid ethanol-added gasoline, it's more hypro-philic
* Add a fuel stabilizer (like 1 fl oz per 5 gallon)
* live in California, it's really dry.
These are adapted from techniques for winter storage of cars.
Engine Maintenance mode: haven't used the gas engine in some period (month?) so it uses the engine for a small period of time (less than my 12 mile commute) so get the engine oil moving.
Fuel maintenance mode: doesn't let average age of gas be over a year. i.e. I filled my tank August 30, 2017 from basically empty. On Aug 29, 2018 it went into fuel maintenance mode and even though I had a full battery, it would only use gas. I was probably around 1 gallon left, I filled it up, so expect around june 2019, it will go into fuel maintenance mode again unless I finish off the tank and fill it up again.
Is electricity in Canada generally cheaper than in the states?
And the Tesla wall unit also costs $500. Is that included in the price of the car?
