I thought that I was getting unplugged by pure-EV drivers because they felt that I didn't need the electricity as much as they did. Turns out though, when I confronted one who did it, he thought I was done charging (Gen 1 Volts light would blink green when charging was complete, where the Gen 2 has a solid green light when complete (which is the opposite of the Gen 1)).

Also, since the Gen 2 looks like a "normal" car, it blends in a bit better (very close resemblance to the 2016 Cruze for example).

 

Yes! This is such a complaint of mine. Why in the world would Chevy make green mean charging at all?? Hello green should mean done!

Maybe it's Volt owners vandalizing Prius's because they only get 11 EV range.

Lol, I wanted to charge yesterday, but a stupid Fusion was sitting there forever sucking up juice. I do find them really annoying. 11 miles...wow. I'd never do anything to the car obviously. In my I'm blowing it up though

I should probably be more worried about the LA Dodgers sticker on my car making me a target. Particularly since I go to a lot of Angels games.

I was wondering about if the price of gas shoots up to 4 or 5 dollars per gallon, would that make our cars more at risk for theft? How much of a deterrent is OnStar?

 

When I was driving my Prius I had people tailing me, cutting me off and I'm fairly certain some of it at least was because I was in a Prius. 100% sure, no, but it sure seemed that way.

Were you hypermiling during these events?

 

Nope. Highway speeds. Usual was sticking to the speed limit and YES, in the RIGHT hand lane...



I never hyper-mile(ed) if there is someone behind me. Ever. On the highway I almost always do the speed limit.

 

Not me. I have read a few stories of charging incidents, but they may be extremely rare as far as I know. I don't think the Volt is as much of a symbol or as recognizable as a Prius when on the road.

 

Nope. I catch more flak driving a Vette on the street than the Volt. Everybody wants to play boy-racer around you.

 

Everybody wants to play boy-racer around you.

I can see it.

 

IME it works the other way round. As in, "Get your roaring, smoking, slow heap out of the way and let the future through!"

 

Maybe it's Volt owners vandalizing Prius's because they only get 11 EV range.

 

i LOL'd on this comment..

 

There is never a good reason to vandalize a parked car. That being said:

If you want to minimize getting hassled:

Leave silly stickers off your car, especially the ones intended to piss people off. We don't care about your politics or that you think eating meat is murder.

If you decide to drive in the fast lane, keep up with traffic, or change lanes. We don't care that 85mph is illegal. We care that you are deliberately trying to piss other drivers off.

Both of those faux pas give Prius owners a bad rap.

 

There is never a good reason to vandalize a parked car.

well....this guy had a pretty good reason...but I don't condone his reaction...just understand it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJWFkTpN-Kk

 

Not me but I live in Canada so we never really had the Obama Car thing...

 

What is an Obama Car thing?

 

Nope. I think most people don't even notice the car. Only thing I've noticed is idiots not stopping when they can clearly see I'm already backing out of a space in a parking lot. I don't think it's because of the car I'm driving, just that there are lots of impatient jackasses out there

 

I live in NY. Nobody really cares They don't even know what it is.

 

Yeah, I think this is true. The car looks like any other and most people (because of terrible Chevy marketing) don't know what the car does. People I talk to about my car either: 1) think it's only electric or 2) don't know it's electric at all.

 

I have a built in alarm on my 2015 volt
If the plugin is removed my car alarm will go off.
On the 2016 model there is a built in hasp where you can put a small padlock in place and lock it to the charge port

 

Gen 2 has the same alarm option if unplugged.

 

I never experienced this in our Volt, nor our Prius, nor any other EVs we have owned.
The closest I have ever come was when a rusty red pickup passed me and the passenger stuck his hand out the window and gave me a thumbs down.
If not for traffic, I would have enjoyed catching up to them and offering to buy them lunch.

 

I'm one of only three (that I know of) Volts in my area and yet somehow some young punk at Lowes decided to rant about my "taxpayer funded" car. I don't think he expected a beefy, 6ft 1, bear of a guy to get out of the car and tell him to go away.

Sheesh, I've only had the car for 3 weeks!

 

That's just ignant !!

 

Like the others said, I don't think people view the Volt in the same light as a Prius. I don't think the diesel truck dudes are "rolling coal" all over a Volt.

 

I saw my first coal roller at the NDEW event last September. It was a weak attempt - he didn't have the setup for it. I seemed to be the only one who knew what "coal rolling" is.

 

I think anyone who was an early adopter of the Volt dealt with some level of backlash, which was much worse than I've seen any Prius driver have to deal with. The worst things that a Prius driver has to put up with are being lumped in with all the "green wannabes." As a pre-2013 Volt owner, I've been called everything from a traitor to a terrorist, a government mooch, and all points in between.

In terms of road behavior, I've completely given up attempting to understand what is going through other drivers' heads. Just today, I had a person speed down the center divider at ~ 60 mph to get around me only to come to a screeching halt because I trailing the car in front of me by a few car lengths just below the speed limit. While I can't assume what was going through the person's head, I am secure in the fact that he/she has a two-digit IQ.

 

Nope


The Volt isn't a Prius lol

 

Indeed. Canada is not as politically polarized as the US. But even here we have our share of Prius haters, saw a pickup with 'prius repellant' written around the exhausts.

 

On the Obama car thing, I recall this from his debate with Mitt Romney 'the government picks only loosers like Tesla to give loans to'. The same Mitt who advocated for letting Detroit go bust.

Oh well, poor Obama, he actually inherited the Volt together with the rest of the GM back then in 08.

 

On the Obama car thing, I recall this from his debate with Mitt Romney 'the government picks only loosers like Tesla to give loans to'. The same Mitt who advocated for letting Detroit go bust.

In fairness to Mr Romney, he did mention Solara and Fisker in the same sentence. Though I will admit that I cringed when he mentioned Tesla. Of the three, Tesla was the only one with a decent chance of survival.

 

With the unplugging, many EVs/PHEVs have locking charging cords while the Volt doesn't...Sometimes people have made up their entitled mind that they're going to unplug someone and the Volt may be their only option and/or the path of least resistance...

 

IIRC, the POTUS limo is not really a car.

They started with a GM Kodiak chassis and Duramax Diesel engine with Allison transmission. A Cadillac chassis could never hold the weight of all the armor, and a gas engine is too risky and lacks the grunt for such a heavy vehicle at low speeds.

So they put the Cadillac based armored body on a medium duty diesel truck chassis. You might notice how large the tires are. Those aren't 5 lug wheels, or car tires. They couldn't hold the weight.

 

Having not had any commercial television for 10 years or so, we somehow missed most of the political ranting over the Volt. First time I realized it was an issue for some people was from a co-worker. He had lots of "facts" to tell me that were all wrong.

I've since seen some of the rhetoric linked from this forum and looking back its easy to see how wrong some pundits were/are.

Worst thing I've had happen is co-workers asking me "how much could someone get for that charger on ebay/pawn shop?"

I told them that the car's lane keeping camera footage could be pulled to identify the culprit.

 

I think the Gen 2 volt is probably mostly immune to all of this. First of all, the Gen 1 didn't make a habit of exploding in a ball of flames and Chevrolet are making money and paying off their loans, so the predicted disasters never came and with hindsight most people would agree that bailing them out was probably the right thing to do. Secondly the gen 2 looks so different and so 'normal' that it's almost a stealth EV like the eGolf.

Rolling coal needs to be illegal coast to coast because it's dangerous to blind other drivers with a cloud of smoke and incredibly bad for the environment. And yeah, we all hate when someone doesn't park within the lines... but if you drive a massive truck like the asshole in the first video then I'm never going to feel sorry that you can't fit into a space. A volt would easily have fit into that space. If you're taking your truck into the city... yeah, sorry why the hell are you taking your truck into the city?

And to be totally honest, I actually kind of love people who don't park within the lines these days, as they create a lot of smart only spaces. I've been cheered by strangers for parking my tiny smart ed next to some moron who thought they were going to have two spaces all to themselves.

 

I think the Gen 2 volt is probably mostly immune to all of this.

Yeah, I kind of think it will be as well precisely because it looks like a "normal" car. It stands out as being a nice looking car, but not distinctive like the Prius.

I'd just been curious, more about people messing with your charging unit or charger port. They seem like a target for some drunken butthole.

Best,
Rick

 

I can understand people getting really angry at all the EV drivers that drive 15 below the posted limit and do 0-40mph in 5 minutes at stoplights because they want to save the battery.

Heck I drive a Volt and really hate the EV extreme driving style. Fine when you're alone but really inappropriate when others are around (behind)

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

You can say this without exaggerating which I think only confuses hypermilers. People need to drive WITH the flow of traffic, not the speed limit if they don't want to cause congestion and annoyance. In major cities and on major freeways that is usually +5-9mph over the speed limit. In many major cities the speed limits on the freeways inside the cities is posted at 55mph but traffic ignores it and is running 70mph. If you need to pull out of the right lane to pass the guy that is going .5 mph slower than you, please accelerate up to the speed of the people in the left lane, and then get back over to the right. Do not pull out in front of someone going 20 mph slower than them and think that is OK. Do not pass at .5 mph faster than the guy in the right lane for the next 10 minutes blocking traffic the entire time. If you see a long line of cars behind you and a big empty space in front of you, you ARE causing congestion. Be aware.

 

People drive like crap all the time. It sounds like pure assumption your being cutoff and tailgating was based on the type of car you drove/drive.

Sounds like you have some personal guilt issues having driven a Prius

 

Um... no. Pretty sure it was on purpose based on my car.

And ZERO guilt on driving two Prius's over 12 years.

 

I think I pissed somebody off once since I was in L and going about 30 in a 25 down a slight hill for a while. I was using the pedal-off regen to keep my speed correct (I used to speed a lot worse but the Volt has made me a lot more zen). So I think it was my brake lights coming on often that ticked this guy off. He obviously wanted me to go faster and was close to my bumper, but I think the brakes did it.

Prius drivers, I'm sorry, deserve it for the most part. They are either going 63 in the left lane, or going waaaay too fast in the right lanes zipping around everyone. Hardly ever do I see them driving with the herd.

 

Prius drivers, I'm sorry, deserve it for the most part. They are either going 63 in the left lane, or going waaaay too fast in the right lanes zipping around everyone. Hardly ever do I see them driving with the herd.

Sorry, that is just bull****. I've had Prius drivers pass me and I've passed Prius drivers (when I was driving one, too). I've seen all sorts of cars, trucks, SUVs, lagging in the left lane, lagging in the right lane....It's just easy to generalize about Prius drivers.

It's like noticing any other car above others. At one point I was considering buying a used Dodge Caliber for my father. Before looking at a friend's I'd never noticed that model before. Now when I'm on the road I keep seeing them.

It's easy to single out idiot Prius drivers. Pick a car, any car and see how many morons you notice driving that car.

BMW drivers anyone....?

 

I run across aggressive assholes all the time because of my EV driving style, but I only ever go below the speed limit if there's no one behind me, and I only ever use the passing lane to pass when there are two or more lanes. Doesn't stop the occasional person from getting really upset when I'm doing 30 in a 30 zone and illegally overtaking me only to take the next dead end side road, or turn into their drive three houses down the road (in 10 months I have had this exact variation happen to me about 4 times). I've had zero issues when parked, charging or not charging in either the Volt or my smart. Generally if anything you attract positive reactions. People seem genuinely interested and are eager to hear more about both.

But people hate it when I'm doing 30 in a 30 zone. I don't think speeding is wrong or anything, but I make no apologies for driving by the manual.