Chevy Volt Gets Highest Satisfaction Rating in Consumer Reports

December 8th, 2011 by Zachary Shahan

The Chevy Volt has been having a bit of a rough time lately, but the news you probably haven’t heard is that the Chevy Volt got the highest consumer satisfaction rating in Consumer Reports’ annual ownership survey. 93% of Volt owners said they would buy the vehicle again.

The Porsche 911 and Dodge Challenger tied for second with a score or 91%.

Some notes of caution, however:

due to the Volt not being out for long, Consumer Reports was only able to survey a small number of Volt owners;
and it “cautioned that early adopters of new technology tend to be more enthusiastic (although the same qualification is true for sports car aficionados), and that other new eco cars, such as the Smart ForTwo, debuted on the market with rave reviews from owners, only to see customer satisfaction scores fall once the honeymoon period was over,” Liane Yvkoff of CNET notes.

While there is the fire issue, GM’s response has been pretty savvy — offering vehicles on loan to current owner — but only 33 owners have even opted for that, and there are no reports so far of any such issues with bought vehicles.

h/t CNET | Chevy Volt image via suzi54241

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Tags: chevrolet, chevy, Chevy Volt, quickies, Volt

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

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Nehemiah Spencer

Thanks for your article. I’d like to clarify a major error in your article. There have been around 3 dozen total people who have contacted GM regarding a vehicle loaner while the Volt is investigated. Not 33%. Major difference.
- http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  Thanks — correcting that right now!
mds

@brenro

One more thing: The concept of a lithium shortage or dependency on lithium from one part of the world, e.g. Chile, has been argued down numerous times. There is plenty of lithium available.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/08/lithium-20110803.html – August 2011
“University of Michigan and Ford researchers see plentiful lithium resources for electric vehicles” – August 2011

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/solarworld_goes_from_modules_to_mining “SolarWorld goes from modules to mining” – March 2011
“The Saxony-located lithium deposits were claimed to be among the ten largest lithium deposits in the world.”

http://evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=23518 “Afghanistan Could Be ‘Saudi Arabia’ of Lithium” – June 2010

http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Lithium+mine+will+help+power+revolution/2260866/story.html – November 2009
“Quebec lithium mine will help power electric-car revolution” “Quebec will have a mine north of Val d’Or on stream in 2011 and Australia’s Talison Lithium, the world’s biggest single producer, is coming with an initial public share offering in Canada and at home.”

http://evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=21825 “Is There Enough Lithium for Electric Car Boom? Most Experts Say Yes” – September 2009
“SYNOPSIS: Between new lithium resources and recycling, proponents see enough lithium for electric car batteries into the foreseeable future.”

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Rodinia-Minerals-Inc-TSX-VENTURE-RM-1037656.html – August 2009
“Rodinia Minerals Inc.: Clayton Valley Lithium Project Drilling Update”

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/01/outlook-lithium.html “Outlook: Lithium Industry Will Be Pushed into Oversupply through 2013” – January 2009

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/geothermal-power-lithium-mining-two-in-one-in-california – September 2009
“Geothermal Power, Lithium Mining Two-in-One in California”
“Geothermal power plants can extract lithium from underground brine and sell it to battery makers. One geothermal project is turning to startup Simbol Mining to try it out.” “Generate geothermal power, and extract enough lithium from the briny water those plants emit to match a quarter of the world’s supply of the metal.”
http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9881869-54.html Simbol Mining – “ Mining lithium from geothermal ‘lemonade’ ” – February 2008
“The start-up eventually aims to mine more than 100,000 tons of lithium carbonate each year from geothermal sources. That’s more than the current annual market for the compound; the company expects demands for it to quintuple by 2013.“

http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1434 “Lithium in Abundance” – April 2008
“Evans pointed out that a single geothermal well in southern California can produce enough lithium to meet all of the world’s current demand for lithium.” “There are also lithium-bearing clays called Hectorite and oilfield brines that contain commercially-viable concentrations of lithium, though they would be more expensive to produce” “He estimates it at 28.4 million tonnes of lithium, which is equivalent to 150 million tonnes of lithium carbonate. Current world demand is 16,000 tonnes.”
“His conclusion is that “concerns regarding lithium availability for hybrid or electric vehicle batteries or other foreseeable applications are unfounded.”
http://www.worldlithium.com/Home_files/An%20Abundance%20of%20Lithium.pdf “AN ABUNDANCE OF LITHIUM” by R. Keith Evans – March 2008

LOTS OF LITHIUM IS AVAILABLE DUDE!
- Anonymous
  
  I am so stealing this….
mds

@brenro

1. 1970s technology Li-Cobalt batteries with flammible electrolytes can be dangerous. I don’t think these are used in a single EV/PHEV vehicle. Newer Li-TiO2, Li-Mn2O4, or Li-FePO4 chemistries with non-flammable electrolytes are considerably safer than the Li-Cobalt batteries still used some in electronics. The newer Lithium chemistries are far safer than using that flammable volatile fuel we know as gasoline. Gasoline fires destroy vehicles and take lives every year. Some models of gasoline cars have been famous for frying the occupants in accidents. Remember the Pinto? Sure, anything with a high energy density is also going to have some risk and needs regulation oversight. This will be true for batteries as much as gasoline. …BUT you have to be clueless to think the newer lithium battery chemistries are more dangerous than gasoline.

2. Mr Wallace is far more correct about the CO2 production from ICEV compared to coal powered EVs. The later are cleaner now and will continue to become more so. An increasing amount of our oil in the USA comes from the tars sands of Alberta Canada. This is now the major source of our oil imports. This means ICEVs burning gasoline are in-fact far more polluting than they were a few years ago (from well to wheels perspective). Since sweet oil production has peaked, we can expect our oil to come increasingly from more polluting sources.

3. The grid is starting to get cleaner. The only reason we’re “falling behind China” in building new coal plants is because they’re building lots and we’re building almost none. In fact, I think we’re decommisioning them faster. Most agree natural gas is going to take a significant share of power generation from coal over the next few decades. NG is cleaner than coal. Combine this with the continuing exponential growth of Wind and Solar. EVs/PHEVs will be cleaner than ICEVs in short order, if they are not already.

4. I live in Washington state. We use hydro, NG, and wind for electricity. Almost no coal. We already have very clean power for EVs and PHEVs.

5. A surprising number of EV owners in S. Cal. charge their cars using home solar power. (Several of the large auto manufactures with EVs also offer solar charging stations.) These people of driving nearly CO2 free. This trend will only increase becuase the cost of coal is increasing and the cost of solar is dropping.

Try to look past the oily empire dogma. The energy business is changing. EVs and PHEVs are important:
A. To get us off oil, so we can balance our international trade better, balance our national budget better, and bring our troops home from the wars in the Middle East.
B. To reduce CO2 output by using cleaner sources of electricity to power our cars. By the time there is a significant number of EVs/PHEVs on the road, our grid electricity will include much more NG, wind, and solar …and much less coal …it will be far cleaner.
- Anonymous
  
  We have a little bump of new coal plants coming on line. They were started many years ago. Like nuclear, it takes a long time to build a new coal plant. As far as I know we have permitted only one new coal plant in the last two plus years. And we’ve scheduled a large number of coal plants for early closure.
  
  We average about 800 gasoline car fires per day in the US. Anytime you store a lot of energy in a small place you’ve got potential problems, be it gas, electricity, flywheels, springs, or steam. Batteries should work out to be a lot safer than gasoline.
Anonymous

We’re talking about people who spent over forty thousand dollars on a plug in hybrid that trades overseas oil use with overseas lithium mining and is charged with coal burning power plants. Is any rational person supposed to be swayed by this news?
- Anonymous
  
  The average US new car is roughly $29,000.
  
  The Volt is about $33,000 after the federal subsidy.
  
  As manufacturing volumes rise the cost will drop eliminating the need for the temporary subsidies which we are using to build US manufacturing can to create American jobs.
  
  The US grid is now about 44% coal and falling.
  
  The non EV/PHEV is burning a lot of imported oil. We spend about $1 billion per day for imported oil and we spend close to another billion fighting our oil wars.
  
  We are now mining and refining lithium in the US. We should soon be extracting additional lithium from US geothermal waste water.
  
  Rational people are governed by facts. Some people attempt to sway others with dishonest statements.
  - Anonymous
    
    That subsidy is not instantaneous, it comes at the end of the year when you file your taxes and may or may not actually put any cash in your pocket depending on your tax burden. Lithium batteries are inherently dangerous and not ready for large applications like automobiles no matter how desperate you are to get us off our petroleum fix. The US reserves of lithium are estimated to be 38000 tons which is pretty laughable compared to the 7.5 million in Chile and the 800000 in Argentina which is where it really comes from. The Union of Concerned Scientists pegs coal as 54% of our electric generating source but beyond that we have some of the dirtiest power plants on the globe and we’re even lagging behind China in building cleaner ones. Battery technology and our own power grid have far to go before battery powered cars can be considered mainstream. You can skew facts any way you like but $20000 cars that get 35-40 mpg are going to make more sense to people for a long time to come.
    - Anonymous
      
      Well, you can increase the number of dependents you claim on your withholding and get your rebate each month. The subsidy starts with your next pay check.
      
      Yes, if you don’t pay much in taxes then you wouldn’t benefit from the rebate, but few people who pay little or no tax are likely to be buying new cars, so I think we can put your tax concerns to rest.
      
      Lithium batteries are not nearly as dangerous as a ruptured gas tank. I have personal experience with gas leaking after a crash and vehicles going up in flames. They pulled me out of mine just in time.
      
      The Volt that had its battery catch on fire was hit by a hydraulic ram to simulate a high speed sideways slide into a tree or pole, followed by turning the vehicle over. Then three weeks later the battery caught on fire. During 1999 to 2003 the US averaged over 325,000 gasoline vehicle fires per year.
      
      After crashes it is standard practice to drain gas tanks and disconnect batteries before the wrecked vehicle is stored. With EVs the batteries need to be drained as well. Plus GM is toughening their battery packs to keep the cooling systems from being ruptured as this one was.
      
      You confuse reserves of lithium with occurrence of lithium. We’ve got far
      more lithium than we need to manufacture EV batteries. If we somehow ran
      out and the rest of the world would not sell us any we could extract it
      from sea water and the price of EVs would rise only a few hundred dollars.
      
      You’re using old grid data. In 2010 we generated 1,847,290 thousand MWhs
      of our total 4,127,648 thousand MWhs of electricity with coal. That is
      44.8%.
      
      We’ve essentially quit building coal plants. We’ve got close to 200 of our
      least efficient, dirtiest scheduled for an early shut down.
      
      A $25,000 EV is about the same per month to own and operate as a 40MPG
      $20,000 ICEV. That’s assuming no down payment and five year financing at
      4%. After both cars are paid off at the end of five years the EV is
      roughly $100 less per month to operate. I don’t think people are going to
      turn their backs on “pay the same now and a lot less later” EVs.
    - Tim
      
      “Lithium batteries are inherently dangerous and not ready for large applications like automobiles no matter how desperate you are to get us off our petroleum fix”
      
      Gasoline is inherently dangerous as well but we still use it don’t we? Besides Li-ion is used every day in millions if not billions of devices and scaling up to larger applications is typically done with smaller Li-ion cells in series or parallel so there is nothing new or dangerous about it compared to what we already are doing. The biggest issue with larger Li-ion batteries is individual cell failure.
      
      You argue about coal power but you think its okay to put gas in your car? How many coal disasters have killed massive amounts of wildlife like oil has? At least with coal powering electric cars the pollution is isolated at a single source and can be controlled better than emissions from millions of different vehicles. You have any idea the amount of people driving on the road with failed egr valves, or have completely removed their catalytic converters and other emissions equipment?
      
      The Volt is an American car fueled by American energy, it doesn’t get any better than that.
      - Anonymous
        
        First of all, I will gladly raise a glass with you on the day the world economy is no longer based on petroleum but your arguments are seriously flawed. Li-ion batteries have already been all over the news for igniting, the most horrific being the UPS cargo plane going down in Abu Dhabi. You need to bone up on coal burning power plants. Carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, arsenic, lead. No car being driven on American roads spews anywhere near the poisons these power plants produce. We have some of the dirtiest on earth. We’ll probably never know the health hazards they’re responsible for. We’re putting the cart before the horse with electric cars because we live in a capitalist society which in turn controls our government. The utility companies are fighting modernization tooth and nail and you can be sure any expense they incur will show up on your bill
      - Anonymous
        
        As of April of this year there is no definitive report that states the cause of the UPS fire due to shipped batteries. If you know of a firm finding, please post.
        
        It is not true that ” Li-ion batteries have already been all over the news for igniting”. There were a few problems some time back, a search of the web for fires turned up two in the last year. One was a “barrel of batteries” at a Marine base. I’m willing to guess that was due to improper disposal. The other was a fire started by a dog chewing up a child’s toy telephone, the dog’s saliva playing a role in the resulting short.
        
        Lithium ion batteries fly everyday by the millions. They live in houses and commercial buildings by the billions. Lithium batteries outnumber automobiles many times over. If they are a great danger, where’s the news of hundreds of thousands of battery fires this last year?
        
        Balance that against the >300,000 gasoline-auto fires we have a year.
        
        Yes, coal is nasty stuff. That’s why we are shutting down our coal plants. Coal is now less than 45% of our grid supply and we have a large number of coal plants, the dirtiest, scheduled to close.
        
        We are putting no horse before the cart (unless you work for the people who sell oil). We are simultaneously greening our grid and putting EVs on the
        road. To argue that we should wait with EVs until coal is off the grid is
        to do the work of big oil.
      - Anonymous
        
        Whether the fire on that 747 started with batteries or not they are most certainly what brought that aircraft down. They burn at a very high temperature. Laptop batteries, cell phone batteries, do you not watch the news? Not a single one of the 53 coal plants in the US on Forbes Top 200 dirtiest power plants in the world have been taken off the grid. Please save the patriotic chest beating.
      - Anonymous
        
        Here are a few closures for you…
        
        “On Jul. 11, Southern Company announced plans to retire two coal- fired units at Plant Branch in Millidgeville, Georgia, as a result of the new CSAP rule. One is scheduled to close in October 2013 and another by December 2013.
        
        Two days later, Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings Corp said it may have to close some of its 12 coal-burning power plants in the state of Texas as a result of the new CSAP rule.
        
        On Jul. 15, Duke Energy Ohio announced it will retire all six coal- fired generation units at its W.C. Beckjord Station, southwest of Cincinnati, Ohio, by Jan. 1, 2015, as a result of the new rule and new proposals.
        
        On Jul. 24, Duke Energy announced it will retire three coal units at the Lee Steam Station in Williamston, South Carolina, in late 2014.”
        http://www.istockanalyst.com/business/news/5326181/u-s-new-clean-air-rules-force-some-coal-plants-to-close
        
        The 63 year old coal fire power plant in Muskegon is scheduled to close in 2015.
        
        Sept 26 (Reuters) – Regulations being formulated by state
        governments and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to cut
        air and water pollution and control the handling of coal waste
        are expected to force the retirement of 30,000 to 70,000 MW of
        coal and other fossil-fired generation, industry studies show.
        
        The following is a partial list of U.S. coal plants that
        energy companies expect to retire in the coming years. Some
        units may be converted to burn alternative fuels or be replaced
        with natural gas-fired generation.
        OWNER UNIT SIZE(MW) STATE DATE TO SHUT
        Exelon Cromby Units 1,2 345 PA 2011
        Exelon Eddystone Units 1,2 588 PA 2011
        AEP Phillip Sporn 450 WV 2011
        TVA Shawnee Unit 10 124 KY 2011
        Duke Cliffside 1-4 198 NC 2011
        Duke Buck 3 and 4 113 NC 2011
        Progress Weatherspoon 172 NC 2011
        AES Greenidge 156 NY c2011
        AES Westover 128 NY c2011
        TVA Widows Creek 1-2 282 AL Late 2011
        TVA John Sevier Unit 1,2 352 TN 2012
        Duke Edwardsport 160 IN 2012
        Duke Dan River 1-3 276 NC 2012
        GenOn Potomac River 482 VA Oct 2012
        Progress H.F. Lee 397 NC 2013
        Black Hills W.N. Clark 42 CO By 2013
        Progress Sutton 600 NC 2014
        Duke WS Lee 370 SC 2014
        Dominion Salem Harbor 738 MA 2014
        Duke Wabash River 2-6 668 IN 2014
        AEP Glen Lyn 335 VA Dec 31, 2014
        AEP Kammer 630 WV Dec 31, 2014
        AEP Kanawha River 400 WV Dec 31, 2014
        AEP Phillip Sporn 600 WV Dec 31, 2014
        AEP Picway Plant 100 OH Dec 31, 2014
        AEP Big Sandy 1,2 1,078 KY Dec 31, 2014
        AEP Clinch River 3 235 VA Dec 31, 2014
        AEP Conesville 3 165 OH Dec 31, 2014
        AEP Muskingum River 1-4 840 OH Dec 31, 2014
        AEP Tanners Creek 1-3 495 IN Dec 31, 2014
        AEP Welsh 2 528 TX Dec 31, 2014
        Dominion North Branch 74 VA Late 2015
        Duke Riverbend 4-7 454 NC 2015
        Duke Buck 5-6 256 NC 2015
        Dominion Yorktown 1-2 323 VA 2015
        TVA Widows Creek 3-6 564 AL Late 2015
        TVA Johnsonville 1-6 794 TN Late 2015
        Dominion Chesapeake 1-4 595 VA 2015-2016
        PPL’s LG&E Cane Run 563 KY 2016
        PPL’s LG&E Tyrone 71 KY —
        PPL’s LG&E Green River 163 KY 2016
        TVA Johnsonville 7-10 692 TN Late 2017
        Dominion State Line 515 IN By mid-2014
        Progress Cape Fear 316 NC 2017
        Xcel Cherokee 1-4 1,069 CO By 2017
        Xcel Arapahoe 3,4 156 CO By 2017
        Xcel Valmont 186 CO By 2017
        CPS Energy Deely 871 TX 2018
        PGE Boardman 585 OR 2020
        Centralia TransAlta 688 WA 2020
        Centralia TransAtla 688 WA 2025
        APS Four Corners 1-3 560 NM —
        
        http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/26/utilities-coal-shutdowns-idUSS1E78P0PE20110926
        
        Now give us some data on lithium battery fires in the last year.
        
        The UPS plane, we don’t know how the fire started. There are
        thousands of things which, if ignited, would have brought the plane
        down.
        
        And take your ” patriotic chest beating” crap and shove it.