Mildly Hurtful Sarcasm: September 2011

The best summer

I was flipping through some old photos tonight. It was from 1991, that was the best summer of my life. I hung out with my few best friends a lot. It feels strange that it has been 20 years and it's sad that I won't be doing that anymore.

Labels: grief

Test driving the Volt

GM today came to the campus to promote their 4 lines of vehicles. I jumped onto the chance to take the Chevy Volt, the all electric with a backup gas engine, 40 grand, green transport, for a spin

Getting into one was surprisingly easy. Showed my driver's license, signed a waiver, waited at the tent for 1 minute, that's it! I was in one. It was quick because they had like 5, 6 of each (they also had the Camero, and many others) for us to test drive. They even had the guy who designed the battery there to answer questions.

Starting it was new, brake pedal then press the power button. It's one of those RF keyless thing. I drove off the parking lot gingerly - it's a $40000 car and the windows are so small I could barely see outside - then gunned it to make the red for a left turn. It accelerated effortlessly compared to my 148hp CR-V.

The inside felt spacious and the leather seats and carbon fiber dash were eye pleasing. The all electric panel was graphical and requires a little getting used to. The center LCD screen displaying power info was darn right confusing.

Consider it being a electric, it was actually noisier than I thought it would be, but the real surprise went to the brake system - it didn't kick in until the pedal was fully depressed - scared me. It was obviously a car built for efficiency, accelerating required me to really to step on it and releasing the gas hardly caused it to slow down; it just kept coasting.

The advertised 95mpg is really attractive but I am just so put off by the 40 grand sticker price, though I am sure there are some offsets in fuel economy incentives. Either way it was an interesting drive.