Since Chris got to show off his favorite weekend toy (Sunday Drives in the Celica) we thought it only fair to also showcase our much more practical, daily driver car as well. While the Celica is a great project car, and fun for showing off, its manual transmission and lack of cruise control don’t exactly make it ideal for road trips. So for most of our getaways, we rely on the Chevy Volt instead. We’ve had it for just about a year, and we are totally sold on the eco electric/hybrid. We should also mention this is our primary daily driver, but that’s really boring. I mean, yes, we can get to work and back using just batttery, and that is really amazing, but, we prefer to not talk about the monotony that is our current 9-5 life. Once we get into vacation mode, whether it’s for the weekend or a longer trip, we’re most likely packing into the volt and headed off to some fun adventure.

Our road trip included a drive down a VERY curvy road.. Angie was not happy. Chris was not happy he was driving the electric Volt and not his sports car.

Our first real test for the Volt was last year, when we actually planned our trip partly around taking the Volt for a maiden (to us) voyage… Yup, we’re cheap, so we bought used, but the car was well cared for, so it really feels like a new-new car. We decided, since we had taken off for our vacation to coincide with the eclipse, that we should plan a good old fashioned road trip, staying for a night or two then moving on to the next destination. Around 800 miles and we only had to fill up twice (The gas tank is only 7 gallons, so that makes our lack of fill-ups more impressive) We calculated the mileage at the end of the trip and I think it worked out to about 60mpg? Not bad at all!

We drove. All. Over. It was awesome!

We’re also HUGE fans of using the Volt for our Disney trips. Not only does it make excellent gas mileage, but when we go to park we are able to take advantage of the absolute best perk, pretty much ever, of EV (electric vehicle) parking. It does cost to charge, but the rates are really reasonable (it costs us about $3-4 for a full charge). And yes, that’s in addition to Disney parking rates, but as annual passholders we do not have to pay for theme park parking, so for a few bucks we get amazing parking! So far we’ve only taken advantage of the parking at Animal Kingdom and EPCOT, but we understand that the EV parking has been extended to Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios also, so we can’t wait to use that on our next trip!

Amazing perk of electric cars? Seriously prime Disney parking!

While we originally bought the Volt to be our daily driver car to cheaply travel back and forth to work, we absolutely love using it for trips. Even for day trips it’s a great advantage over a regular gas engine car, especially if we can find a charging point. While we rarely find those in Alabama, we’ve noticed more and more popping up, and for a couple who are rarely “early adaptors” it’s fun and exciting when we get to see the tech changing around us.