Anyhow, we went and looked at the Volt in question yesterday...too busy last night to write up the full story.
I was disappointed that dealer didn't do as I requested on the phone when I setup the viewing appointment - that was to have it fully charged and plugged in. Instead, it was left dead and not plugged in. Grrrr. The receptionist that took the call apparently didn't pass that request through to the salesperson...although I was left wondering, if I was trying to sell an EV I would expect that people coming to see it would actually expect it to be charged. I'm surprised a big dealership would just leave it dead.
We negotiated in a 2-3 hour test drive an exchange based on the fact that I was kinda interested in driving it on gas a little anyways, and then we took the opportunity to go to the Oshawa Center and pull up to the
Flo charging station and plug it in while we went into the mall for a bit. We spent 45 minutes in the mall and the system did it thing - it's really quite a neat system - I checked in via my iPhone, the charging station unlocked the cord, we plugged it in, and I got a confirmation the charge had started. The iPhone app then constantly updated to let me know what was happening back at the car as we hung out at the mall.
As with most charging stations, the charge was free. Hey, free "gas", I'm cool with that. Another reason we like the EV thing.
Since we only had 45 minutes we only got about 10K out of the charge, but it was enough to let my wife drive the car on pure EV at that point and experience it.
When we got back to the dealership this was in my email.
Neat.
Anyhow, the car was great. It's very clean, had never been smoked in, was pretty much loaded short of the backup camera system, and even that wasn't a big deal as my wife quickly exclaimed that she could basically almost see the rear bumper through the little window on the very bottom of the hatch. This isn't the car we looked at, but a picture I found online...but it shows the window perfectly.
Anyhow, the car performed admirably despite the disappointment with regards to it not being charged as requested.
The interior door panels were indeed funky and when I asked the salesperson if that had added to the challenge of selling this particular car in question (given the fact it's been on the lot for a few months now and has been price reduced around $4K) he admitted that yes, many males were not exactly enthralled with that.
My wife, on the other hand, loves it - one of her favorite colours is lime green and leafy motifs, so it's a perfect fit. Again, another stock photo below, but this is basically identical to the car in question. The photos on the Trader.ca listing makes the green look way darker than it actually is.
Anyhow, we put our money where our mouth is...and put a deposit on it. Things are still not 100% (I will be coming back Monday evening for another test drive, this time on a
full battery (they were plugging it in before I left, I made it clear it needed to be full when I arrived Monday) and my wife is going to do her best to get a better feel for her ability to plugin at work.. Not a deal breaker, but certainly a major consideration.
