Road test: Hey, this plug-in electric Chevy Volt runs great on gas

My borrowed Chevy Volt runs great on gas.

Bruce Volt log, Day 4. Sunday, 1 pm: I know what you’re thinking: Either ..

A) How un-cool and un-green! In an ideal world, you’re supposed to run this gas-electric hybrid car on pure electricity. Or ..

B) How reassuring! In the real world, when your driving needs might exceed the limited range of your battery charge, you’ll have a gas tank security blanket.

Don’t ask for my fuel economy numbers. I can’t find them. This car flashes a maddening array of numbers at me. They’re spread over two video displays that explain everything I want to know except exactly where I find the USB jack to plug in my iPod (Volt owners: If you know, please share!) – and a great many things I don’t want to know.

Chevy calls this an “infotainment center.”

(Meanwhile see today's story "Electric cars coming; Raleigh gets preview," with comments from plenty of plug-in cynics.)

The numbers are there somewhere, surely, on how many milliliters of petroleum I burned Saturday on trips to Home Depot, Advance Auto, the Orange County solid waste and recycling center, Harris Teeter, Ace Hardware and the Azteca restaurant (where I had a few parking-lot conversations with folks curious about the Volt).

But I would need a secretary -- or maybe an engineer -- riding shotgun to take down all these digits and translate them into some kind of sense about how much gas I’m burning.

Meanwhile the Environmental Protection Agency says the Volt gets a respectable 37mpg when running on pure petrol power. (And you should know that the EPA now figures fuel economy conservatively, with numbers any calm driver can beat.)

Alas, this is one of those cars that demands pricey premium gas (91 octane). Like Stewball, the race horse who only drank wine.

A blue gas-pump logo tells me I’m running on gas – as opposed to the green logo that glows when I’m running on the battery charge – and I have maybe 140 miles of fuel left. Let me see: @37mpg that sounds like about 3 gallons. The Volt's little tank holds 9.

Meanwhile, I promise, I do manage occasionally to recharge the battery – but only in ways I’m not supposed to:

1) At a public charging station. My main source is a city-owned 240-volt charging station on West Hargett (I mistakenly said East Hargett recently) Street, a convenient block from my office.

These public stations (Raleigh has more than a dozen now) are supposed to be for drivers who just need a boost – to give a partly depleted battery enough juice for the trip home. Here's a photo of Paula Thomas (center), who runs the city's sustainability office, talking Friday with Kimberly Izuogu (left) and Guilemere Cox (right) about plug-in cars and the city’s charging stations.

I’ve used it a couple of times for a full charge, which takes four hours. This is in a metered parking zone with a two-hour time limit, but so far I’ve avoided a parking ticket.

2) At work. Pete Caison at The N&O found a 120-volt outlet I could use at one of the newspaper’s big loading docks. Feels silly to park the Volt there between big trucks, but it works. I would have to stay plugged in for 10 solid hours, though, to get a full Volt charge, so this isn’t practical.

There are some more convenient outlets in The N&O parking garage, but my attempts to use them showed how finicky the Volt is about where it plugs in.

When I plugged in the charger, the signal lights flashed green, then red, then green and stayed green. The car gave a cheery toot to signal that recharging had commenced. But about 10 minutes later the green light turned red. The car emitted a long series of muted but unhappy beeps, and the dashboard display said “Unable to charge.” A code sheet said this might mean the outlet had a bad ground.

3) At home. Of course, you’re supposed to charge your plug-in car at home, at night. When you don’t need to drive the car, and when it is cheaper for the power company to produce this electricity (whether or not power company charges you a lower rate for this off-peak consumption).

At my house, as I’ve mentioned earlier, the nearest outlet is 60 feet from the car. The Volt’s charging cable is 25 feet long. Progress Energy, which loaned me the car, said extension cords are not recommended.

So what else can I do but use an extension cord?

I get the same results as in the parking garage: the recharging process starts, runs fine for a while, then stops. So I unplug the extension cord and plug it in again to start over. It goes for a few minutes or a couple of hours before I get the red lights and unhappy beeps. I unplug, replug, reboot, and charge some more.

Gradually, I’m charging the battery. Last night the green-icon gauge told me I had enough for 7 miles. This morning after a few unplugs and reboots, I was up to 14 miles.

Meanwhile, as I said, this car runs great on gas. Whether the electricity is coming from the battery or from the gas-motor generator, it's the electric motor that turns the wheels most of the time.

So the performance is the same, green battery icon or blue gas icon. Feels good at interstate cruising speed, has plenty of muscle to spurt into the passing lane when that’s what you need.