"The average person drives between 10,000 and 15,000 miles and spends between $1,000 and $1,500 on gasoline per year. In comparison, the cost of electricity to power Model 3 over the same distance is up to three times lower. Over the six year average length of car ownership, that's between $4,300 and $6,400 in gasoline savings.
We've assumed a fuel economy of 28 miles per gallon for a comparable gasoline powered sedan, for example, the 2017 BMW 3 series. We've also assumed the national average of $0.13 per kilowatt-hour for electricity and $2.85 per gallon for premium gasoline over the next six years."
I dunno, I find it dishonest. Any electric vehicle shopper knows that gasoline is a major cost-driver and reason to buy electric instead.
The Chevy Volt is currently $33,520. Then gets a $7500 Federal Credit (and unlike Tesla, Chevy hasn't run out yet. If your Tesla 3 is delivered in January 2019, you only get $3750 in credits). AND it mostly won't use gasoline (50-mile all-electric range == good enough to not use gasoline in over 99% of my expected drives)
It almost wants me to walk into a Tesla showroom and show them their press release and say "I'll take the $33,200 model. Here is my check."
The back pedaling and hand waving would be entertaining.
The Volt, BMW i3, and basically any other car with a range extender periodically run the engine in "maintenance mode", because it's good to circulate fluids, burn off some gas, and take some load off the battery for a while.
If you need to store a car for more than a month, you should top off and add a bottle of fuel stabilizer before driving home.
It appears that the Volt will detect the gasoline going bad (or at least, puts it on a timer and then assumes), and forcibly burn it off roughly once a year. Before doing so, it encourages you to use a bit of gas.
To be honest: this is the first link from a search engine. So its not an issue I've looked into very strongly. Nonetheless, it seems like GM has already figured out a procedure for "stale gas" issues.
https://forum.quartertothree.com/t/volt-gas-goes-stale/69063
So it seems to be a timer of some sorts, roughly on the order of ~once a year or so.
EDIT: I found a video on youtube showing the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEe4Rkg4GfA
The author of the video notes that you can drive the Volt just fine. He just had a camera handy and stay'd in his garage in this case however.
* Keep the tank full of gas: air space is prone to condensation
* Avoid ethanol-added gasoline, it's more hypro-philic
* Add a fuel stabilizer (like 1 fl oz per 5 gallon)
* live in California, it's really dry.
These are adapted from techniques for winter storage of cars.
Engine Maintenance mode: haven't used the gas engine in some period (month?) so it uses the engine for a small period of time (less than my 12 mile commute) so get the engine oil moving.
Fuel maintenance mode: doesn't let average age of gas be over a year. i.e. I filled my tank August 30, 2017 from basically empty. On Aug 29, 2018 it went into fuel maintenance mode and even though I had a full battery, it would only use gas. I was probably around 1 gallon left, I filled it up, so expect around june 2019, it will go into fuel maintenance mode again unless I finish off the tank and fill it up again.
Is electricity in Canada generally cheaper than in the states?
And the Tesla wall unit also costs $500. Is that included in the price of the car?
I guess bottled water then should be considered free since it's significantly healthier than drinking any else.
Or maybe my laptop should be considered free since it's used to earn money.
Perhaps if they want to advertise gas savings they should be forced to also add "increased home electricity costs".