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With gas prices hitting an unsteady rate of more than $3 a gallon and the uncertainty of the economy still looming in the air, more and more people are buying hybrid vehicles. Although he doesn’t particularly need to save at the gas pump, Jay Leno has gone with the trend and bought one as well- a Chevy Volt to be exact. But it’s not Leno’s purchase that caught our attention, or even that he chose a Chevy over any other hybrid manufacturer. Rather it’s his impressive feat of driving his Volt about 11,000 miles on less than 5 gallons of gas, as our very own Chris Demorro reported on Gas2.org.
Leno purchased his Volt last year with a full tank of gas. Since then, he has only used about a half of the 9.3 gallons of fuel in Volt to go 11,000 miles. That makes Leno’s average fuel economy about 2,365mpg, and he’s not alone. There have actually been many claims of Volt customers getting more than 2,000mpg in their Chevy hybrids.
With more and more customers achieving feats like Leno’s, the Volt is also proving to virtually pay for itself, according to Demorro. With an 8 year/100,000 mile warranty on the battery that provides the Volt with its electric power, an average savings of $1,500 a year on gas would wrack up to $12,000 of savings over the warrantied life of the battery. Add that to the $7,500 in tax incentives, and you’ve got yourself one cheap little gas saver.
We all hear the hype about hybrid cars saving on gas, but who knew that you could potentially drive for two full years on one tank of gas in the Volt? So long as you have the ability to charge the car regularly and don’t have to travel more than the allotted 35 miles at a time, it’s safe to say the Volt is the best bang for your buck in the electric/hybrid market.
Although Leno may not need to pinch his pennies and has plenty of cars in his collection he can drive, it is cool to see a celebrity and avid car enthusiast like him be a part of an automotive phenomenon like the Volt’s unheard of fuel economy. We look forward to seeing just how far the rest of the fuel in Leno’s Volt takes him.
