Well, I've had my Volt for a few months now, so time for a PIREP, right?
In general, as a car, without paying attention to the drivetrain or other tech: Meh. It's a GM product, so my expectations are pretty low, and it meets them.
Speaking of low, this car is definitely significantly lower to the ground than either the i3 or the Fusion Energi. I think it might even be lower than my Volvo S60 was. As a tall guy, I have to stick my butt in first, duck my head (chin to chest), and slide back until my head clears the door frame. Once inside, though, headroom is good and seating is mostly comfortable.
Non-drivetrain-related tech: It has decent lane departure, front collision, etc. warnings. They do a pretty good job of not setting off nuisance alerts. It's even done pretty well in spite of the winter weather and having everything coated in salt. The big disappointment is that the main tech thing I like, the ability to start/unlock/lock the car from a smartphone app, runs through OnStar, and my experience there has not been good. I hit the button when I first got the car and they set me up with the 30-day free trial with all the features, and it was great. Then, when the 30 days was up and I went to sign up for the remote access only plan, I couldn't do it online for some reason, and when I hit the button in the car to call them up and do it with a person, we got through the whole process and they asked if I wanted to put it on the MasterCard I had on the account. Slight problem: I don't have a MasterCard! And when they read off the name from the card, it was the name of the previous owner that I'd seen on the title!
So that's a little scary that they don't remove any of the credit card information when putting a new person onto the car... And for whatever reason, they have been unable to detach the car from its prior owner, so here we are almost two months later and they still haven't been able to turn my service on! I call back in every couple of weeks, and every time it's "We need tech support/the database guys to take care of this, it'll be 4-6 days" and lather, rinse, repeat. OnStar sucks.
EV aspects:
The GOM (that's Guess-O-Meter, which is what we call the remaining range readout on most EVs) generally reads high 20s-low 30s and seems to be pretty good at its guess, though it doesn't seem to make any adjustment when cabin heat is turned on or off. I think the absolute worst range I've actually gotten on a full charge was in the mid-20s, and I've also gotten one in the high 30s despite the cold temps. It'll be interesting to see what happens in a couple of months when we get back into the 60s to see whether its rated range is still there on an older car (this one is a 2013 with about 93000 miles on it).
Performance is OK, pretty much what I expect from something that has two slightly-underpowered powertrains and has to haul them both around.
Another thing that happens in the cold: If it's less than 15ºF out, the engine will come on. I think this is for the battery thermal management system. It pretty much just warms itself up at a medium idle for a while, and I've seen it cut out briefly a couple times once it's warm. It doesn't use much gas in this mode, and it does seem to extend the range a bit, but it's a little weird to me, and I'm not a fan of engines running in the first place so there's that. Knowing what it's there for, it doesn't bother me too much.
Charging is kinda slow. These gen-1 Volts (2015 and prior model years) only have a 3.3kW onboard charger, about 14 amps on 240V. My home EVSE is a 40-amp, 10kW unit, so it's not even breaking a sweat. Charge time from empty to full is about 3.5 hours, though of course it tapers off at the end:
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The bottom line: It's decent for what it is: A cheap way for me to wait until I can afford a Tesla. <ahem> A plugin hybrid with good battery range.
