The Holden Volt is a pretty impressive piece of kit, but as we mentioned in our review, it has a bit of an image problem. In a bid to address the issue, Holden staffed itself into a local petrol station in Victoria and only charged customers $2.50 for however much fuel they liked to compare the cost of owning a petrol car versus owning a Holden Volt.
It’s a clever little campaign to promote electric motoring in Australia and some of the reactions are really nice to watch, but I can’t help but feel concerned by this advert.
Holden is telling people that the Volt only costs $2.50 to charge up. By only charging people $2.50 for their fuel in this ad, it’s suggesting — by accident or not — that you can get equivalent range from the Volt as you can petrol cars.
We tested the Volt and found that it can get you about 80 kilometres on a single charge before its own petrol back-up motor kicks in to take it the other 515km.
The Volt is wonderful, but it can’t do what a petrol car can on electricity alone.