 What are expectations? Can we defy them? Are we breaking the mold? What if they expected me to do that? Who are they? Why are they pointing a camera at me? And why did it take me two years to make this video? Maybe none of that matters. Maybe what really matters is the here and the now. And the who. Like, who is my sponsor? When I bought my Chevy Volt, Model 3s weren't shipping yet, and Model Ss, even secondhand ones were going for as much as 100,000 Canadian rubles. That's more than every other vehicle I've owned in my life put together. So the hunt began for some other option. Any other option for someone who loves technology as much as he hates paying for gas, but who doesn't need ludicrous speed or whatever. I mean, at the end of the day, how much fun can it be? It's still going to have four wheels, isn't it? Sort of. Tesla strongly disagrees with that sentiment, and they're actually working on providing a review unit of the Model 3 for me to check out as we speak. But before we make that video, I owe you guys finally an explanation for why I made the choice I did. Why did Linus, tech tip Sebastian, settle for a Chevrolet Volt? Performance on the track wasn't the first consideration for me, and it isn't for a lot of people. But that doesn't mean that the Volt is a slouch, because in here we've got not one, not two, but three engines. The 1.5 liter gas engine right here on the left outputs a measly 101 horsepower. The fun part, that's the dual electric motors doing exactly what electric motors are famous for. Torque. And then, at the end of the run still, we've got access to nearly 300 foot pounds of the stuff. So how does that feel, you might ask? Off the line, it's surprisingly exhilarating, doing 0-50 in just 2.6 seconds. Then at about 70 clicks, it peters out, finishing the 0-100 in 8.4, which coincidentally is identical to my old 2003 Honda Civic, just without the extra fun of a manual transmission. The advantage compared to my Civic, however, is that I'm doing all of that without using any gas whatsoever. And compared to other plug-in hybrids, it's a lot peppier. I get anywhere from 60 to 100 kilometers of range, depending on the weather. That's enough for me to do well over 80% of my driving on battery, meaning that the average tank of gas lasts me a month or two, or even more sometimes. As an added bonus, we installed EV chargers at the office, and currently there's a taxation loophole that allows me to refuel using those without counting it as a taxable benefit, reducing my total cost of ownership. We already have a Honda Odyssey for family road trips and hauling soccer things, so anything bigger than a sedan or a hatchback would have only served to take up extra space in our cramped two-car suburban garage. And a lot of the benefits of an EV, like being able to use the HOV lane by myself, less frequent servicing, and, okay yeah, being quicker off the line to delay change, were very appealing to me, with the Volt sharing all of them. Even more appealing? Look at all that space! Chevy went with a design that's become quite popular, probably so that they can sell the same body, both to sedan lovers here in North America, and to hatchback enthusiasts across the pond. I've actually really missed my wife's VW Rabbit ever since we got rid of it, and if I traded in my Volt, I would definitely miss it too. It is shocking how much stuff you can fit in this thing when you've got the seats folded down. Ooh! Hey hey! Check this out, I had all that tech loaded in it to give away at my house last Halloween. Flipping crazy, right? By the way, don't show up at my house this year, I'm not doing that again. As a taller user, it might not be as comfortable, but for me, the front seat design is basically perfect and the only change that I would make to the instrument console is to add a clock option right in front of the driver. There is one built into the center display, but the problem is that when I'm in Android Auto, some apps don't have a clock overlay, so I'm left without one altogether, which is a minor inconvenience, kind of like the rear seats. Now shockingly, I can get all three of my kids back there, even with car seats, but I would recommend spending some time on the websites that specialize in car seat compatibility to find a configuration that's likely to actually work, and I would also recommend not trying to put three adults back there. The two outside seats are pretty comfy as long as the occupant is under six feet, but the middle seat is basically a non-seat. Media controls are all handled with buttons on the optional leather wrap steering wheel, which okay, that might not seem like a huge deal to you, but coming from my old car, that was an absolute game changer, and regenerative braking is handled in one of three ways. When you're on battery, you can either drive around in low, and as soon as you take your foot off the accelerator, you'll get a mild regenerative effect, or you can press this paddle to the left of the steering wheel, and you'll get a much stronger effect. Finally, if you don't like the on and off controls of the paddle, you can simply press the brake pedal lightly, and it will start with regen, then if you exceed the threshold, it will apply more conventional brakes, and this easy access to regen braking has already been saving me money in little ways, like less wear on my brake pads, just like a fully G, or at least for now. A big potential downside of this plug-in hybrid approach is reliability. Two complimentary drivetrains does introduce the potential for more costly repairs, but, knock on wood, so far I've done really well. Now one of my personal preferences when it comes to cars is to give myself a better chance when it comes to recalls and lemons by avoiding all the new model years whenever possible, letting someone else find the overlooked flaws in a brand new platform or design. I'm still dealing with the worst of both worlds though. Ice engines tend to be more prone to breaking down than EVs, and electric has its own ticking time bomb too. The batteries. Now given that a phone that used to last a whole day when new might barely get you through lunch two years later, I understand people's concerns about the longevity of battery packs in cars, but fortunately, Chevy thought of this. From the factory, Chevy intentionally doesn't expose the whole battery to the user, which reduces unnecessary wear on the batteries from overcharging, and also adds a battery buffer so to speak. So over time, they slowly give you this buffer back to make sure that the range of the volt is as good on year five as it was the day you left the lot. I mean of course the buffer will eventually run out, but if nothing else, this approach forces the consumer to care for their battery properly, and it's an approach that I really like. We saw what the race for more talk time did to phones, and it would be a shame to see EV makers fall into that same trap of eliminating this buffer for the sake of advertising bigger and bigger ranges at the cost of their batteries ending up in landfills sooner. So I guess that's another win for the volt. When it does become junk, at least a lot less battery is getting tossed compared to a full EV like a Tesla. So if I love this thing and I think it's great, why do you not see them all over the road? Well one big reason is the price. Brand new these things ran about $35,000 US dollars, and frankly I wouldn't have paid that much for one either. But second hand, now we're talking. I ended up paying just about $23,000 US dollars for a one year old lease return with 29,000 kilometers on it. One of the biggest letdowns though, and something that I'm expecting to be very enticing about the Tesla, is the technology. I mean you can roll down the windows on a hot day with the fob, the backup camera is way better than my van and honestly all that I could ever need. The Bose sound system is pretty good, you know, I'm glad the previous owner selected it. And having Android Auto and CarPlay is, well hey, it's a lot better than not having them. But other than that, unless you consider traction control and power windows to be tech features, there ain't a whole lot going on here. Even the basic driving assist that the car does have are implemented in ways that just aren't that great. Cruise control without the adaptive component is just not as useful to me. And one of the areas I really like using cruise control in school and playground zones, I can't. Not allowing cruise control at speeds under 40 kilometers an hour is just asinine to me because if I could use it, then I could be covering my brake rather than my gas, or excuse me, accelerator, and I can be watching the road for children rather than watching my speedometer to make sure that I'm not going to get a ticket in these high risk areas. And there are a handful of other sucky slash weird things. The AC, particularly in eco mode, is super weak. It makes me irrationally angry, like I shouldn't even mention it, but it drives me nuts that you can press the windows to go all the way down, but then everyone but the driver's seat, you have to hold it to bring it all the way back up. And whenever I throw my backpack in the passenger seat, the car is like yelling at me to have my passenger put their seatbelt on, even though my bag only weighs like 10 pounds. But with all that said, I got an absolute ton of car for my money. And in spite of my recent Jaguar I-Pace test drive, I just haven't been tempted to upgrade for now. So that's it. That's why I bought a Chevy Volt. Tesla, now it's time to change my mind. Thanks again to DJI for sponsoring this video. All the sexy in-air drone footage was shot by our very own Colin Warabets on the Mavic Air 2 drone, and we had a ton of fun doing it. It's got a 10 kilometer transmission range, up to 34 minutes of flight time. Like what? You can capture up to 4K, 60 FPS or 1080 at up to 240 FPS. It's got a pass 3.0 obstacle avoidance. You can edit the videos afterward easily with their DJI fly app on your smartphone. And it's got tons of other great features. It's just a lot of drone for the price. So check it out today at the link in the video description. If you guys enjoyed this video, you might enjoy our other videos about cars, which I don't think we really have any yet, but make sure you're subscribed because we're hoping that this is just the first of many. I did the Karma Rivera. Oh, that's true. Alex did a video on the Karma Rivera.