The first thing I thought of was the charging station installation cost. If you move, you have to dish out the cost of another one in your new place. Sometimes, you move from a house to an apartment. Not many apartments will set up a charging station just for you.
These charging stations will cost $1475 plus the cost of the $490 240-volt cord. Two thousand dollars can buy you 500 gallons of $4/gallon gasoline (25 mpg x 500 gallons = 12,500 miles). And that charging station may cost you more if it you don’t have your main panel located in the garage or if you want it located out in the driveway which will require a special outdoor set up.
Next, is the cost of the replacement battery. You cannot pin a Chevy dealer down with the cost of battery replacement. That’s because they don’t want you to know that a replacement will cost around $10,000. They try to put you at ease with an 8-year or 100,000 mile warranty on the battery. Will that warranty carry over to another owner if the car is sold? And, once that warranty is up, you either have a worthless Volt or a car costing $10K which will add to all the other things you will be paying for with a 100,000 mile car.
You said it very well. People have no idea of the ongoing costs because they won’t say, they won’t say because it’s out of sight.