Cost of Charging

[clipboarder]

I live in the SF Bay area and got the Volt last week based on the advertised cost of recharging the vehicle and based on existence of two advertised EV rates from PG&E.

It turns out that the base rate in the SF Bay area is 8kw/day, which means that charging the Volt alone pushes me from $0.13/kw to $0.29/kw without using any electricity and into $0.33/kw with using energy beyond recharging the Volt. In essence it costs me $8 to recharge the Volt and not $2.70 as implied by the advertising.

In addition the EV-9A rate, designed by PG&E for EV owners would cost me the same, because as I found out after talking to PG&E it assumes a base rate that is less than what it takes to charge the vehicle alone. So, while it costs $0.05kw to charge the vehicle during off-peak, it would cost me $0.55kw during the rest of the day. There is an EV-9B rate, but requires digging up a street not owned by me to lay a dedicated electric wire, which is not going to happen.

In essence, it means that I now have to refuel the car with premium gasoline exclusively, to limit the increase in fuel-cost. I must say I'm extremely disappointed with PG&E and Chevrolet at this point, given that cost of driving was about the only reason I was able to rationalize the otherwise high cost of ownership, and now it turns out that even this aspect is going to cost me more than with my previous car.

I can't believe there has been no news about it given that the Leaf and Volt have been on the market for quite some time, and especially the Leaf would seem completely unviable financially given those rates.

Has anyone else experienced any cost-surprises like this?