Active or Former Armed Services Volt Owners

[EZ Volt]

Served in state-of-the-art, alternatively-fueled vehicles in the Navy (Nuclear-Powered Ballistic Missile Submarines). USS Tennessee (SSBN-734), Gold Crew. Reactor Controls Assistant, Tactical Systems Officer, Navy Diver (SCUBA).

Our military protects the interests of the United States, including energy. One of the many reasons I love the Volt is that it provides a path for us to move away from oil dependence (starting with the foreign stuff). I am impressed with the thoughtfulness and quality of the engineering. And it's so darn fun to drive!

I think it's telling that regardless of who is in the White House, the U.S. Military is actively pursuing alternative energy scenarios in many departments. When you get past political nonsense, and take real responsibility for planning more than 4 years in the future at a time, the true important issues start to surface.

SSBN734-ErBridgeSunset1.jpgDSC04355 - Version 2.jpg

[Sterling Silver]

U.S. Army volunteer, not a draftee 1970-1973 and I asked to go to Vietnam. (I was a 19 year old idiot...)
Navy Officer Candidate School, Newport Rhode Island 1981... (diverticulitis abruptly ended my brief Navy experience)

My reasons for buying the Volt are numerous...

My father was an Army Air Corp Instructor Pilot... after the war, he was a crop duster. Flying jobs were hard to find after WW2 because of the glut of pilots available. My father also had an A&P Mechanics License issued to him by the FAA and as kid, I grew up with a dad who was always making and inventing things, so I was a geek at an early age. He took a starter motor (24 volt) from a Beechcraft Twin Bonanza Excalibur and hand built me the coolest looking "hot-rod" that ran on batteries, when I was 10 years old. It was great fun terrorizing the neighborhood kids in my silent electric car in 1961 and I was hooked on electric cars at an early age. My electric hot-rod hauled butt. And the fact my father was so non-dependent and could think outside the box, build what he wanted or needed... I suppose "thinking outside of the box" has always intrigued me, and what car made in America is more outside the box than the Volt?

When I joined the Army in 1970, I thought I had a pretty good reason why we were there... Now that I am an old man, I'm pretty turned off by the whole mess. I hear stories of how DuPont was involved in politics at a high level, that oil companies suspected there were vast oil reserves under Vietnam... and I was a kid who grew up watching John Wayne movies, I had three uncles who served in WW2 and my father was in the Air Corp, and I thought Vietnam was about something "patriotic."

My primary reason for buying a Volt is I have a very sour and bitter taste in my mouth (bitter and oily I should say) about OPEC. I remember the gas lines of 1973 and again in 1979. Thus now I have a "duel-fuel" Volt. I'm ready for this mess to start again and I'm prepared this time. When I got out of the Army in 1973, I rewarded myself with all the money I couldn't spend in Vietnam and bought a new 1973 El Camino to drive back and forth to college, then OPEC decided to punish the USA and I had to park the El Camino and ride my ugly-old Honda motorcycle I had from high school to college...

A few years back, as I sat here on my farm in Texas not too terribly far from the Bush Ranch near Waco, I watched the news when the Saudi Crown Prince came to Texas in his Boeing 747. One of his demands (I'm a pilot and a former news guy and I followed this story very closely) I learned that the Saudi's told us, no females were to be allowed (as air traffic controllers) to "control" the Crown Prince's 747... (My dad was a WASP Advanced Instrument Instructor Pilot too, and had great stories how the gals in WW2 helped in the war effort, so I grew up "liberal" in my thinking a woman had a place in the sky and in aviation... and for the Saudis to require no women could even talk to the Saudi pilots, was nearly revolting...) But when I saw news footage of President Bush walking along his ranch with the Crown Prince of Sauid Arabia, holding hands with the guy, it just reeked that we have been kissing butt to foreign oil producers for way to many decades... When the Volt came onto the scene, I became a fan of the technology and the potential to reduce our consumption of a product that has has been paid for in blood and trillions and trillions of dollars over the years.

T. Boone Pickens came on with his TV commercials several years ago and provided enlightenment that we as a nation are exporting our wealth at the tune of $600 billion per year to foreign oil producers, and he suggested we go natural gas on vehicles. That was a seed planted in my head when this "alternative fuel" idea popped up.

Then, as a consumer, I became so disgusted that each time I came home from buying something, I was disturbed by seeing MADE IN CHINA... Heck, even my underwear is made in China, my tools and now Cessna is making airplanes in China... and about 10 years ago, the US Navy was on "that side of the world" when a typhoon brew up quickly. The ships were not too far from China and asked for safe harbor to escape the typhoon. China denied and would not allow our ships a refuge... (These people we are making rich, are not our "good buddies..." check this link, http://www.cfr.org/east-asia/armed-c...ina-sea/p27883 )

The Volt for me, filled the bill quite nicely. It was designed and engineered in Michigan by a bunch of very savvy and with-it guys and gals, made in a part of the USA where folks are in a big hurt for jobs, and the opportunity to get off of oil was entirely too appealing. And to think we might have an opportunity to stop being "cops of the world" in regard to the areas that produce oil, makes me happy to believe some kids growing up today, may not have to die in a foreign land when they were the age I was when I was in Vietnam...

(Sorry for the long rant, but I am just too passionate about my Volt and what this technology can do for America, Americans and those who wear the uniform and put their lives on the line for a consumer product...)

And as Paul Harvey used to say, "And now you know the rest of the story.." that is, if you read my rant about my Volt on Flickr... I tell stories with pictures... I started with a camera when I was 4 years old... I don't know how to communicate without a camera either.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/southwe...7630379404900/

[dukecola]

Sterling, nice story, right on target too.

[techtom]

Thanks for sharing Sterling.... good stuff!