It's a valid thing to research and report; when you pay $40K for an EV you want it to work as an EV and not as a lawnmower. Scarcity of public charging stations is a problem of growth, but it's a problem nevertheless.
while never mentioning that exactly what makes the Volt better than the Leaf is that you can utilize gasoline on long trips.
He did mention that. Most of his trip was on gasoline, and he reported the mileage to be 40 mpg (premium.) [A Prius would give you at least 50 mpg on regular gas.]
when the whole point of the Volt is to charge at home and never need public charging stations.
This is a debatable statement to make. Perhaps if you live in North Korea, where you aren't allowed to leave the city, you can indeed ride around in a golf cart and you will be OK. However everyone who I know takes long trips quite frequently - sometimes even involuntarily (when family members call and ask for something that you can't refuse.) Cars, as they are today, are universal vehicles. A car can take you to work, all of five miles, but after work a call from wife can send you on a trip of 100 miles because (insert any reason here.) We do not plan our life around cars - they are our servants, always waiting for orders and always ready to carry us, non-stop, pretty much anywhere.
Cars like Leaf - and in part like Volt - are undermining this freedom. Now they are becoming new tamagotchi, things that need care and feeding. But don't we already have enough of those?
Cost-wise, modern EVs (Volt and Leaf) offer negative savings over the estimated lifetime of the car. The savings are trickling in so slowly that the car will become dust and rust before you break even. Do not forget, you are investing $40K that you could have invested differently, with interest. A car doesn't pay you an interest.
I personally would love to have an electric car. But it has to be a real car - one that can go for a few hundred miles, one that can be recharged in minutes, one that can hold the charge pretty much forever, and one that costs reasonable money. That's what today's gasoline cars do. As soon as an EV meets these requirements I will be glad to buy one. Until then, these are just toys. The technology is simply not ready.
“[A Prius would give you at least 50 mpg on regular gas.] “
So a Prius can regularly achieve $0.09 per mile, while the Volt cost $0.11 per mile on long trips and $0.025 on short trips. Clearly vehicle choice depends on your mix of driving. Although the writer is honest enough to mention the quiet, handling and solidity of the Volt — something Prius is not noted for.
“Cars like Leaf - and in part like Volt - are undermining this freedom. “
True of the Leaf, but how is it true of the Volt ? With gasoline usage immediately and seamlessly available, how has your freedom of usage been limited in any way ? By the psychological impact of knowing you could be driving at a lower cost per mile if only you could do it all electric ? The Volt is, as you said, a “universal vehicle” just as it is, while the Leaf is definitely limiting.
You say the savings “trickle in”, but actual owners are reporting a net reduction in monthly fuel costs of $100/mo. That isn’t a “trickle”. Over a ten year ownership, that is a $12K cost advantage, making the Volt cost equivalent to a $28K conventional vehicle even before other savings such as oil, filter and other engine maintenance costs. TCO is similar to a $25K conventional vehicle even without any tax credit.
A writer who was doing true “research and reporting” would mention this fact, and not slant two pages to the lack of public charging stations in an unfamiliar city after a long trip. That is unbalanced reporting, surely ? An actual owner would charge at home, not waste time looking for charging stations like a Leaf owner would be forced to do.