To me, G.M. should shout from the rooftops that the Volt is really a plug-in hybrid; its ability to drive like an electric car when you want it, but coast-to-coast on gasoline should you need, is its huge advantage over short-range, cord-bound E.V.’s like the Nissan Leaf.

As Chevy reminds us incessantly, a Volt owner can travel 40 miles each day and never burn a drop, joule or calorie of gasoline (more, obviously, if you can plug in while at the office or shopping mall). That owner will cover those first 40 miles for about $1.50 worth of electricity on average, a figure that includes electrical losses as the Volt draws some 12.5 kilowatt-hours of juice to refill the battery. The Volt only uses about 65 percent of its battery capacity, one of several strategies aimed at ensuring long battery life. While the batteries are warranted for eight years or 100,000 miles, G.M. says it engineered them to last 150,000 miles.

Covering those same 40 miles would cost $4.80 in gasoline for a typical 25-m.p.g. car, or $2.40 for the Prius driver who managed 50 m.p.g.

Those figures are based on a national average of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to the Energy Department, but electric rates vary wildly by location. Charge your Volt in Connecticut, with its nearly 19-cent average rate, and the Volt’s running costs fall close to those of a Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid, raising skepticism over the Volt’s considerably higher price.

But please, enough with stories that cherry-pick statistics, comparing worst-case Volts against Priuses running downhill on the nation’s cheapest gas. So try this: In California, which endures some of the nation’s highest electric bills, Pacific Gas & Electric plans to charge as little as 5 cents a kilowatt-hour for nighttime E.V. charging. At that rate, you’d spend 60 cents to cover 40 miles in the Chevy. For a Prius to commute on such pocket change, gasoline would have to cost 75 cents a gallon.