Our local DWP in Los Angeles offers a time of use meter, but it's not worth it.
First there's a service charge of 8.00 monthly for a minimally lower night rate (I forget the exact numbers), but it's not enough less per KWH unless you use practically nothing during the day. It would likely end up costing me more. It costs 2.40 to charge for 42-45 miles at peak tier 3 summertime rates. Wintertime might drop to a little over half that since the tier 3 rate structure goes away. Not a lot of savings at our electric rates, but it's the principal.
Once you go time of use they absolutely hose you for anything you use during daytime peak hours. I guess it could work for people whose homes are vacant from 8-5, but that isn't the case in our house.
We just choose to charge the Volt every time we park it. It's only run on gas a couple of times briefly. I'd say we easily will go 4000 or more on a tank the way we use it currently. It's intended to be a local errand car, and serves that purpose nicely.
Volts are designed with water cooled batteries that are designed to change their charge state as gradually as possible, and don't need to deep cycle since they have a backup generator.
As a result, the Volt batteries have ben proven to retain their performance and battery degradation is almost non existent. The batteries will never need to be replaced on most Volts.
I know the car has a higher carbon footprint to manufacture initially since it has both an ICE and a battery pack, but that disadvantage should go away as the car is used as opposed to a conventional car since the battery is likely a one time aquisition.
Pretty hard to calc out, but I'd bet the amount of electricity used to get fuel in a conventional car is not trivial. Consider that pumping out the crude is probably electric (unless it comes from a high pressure well), transportation to the refinery may be pumped through a pipeline, and I'll bet the amount of electricity used at the refinery isn't trivial. Then it usually goes into another electrically pumped pipeline as a refined fuel. The terminal where it's offloaded and retailers mix in their additives uses a fair amount of electric, and then after it's trucked to the fueling station electricity is used again to operate pumps, lights, and everything else at the service station.
Having an electric that I fill at home eliminates a lot of steps in the carbon cycle, and at least here we don't make the electric with a refined fuel such as fuel oil. Natural gas is less energy intensive to produce than refined fuels. Some of our juice comes from the one remaining nuke plant and whatever we are able to produce with solar. I guess the carbon footprint of making solar panels is another topic.
I guess especially with what's happened with VW the last week, the jury is still out on just how eco friendly my TDI Passat is. I'm convinced the Volt is once you get beyond initial manufacture.
Most of my satisfaction comes from using less of a resource that comes from countries run by madmen that would rather chop my head off than say 'Thank You'.
In each case, I could have gotten more conventional car for the money