As a political fire rages over the Chevy Volt, an engineer who bought the first Volt sold in Fredericksburg is raving about his first year with the vehicle.

Last week, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee questioned whether the government's 32 percent ownership of GM resulting from a bailout was the reason for a delay in releasing information about a June 6 fire in a Volt lithium-ion battery three weeks after a crash test.

In its inaugural year, GM reports that it sold 7,671 Volts in 2011, fewer than the 10,000 it had expected to sell at selected dealerships around the country.

Locally, Radley Chevrolet fielded calls from as far away as California. It sold out its inventory of Volts quickly last year and began taking orders for the 2012 model.

GM had been planning to produce 60,000 Volts this year, but officials said at a Detroit auto show this month that they will match production with demand, apparently as a result of a flap over the battery fire in a test that resulted in a recall.

One Volt owner, a structural engineer, had nothing but good things to say on the one-year anniversary of his purchase of the first Volt sold in Fredericksburg.

Radley's first sale was to Nick Sours of Portsmouth, who had pre-ordered. Sours told Free Lance-Star reporter Kelly Hannon after he picked up his new vehicle that he had seen the Volt in 2008 at the Virginia Motor Trend International Auto Show and was impressed. He said he thought "it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen" and put a deposit down without even test driving it.

In an email report on his first year driving the Volt, Sours said he's been amazed at its fuel economy:

"Since we took delivery, we have put 13,121.4 miles on the car and burned 89.4 gallons of gas. So we have averaged 146.8 mpg. The lifetime mileage is 13,147 miles and 9,802 of those miles are EV (all-electric, electric vehicle) miles. Our lifetime fuel economy is 145 miles per gallon. I sit in traffic for two to three hours out of my day and the only energy that's consumed when sitting is what is required for the radio and climate control."