GreenHybrid - Hybrid Cars - View Single Post

flopshot · #2 (**permalink**) 09-30-2006, 04:49 PM

The EPA estimate is in the best-case scenario. Unfortunately for you, SF represents possibly the worst-case scenario, with short severely-sloped hills. The TCH gets lousy gas mileage when climbing hills. The ICE is only a 4cyl 147hp, and the car weighs 3700 lbs, so you are asking a smaller engine to pull a larger car. I commute from Gilroy to Monterey Peninsula every day, so I have to drive thru the hills of Prunedale and Carmel. Even when I'm towards the end of a tank and have 500 miles already calculated in that tank's average, the 2-mile uphill climb into Monterey will peg my real-time consumption meter at under 10mpg, and I will see my tank average drop a full mpg in those 2 miles. I haven't done the math, but to make me drop a full 1mpg in average after 500 miles means that I'm getting extremely lousy gas mileage during those two miles. And the hills of Prunedale and Monterey are nothing like the hills in SF. Quite honestly, I don't think the TCH is a good car for SF. Had you bought the 4cyl Camry, you would get the same engine, but with much less weight, hence you would have gotten better gas mileage in the hills than with the TCH.

So I don't think you have a lemon, and it's not false advertising, you just didn't do enough research and bought the wrong car for your situation.