Quote: nterprise Rent-A-Car announced plans to add Saturn VUE Green Line Hybrid vehicles to its vehicle line-up for California renters in 2007. Currently one of the largest providers of alternative fuel rental vehicles, Enterprise is continuing to grow its fleet by adding a variety of alternative fuel vehicles including flex fuel, hybrid and bio diesel in select markets across the United States. The first wave of approximately 160 hybrid Saturn VUE SUV's will be delivered the first part of 2007 to select branch locations in the Bay area as well as Los Angeles and Sacramento, with additional deliveries slated throughout next year. http://digital50.com/news/items/BW/2...-vehicles.html

Of course, the convenient thing about rental companies offering hybrids is this: if you're on the fence betwen a Prius or a Civic, or a FEH or a Vue, you can just rent for a weekend to see which one you like better.

I tried to rent a hybrid from Enterprise in San Francisco. They said they no longer had them as "people were unwilling to pay extra for them." I got a great price on a Prius from Fox Rent A Car.

ramseyny- when was that? Recently?

This sounds like a really good thing to me. I fly in to SF about once a year and need a rental car, and if I can get a hybrid from Enterprise, I'm definitely going to make them my rental company of choice. I've asked people on this forum before about taxis and rental hybrids and, anecdotally at least, it seems to be slim pickings at the moment almost everywhere. I like it when a big name in the business takes a positive step like this.

The Saturn VUE Green Line Hybrid is just barely a hybrid. It's an extremely mild hybrid (basically an enlarged alternator) and only gets 1mpg better than the Ford Escape 4cyl (NON-hybrid model) while providing similar power output. Even worse, the Escape 4cyl model referenced is AWD while the Green Line is 2wd. I read this in the Consumer Reports magazine I just received 3 days ago. I have to give them credit for their attempt, but it seems to me like it is only a gimic aimed at attracting those customers who are jumping on the hybrid bandwagon and hoping for tax credits. If their trying to provide an inexpensive American hybrid vehicle, I think they should go for the Ford Escape Hybrid which is much better (though I'd really prefer Toyota/Honda and soon Nissan hybrids).

Even mild hybrids are still worthy. Technically, isn't my car, the HCH I, a mild hybrid? But I average about 49 mpg. Some of the hybrids we track here, like the VUE, may not get great mileage overall - see the database. We have only six VUEs going in the database right now, all with FE in the 22-29 mpg range. Still, the fact that rental car companies are starting to think that they need to buy hybrids to attract renters is a most interesting fact. Side note: none of those renters could possibly be allured by the tax credit, so I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Regarding the Tax credit bit, I meant that in general, the tax credit has helped give hybrids more popularity and press time overall. Even though the credit wouldn't benefit renters, it at least help enforce a more positive image of the hybrid in their mind.

As far as my comment regarding mild hybrids, I meant that there was very little thought or engineering put into the design of the Green Line hybrid system. Even though your HCH is considered a mild hybrid, A LOT of engineering and thought went into that design, thus giving it incredible efficiency. The HCH obtains a substantial improvement in economy compared to other vehicles in it's size class. The Green Line, in comparison, obtains only marginal improvement compared to other vehicles in its class (in some cases, even less economy). It's a good start and I applaud GM's efforts. I just hoped that the Greenline would have given more of a perceptible benefit. When people buy a vehicle with a "Hybrid" badge on it, they expect to have a certain amount of improvement in economy.

I hate to be negative towards any hybrid, but after reading the report from Consumer Reports along with some posts from users on this site, I worry that people will mistakingly purchase a Greenline over a better model (with similar features/price) and become disappointed when they compare their mileage to others on this site. Perhaps I am being too sour. I was just looking forward to the release of the Greenline and was starting to become proud that an American car company was going to try and compete with the Japanese in the hybrid market using their own, homegrown technology (The Ford escape uses licensed tech from Toyota). I feel... let down.

Not true. Quoting from Pravus Prime...

Ford didn't license anything from Toyota; they signed an agreement to not sue each other, even though the technologies are similar.

This is one reason why the patent trade suit doesn't make sense. Both the Ford and Toyota systems use a planetary gear and dual motor-generator system but only Toyota has been sued. They have not gone after Ford in any court.

Bob Wilson

After April 3, use e-mail to contact me:

I don't know if that's necessarily true- it's given a bit more of a governmental stamp of approval on the technology, and a financial incentive, but a positive image? I'm not sure. Having to be tax subsidized actually seems to me to be increasing the perception that hybrids are prohibitively expensive. They are more expensive- I'm not going to deny that there is a hybrid premium- but not prohibitively expensive. People who don't investigate are always telling me that they've heard about the tax break and that they think the cars must be much more expensive than regular cars, and that any tax break can't possibly cover the difference. In some ways, then, isn't the tax break an image problem?

True- and a good point. Though the jury is still out on real-world gas mileage, since as I said, we only have 6 of these vehicles in our database, which is not that statistically significant yet. I haven't checked since my last post- it may not be exactly 6 now.

I agree that most, if not all, of the hybrid SUVs are a letdown- at least to me. In many cases the overall efficiency is just not that impressive, and I get the distinct impression that a main reason the car companies are making hybrid SUVs at all is a little like window dressing, to salve consciences of people who would be buying SUVs with similar gas mileage anyway but don't want to feel like they're SUV owners. And by 'feeling like an SUV owner,' I mean the sense of being part of the problem, and frowned upon a bit by others, instead of trying to be part of the solution.

Any car, hybrid or not, that gets over 40 mpg is a class act in my book. Technology is a means to achieve a solution, not the solution itself in this case. I don't care if it's newly developed, licensed, borrowed, mild hybrid, full hybrid, - the point is to reduce the amount of gas you use, the amount of energy you use, the amount of carbon dioxide you emit and the amount of damage you cause by whatever means the car company can find.