Have you Hybrid Vue guys had a lot of trouble with your vehicles? I am considering buying one, but am concerned. It looks like many of you have had the battery take a crap and been stranded.

Also, several Hybrid Vues that I have seen for sale have been "GM buy backs". I wonder how many Hybrid Vues have been purchased back by GM.

Sold my 06 Ford Escape Hybrid 2WD and regret it every day. Hope to get an 09 shortly.

I've had my 07 Greenline for about 14 months. Have not had any trouble with it. Did receive two recall notices during that time, took it in to the shop had the required work done. No other shop time except scheduled maintenance.

There were problems with the earlier battery design, which caused many of the problems that you may have read about.

Have did two road trips last year, one 5,600 miles and the other about 1,000 miles without worries. Have a 6,000 mile trip upcoming on the schedule. Not worried about taking my VUE.

I am a very satisfied owner of the VUE Greenline.

Bob

Some of us are watching this brand closely due to the connection with Johnson Controls and the upcoming PHEV Saturn VUE in 2009. The upcoming Volt and well known Prius have been grabbing most of the news about the PHEV version of their vehicle in 2010 but....GM quietly announced a rollout of the PHEV Saturn VUE for late 2009. With Mary Ann Wright (former Ford Escape Hybrid Executive) at the head of Johnson Controls Auto Hybrid division, I'm betting the lithium ion hybrid battery will be ready for the roll out as schedule but will GM still have Saturn at this time?

2005 AWD Escape Hybrid
Best Interstate tank trip MPG 39.02 (scangauge II) for 402 miles on I-70, 10.3 gallons used over mostly flat terrain.

Best Interstate tank trip E30 MPG 34.6 for 271 miles along I-80 in Indiana and Ohio.

Best multiple road tank trip E30 MPG 36.2 for 202 miles in Southwestern Pa.

Thanks for the info and I appreciate your enthusiasm HybridVue.

32mpg average? Wow. I was a bit turned off by the 26mpg average calculated on this site. I wondered why there is such a huge spread of MPG performance.

Sold my 06 Ford Escape Hybrid 2WD and regret it every day. Hope to get an 09 shortly.

Hi All,

first time post. I'm also looking into the Vue. HybridVue, looked at your spreadsheet and that's a great help in my decision. I couldn't help noticing that as of 6/29/08, your savings over a regular Vue was $797.83. Is that only considering every 3rd tank as the total savings thus far? At this point it seems that the ROI is still way off when you compare hybrid to non-hybrid.

Glad you checked out my spreadsheet.

My ROI is computed the following way. My numbers are as of 7/8/2008.

Following the guidelines from www.fueleconomy.gov - I took the EPA estimates of the:

• 2007 Saturn Vue 19mpg city & 25mpg highway 50city/50highway driving = Avg 22mpg
• 2007 Saturn Hybrid Vue 23mpg city & 29mpg highway 50city/50highway driving = Avg 26mpg
• I also factored in the Saturn statement that the Hybrid gets 20% better gas mileage than the regular Vue. 20% + 22mpg = 26.4mpg
• With the EPA difference of 4mpg and the 20% Saturn difference of 4.4mpg I pushed it up to 5mpg.

My Theory - My Saturn Hybrid Vue gives me about 5 mpg better than the Regular Vue. With my driving style - if I average 32.2mpg than I would avg 27.2mpg with the regular Vue.

I take the 5 mpg difference, apply it to each tank and that is how I come up with the total savings of $818.46.

Some may say there is no way a Regular Vue can get 27.2mpg and that maybe true, they also say the 32.2mpg with Hybrid Vue is not possible as well. So if you like, a quick recalculation of the numbers (from my spreadsheet) and here are some savings.



If you say the Saturn Hybrid Vue gives you a

6 mpg advantage = $1020.00

7 mpg advantage = $1237.74

8 mpg advantage = $1473.72

9 mpg advantage = $1730.35

10 mpg advantage = $2010.51 savings

My Hybrid cost me $2250 more than the Regular Vue.

I received a $650 tax credit from the Federal Government.

$2250 - $650 = $1600

If you factor in my savings from gas $818.46, I am more than half way to breaking even.
20 months of ownership + rising gas costs = I should break even by 36 months or three years.

Thats the financial take on the Hybrid Vue.

The environmental take is a calculated savings of 280.553 gallons.

The psychological take is that I do not have to fill up more than once a week - even driving an average of 500 miles per week. In addition, I drive a Hybrid SUV that gets over 30 miles per gallon. Pretty good for 2008 standards. Maybe in a few years 40 or 50 miles per gallon will be the new standard. At least for now I feel like I am doing at least my small part. (Mass transit - smaller car - carpooling - unfortunately does not work out for me at this time.) In addition, I have a sense of pride that I am very good at how I drive the Saturn Vue Hybrid.

There are not many Hybrid SUV owners on www.GreenHybrid.com getting 6 mpg better than their groups average.

In the mean time, the Hybrid Vue and I continue on our journey together.

Ok, I think I see...you take your average and subtract 5, correct? Thanks for the explanation and congrats and your happiness.

To rain on the parade a bit, most of our driving is suburban and we get a rather pathetic 22.4 - this is the same as my 3L I6 BMW which weighs more and does much the same circuit.

In my case, I really don't see much of the hoped for value proposition; that said we needed a car this size and the GL does the job nicely and the powertrain/hybrid drive does feel so much nicer than a regular 4 cylinder. As a performance booster for an I4 , the BAS works very well and justifies having it; as an economical hybrid I don't see it.

General consensus is if you do a lot of highway and drive gently, you'll see some decent numbers (but, the BAS doesn't really apply on the highway so little advantage over a conventional); if you mostly drive short distances and drive fairly 'normally' you'll see some rather less decent MPG's.