My driving with the Saturn VUE Green Line, after some break-in miles, is averaging just about 30 mpg . My fill-up this morning was 29.7 mpg over about 310 miles. The tank before that was a hair above 30 mpg. My driving is mostly suburban stop and go, side road cruising, and a bit of high congestion traffic during rush hour. I try to keep my highway speeds in the low 70's. I usually leave my AC off, but defog seems to run the AC anyway.

 

Well, guess what - our 2 week old GL is retruning pitiful MPG (yes, the economy setting is on, yes, the green setting for AC is on, and no, we don't have a lead foot). We've done 700 miles and so far achieved 26, 21, 21. The first was mostly highway, the other two in suburbia.

This is way less than anything we were expecting - in fact only 2 MPG better than the 03 VUE V6 AWD we traded in. There are no known problems (the computer is clean) - how do we know that - well, it's spend 4 of it's 15 days of ownership in the shop, one being for an electrical problem.

Feeling very conned.

 

I wouldn't feel too dispirited yet. My HCH had a few quirks that had to be ironed out in the beginning. As far as the mileage goes, the phrase "your mileage may vary" is VERY applicable to hybrids -- much more so than regular vehicles. My HCH is rated for 47 MPG, but I've gotten as high as 69 and as low as 36. That's a 33 MPG variance. Even under normal circumstances, it varies between 40 and 45 (my commute is 90% city, so it's not the best commute for an IMA hybrid.)

You'll probably find that it's better to measure performance in 5,000 mile chunks. Like, "I got 28 MPG since my last oil change".

For what it's worth, BAS and IMA hybrids really suffer in stop/go traffic. On 100% highway, I almost always get *better* than the EPA estimate. You probably will too.

If you do both kinds of driving, probably IMA2 or Two-Mode would be the hybrid of choice. For my, I'll probably have to go HSD next time around, since my commute has 12 traffic lights and my speed never exceeds 40 MPH.

 

can you coast with fuel cut mode? or that only happens when the suv is decellerating....

 

Latest mileage is just under 25MPG, mostly in town. I'll feel OK if this keeps up and withdraw my conned comments. TBD....

 

I have 342 miles on my GL so far and it's at 24.6 MPG after four small fills. I've been filling more frequently just to see how the car is performing. I drive in a hilly suburban area with some stop and go. The temps have been in the 40's and 50's mainly so far. When I've had to do more city driving I got about 23 on one small fill up and I've gotten about 26 on another one that had less stopping. I generally do not go into the city that much, so if I can end up getting about 25-27 overall I'll feel pretty good considering the price vs. the Mariner/Escape or other Hybrid SUV's. My old car got about 18MPG, so If I increase my MPG by 8MPG with a very resonably priced car that's pretty good in my book. Jon

 

SV Cleveland,
I've been trying to go as long as possible between fill ups to get as good an mpg estimate as possible. Four small fill ups over 342 miles could mean sizeable errors in the mpg calculation. For a short 85 miles, one click on the fill/refill can come out to more than a few mpg's.

Good to hear BadGL's GL is doing better. From the 26,21,21, it sounds like the car was running in a safe-mode. Then eventually the yellow engine light would come on, or so I've heard. During the 21,21 days, was the car driving differently, like engine or transmission smoothness?

Still getting about 30 mpg! My old car's (non hybrid) mpg dropped 10-20% in the winter. Wonder how the SGL will do.

So long.

 

Sorry about that, Jon!

We're currently overhauling the code underlying the site, so it'll be a couple of weeks before we can add the VUE to the Hybrid Database. Thank you for adding it to the Non-Hybrid Database, though. I apologize for the delay, but rest assured that once this is done, the new code base will enable us to add more features and functionality in the future!

 

Latest MPG with cold (but California) mornings, on 90/10 city/hwy was 18.4 MPG. Overall, over 2300 miles we stand at 23.8, distorted by half the overall mileage being highway at limit.

This is a far cry from the 28 that we were told we could expect, and so way off the EPA as to be ridiculous. Should have stuck with that v6 AWD VUE and invested the upgrade money in a gas subsidy - would have been far cheaper.

Last GM car for me I think

 

Its a shame. My father and step mother get better than that in there I4 RAV in hill ridden NW Arkansas.

Martin

I stand by my opening comments concerning GM's hybrid world when you first showed up here. GM owns a lot of the world in heavy transport with there ground breaking work at Electromotive and Marine divisions. Dont know if they still own the division's. Seeing they are near next to selling the farm. And then produce something as stupid as BAS. I dont want to hear nor does anybody else how locomotive/marine hybrids dont compare or slot with consumer goods... Nor that there isn't any battery's in Locomotives/ships. You will not nor cover up at least to me in my minds eye the absolute junk BAS is with the massive resources and data GM has developed in the hybrid world since the late 1930's.