For some reason I want to say my dealership had a few day return and 30 day trade-in offer. I honestly have no idea how people get 22 mpg in these, 27-30 is not hard at all. Call me crazy, but the Escape's interior bored me substantially more, had less cargo room and less rear seat room, which is the reason I bought an SUV in the first place.

 

I agree. The BAS system isn't purely set up for city driving the way other hybrids are, so it's understandable that it's lower than the highway rating, but getting 22 (or even below 20 as some have reported) seems tough to do. They must be standing on the throttle on a regular basis.

Our first tank was 26.0, with the engine not even broken in yet and less-than-reasonable weather. That was ALL rural and city miles, NO highway whatsoever. The last tank was 27.4 with the same commute.

I like the FEH, but not the price. The classy and roomy interior of the VGL sold us.

 

Check out our reports (see OurGL) - hover over 'more' for tank details and notes - and you can see exactly the conditions.

We're getting low 20's (or less sometimes) on short trip suburban city. No lead foot is needed. After complaints from us, to their credit, Saturn took it for 3 weeks of testing and they got similar under the same circumstances.

On the plus side, we can get up in the 28's highway and the BAS is the best matched and smoothest engine for the SUV IMHO. I think we've reconciled ourselves to it being a really good conventional engine innovation that improves performance for a smaller engine rather than a significant gas saver (we traded in a 2003 v6 AWD VUE which averaged 19 vs our current mixed of 23.2). Disappointing all the same.

The true EPA numbers probably should be in the order of 20/28, something I think the tank reports from everyone here seem to support if you delve into it. If you look closely, the high MPG's are from folk who can keep their GL's cruising at a modest speed, and low MPG's are start/stop short commute from cold.

Not bad overall but not really our expectations when we bought it - still we bought a new VUE because the old one fully met our needs, and the new GL is much more refined so we're OK with it overall. We just don't talk it up as we couldn't really rave about the economy.

 

Our first two tanks gave us 26 & 27 mpg. This was in some lovely NE Ohio weather (cold & snow) and before I had a feel for driving it. Scangauge is showing better than 30 now but it hasn't been calibrated yet.

 

Be a bit wary of the Scanguage numbers - it's an indication but not an accurate measure so if that's what you're using, I'd check your gas receipts against miles driven for a ballpark reasonability check.

I have one also but have yet to get an accurate read despite all the calibration activities. All my MPG reports are based on calculation using fuel consumed vs. miles driven, mostly off the same pump with the same brand of gas.

I record our details here and let the website compute the FE. Would be great if you would add your details too as the more data points the better the idea we all have of how these perform under what conditions. As I mentioned, we're cold start, short suburban 90% of the time so that kills us. What's your typical pattern?

 

Just added my 3rd tank to database. A couple of short cold weather trips really sucked down the FE. My work comute is 85% highway and about 50 miles but that is weekends only. My wifes is within walking distance and only dries in really bad weather. We have little stop and go city driving in our rural area with some rolling hills.


As far as the scan gauge goes, it was off by 2 mpg but it did help to identify the trips that hurt the FE.

 

Given your pattern, I reckon you're right in the ballpark. I see about the same variation on the Scanguage but working on tuning that up. As you say, an indicator though. I reckon if your wife used it exclusively, you'd see way under 20 as that would be even more extreme than ours :-) Our experience of a long rural/highway journey, limited stops, rolling hills and about the same sort of percentage mix, was we hit 26-28 so I see how you get what you do.

However you look at it, it's not an EPA 27/32 vehicle, I reckon 20/28 would be a fair evaluation.

A note to apologists - don't bother flaming me. I'm not being mean to Saturn but facts are facts, and, yes I know how the EPA does their testing and the required display of them; nonetheless your local Saturn dealer will point out the EPA as a major sales feature. In my opinion that's not honest, and not excused by a lack of due dilligence and the buyer-beware philosophy.

Still, it's the best matched and smoothest engine for the VUE IMHO so not bad once you get over the disappointing city fuel economy. If sold as a performance booster for a smaller engine rather than a hybrid system, the critcis would be raving.

 

My two cents worth about EPA numbers is that they are on the high side but that is across the board. However, with Hybrids - there are many more variables that effect mpg than with a traditional gas powered vehicle.

We all know about driving habits but one variable that is seldom talked about is the computer system controlling it all. Seeing the various results of other Saturn Hybrid owners leads me to belive that certain Hybrids may be programmed differently than others and that ones driving is just one factor in determining mpg.

About a month ago - I was driving my normal route home and noticited that the ECO light would not kick in at certain times and the Hybrid was not shifting smoothly. The next day, I kept a close eye on it and everything was fine and has been since. Just like with a desktop or laptop computer - rebooting the system when it is acting up sometimes fixes the problem (or in my case turning the Hybrid off).

I am a Systems Administrator and I still scratch my head sometimes as to why two identically setup computers perform differently. Maybe it is the same for Hybrids.

 

I agree with you - the computer is the soul of it - in fact it's worth making sure your hybrid software is current. My personal feeling is that the GL is set up too conservatively, in that it uses the battery too sparingly. I'd rather it use the battery to the point of exhaustion more, something that could be achieved through the software. Perhaps this will happen as more poor city numbers come in and Saturn see the pattern.

I'm in IT too - numerous systems, across the range. I'd love to have a way of selecting the 'mode' on the hybrid. That would help us out I'm sure.

 

This is an issue I have run into with the VUE in really cold weather. It's only happened on a couple of occasions. It seems that somehow the computer gets "confused" and seems to forget that it has a hybrid system attached to it.

The shifting is rough because the hybrid system actually smooths out the transitions. But you will also notice other behavior as well. The eco light turns on only in the most rudimentary circumstances. If you watch the charge gauge, you will see it kinda bounce losely around the middle almost like there is no connection.

Solution: Turn off the car and turn it back on.

It would be interesting to debug this problem, but given it's rare and erratic occurence it would be a hard to track down.

~X~