Another tank at 18.4 MPG - what can I say folks.....

 

Whew! The little VUE Green Line seems to get some big emotions running.

As a daily driver of the VUE GL, I completely disagree with the lively commentary. My experience so far has been mostly very positive.

First, I did research for over a year, driving the Escape Hybrid several times. I was shopping for an SUV with better economy, hybrid or not. A hybrid was a bonus since the no-idle and regenerative braking just seem so logical. I also drove the Prius and Civic Hybrids, but just for education. I had read many good things about the Escape Hybrid, along with some harsh reviews. Though I was mostly impressed with the Escape Hybrid, a few things bothered me. One was the blender sounding engine on highway cruising and worse on accelerations. And for the one feature that I had looked forward to, the electric driving, I found that the engine restarted almost immediately when accelerating. I had to drive so gently to stay electric that I couldn't fathom anyone but the utmost gamer holding up traffic to eke out the benefits of this capability. I also felt the price was steep, and according to many reports, like all hybrids, the economy would disappoint compared to the sticker. My overall impression was positive, but not overwhelming enough to put down $30K. So when I heard the VUE was around the corner I decided to wait. During the wait, I borrowed a family member's regular 4 cylinder VUE for two weeks and got mpgs in the low 20's under ideal conditions.

After a few test drives in the VUE hybrid, I was very impressed with how well the car worked. I had read a few clippings on the VUE which were mostly positive. And, given the price, and how normal it drove, I was willing to bet the economy would live up to the window sticker as well as other hybrids.

A few months into my VUE GL, I am still pleased. The economy is very good. My last few fills are: 30.8, 29.6, 30.0, 25.2, 31.1, 25.7 mpgs. My mileage between fills has been 150 miles to over 400 miles. The 25.2 was from cold days where I made many short trips and the engine barely warmed up. I also had friends driving and "testing" the car. The last 25.7 came from a lot of idling while scraping windows. A negative I found during cold startups is the engine noise. But, after a few minutes of driving, the car is fine. My old car used to drop economy by 20% during the cold months. It looks like the VUE GL is doing the same.

Why am I so happy with my GL? Compared to the regular VUE, it has 40 more ponies and a claimed 20% better economy. In my actual driving the economy gain is more like 40%. Granted, I have been learning to pay more attention to my driving with the Green Line, but there must be some true benefit. And yes, a digital economy readout would be useful ($2k option on Escape), but the eco light is surprisingly effective. It took me some driving to appreciate this. Also, the many Escape Hybrid drivers on this site seem to end up in the low 30's as well. The gamers will always get more, but they can probably get more from a Hummer. I'm guessing the gamers could get more out of an Escape Hybrid than they could out of the Saturn GL too, but for price difference for the same type of SUV, it should.

OurGL: I would get your GL checked. That is low even brand new.

I understand that many on this site are probably Hybrid or electric vehicle enthusiasts that want nothing but the maximum everything, and anything short of that is "junk" as one post puts it. But what of all the non-hybrids vehicles that make up the rest of the market?
The bottom line is if you look at this Saturn GL as an SUV with very good fuel economy, for the non greenhybrid.com blog enthusiast, this is a great buy, and you can feel plenty smug when regenerative braking and no-idle stopped at lights.
Peace, and Go Bucks!

 

So how on earth are you getting that? We drive pretty normally so what are you doing that's getting you those MPG's. We must have something pretty wrong with ours?

 

Yes, if nothing else, for the betterment of all VUE owners, please, share your driving technique so that others may copy it and enjoy similar FE, as well as combatting the notions of such poor FE as it seems to be recieving.

 

I'm getting on the order of 26 MPG on my Green Line with what's more or less 80% suburb driving (in Metro DC). Highway mileage is much better than EPA, but the "city" mileage is more like 20 MPG for me so far.
I've only got just over 1200 miles on it so far. It'll be a couple of weeks before I get a good long highway run to see how well it performs versus the sticker.
It's easily 30% improvement over the MPG I was getting on my conventional Vue.
-Rick

 

Hey, that's fantastic! Welcome to GH BTW.

 

Thanks for the welcome, it's appreciated.

I had an interesting drive today to work - my commute is rather a short one (less than four miles each way) with speed bumps, stop signs, and a traffic light all causing a lot of slowing then accelerating. I've been doing barely 20 MPG on that drive. Yesterday on the Saturnfans board I read a message suggesting that babying the Vue's system (slow acceleration, avoiding braking, etc.) would actually hurt the performance. So, today's drive was more aggressive on the gas and brakes and the mileage went up to 22 MPG! Now, measuring such short trips isn't quite repeatable but it'll be interesting to see how this stands up.
It's very odd tromping on the gas to save fuel, but I guess that gives the boost system the chance to get you more quickly out of the lower, less-efficient gears.
-Rick

 

With the BAS and a nonvariable transmission, you probably don't want to baby it at all, as you don't get the benefits that HSD owners do, and you want to get into the cruising mode ASAP, but at the same time, you probably don't want to push it too hard.

You should also experiment around to see if you can get the ICE off before you get to a stoplight, or see how near stop effects work. If you can get some kind of ICE-off coast up to a red light, that should help your MPGs considerably.

 

Sounds like you might have read my post.

Constant coddling of the system, especially if you're doing city driving, will end up decreasing FE. The battery will end up getting depleted as it won't have enough opportunities to charge. So you not only lose out on what small boost you get from the electric motor, you're also paying th price for charging the battery from the engine as well.

The VUE GL does best when it's cruising. The faster you can get up to cruising speed the better off you are. Of course, you can't floor it either.

I've been trying to figure out the right amount of acceleration, but my commute doesn't have much in the way of stop and go city driving.

I've also read that people who have installed the K&N cold intake system have seen performance improvements both in HP and MPG. However, that needs more investigating.

~X~

 

Do you have some way to scan data from an OBD or interest in instrumenting the car to gather data? For example, I used simple current loops to generate audio level signals recorded in a laptop. This provides raw data that can be used to quantify vehicle operation.

Bob Wilson