Cars.com Hybrid Mileage Challenge: Part 1
It’s official: At $4.20 a gallon in some areas, gas costs more than a cup of the fancy stuff at Starbucks. That’s why Cars.com has revisited its ongoing look at the real-world gas mileage today’s cars are getting. In our last mileage challenge, we took an SUV, a minivan and two sedans on a highway trip around Illinois and Wisconsin, and we concluded that the cars’ EPA highway ratings were easy to achieve. This time around, we wrangled four hybrids — two SUVs, one sedan and one hatchback — and their renowned ability to return extraordinary city mileage numbers to see if they could handle everything Chicago could throw at them.
The Second City certainly obliged. You might call it the route from pothole hell: Drive north 140-plus blocks, east eight blocks, south 115 blocks. Repeat. All told, we spent more than nine hours behind the wheel — 12 hours if you count stops for lunch and Mother Nature — and, thanks to a Cubs game and enough rush-hour traffic to discourage even the Californians among us, we averaged speeds of only about 20 mph.
Details on the cars below.
- 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid: 4WD, 6.0-liter V-8 w/two 60 kW electric motors and electrically variable four-speed automatic; EPA gas mileage 20/20 mpg city/highway
- 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid: FWD, 2.3-liter four-cylinder w/70 kW electric motor and continuously variable automatic; EPA gas mileage 34/30 mpg city/highway
- 2008 Honda Civic Hybrid: FWD, 1.3-liter four-cylinder w/15 kW electric motor and continuously variable automatic; EPA gas mileage 40/45 mpg city/highway
- 2008 Toyota Prius: FWD, 1.5-liter four-cylinder w/50 kW electric motor and continuously variable automatic; EPA gas mileage 48/45 mpg city/highway
We had some ground rules from our last mileage challenge — fill the tires to their recommended cold pressure, keep the windows shut, drive as you normally would — and added a couple more this time around: We avoided cruise control on our route’s brief highway stretch, and because all four cars had automatic climate control, we set the temperature on “auto” at 68 degrees with no air conditioning.
The mid-40s weather cooperated with our A/C mandate, but the Civic did not. The other three hybrids clearly delineated ways to automatically govern the temperature without A/C, but at the end of the trip we found that the Civic’s “auto” button had defaulted the A/C back on. The owner’s manual said such usage ran A/C on an as-needed basis — and the system employs a gas-saving electric motor much of the time. All the same, we have to conclude there might have been a slight mileage penalty. Honda spokesman Jon Fitzsimmons confirmed as much: Running the A/C impacts mileage because it requires energy from the engine or the battery pack, he said, though how much of an impact it has depends on driving conditions.
Weigh in below with any predictions, and check back tomorrow for the results and check out our team with the four contenders.
