Motley Fool article claims 58 mpg on the highway - with a Chevy Cruze

I do not dismiss the number out of hand. The best SFC in any petrol car is about the same +/- 5%. If you have a high gear I imagine most cars have ONE sweet spot where ~ 11 kwh/gallon makes it to the wheels. Decent aerodynamics and low constant speeds requiring 200 wh/mile means 55 mpg.

The trick is staying in that sweet spot through normal driving cycles. Not too hard in the Prius, impossible in the Cruze or any other pretender to the Prius crown.

msrp for the eco is over 19k, and can barely hit 30 mpg in city driving if the driver drives in high gears and sacrifices all pep, otherwise around 27 mpg is expected.

Prius competitor ? Hardly. The article is a hack because it tries to imply that the EPA number is wrong. The EPA is a specific drive cycle while the 58 mpg -- while likely true -- is a contrived synthetic benchmark. By the way, the unfudged highway MPG for the G3 Prius is 71 mpg, and that cycle is more demanding than a constant 55 mph. Using Bob Wilson's graph a Prius on the same synthetic benchmark the fools used would return about 64 mpg. So the Prius beats the Cruze when the most advantageous conditions for the Cruze are picked. Let the Prius pick just about any other scenario and the Cruze is whipped.

 

Keep in mind that the EPA Highway sticker is sharply marked down from the actual measured test results, to approximate the typical American leadfoot driver blasting the AC. From the mid-1980s to 2007, the markdown was exactly 22%. Now it is indeterminate, but typically approaching 30%. So careful drivers sticking close to the test profile can handily crush the EPA rating. Under ideal conditions, I have matched the non-discounted test result in all my recent cars.

The EPA test list shows various Prii getting 66.1 to 70.2 on the highway cycle. Cruze ECO gets 59.7 with manual transmission, 54.0 and 54.1 with auto.

In other entries that appear to be related to city cycle, there is no contest. Prius gets slightly better, Cruze ECO nosedives like a normal non-hybrid.

 

Just wait until the Prius c comes out guys. Then we can have a good comparison.

 

This can probably be taken as the record high. The record high for a Prius is what, 109?

'drafting a truck' Of course that is what people think hypermilers do. And that is used to poo-poo the mileage they get.

 

To be fair, you have to compare apples to apples. Using numbers that you've pulled out of your hat (or elsewhere) doesn't really help in terms of comparison. In fact, it's deceptive.

The FE government numbers, if not perfect, are at least consistent. Those number do no fair well for the Cruz relative to the Prius.

Oh yeah, and it's a Chevy. Plan on spending some of the gas money on drives to the dealership.

-Brad

 

Actually according to the article it's a Daewoo with an Opel engine.

Obviously it's great that such efforts are being made and I think for someone doing a lot of long highway miles this could be a compelling option. I'd like to know what the FE numbers are like at 70-75mph though. Long highway commutes tend to encourage a lead foot.

- D

 

^^ A few GM products were design by Toyota. The Chevy Prizm and Pontiac Vibe come to mind.

A lot of Ford current offerings are Mazda designs (and vice versa). Some Volvo's are Mazda designs as well.

The Chevy Volt is the hybrid cousin of the Cruze, and its powertrain is designed with a lot of engineering by Saab (this could be misinformation but I'll repeat it here).

 

The Volt drivetrain is a Toyota HSD knock-off, with more clutches to insure poor reliability

 

There's a big push this year in media/papers to buy small sedans to combat high gas prices - Cruze, Focus (which has been in commercials for months but still not available, stupid), elantra, etc...

Paper this morning claims most Cruze's will have the ECo engine for 42 MPG highway. Hardly matters around here, Fremont Chevrolet only had 7 Cruzes on the lot last month while Honda had 25 of the outgoing Civics around.

At the end of the day, those small sedans will only net you low 30's at the pump.

I couldn't miss 52 or 53 MPG in a Prius rental, so it still wins by 20 MPG.

 

There is a guy on the Fiesta forum that gets 50mpg in his but he drives like the most extreme Prius hypermiler does. I told him he would probably get 70 in a Prius but he wasn't interested.

I imagine a straight up car like Cruze or Fiesta that can do a 50mpg tank never sees a stoplight in that whole trip.

We are still getting > sticker in our Fiesta and I am happy with that. We are basically getting combined MPG with city only driving.

 

If you check the cruze board(s) you'll see their mpg is all over the landscape ... just like prius ranges:

Chevy Cruze Transmission Update - Chevy Cruze Forum : Chevrolet Cruze Forums

And that's why you'll find buried in the article the following:

So, crunch those 3 sets of numbers and you get an underwhelming number in the low 30's. Still ... that's not bad for GM.
.

 

Let them have a taste of hybrid under certain condition. They'll come asking for more and hybrid provide super MPG under all conditions.

 

The posts over at the Cruze forum are amusing.

Hmmm ... lousy MPG, quicker engine heating. Who wudda thunk ?

An interesting post --

http://www.cruzetalk.com/forum/3503-post19.html



The GM troll was posting not too long ago that Cruze owners are delighted with their cars. Yet

http://www.cruzetalk.com/forum/7392-post59.html

So ... $17 - $19K, low 30's MPG, GM "quality". The Cruze might be an improvement over the typical crap GM sells, but any attempt to say the car is competition to the Prius is a joke.

 

Yeah, on the 2nd gen. Motley Fool ought to write an article stating the 3rd gen Prius claiming 117 mpg since ken1784 got it.

 

On CleanMPG there's a thread with details of Wayne Gerdes' proper test and he found that the Cruze Eco with MT is indeed the most efficient non-hybrid car out there. He was testing it in relatively poor conditions but thought it was worth 60mpg at 45mph in normal conditions utilizing all techniques. At lower speeds he could get over 80mpg using all techniques. Near the end of the thread he posted the results of steady-speed with DWL testing in pretty poor conditions (37F with sidewinds) (CleanMPG Forums - View Single Post - GM’s Most Fuel Efficient Car Coming to Chicago) and found 46.7mpg adjusted at 55mph and 39.4mpg at 65mph.

As with other turbocharged engines, it suffers when you have to rev high so he found you had to stick to DWL rather than P&G to get best mileage.

The Motley Fool article doesn't indicate whether the mileage they got was measured at the pump. Wayne found a very significant difference between the display and the real numbers (up to 9.5%).

Since Wayne tops off, he found that the real capacity of the gas tank seems to be the same as the regular Cruze, it's just limited to 12.6 gallons so that it loses pounds for the EPA testing. It suggests that it would be OK for those concerned with emissions to top off at least an extra 3 gallons.

 

Not sure. I have '96 Protege which is EPA rated at 27/35 (33/39 originally), and it gets ~34MPG without hypermiling.. Prius gets ~50MPG in same conditions.

When Protege was new, 15 years ago it was routinely giving 38-40MPG.

 

Driving very slowly (55 is; that is not really a highway speed) with an incredibly strong wind on your back and accelerating like a total panzy maybe that mileage would be possible. But even then I would really question it.

 

I don't get worked up on a 10mi 1 way trip MPG, one long stoplight in a non-hybrid and it is gone.

I have never reset the MPG gage on the fiesta on a short run up a highway because there is only one trip so you lose your monitoring but I bet I could get mid 40s easy...though that same trip would be in the 70s in the Prius.