NY Times: Cruze "Fossil fuel milage champ"; hybrids still win city, burbs

Nothing against a diesel Cruze, but if I flip the wording around, the writer is saying that a Cruze is more fun and satisfying to drive than a hybrid.

 

I'm happy VW will no longer be the only game in town.

 

Cruze diesel good highway mileage, city not so much! discussed at Autoline Daily this week, click it starting at 18:00 minutes.
Fiat's 500L: the Cavernous Compact - Autoline After Hours 203 - YouTube

 

27 mpg city ?!
Whatever did they do to manage such a poor rating ?

 

Only comes in Automatic; 27/46 mpg + the 4.5 gal. of DEF, mileage is close to Cruze Eco; Compare Side-by-Side .

 

Weight. This generation of Cruze was designed in GM's bloated era, and the diesel model is a little more than 300 pounds heavier than the Eco model and the diesel Jetta. That's going to hurt city fuel economy.

Diesel owners report better than EPA on average. The worst diesel Cruze on Fuelly at the moment is at 30.3mpg. That's below the reported EPA combine. However, the owner reported mix of city to highway is 71% to 29%. The car is likely still in break in phase too. The car has only been out since May. So still too early for user reported data to give a complete picture.
Cruze D (Chevrolet Cruze) | Fuelly

 

It's heavy for a compact and the slushbox automatic probably hurts too.

 

I have no intentions on buying a diesel sedan for economics. You might get 10 more MPG but you'll be paying 50 cents extra for the fuel in my area.

 

Diesel is not the future

 

What is the future? I think it's still better than the plain old gasoline engine. I live in the present and diesel works fine for me here.

 

EV Is the future.

 

I cannot figure out the the NYT headline. Perhaps it was a typo and should have read:
Cruze fossil fuel mileage chump.

 

Quite a weird category. I could see it saying something like best in a price class, but no the cruze diesel is in the same price class as the prius.

Its pretty easy to see why the city mileage may not be as good as the jetta tdi
2014 Chevrolet Cruze Diesel First Drive – Review – Car and Driver

Still if you are only doing highway, it seems to get great mileage at higher speeds

 

Diesel = Fine = C

Getting a grade of just status quo isn't exactly a good sign for the future. We really need to strive for a better tomorrow. Comparing to plain old gasoline isn't constructive. Some of us have been driving hybrids for over a decade already.

Hybrid = Very Good = B

Plug-In Hybrid = Great = A

Let's not overlook how dirty diesel actually is either. Requiring a urea system to cleanse emissions just to bring them to the level clean enough to meet minimum allowable criteria is embarrassing. We shouldn't have to lower our standards for diesel that much when SULEV & PZEV ratings are so easy to achieve with hybrids.

As far as the "Fossil-Fuel Mileage Champ" title of the article goes, excluding hybrids fueled only by gas is quite an omission... especially when the regular Prius delivers greater efficiency in every category... not to mention that it offers a larger interior than Cruze diesel too.

And with such a massive difference between highway & city efficiency, overall MPG is going to be far lower than the advertising will inevitably lead people to expect. 46 highway. 27 city. Combined is only 33 MPG from the diesel. That's dramatically lower than the 50 MPG combined from Prius

What makes diesel compelling? The reality that it costs more per gallon than gas is a big deterrent. That makes the fun-to-drive argument a wash when there's a gas version of the same vehicle available.

 

"Fun to drive" is diesel-washing.

Certainly advert copy extolling black fumes, stink, noise, poor reliability, urea and high price are not attractive.

 

By comparison the 2013 Jetta diesel curb weight is: 3,161 lbs vs 3,475 lbs for the Cruze.

 

A hybrid like the Prius, shutting down the engine anytime you're:

* sitting at a red light
* coasting
* dealing with light load and/or low speeds

is gonna do better than a conventional setup. What drives it home for me in particular is sitting at that red light, shut down, with all the idling cars around...

 

Don't a lot of VW customers just buy the 2.0T or 2.5 instead at a cheaper base price and then get about the same cost-per-mile as far as fuel goes? There's no doubt that you save fuel if you drive diesel, but you're using a much less refined fuel while paying half a dollar more just to get MPG figures that MIGHT be as good as a Camry hybrid, much less a wisely-driven Prius. Please never even bring up the battery costs, because even though that's a solid three grand, a VW's repair costs are just unreal.

 

nice to see vw's take that for america and china hybrids are the future. BTW they also don't see fuel cells as selling anywhere close to as well as diesels
You can see at least in epa testing diesels can't keep up
Compare Side-by-Side

In Europe they drive differently, and have different tests. GM needed to make the cruise diesels for Europe, so why not try to sell it here. Its a good idea. Some want to buy the new clean diesels and they get great highway fuel economy. That doesn't mean there is much of a market.

2013 VW Jetta Comparison Test: Hybrid vs. TDI vs. GLI vs. 2.5 – Review – Car and Driver