CTC Review: 2008 Saturn Vue Hybrid

[wing]

I live out in the burbs and commute to more burbs through backroads --

So yeah no traffic at all.

[UmroAyyar]

Let's be honest...The Big 3 are miles behind in hybrid technology compared to Honda or Toyota.

The Escape Hybrid is a pretty darn good.

The Ford Escape is a pretty darn good vehicle in its own right.
Ford and Nissan use Toyota's hybrid system in their cars. Only GM has its own two-mode mild hybrid systems in its car/suv lineup.

[Blueprint]

Just a comment on the "German" origins of the Vue : most of the engineering was done by Daewoo in Korea.  The prime market was Europe, but this is a real "world car" from GM that optimizes the ressources it has in Asia, Europe and the US.

Comparing this Vue to a fwd Escape (base 4 cyl. auto) or fwd CR-V would be interesting... My own ownership of a manual, awd 1st-gen CR-V netted pretty much a 10 l/100 km average on dry roads.  All the cars I drove with a combination 4 cyl. / auto in the 2-litre engine range pretty much averaged in the 10.x l/100 km range.  The Vue's problem is weight : it is by far the heaviest cute-ute on the market today.

[carcrazy]

IMO, the FE for comparison purposes it's meaningless unless you drive the cars back-to-back literally.
Even if you drive multiple cars on the same route at different times, important and changing environmental factors will impact the results.
I get different readings every day driving on the same route to work even if I make every effort to keep the driving style constant. Sometimes the difference is as high as 1L/100km or more.

[wing]

This isn't a scientific review....

If you are that concerned about the FE, read the NRCAN results those are perfect

[quadzilla]

This isn't a scientific review....

If you are that concerned about the FE, read the NRCAN results those are perfect

If you are that concerned about the FE, don't be shopping SUV/CUVs.

Fixed it for you 

[Leviathan]

Ford and Nissan use Toyota's hybrid system in their cars.

Nissan uses Toyota's but Ford uses their own although the lawyers got in and did some CYA   patent sharing with Toyota.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Escape_Hybrid

The Escape Hybrid uses technology similar to that used in Toyota's Prius. Ford engineers realized their technology may conflict with patents held by Toyota, which led to a 2004 patent-sharing accord between the companies, licensing Ford's use of some of Toyota's hybrid technology in exchange for Toyota's use of some of Ford's diesel and direct-injection engine technology

[carcrazy]

This isn't a scientific review....

If you are that concerned about the FE, read the NRCAN results those are perfect

I wasn't trying to dispute your comments on Vue’s FE at all. I understand this is not a scientific evaluation; therefore the FE remarks are only your observations on one particular vehicle tested in a particular test environment and I take it just as that.
However, your observations can't really be used to compare Vue's FE with any other vehicle's FE since they haven't really been tested under identical, well defined testing conditions -critical for any testing.

NRCAN results are only guidelines as well as I don't think they do a back-to-back testing either nor they test in a controled environment.

For example, my Mazda3 2.3L I4 gets much worse FE than my Outlander 3.0L V6 4WD, but the driving pattern is totally different. My point is, the environment and driving conditions are crucial; therefore any vehicle-to-vehicle comparison is meaningless unless the testing is done under identical conditions.

[Mitlov]

Ford and Nissan use Toyota's hybrid system in their cars.

Nissan uses Toyota's but Ford uses their own although the lawyers got in and did some CYA   patent sharing with Toyota.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Escape_Hybrid

The Escape Hybrid uses technology similar to that used in Toyota's Prius. Ford engineers realized their technology may conflict with patents held by Toyota, which led to a 2004 patent-sharing accord between the companies, licensing Ford's use of some of Toyota's hybrid technology in exchange for Toyota's use of some of Ford's diesel and direct-injection engine technology

I was going to say the same thing.  Nissan's system is licensed from Toyota.  Ford's was independently developed, though conceptually similar.

[UmroAyyar]

Ford and Nissan use Toyota's hybrid system in their cars.

Nissan uses Toyota's but Ford uses their own although the lawyers got in and did some CYA   patent sharing with Toyota.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Escape_Hybrid

The Escape Hybrid uses technology similar to that used in Toyota's Prius. Ford engineers realized their technology may conflict with patents held by Toyota, which led to a 2004 patent-sharing accord between the companies, licensing Ford's use of some of Toyota's hybrid technology in exchange for Toyota's use of some of Ford's diesel and direct-injection engine technology

Thanks for the info, this is really interesting.
Toyota and GM have usually done the sharing. Honda and GM have done that too.

Ford made more changes, they mated the Atkinson cycle engine with the hybrid components.
http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/jk/080521.htm

[dorin]

IIRC Toyota has used an Atkinson-cycle engine in the Prius since the first generation.

[conwelpic]

in reading the final review on this vehicle, I checked out the specs on the Vue and I'm glad I purchased my Rondo. 
Overall the Rondo is about the same size vehicle both in length and height and with the same wheelbase, but mine has more legroom, more headroom, larger storage area, same size 2.4L engine (not hybrid), good gas mileage (35mpg on the highway - real world driving!) and ten grand less!

[rrocket]

The Clarity isn't a hybrid, so I'm not sure what it has to do with this thread.  I may as well start praising MB's Blutec diesels if we're going to widen this discussion beyond hybrids.

How is the Clarity not a hybrid?  A hybrid car "is a mode of transportation that uses more than one energy source to power it." The most popular being gasoline/electric.

The Clarity uses hydrogen (generated by the fuel cell) instead of gasoline to power the batteries.

So isn't it a hybrid....hydrogen/electric vehicle?? (ie. using more than one source to give the car motive power)

[Frugal Canadian]

Just curious, when Lawrence Yap did a review on the Chev Malibu Hybrid, he wrote that he found the trip computers Fuel economy numbers to be calbrated for a non hybrid version, so he was surprised to find hand calculated FE to be better than first thought, 7L/100km. Did you use the DIC readout to report on FE or use a more accurate hand calculated method? Also from the information I'v read GM's 2 mode hybrid system is quite a leap forward, They also provide a system used  commercially in transit buses throughout North America. I dont claim that makes them more advanced, however some people in this forum seem to think North American manufacturers are so far behind Toyota that the will never catch up. The hybrid buses doing duty in our cities every day are manufactured by GM. Interestingly I have heard by reliable souces that they are extremely reliable and fuel efficient. How come nobody critisizes Toyota/Honda for not providing commercial solutions for North America?

[wing]

Frugal, I used both the computer and manual calculated based on full tank and trip meter it was basically identical.

Although I'm not sure the computer could be "calibrated" wrong, it isn't "calibrated" really it measures fuel output based on timing from the injectors.

[MSantos]

So isn't it a hybrid....hydrogen/electric vehicle?? (ie. using more than one source to give the car motive power)

No, the Clarity FCV is a fully qualified electric vehicle powered solely by electric motors.

The Honda FC stack is just another way to recover the stored energy in the hydrogen in order to generate electricity, in fact paralleling what a battery pack does but through a different chemical process.

A contemporary HEV is an aggregate of at least two sources of kinetic energy which can be used directly to power the car either in Series, Parallel or both:
-ICE + Electric motor
-ICE + Hydraulic
-ICE + Flywheel
-Etc

Cheers;

MSantos

[WopOnTour]

I’ve noticed an interesting tidbit: use the Vue’s automatic climate control and the engine does not shut down when coming to a stop. Kind of defeats the purpose of the hybrid system or the climate control, which ever you decide is more important.

All the writer needed to do here was read his owners manual...
About all that was required was to press the Hybrid A/C button (the "other" snowflake button with the green hybrid "H" next to it) Since the A/C compressor is belt driven on the GM BAS hybrids it obviously cannot operate when the engine is in Auto-Stop. Selecting the Normal A/C snowflake button therefore overrides the Auto-Stop function and essentially nullifies any fuel economy improvement or reduced emissions benefit.

Even though the A/C compressor quits pumping refrigerant when the engine stops in "hybrid" AC mode, the HVAC sytem will continue to deliver cooler air for up to a minute or so- long enough for most red-light events or typical stop & go traffic cycles. While some newer high voltage hybrids get around this issue by using an electrically operated A/C compressor, many older hybrids (eg. 01-03 Prius) and even some current production so-called FULL hybrids (i.e. Ford Escape HEV) still don't- and therefore function in a similar fashion to this Saturn Greenline. (i.e. the engine operates at all times unless A/C is commanded OFF or the "green" A/C mode is selected by the operator)

As far as I'm concerned, any sort of quantative analysis of fuel economy benefit (to whatever level of science) of this hybrid review could certainly be nullified if the writer spent the entire week using "regular" A/C functions as the primary hybrid function of Auto Stop-Start is paramount to any observed FE gains. This is especially true of the BAS/FAS hybrids which lack the ability to launch under full electric power and therefore rely mostly on this feature, hence thier GM classification as "mild" hybrids.
Thus a comment like...

Unlike other hybrid systems that are able to run on battery power at low speeds, the BAS system always requires the engine to be running.

is hardly an "apples to apples" comparison.What you conveniently forget to mention is the BAS technology contributes less than $2000 to the cost of the vehicle, therefore delivering returns on that investment much sooner than any other hybrid. If you desire to save even more fuel and pollute even less (and spend much more $$ to do so) a 2-mode version of the VUE Greenline with full electric launch AND advanced power source "blending" (via an automatic shift from an input split to a compound split configuration) will be available later this year and a "plug-in" capable version coming in 2009.    
This writer goes on to state:

Onto the BAS hybrid system incorporated into the Vue. To say that I am not extremely impressed so far would be an understatement. Yes, the specifications say the Vue hybrid is able to achieve an average of 25 per cent better fuel economy than the standard Vue, although I’m not sure how this would actually translate to during my daily commute.

Since the parameters of this commute are not specified by the writer, what seems to be implied here is his daily commute must obviously include long periods of highway, freeway, or steady state driving, with few stops- which also negates most benefits of this hybrid's capabilities. In these conditions the 2.4L Ecotec engine would be performing (and consuming) in a fashion similar to a non-hybrid FWD VUE, with the exception of small portions of electrical assist while under higher engine demand loads due to heavy payloads, mountainous terrain, or when demanding WOT acceleration or passing power .

FYI-The 25% improvement mentioned in some Saturn literature is based on the new "real world" 2008 EPA COMBINED fuel economy test results which lists the non-hybrid FWD 2.4L VUE as 22mpg and the Greenline model achieving 28mpg (again, COMBINED highway & city in US gallons) Early owner responses to the EPA site fueleconomy dot gov appear to corroborate these numbers. Not sure what this writer's FE numbers were,since he failed to publish them in order to support his negative comments.

Since there's no way for ANY hybrid to compensate for poor driving habits, certain environmental conditions OR a serious lack of product knowledge, in this case one could certainly state... "Your mileage my vary!"
JMO
WopOnTour

[airbalancer]

"All the writer needed to do here was read his owners manual..."
But the writer is Canadian,
 Canadians do not read owner manuals until the day we sell our cars
 

[tpl]

I do not understand why a hybrid with auto engine shut off for the ICE ( which is a good thing) would not be engineered with an electric A/C compressor.  More expensive? possibly, but it should be possible to make a very efficient A/C unit that does not need engine power AND as there would no longer be any flexible hoses AND the unit could be tucked away from engine heat... should last longer as well.

[airbalancer]

Or should they be using a heat pump, then they could use the heat off the electric motors to heat the car
I have only use the AC about 3 x this year
I rather open the sun roof or if in the car drop the top