As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hybrid

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

Which is still higher than the fit so why did they say its the most fuel efficient sub compact?

Seems no matter how you do the math they miscalculated.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

CR does have their biases, i.e. bagged vacuums, and blindsides. Based on the blurbs in the recent auto issue, they don't understand the needs of people who would actually go off road in a truck. Probably even those would use for work.

It's been long enough that I have forgotten the details, somethings of one CR issue stick out. It had reviews of some new compact cars. I don't the remember the exact models, I want to say the Fit and Versa were two. I do remember they reviewed brand new model cars that weren't out for an entire year yet. Some of these cars got the 'they're too new for reliablity predictions', and others got the reliable predictions (Honda and maybe Toyota).

Maybe the cars that got that thumbs up in reliablity were out just long enough that they hit CR cut off point for being comfortable calling it, but they didn't spell that out. So reading these reviews with differing predictions on reliablity for brand spanking new models leaves the impression that CR has a bias for certain brands.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

Surprised to see the Lincoln MKZ earn a "worst of class" rating. I thought it was supposed to get 40mpg highway, no?

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

Just the hybrid.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

The MKZ doesn't offer a 4 cylinder like the Fusion, just the V6.

What class is it placed in? Among upscale and luxury sedan market class on fueleconomy.gov, it's middle of the pack. Tied with several offers in EPA ratings.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

Kinda strange that the Lexus HS250 hybrid is rated best at 31mpg even though the MKZ hybrid, in the same luxury sedan category, gets even better city mileage at 41mpg (EPA).

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

why is it weird? it is obvious from many different reviews and tests that Ford hybrids are EPA optimized.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

none of which have to do with their mpg testing.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

I was trying to give some illumination on why some details, when looked at closely, in CR seem, well, off. The discussion on the Fit and Fiesta numbers is what dragged me into the thread.

mpg overall/city/highway/150mile trip
Fit 33/24/37/41
Fiesta 33/22/45/41

Most people taking a closer look at those numbers, and incorrectly, taking and average of the city, highway, and trip numbers would conclude that CR made a mistake. Even when cwerdna correctly calculated the average from the given numbers, the Fiesta still had a slight advantage, and the Fit combined should be rounded down to 32.

So why did CR list the Fit over the Fiesta? Did they use some more esoteric formula, maybe taking the distances traveled into account? (I had to look up harmonic mean) Simply a difference in rounding do to the number of significant figures used? City mpg used to break combined mpg ties? They actually have an Honda bias as some have claimed?

They aren't a scientific journal, and most of their readers likely wouldn't care, but when someone finds something like this, with CR not being completely transparent on their methods, it does give the impression that they aren't as neutral as they say.

On another note, CR's, and other reviewers', mpg tests are not as analytically vigorous as the EPA's. There are many variables beyond their control when testing out on public roads.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

I was confused when you said 6-yr old Corolla because starting 2009 the Corolla had better milage (32 vs 29 via Consumers Reports).

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

I had just started reading the actual CR article.
CR listed SmartCar (39), Fiesta (33), Yaris (32) Fit (30) and Mazda2 (30) as the best Sub-compacts, but only Fit is "check rated" meaning meets CR requirements for other considerations (reliability, safety, etc).

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

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why is it so hard to understand that EPA uses published lab test for their testing and that any manufacturer can chose to make their cars perform better on that test? case in point ford - CR and almost every magazine that tested them, as well as most mpg recording sites tested camry hybrid and fusion hybrid very similar or the same... except for the epa.

if you actually read CR, Fiesta did get 33mpg, Yaris got 32 MPG, they recommended Fit because it was their recommended vehicle (smart actually got 39mpg). Same way they recommended Golf TDI over Insight.

On the other tests, both elantra and corolla were recommended but Corolla simply got 3 mpg more in their tests.

all the cars were on the list, some just had checks next to them and some did not... they dont hide anything, everything is clearly explained in the article.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

I don't know how they got such low numbers... My wife drives our '11 Prius on her commute, which is probably 75% highway, and she gets about 50.5 mpg. And that's here in Western Washington, where it's difficult to drive that efficiently because of all the changes in elevation... not a lot of flat spots out here. How the heck were they getting 44 mpg, unless they weren't making any kind of an effort to drive the Prius even halfway efficiently?

Also, how the heck did they only get 23 mpg in a Scion xB, unless they were driving 90% of time in stop & go traffic? I have an '11 Scion xB, and it has to tote my heavy nice person around, I drive probably 75% city, and I get over 26 mpg. When I was closer to 50% highway driving, I was getting around 27.5-28 mpg.

The driving skills of their testers is dubious at best. They must all have lead feet or something.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

They get 44 in the prius the same way thousands of other people get 44. Shorter trips, more city driving without trying hard to get mpg. they just drive it like any other car.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

Imagine what will happen driving the same way with the PHV.

My favorite drive with the PHV was the morning before they picked it back up. I made a breakfast run in the burbs. The drive to the drive-thru and back was about 6 miles of hilly terrain with the fastest speed just 45 MPH. The engine never started. The entire drive used only electricity.

The plug-in model addresses the only efficiency exposure. It provides a significant MPG boost in many situations, especially short trips.
.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

See the links I posted in post #14 and How we test: Fuel economy. They intentionally don't hypermile nor take steps like overinflating tires or grille blocking to improve mileage. It's got nothing to do w/their driver skills and correct, they are NOT making ANY kind of effort to show improve/inflate the numbers of the Prius nor any other car.

To quote from the PDF I posted in #14:

If you again look at the links I posted, on a 3rd gen Prius, their highway result was 55 mpg and their 150-mile trip result was 53 mpg.

As for the Scion xB, here are the numbers they got on an 08 4AT: 16 city/30 highway, 23 overall, 29 for 150-mile trip.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

^^ If average speed in 25 mph, they come to a stop every ~ 500 yards.
The CR cycle tests regen, and penalizes heavier cars.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

Their test is less grueling than my daily commute.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

The whole "mpg testing" field is a mess because:
(a) mpg varies wildly depending on many many factors, broadly grouped under where, when, and how you drive
(b) if mpg is tested under tightly controlled conditions, the number you get is valid only under those particular conditions.

EPA testing is tightly controlled, but there are problems with it:
- despite the best efforts of the EPA, the particular conditions used may not reflect how you will drive the car
- it doesn't tell you how different cars will respond to changes in how the car is driven (e.g., whether driving economically will yield better improvement with one car than another) or to variations in driving conditions
- hybrids in particular are designed to be driven differently from conventional cars and are equipped with displays to help the driver to accomplish that - so using conventional "stomp-and-go" driving in a hybrid may decrease mpg more than it would in a conventional car (the Insight-I MT is an extreme example: driving it at 80-90mph or in stop-and-go traffic yields 40-50mpg, while economical driving in the summer can yield long highway trips at 100-110mpg)
- changing driving patterns may mean that the test protocol doesn't reflect the current situation, so the protocol may have to be changed (this has already happened at least once to the EPA), making year-to-year comparisons difficult
- EPA mpg testing gives the impression that you will get that mpg no matter how you drive, so it does not encourage efficient driving (except for hypermilers, who use the EPA mpg as a benchmark to beat by as much as possible)
- manufacturers probably DO engineer their cars to score well under the EPA protocols, and this could be good or bad depending on how well the protocols reflect the range of conditions the car will be operated under

The CR mpg testing doesn't seem very well controlled to me, but CR present their mpg figures as a folksy "this is what you can expect to get". Simply replicating a poorly controlled protocol doesn't improve the accuracy of the results. For example, I can drive the same stretch of roadway five times at the same average speed and vary how I do it to get five different mpg figures (some of which might be better than using cruise control). With the Prius-III, the variations could be very subtle. Weather conditions also have a huge effect, especially on high mpg cars like hybrids: ambient temperature (25% winter/summer for my Insight-I), wind, humidity. And "we drive all cars the same way" ignores the fact that hybrids are designed for fuel economy. Since the mpg figure is for people who actually care about fuel economy, it would actually be more informative to drive each car with a moderate effort to get good mpg. For the folks who don't enough about fuel economy - yet - to make any effort to drive economically, mpg numbers won't make as much much difference.

For me, the EPA mpg's are the best-controlled numbers we have, but even so I try to think of them as simply a starting point.

 

Re: As some automakers advertise that conventional gas cars better than hybrids, Consumer Reports hy

problem with epa tests is that manufacturers start designing their software to do better on them, so in the end, you get unattainable results.

fueleconomy.gov numbers prove this too. I think 40!!!!! MPG Elantra drivers average 30.8 MPG there, while Corolla drivers average 32 MPG.