Update: GreenLine Vue fuel mileage

[Rick Murphy (RicksVue)]

Updating an earlier blog post (sorry, been way too busy to blog lately):

I've been keeping detailed gas mileage records on my former 2003 VUE and my 2007 VUE Green Line since March of 2005. This lets me directly compare the cost of operating the two vehicles.

For the 2003 (AWD V6), I recorded 21.361 MPG over 20,529 miles at a cost of 0.12 per mile (for fuel only).
For the 2007 Hybrid, I've received 26.777 MPG over 20,504 miles at a cost of 0.11 per mile.

Gee, you might say, only 1 cent per mile? Big deal. Well, it's not quite that easy. That 11c per mile is mostly due to recent gas cost increases; early on I was closer to 9c per mile. (That's because the average fuel cost for the V6 was $2.51 per gallon while it's $3.04 (was $2.84!) on the Green Line and going up rapidly.)

Now that the mileages are about the same, it's interesting to compare the daily cost: the 2003 VUE cost me $4.65 per day, while the GreenLine is costing me $3.37 per day - very impressive given how much the fuel cost has risen since I bought the Green Line.

Working it another way, the Green Line used 765 gallons of gas that has cost me $2,375.46 over it's lifetime, where the V6 would have used 959 gallons of gas for the same distance. At the same average per-gallon price, that would have cost $2925.71: a savings of $550 so far. That gap is going to go up rapidly as gas prices rise. If prices get up to $5.00 a gallon I'd be able to recover the cost of the hybrid purely on fuel alone (ignoring the environmental advantages of the GL.)

Saving $550 isn't peanuts. That's almost enough to pay for 10 gallons of gas! :-)

So, Saturn, howzabout a plugin hybrid? It'd look great in the garage next to our Astra! :-)

[Rob]

Great info Rick. Thanks for sharing it. I've been tracking my mpg for my Ion Red Line and Sky Red Line just to see what I'm getting. Still in the debate process of keeping the Ion and buying an Astra after the winter with a decent down payment or trading it in prior to get an even lower payment.

But with the credit mess on Wall Street and the Fed not passing the plan, have to take a wait and see I guess.