We've heaped a lot of praise lately on the Toyota Highlander Hybrid. It is a recommended model, our top-scoring SUV, and it recently made our list of the 12 fuel most useful cars per mpg. What we haven't said about the Highlander Hybrid is that it epitomizes the type of technology that America needs to move toward a less oil-dependent future. Can automakers achieve 56.2 mpg, on average, by 2025? The Highlander Hybrid shows the technology is not only in reach, but much of it is on the road today.
At 27 mpg overall in our testing, this big three-row SUV gets better fuel economy than any other SUV and even better than many small cars. And it does it all with very good reliability.
Clearly as a hybrid it doesn't waste gas idling, and it recoups some of the energy that otherwise would be wasted in braking. Its all-wheel-drive system adds minimal drag, because it's electric. The new engine this year, which boosted mileage by 4 mpg, uses direct injection, as almost all of the most fuel-efficient new models do. And the engine has no external belts at all. All accessories, from power steering to air conditioning, are driven electrically. Its hybrid transmission uses no energy-wasting fluid couplings, and it functions as a continuously variable unit to keep the engine spinning at its most efficient rpm.
Added together, these technologies make up the SUV that environmentalists, sometimes called heretics, said could be built back in 2003. None of the Highlander's technologies are new since then, although all have been more fully developed to operate more seamlessly and reliably.
The Union of Concerned Scientists back then posted a blueprint on their website of "the 35 mpg SUV" (though they weren't the only ones to advocate for it). Back then, 35 mpg was the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) target these groups were advocating, and which automakers, including Toyota, were loudly proclaiming was impractical. Congress eventually passed fuel economy standards in 2007 that called for CAFE to rise to 40 mpg by 2020.
Although the Highlander doesn't quite get there, it looks a lot like the blueprint. And it does save owners more than 200 gallons of gas a year, adding up to about $800 compared with a non-hybrid Highlander which gets 18 mpg overall. And that's key. Improving the gas mileage of a big utilitarian vehicle like the Highlander saves more than twice as much gas as a Prius does compared to a very fuel-efficient conventional small car like the Toyota Corolla. And under the corporate average fuel economy scheme, SUVs would still be allowed to make up the low end of an automaker's average.
The only drawback to the Highlander, which we've noted before, is the cost: $47,255 for the AWD Limited version we tested. Our Highlander has leather, navigation, a sunroof, all the bells and whistles. No question, it's very nice. And it's a fair argument that spending the extra thousands for a Highlander Hybrid will be a tough sell to some.
The Obama administration estimates adding all these technologies to more average new cars would cost an average of between $2,100 and $2,600, and that gas savings would more than make up for that extra cost within five years.
With the Highlander Hybrid as the standard bearer, we think the more fuel-efficient cars of the next decade could be very easy to live with.
Related:
The car technologies needed to reach 56.2 mpg and beyond
Consumer Reports says 56.2 mpg is good, but we can do even better
Downsizing: The 12 most useful cars per mpg
Downsizing your SUV for better mpg—does it make cents?
Guide to fuel economy
—Eric Evarts
No comments:
Post a Comment