Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Crosstrek Hybrid Mileage - Part 2

Mileage - Part Deux

In our last post, we looked at what is mostly highway mileage for the Crosstrek Hybrid. On a trip from the Buffalo, NY area to the Detroit, MI area, the highway mileage was 37.4 mpg. That's pretty good considering the regular Crosstrek is rated at 33mpg highway, and the hybrid weighs about 500 pounds more.

What about the mileage after a couple weeks of use?


Around Town Mileage

Mileage just around town will really depend on how far your trips are, and how complete your battery is charged. For me, my office is 15 miles from home, part of that is freeway, and part is surface streets.

For the week of June 2-8, I did normal driving. To the office, to activities around home. For the week of June 9-15 I had to go to a conference in downtown Detroit. This location is about 38 miles from home. 

All told, for the two week period, I put on more miles than I would normally drive, 
562 miles. During that time I used 7.89 gallons of gasoline. Which works out to an average MPG of 71.23, which is pretty damn good. 

At the price I paid for gas, I saved $35.36 in gas compared to an average of similar sized AWD crossovers. I'd like to figure out how much the electricity to charge cost, to get a more realistic value of the savings.


Charging in the City

However, much of my charging was free. Where I was going, I would have to pay for parking. I did find a parking garage across the street from Cobo Hall which had free charging stations in it. Best part is that parking at Cobo was $15 a day and the garage was $10 a day, and I got to charge my Crosstrek.

The GM World Headquarters, otherwise known as the Detroit Rennaissance Center, has four free charging stations out front, if you get there early enough to plug in before the Chevrolet Volts start showing up.


Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid Charging at GM World Headquarters
Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid Charging at GM World Headquarters

GM World Headquarters / Rennaissance Center
GM World Headquarters / Rennaissance Center
A Subaru at the GM headquarters is not as weird as it may seem. GM once invested about $1 billion dollars into Subaru's parent company, Fuji Heavy Industries, taking approximately a 20% share. This was around 1999.

Remember GM once wholly owned Saab as well. They bought about 50% in 1989, and bought the rest in 2000. Their investment in the two companies is how the Saab 9-2x came about. This car was basically a Subaru WRX in some Saab clothing.


Saab 9-2X
Saab 9-2X
Of course, GM sold their stake in Fuji Heavy Industries in 2005. They really missed the boat on what more collaboration with Subaru could have done for them. GM's bankruptcy pretty much forced them to offload Saab too. 

So seeing a Subaru charging at GM is not completely weird, they were once friends.


Want to track the mileage over time?

On the right-hand column, there is a link to a Google Sheets page that I'm using to track the Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid's mileage over time. Feel free to check it out from time to time.  Here's the link too. Google Sheets for tracking Mileage


2 comments:

  1. Your mileage seems to be fluctuating quite a bit week-to-week. Can you attribute that to anything? e.g. hot weather so running A/C more, not plugging in as frequently some weeks, more/less highway driving? I'm considering purchase of a hybrid crosstrek but would like to get some solid feedback from current owners first. Mileage is a key reason I'm considering the hybrid crosstrek. I live in Vermont and drive to the mountains to ski every weekend so want real AWD and good gas mileage so not a lot of choices. I'm also really curious how you scored that 71.23 mpg that one week. That seems incredible.....were you constantly plugging in to achieve that? Thanks for the data and feedback!
    John from VT

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  2. Mileage fluctuation are totally dependent on whether there are longer trips involved or not. If the trips are short, and we can recharge the battery, mileage is fantastic.

    However, on really long trips, without the battery at all, I think I'm still getting over 37mpg highway, which is pretty good.

    ReplyDelete

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