Jetta TDI Throws Down with the Prius
I was in Miami recently and had the opportunity to rent a Toyota Prius. I’ve never driven a Prius before and once I actualy figured out how to drive it, it was quite fun. But as gas prices continue to climb in the wake of Memorial Day, I was most impressed with the gas mileage. So when I saw the new Jetta TDI commerical this weekend where the car is compared to a Prius I found it quite amusing.
The Jetta TDI claims that it gets 58 miles per gallon (mpg), breaking the record for all current “gasoline” fueled cars, even beating the Toyota Prius – a hybrid. I might have grown skeptical in my old age, but I’m having a hard time swallowing this claim to fuel economy. What, were they driving 20 mph on the highway and never stopping?
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It is interesting to note that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists the vehicle as getting an estimated 30 mpg city/41mpg highway – and that’s running the air conditioner (a claim of the commercial). Do you want to take bets on a “false advertising” campaign circulating in the blogosphere?
I know this car appeals to a lot of people. According to the commercial it’s fun to drive and makes a great “vroom, vroom” sound that is “missing” in the Prius. For those who are concerned about fuel economy this car, comparably speaking, gets good gas mileage. It could also be argued that it’s ahead of the curve of the new fuel economy standards that were passed last week. This new policy will go into effect in 2012 and ramp up through 2016 and will require passenger cars and light trucks to get an overall average of 35.5 mpg by 2016 (it is currently 23.1) while cars are expected to average 39 mpg (currently 27.5) and trucks will be required to get 30 mpg.
Interesting policy considering hybrids like the Prius already exceed these new standards. I’m not going to debate the new fuel economy standards but I will say that it doesn’t go far enough on reducing our use of fossil fuels. America needs to support technologies that have a greater impact on reducing our dependence of oil like flex-fuel vehicles (FFVs), electric vehicles (EVs), plug-in, flex-fuel hybrids, hydrogen, and others.
I wonder what car company will go after hybrids next….
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May 27th, 2009 at 1:55 am
I had a 2009 Jetta TDI and got 51MPG routinely going from Austin to Dallas. The 58MPG was done by a couple of hypermilers driving thousands of miles across the country. I drove a Prius for the weekend and got 40MPG.
May 27th, 2009 at 2:18 am
My ‘09 Jetta TDI (named Loretta) averages in the mid 40s – that’s a mix of in-town & highway. 58 was the record and I believe the people who did it only did 55 mph at most. It’s nice that it tells you what you’re current MPG is so you can learn how to drive and get better mileage.
A Prius would probably be a good bet if all you do is in-town stop & go driving – since it has regenerative braking and can charge with the brakes. But if you do more highway miles, the TDIs rock. Also, VWs are just better designed and dang does Loretta have a lot of trunk space, which I use every bit of.
It’s nice that diesel is back to being cheaper than gas. But what I really want is for VW to NOT void your warranty for using over 5% biodiesel. Wish they would jump on the biodiesel wagon – B5 seems much harder to find than B20. And Loretta wants to be a volksvegan!
May 27th, 2009 at 3:56 am
My 1999.5 TDI averages in the mid 40s. I think it’s quite appropriate for VW to point out they have had high mileage technology in production for 10 years
.
Now, let’s see a TDI-hybrid running B100…
May 27th, 2009 at 4:10 am
I had a 1986 VW Golf Diesel that got 55 mpg when I stayed at the 55mph speed limit. That was 23 years ago.. They might be able to do what they claim. Only problem for VW is that diesel is always more expensive than gasoline. Just wonder if they used materials that allow it to use biodiesel?
May 27th, 2009 at 4:11 am
All power to whomever improves on the gold standard for fuel efficiency as long as they’re really doing that and then leaving a vehicle with ample space to justify driving instead of riding a scooter or public transportation.
I’ve got to blow my Prius’ horn. Almost 130,000 miles, average 50 mpg, with four people and two large dogs. I’m nuts to write this out loud but it’s only needed new tires since I bought it in 2004. For 18 months I drove 140 highway miles a day to work and shuttled kids locally when not working. I’ve never encountered anything with the Prius that I haven’t been able to get inside it: Five arborvitae trees; two adirondack chairs; a rolled 12 x 13 foot rug; bicycles. It goes on and on.
May 27th, 2009 at 5:28 am
diesel has been 10-20 cents cheaper than 87 gasoline in San Diego for the past few months…this is a big change from where it was a year ago. I have an 09 TDI as well, so I’m happy to see the prices reverse. I am bummed that I can’t run over 5% biodiesel…otherwise, its been a great car.
May 27th, 2009 at 8:46 am
I drive around in an old Peugeot 106 diesel and get 70mpg out of it – at motorway speeds! Oh yeah, and I’m British, so our gallons are larger than yours, so UK observers have a tendency to laugh at such paltry aims as 30-odd mpg for all cars by 20-whatever, only because we’ve forgotten that you guys use different conversion factors!
US liquid gallon = 3.8 litres
UK (Imperial) gallon = 4.5 litres – nearly 20% more, hence UK mpg figures are 20% higher too!
Damn: my Peugeot’s not so good after all…
May 27th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I have 1300 miles on my ‘09 TDI Sportwagon. It’s a lot funner to drive than the Prius, definitely. But I’ve only been getting 32 mpg. That’s still great compared to where most cars are, but it’s not getting the 40’s like the hype factory rumored.
I met another guy on the road who swore they got mid forties all the time. How could it be so different? I’m wondering if VW manufacturing isn’t consistent and some are winners and some losers.
Certainly I wanted to believe the rumors that the EPA underrated it, but that has not been true for me yet.
May 27th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Truth in advertising is an oxymoron. It is clearly a very high mileage car. That’s good. But we will not get much more out of that technology unless we build diesel hybrids. Cost is the limiting factor to that combination.
The Jetta costs about $5K more than the new Insight:
http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2009/04/first-sighting-of-new-honda-insight.html
And whatever you do, don’t burn crop based biodiesel in one. Also demand proof from your biodiesel distributor that they really use waste grease instead of virgin oils. I suspect some are starting to make false claims now that demand for waste grease biodiesel is high.
Flex-fuel cars are also old school. If you are concerned about energy independence, drive a high mileage car. The highest mpg flex fuel car in the states is 19 mpg:
http://gas2.org/2009/05/11/biofuel-industry-%E2%80%93-no-money-no-respect/
For every 1.25 gallons of corn ethanol one gallon of it came from fossil fuels. Flex fuel cars are competing high mileage cars for car sales, hampering innovation.
People still think the Prius gets its best mileage in the city. My wife got 58 mpg on a 40 mile highway trip yesterday in a Prius (at 65 mph). Priuses always get much better mileage on the highway.
May 27th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Andy, get your foot out of the accelerator! If you treat it nicely it will get better mileage. Also, it will improve once you break it in a little more, it’s still very tight.
The problem (in my opinion) with pushing hybrids and EVs is that you have batteries to dispose of later. There are other technologies that are more useful, Biodiesel for one, boosted ethanol (made from cane not corn) engines.
The commercial from VW is misleading though, the 58mpg was some hypermilers driving over several thousand miles, same type of situation with the Fusion Hybrid getting 70+mpg.
May 27th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
SLVR6,
Batteries are recycled, not disposed of. Like the metal used to make a car, the lithium and lead are reused. Ethanol does not “boost” engines, it degrades their mileage. Not all biodiesel is created equal. Using virgin oils screws with food prices and damages ecosystems.
May 27th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
I think the 2010 Golf TDI being slightly less weight will do even better than the 30/41mpg combination published by the EPA. A Golf TDI 4-door will be available making it even more maneuvable in city traffic and parking in tight spaces over it’s sister Jetta.
I am going to wait till September or October when they start hitting the U.S. Also not bad is the 6th generation GTI with a more aggressive stance and much improved interior layout. It’s mileage is still very honorable at 32mpg on the highway.
May 28th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Wow!!! I suppose that Ford Fusion hybrid never got 1440 miles on a single tank of fuel either. With the assumption that they only stopped to change drivers in that 34+ hour stint, the average speed in the Washington D.C. area and on the beltway was just over 20 MPH. the average fuel mileage was over 80 MPG. Yes it was done by hypermiling experts. And it was on a week-end which would reduce the traffic.
Sorry Prius cheerleaders, but the mileage ratings for the Prius were also obtained by conservative driving in a manner that was best suited for the MPG ratings. The big increase in MPG averages for diesel powered vehicles, especially in the city is a result of the operation cycle of the diesel engine that does not have “pumping losses”.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:48 am
Chuck,
We consistently get 50 + mpg highway in our Prius. Not a big deal.
May 29th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Of course it’s misleading. They forgot to mention that the Prius has achieved well over 100mpg in similar hypermiling experiments.
And a diesel is *not* a good sounding engine, even a turbo. It sounds like a backhoe. Lol, some construction equipment have turbos too.
May 29th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Oh, and we get 50+ in our Prius, too, without doing anything but driving it like a normal car on mixed highway/city.
And yes, highway is usually better. Stop-and-go LA traffic is particularly good for the Prius MPG’s, which softens that pain a bit I guess…
May 29th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
The reason ‘09 TDI drivers can’t use more than B5 biodiesel is simply the type of emission system VW chose that periodically regenerates the diesel particulate filter(DPF). The DPF is burned off periodically by an extra squirt of fuel into the regular combustion chambers. If more than B5 is used, too much unburned fuel will end up in your engine oil and this may destroy a TDI engine over time.
Another technology (one not chosen by VW) allows for the fuel injection to occur downstream by adding an extra injector closer to the DPF. With this in-stream injection, biodiesel is actually superior to diesel fuel, because the oxygenated fuel more completely burns off the DPF thereby resulting in less frequent burn offs and less engine backpressure.
VW chose the cheaper version thereby disregarding the ability to use high blends of renewable fuel.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I suspect that the new TDI’s fuel economy is highly underrated by the EPA. My ‘06, with the older 1.9-liter, under the new fuel economy standards is rated at 33 mpg, overall. I have gotten below 40 only once when the car was new. I drive conservatively, about 70% highway (62 mph, mostly highway commute, curvy/hilly roads), and I average 46.5 in the winter and 47.5 in the summer and that’s after taking out the possibility of a odometer error. I subtract 4% after dividing the miles driven by the gallons pumped in. When I was able to find B20, I lost only about one mpg, however, the car ran smoother and quieter.
A certified, independent company estimated the ‘09 Jetta TDI automatic and came up with 38 city/44 highway. They did not test the manual, but it probably would have done a little better.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I’m not sure which group exaggerates more; Prius owners or TDI owners, but I like my chances running my windy-road commute in my ‘06 Jetta TDI manual against a Prius and I’ll even run 20% biodiesel. If we were able to put each power train into the same car, I like my chances even better. The Prius is designed specifically for those green-minded folks. The TDI goes in the same car as the regular gas guzzlers, so the technologies are not truly compared.
Sure–A Prius can win in strictly in town driving, but if one is only driving in the city, then he or she doesn’t really burn that much on fuel anyway, since he or she is not driving that many miles. I must drive 16K miles per year to get to work and back. The whole concept of parallel hybrids doesn’t even make since for people who actually drive on the road where the electric motor does nothing but weight down the vehicle. The Prius does well on the highway because of the entire set up for the vehicle to excel in fuel economy; not because it’s a hybrid.
A serial hybrid, like the upcoming Volt; now that’s a different story.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
The VW hypermiler experiment with the Austrailan couple is well documented, http://www.vwvortex.com/artman/publish/volkswagen_news/article_2508.shtml, and most importantly worth evaluating prior to suggesting false advertising, although anything is possible in the blogosphere.
Reducing dependency on fossil fuels and lowering CO2 will require many solutions like you say (although the Sec of Energy has killed funding for hydrogen). This includes flex fuel vehicles, plug in electrics and “other” in your terms, meaning clean diesel cars like the Jetta TDI that get 20-40 percent more mpg than a similar gasoline car.
Your last comment about which company will “go after hybrids next” exemplifies the problem with this debate. If told often enough people develop a mindset that regardless of economics, real world performance or any other factors, if it is a hybrid it must be good and if not a hybrid it therefore must be bad. Have you driven the Jetta TDI ?
While hybrid technologies are very viable and worthy technologies of saving energy, they are not the only ones out there, as many respondents are reporting ver good fuel economy with a clean diesel as well as a nybrid. NOt everyone wants a hybrid nor would find an optimum benefit or value for their specific needs; some might like a diesel and some stick with smaller very fuel efficient gasoline engines.
It’s not that companies are attacking hybrids– in fact VW has hybrids in its future as well. More at http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2009/gb20090211_050836.htm
Many are waiting for a diesel hybrid vehicle that would be very hard to beat from a fuel efficiency http://www.hybridcars.com/news/volkswagen-diesel-hybrid-pipe-dream.htmlperspective.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:17 am
These are the hypermillers that were able to achieve the 58 mpg record (http://www.fuelacademy.com/world_record_drives.html) using a stock Jetta TDI.
One other point is the Jetta also still gets you the federal tax credit.
June 1st, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Its pretty rediculous how Diesel cars are ignored in the US. The Jetta and the European Ford Fiesta are both diesel and kill any hybrid they go against. This kind of thinking is why american auto makers are going to all die out soon!
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I had an 85 Jeep Cherokee with a 2.1L Renault TDI 70L tank that would get around 700k city and 1000k highway. No 0 to 60 times in 3 seconds, but an amazing overall performer. I believe that the whole fuel economy issue comes down to peoples ridiculous expectations with the family minivan. We DO NOT need daily drivers with the raw power that they currently have today. Save the sport car specs for sport cars.
Automakers and consumers need to put more focus on vehicles that go from A to B Safely, Cleanly, and Economically, not the fastest. I also had an 81 VW Rabbit Diesel that would get 1200k per tank. It can and has been done.
My current 2005 Honda CR-V AWD 70L tank gets 300-350k city and 550k highway. What happened to the last 20 years of automotive efficiencies?
June 24th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
The Commercial stated “The Volkswagen Jetta TDI SET A GUINESS WORLD RECORD 59 MPG.” It didn’t say it routinely gets 58 MPG. On a highway trip I average 45-48MPG, running around town and to work I average 38-40MPG
August 9th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I find it odd that anyone would think 58 mpg is a great improvment over the 1980 VW Rabbit was pulling 53 HWY and 42 City fully loaded with passengers from
the showroom floor.
The current ‘09 Pruis is greatly reduced in mpg when a few fatties crawl inside of it and forget the range and mileage when you add gorceries or a suitcase. Dollar per mile per weight, we’d be better off with a Dodge Durango or Chrysler Aspen if we can’t find a surviving ’80’s era VW Rabbit.
Just keep in mind, we are seeing nothing new and nothing innovative in EVs today. The first all electric vehicle in 1832 has not changed much excluding the modern rechargeable batteries (1859), and hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells in 1839. These breakthroughs are not new and not the least bit in new groundbreaking technology.
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