MORE than a year ago, a Chevrolet
marketing man was gamely presenting the new Malibu family sedan to the
press in a suburb of New York City. The company had trumpeted a hybrid offshoot
of the car, but with the standard
Malibu about to go on sale, Chevy became strangely evasive.
Queried about the hybrid — how
many they would build, when we might see it — officials hemmed and hawed like
parents pressed for the whereabouts of a pregnant teenage daughter.
Now we know why. The standard,
gasoline-only Malibu turned out to be an impressive family sedan.
But it’s time to add the Malibu Hybrid to the growing pile of hybrid failures
from General Motors.
These half-hearted efforts have
included pickups (now defunct) that couldn’t save fuel, but could run your
power tools.
Even the guys who wear tool belts to weddings wouldn’t bite. Then G.M rolled
out full-size hybrid S.U.V.’s from Cadillac,
Chevy and GMC.
These 20-m.p.g. behemoths (with outsize window stickers) have proved as popular
as the A.I.G. corporate jet.
And last week — long after I
had driven the Malibu Hybrid and recorded these impressions — G.M. abruptly
pulled the
plug on the car after just a year of production. In May, Chevy sold just
706 Malibu Hybrids, along with only 35 units of its
sister car, the Saturn Aura Hybrid.
The Aura and Malibu are so-called
mild hybrids, which makes them as authentic as supermarket salsa.
To keep the price down, the Malibu forgoes the things that let full hybrids
generate impressive mileage: a large electric
motor that can propel the car with no help from the engine, a sizable battery
pack and a continuously variable transmission
to efficiently mix and match electric and gas power.
Instead, the Malibu adopts a
simple motor-generator driven by a wide engine belt and connected to a small
nickel-metal-hydride battery pack in the trunk. Like other hybrids, the Malibu
recharges the batteries by capturing energy
generated by coasting or braking.
Unlike full hybrids, the system
delivers only supplementary squirts of electricity; aside from automatically
shutting down
and restarting at stoplights, the engine is always on duty. The Malibu also
gains a bit from a taller rear-end gear ratio
that lets the engine spin slower at highway speeds.
The car, which starts at US$26,275,
has a federal rating of 26 miles a gallon in town and 34 on the highway.
That’s solid mileage for such a roomy, comfortable sedan. The problem is that
the conventional 1LT 4-cylinder with an
optional 6-speed transmission is nearly as economical at 22/33 m.p.g. and
costs US$2,325 less, comparably equipped.
The feds estimate that the hybrid will save you — wait for it — just $146
a year in fuel compared with that 4-cylinder sibling.
Even accounting for a one-time $1,550 tax credit, this hybrid won’t put you
in the black through fuel savings.
That wouldn’t matter as much
if the Malibu Hybrid felt smoother, quicker or more advanced than the straight-up
gas version.
But it drives worse, not better.
The gas pedal and 4-speed transmission
misinterpret messages from your right foot, making it hard to hold a steady
speed
or accelerate smoothly. The result is a queasy sensation of surging and relaxing,
especially in heavy traffic and hilly terrain.
Drop off the gas to coast, even at freeway speeds, and the clumsy power-regenerating
mode makes the car feel as if it is
dragging an anchor.
Because of the batteries, the
hybrid also has slightly less trunk space: 13.3 cubic feet compared with 15.1
for the
standard model.
The Chevy lacks another compelling
feature: an animated display screen to coach you to drive more efficiently.
Instead, a dull microwave-oven readout shows the trip mileage and an Eco light
comes on when you’re coasting.
A small indicator shows when the 2.4-liter, 164-horsepower engine is sleeping,
and a gauge shows whether the batteries
are charging or assisting the engine.
It’s as though G.M. would rather not focus attention on the underachieving system under the hood.
These days, offering a hybrid
without an engaging system display is like building Yankee Stadium and forgetting
the
scoreboard. In either case, you want digital fireworks to celebrate the home
team’s performance.
That’s what the superior Ford Fusion Hybrid does, with a screen that affirms
the owner’s enviro-shrewdness
even as it helps her to achieve maximum mileage — in the Ford’s case, a knockout
41 m.p.g. in the city.
Doing my best slow-lane imitation
of a Prius driver, I managed a respectable 28 m.p.g. in overall city-highway
driving
in the Chevy, just below the E.P.A.’s combined estimate of 29 m.p.g.
If you are not already scared
off by G.M.’s sudden abandonment of this hybrid, the upside is that Malibu
Hybrids were
being sold at fire-sale prices even before the cancellation. G.M. has pledged
to improve its mild-hybrid system and
bolt it into yet-unidentified models next year — small consolation to existing
owners.
Oddly, while G.M. may win the
race to mass-market a plug-in hybrid (the Chevy Volt), it can’t seem to build
a
conventional hybrid to save its endangered life. Perhaps G.M. should take
a lesson from the Toyota Prius:
sell a hybrid as a loss leader until the technology finds a critical mass
of buyers. Those buyers become unpaid
spokesmen, bragging to anyone who’ll listen about their wonderful Chevy hybrid.
What G.M. would ultimately gain
in buyers and public image might be as valuable as, oh, a spare couple
of billion dollars in government aid.