Toyota Sienna Brings Extraordinary Fuel Economy For Road Trips

Much of the staff here at Valley Hi Toyota regularly read through the monthly car magazines and major automotive sites. If you do as well, you will find, possibly to your surprise, that professional automotive journalists really like minivans. Yes, the same people who are paid to drive European supercars, over-the-top luxury land yachts, and ten-foot-tall off-roaders are very likely to be the first to praise the comfort, space, and overall usefulness of a minivan. And many will tell you that it is the best type of vehicle for a cross-country trip this side of an upscale RV with someone else doing the driving. 

That brings us to the Autoblog journalist who tells of his road trip from Michigan down to the Gulf Coast and back in a Toyota Sienna, how impressed he was with its hybrid drivetrain, a standard feature on all Sienna models. For Toyota, this simply made sense. For their day-to-day use, minivans generally carry out the duty where hybrids thrive. In-town trips to the grocery store, school, after-school locations, and so on. Plenty of opportunities for the brakes to bring energy back into the battery to assist the engine to accelerate again. Minivans will also be the first vehicle in the stable to be chosen for a road trip. And if it is a hybrid, the cost of that road trip may be brought down significantly.

For a round trip of over 2000 miles, the journalist and his family averaged 31.87 miles per gallon. While that is below the EPA-rated 36 mpg figure, the author acknowledges a very full vehicle, some bad traffic, and at least one period of poor traveling weather. He brings up another Autoblog journalist who achieved 39.4 mpg on a road trip in a Sienna who insists there were no hyper mileage measures taken. Hence the term “Your mileage may vary”

This is where it becomes amazing to think that the competing minivans from Honda and Kia have no hybrid models at all, much less across the model line. The combined EPA mileage for both those competing vans is 22 mpg, and again, your mileage may vary. The other hybrid minivan on the market is the Chrysler Pacifica Plug-in Hybrid, which still has a rated highway mileage of 6 mpg below the Sienna, probably due in part to being almost 400 pounds heavier. To the author, any advantages the Kia and Honda may claim pale in comparison to Sienna’s lower operating costs, in which the benefits just keep coming with the miles.

The Autoblog author’s Sienna also had all-wheel drive, which he stated was much appreciated when encountering a heavy storm in Kentucky. As much as it makes sense for a minivan to be equipped with both a frugal hybrid drivetrain and poor weather safety of AWD, the Sienna is the only minivan on the market to offer both of those features on the same vehicle.

The writer didn’t just dwell on the drivetrain. He praised the Sienna for its space, comfortable dynamics, infotainment system, and large center console. But it was clear he really thought Sienna’s hybrid efficiency gave the vehicle an insurmountable advantage over the non-hybrid competition. If you have family road trips in your future and like to keep an eye on their cost. Or, just like a vehicle that will carry plenty of people and things and do it efficiently, there is a Sienna waiting for you at Valley Hi Toyota.

Tags: efficiency, hybrid, minivan, performance, road trip, Sienna, test drive
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