Spreading awareness about the dangers of SUVs.

Have you seen the Cadillac commercial for the Escalade Hybrid where they claim it has the same gas mileage as a MINI Cooper? Consider this a lesson in how deceptive and desperate SUV commercials can be.

The Cadillac Escalade in the commercial is a hybrid model. Automotive.com reports the 2009 Cadillac Escalade Hybrid Sport Utility at 21mpg highway and 20mpg city. The base model Escalade gets a dismal 14mpg highway and 10mpg city. Anything is an improvement over that. Regardless, fuel economy in a luxury SUV is an oxymoron.

The voiceover in the commercial simply states that the comparison is made against a MINI Cooper, but doesn’t clarify which model. However, in the hardly legible fine print that briefly rests at the bottom of the screen you might notice that the MINI Cooper they Cadillac compares it to is the Cooper S, which is MINI’s turbocharged model. But Cadillac doesn’t want you to know this. You are led to believe it’s the regular economy car. Regardless, according to Automotive.com, the 2009 MINI Cooper S Hatchback gets 34mpg highway and 26mpg city. Unfortunately, Automotive.com does not have the mileage listed for the convertible model, but MINI’s site claims the same fuel efficiency with a 2-3mpg difference between manual and automatic transmissions. The base model gets 37mpg highway and 28mpg city! Obviously Cadillac wouldn’t compare their hybrid’s gas mileage to that fuel economy.

You also need to take into account that the Escalade Hybrid has a sticker price of over $75,000 – $80,000. The Cooper S, on the other hand, has a sticker price of under $24,000. If you really want to compare apples to oranges as GM did in their commercial, without the blatant lying, there is also a platinum edition (non hybrid) Escalade that is over $80,000. You could almost buy four base model MINI Coopers for that price, as pointed out in the comments here!

Green living blogger Max Gladwell found on his test that the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid, driven around Beverly Hills, CA got only 10.3MPG (see below) during their five mile journey! On what planet is that better than the 26mpg the MINI Cooper S gets in the city?

Now, I’m not a MINI owner, so I was curious as to what comments from true enthusiasts about this blatant false advertising would look like – check out five pages worth at NorthAmericanMotoring.com!

According to Toyota, its plug-in Prius hybrids are averaging 65 miles per gallon in real world testing. This is an improvement of 15 mpg over the recently-unveiled 2010 Prius. The secret to the big fuel mileage increase is a battery with the capacity to store much more energy than the unit in the standard Prius. This means a lithium ion technology and a much greater expense. So far, Toyota has not committed to a date when you’ll be able to actually purchase a PHEV Prius for yourself, but it does plan to bring in another 150 test cars for testing.

Bill Reinert, Toyota’s U.S. alternative-fuel vehicle manager, points out that this 65 mpg figure is from drivers who were instructed to pilot the test car the same as any other vehicle, so there are no hypermiling techniques required to achieve the mileage boost. Of course, the car must be plugged into an outlet to recharge its battery pack and fuel but mileage and range are still mostly determined by the driver’s right foot. This is one reality that affects any car, including hybrids and fully electric machines.

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Finally, something is being done about the biggest of the big gas hogs… Automakers will be forced to increase the fuel efficiency of trucks and SUVs to just over 24mpg. Is this going to hurt the pocket books of SUV owners?

According to Ron DeFore, a spokesman for SUVOA, Sport Utility Vehicle Owners of America, the answer is yes. Of course that’s what he wants you to believe because the public’s fear of this will benefit him. He says that this will lead to higher vehicle prices… The fact is that it will only raise the price by $200 – just a fraction of a 30k to 80k dollar SUV, which you’ll get back w/ the added fuel savings! Does he actually believe what he says? He also claims reduced performance and fewer options such as V-8 models. Give me a break! If you really need that to, oh say, fight a war in the middle east, I’m sure they’ll give you an exemption.

At least this is a step in the right direction, though you need to consider this… “Fighting America’s oil addiction with these standards is like fighting lung cancer by smoking 49 cigarettes a day instead of 50,” said Don MacKenzie, a Union of Concerned Scientists engineer.

…now if they weren’t rolling death…