The 2001 Jetta GL with a 4 cylinder 2.0 L engine and a five speed manual transmission is rated by the EPA for 21 MPG city / 28 MPG highway. With driving about 10 MPH over the limit in most areas, having the air conditioning blasting, using regular gas instead of premium or mid-grade, and having the car fully loaded, we managed to squeeze a little over 30.5 MPG out of it. Things that helped were maxed out air pressure in the tires and mega-premium full synthetic oil in the engine (Mobil 1 15,000 mile).
- 96 hours of driving
- 5956 total miles
- 195.15 gallons of gas
- 30.52 MPG average
- 62.04 MPH average
- $599.12 in gas
- $3.07 average price of gas
Using the Forbes numbers for the H2, which are the most generous (since GM doesn’t provide its own numbers for the H2) … if we drove a Hummer H2 on the same trip, it would have cost us $1,406.53 using 458.15 gallons of gas at 13 MPG highway. If you use the other numbers for the H2, it could have been as much as 827.22 gallons of gas costing $2,539.57 at 7.2 MPG.
On the other hand, if we drove a 2007 Prius, which gets 60 MPG city and 51 MPG highway, we would have spent $358.51, using only 116.78 gallons of gas at 51 MPG (using the lower of the two numbers since most of the trip was highway). The 2007 Prius is the most fuel efficient vehicle for model year 2007 according to EPA estimates. Since we bettered the advertised fuel economy for the Jetta, it is reasonable to say that we would have bettered the fuel economy for the Prius as well, and would have come in at a lower number.
Kelsey and I were looking at air fare for Arizona, and it was coming up at anywhere between $500 – $1000 round trip for the both of us … we got to see a good chunk of the country in the process, and only spent $600 on fuel. Quite the bargain, I say.