Driving for Economy: Suzuki Alto gets 117 mpg in Global Green Challenge
Posted Nov 3rd 2009 3:01PM by Jeremy Korzeniewski
Suzuki Alto - Click above to enlarge
Proving once again that the way you drive is equally as important (and perhaps more so) than what you are driving is the Suzuki Alto. While the little Japanese runabout is certainly a fuel miser in its own right, we wouldn't have guessed that it could achieve over 100 miles per gallon no matter how light its accelerator were pressed, but that's exactly what happened at this year's Global Green Challenge.
In fact, the Suzuki Alto managed to churn out 117 miles from each and every U.S. gallon of gasoline (this equals 141 mpg in the UK with carbon emissions of 89.9 g/km). The route took the little car a total of 1,900 miles in seven days from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia. That performance was good enough that the Alto took home top awards in the Light and Small categories as well as the scoring the Best Urban Cycle trophy.
[Source: Suzuki]
PRESS RELEASE:
ALTO ACHIEVES 141MPG IN CITY DRIVING
COMPLETES 1,900 MILE AUSTRALIAN FUEL CONSUMPTION CHALLENGE AVERAGING 72MPG
After a successful New Zealand North-South drive at an average of 64mpg last month, the highly fuel efficient Suzuki Alto has taken part in a further MPG marathon, this time down through Australia, managing to complete the journey at an average consumption of 72mpg overall, an 18.5 per cent improvement over the official Australian combined figure (+13 per cent over European figure) and a staggering 141mpg (2.0 litres per 100km) attained in City traffic – the lowest recorded of any entered vehicle.
The Global Green Challenge ran North-South from Darwin to Adelaide and placed conventional and alternative fuel cars against each other in a 1,900 mile real world test. The winner of the challenge was the vehicle judged to have recorded the biggest improvement over its official fuel consumption figure.
Alto won the 'Light' and 'Small' car categories; 'best urban cycle' category and an overall CO2 emission of 89.9g/km, using just 123 litres of fuel for the seven day trip.
Despite some extremely trying conditions for drivers and cars alike, with most teams opting to turn off the air conditioning to save fuel even in temperatures soaring to 43 degrees centigrade, the 1.0-litre petrol engined Alto continued to defy expectations by showing some of the much more expensive diesel cars the true meaning of fuel economy.
Using a simple combination of lightweight design, aerodynamic efficiency and a small and efficient 1.0-litre petrol engine the Alto managed to outrank similar size diesel cars including the Ford Fiesta ECOnetic Turbo Diesel and MINI Cooper D which recorded an overall improvement in mpg of 15.4 per cent and 12.2 per cent respectively.
The Alto is one of the lowest emission vehicles on sale in the UK at 103g/km with an annual VED charge of just £35. Alto is priced from £7,495 for the SZ2 grade and is available under the Government Scrappage scheme from just £5,495.
For more information on the Suzuki product range visit www.suzuki4.co.uk.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
meme 3:53PM (11/03/2009)
Your math makes no sense. 89.8g/km is 145g/mi. A gallon of gasoline releases 8788 grams of CO2 when burned. That means 61mpg.
Furthermore, the press release states right there that the vehicle averaged 72mpg. Assumedly that's UK, meaning 60mpg US.
The 141mpg / 117 mpg figure is clearly garbage. It's almost certainly an "instantaneous" mpg figure, meaning it comes from a time when they had their foot off the gas or were going down a hill. It's definitely *not* the average for the trip.
Please correct your grossly misleading article.
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NeilBlanchard 9:19AM (11/04/2009)
Hi,
Approaching this in another way 123 liters = 32.4931624 US gallons, and so dividing this into the 1,900 miles = 58.47 MPG US
The title/main premise of this article is way wrong...
Sincerely, Neil
dwarg 3:31PM (11/03/2009)
If you're going to keep writing the line, "the way you drive is equally as important (and perhaps more so) than what you are driving."
Then perhaps you should find someone with a Hummer and get them to do some hypermiling to see how green that car can be. If it's more important than the car you drive lets see them out perform the stock MPG of a Prius.
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Sam 1:12PM (11/04/2009)
Search on you tube, top gear, bmw m3 and prius.
Not scientific by a long shot, but it'll basically answer your question.
dwarg 2:09PM (11/04/2009)
Interesting, it's actually the opposite of what I was asking. They managed to prove that when you drive the Prius as aggressively as possible it gets bad milage. If they'd wanted to prove anything they would have done both. Do the test they did and then another where they drive a 10 mile commute through a city, you know like people actually do in real life, and see what the best milage they could get out of the BMW compared to the Prius.
But of course the show is called Top Gear, not Practical Driving under Ordinary Conditions.
So next time I'm buying a car that I'm going to drive in circles as fast as possible I'll be sure to take their advice.
Shane 4:00PM (11/03/2009)
Yeah, 1900 miles with 123L of gas is about 58.4mpg (US). The math is pretty screwed up here. At first, I was like, whoa, why don't they just enter this in the X-Prize?
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wincros 5:31PM (11/03/2009)
That is what I get too. You are the one guy here who can do arithmetic. 58 mpg is a long way from the headlines. Who writes this stuff and why hasn't he been fired?Just completely incompetent. I wonder what proportion of the miles were those "city miles". The road mileage must be awful to drag it down to 58 for the whole trip.
a546119 4:32PM (11/03/2009)
"Proving once again that the way you drive is equally as important (and perhaps more so) than what you are driving" - Bullsh*t. This is not "proven" at all, except in the minds of self important TopGear fans. Yes, you can hypermile a BMW M3 to *almost* match the fuel economy of someone driving a Prius full out on a race track, but both of those usage scenarios are completely unrealistic.
In the real world people are *not* experts when it comes to driving with regards to fuel consumption, and any car that can make getting good fuel economy easy (eg: hybrids, diesels, etc) is a HUGE win over forcing the driver to use an unsafe hypermiling driving style. How hard is this to understand? You'd think someone posting a story to a site blogging about green cars would understand something so basic.
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JustZisGuy 8:34PM (11/03/2009)
2.0 L/100 km? That's nothing! Proving once again that the way you reset your trip odometer is equally as important (and perhaps more so) than what you are driving is the Toyota Prius, which managed a staggering 564 mpg (0.5 L/100 km) in city traffic. Incredible but true!
Of course, I started out with the engine warm, the battery fully charged at the start and discharged at the end, and went mostly downhill, but these are just quibbles. Think of the headline we can put in the press release!
For more information on how to blindly quote misleading PR headlines visit green.autoblog.com.
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Matt 8:42AM (11/04/2009)
Yes the figures are particular to this competition - they are meant to be compared to what the other cars in the competition achieved over the same course, not what you would get driving anywhere else. The "winner" was the one with the biggest improvement over the quota consumption according to government tests.
You'll see the Fiesta used even less fuel (http://globalgreenchallenge.com.au/assets/results/eco/Eco%20Challenge%20Final%20Results.pdf) but as the percentage improvement was more for the Alto, the Alto "won" their "category"
Ernie 4:19PM (11/04/2009)
I think they mean there was a 117% improvement in gas milage, which the press release says is how the competition was judged.
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NeilBlanchard 12:19AM (11/05/2009)
117% of the rated mileage -- or miles per gallon; they're more or less the same...
:-/
Neil