While most off-road trucking enthusiasts might view a 4x4 truck that is both a powerful off-road truck and a fuel efficient hybrid vehicle as a bit of a contradiction in terms, Chevrolet has managed to pull off the feat fairly convincingly with the Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid. Released in 2009 to a skeptical public, the Silverado Hybrid managed to largely win over the majority of the serious trucking public, ushering in what promises to be a future generation of hybrid 4X4 vehicles designed to deliver optimal off road performance and excellent towing capacity with increased fuel efficiency. If you just don't see how a hybrid engine can deliver solid towing and off road performance with the technology that is currently available on the market, the proof is in the numbers.
Unlike most other segments of the hybrid automobile market, the percentage of people who purchase pickup trucks in today's society just for day-to-day driving is relatively small. While plenty of people enjoyed owning and operating pickup trucks for regular road driving a decade or two ago, most of that market share has transitioned to sports utility vehicles, leaving the vast majority of truck buyers as being individuals and business owners who depend upon their trucks to deliver solid performance both for highway hauling and dirty off road jobs. With this in mind, you have to hand it to Chevrolet for pulling off a hybrid automobile that actually delivers results to hardcore truck owners.
The Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid is the perfect vehicle for anyone who is looking for a powerful, full sized pickup truck that combines fuel efficiency with rough and tumble design to let you get the job done. It remains to be seen whether the cowboy mentality of many pickup truck owners will come around to accepting that a hybrid engine could have the torque and power to deliver when it counts. However, the Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid is already catching on with business owners who operate a fleet of vehicles and have more of an interest in their bottom line than a need for overt displays of machismo. The truth of the matter is that the Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid has the solid feel and power of a non-hybrid truck while using as gasoline as possible. Now that we have all seen gasoline approach $4.00 a gallon in recent years, the fuel efficiency offered by this automotive technology it hard to ignore no matter what your views on the environment might be.
As far as mileage goes, the Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid offers 21 miles per gallon in city driving and 22 miles per gallon out on the highway, even when it is towing a load of up to 6000 pounds behind it. If you choose to go with the four wheel drive model, that fuel efficiency drops a little bit down to about 20 miles per gallon both city and highway with a towing capacity of around 5900 pounds. To put that in perspective, the Toyota Prius achieves a fuel economy of between 40 and 55 miles per gallon, depending on how the vehicle is being used, and the automotive industry has yet to make a standard pickup with any sort of towing capacity that could deliver anywhere near 20 miles a gallon. While a Prius might have better efficiency than a hybrid pickup, a Prius simply is not designed for much more than daily commutes. Assuming that you clocking approximately 10,000 miles per year, the fuel efficiency that is offered by the Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid will save you about 140 gallons of gasoline per year when compared to a similar non-hybrid, full size pickup truck.
The Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Crew Cab Hybrid is priced at just about $39,000, with a full loaded truck with all of the luxury accessories coming in at just short of $45,000. However, federal and state tax credits and stimulus rebates that were recently put in place to encourage consumers to make the switch to fuel efficient vehicles can take a little bit off of your bottom line if you know where to look.
