Monthly Fuel Costs - The Best and Worst of the Large Pickups
By John O'Dell February 22, 2011
As gasoline prices start heading north, the cost of filling up once again becomes more than an afterthought for many consumers.
As part of our mission to help people make informed decisions about the vehicles they buy, we're starting a new weekly chart that looks at the highest and lowest average monthly fuel costs of vehicles in the 16 market segments tracked by Edmunds.com.
In the case of large pickups, the differences among the "good" players aren't huge - even hybridizing can't turn a truck with the aerodynamics of a loaf of bread into a fuel sipping streamliner.
But you can easily see that luxury and extra performance add efficiency-robbing weight and thirst and that those who prefer the high end of the pickup market will be paying for what they get.
You can also see that using E85 ethanol, while reducing oil consumption, certainly doesn't do much for the pocketbook. Because it is less energy-dense than gasoline, you have to buy more of it to go the same distance. Thus, in one example, a $215 monthly gasoline bill for 1,250 miles in a 2011 Chevy Silverado 1500 FXE Crew Cab pickup (which comes standards with a 5.3-liter V8) jumps to about $255 a month when the flex-fuel truck is run on an E85 blend of 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent ethanol.
By way of disclaimer - and this goes for almost all the efficiency-based rankings we post here at Green Car Advisor, whether we developed them or they came from outside sources and we're just reporting on them - the numbers were developed using a common set of assumptions and national averages for fuel pricing and vehicle fuel economy.
For this chart, we assumed monthly mileage of 1,250 using the trucks' EPA combined city-highway fuel economy ratings and the national average price of the manufacturers' recommended grades of gasoline or other fuel.
We know that individual results will differ based on variances in things like driving styles, fuel sources, climate, terrain, vehicle load and options on the car or truck.
So use the chart as a general guide, not gospel.
You can be pretty sure that if monthly fuel costs are a big deal in your budget and you need a full-size pickup you'll do better with a Ford F150 STX than with the hi-performance Raptor version of the truck. But will the base Ford always beat a Toyota Tundra Regular Cab? Well, that's gonna depend....
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Download Edmunds.com Monthly Fuel Cost for all new vehicles.
LEAVE A COMMENT
What I like about info like this is that it gives relative performance. I'm not so much concerned with the precise numbers, given the variables and factors cited in the article. I won't be disappointed or surprised if my own costs are higher. But knowing how different vehicles perform relative to each other, given a standard benchmark, is still helpful.
It is like the EPA numbers: their test may not be exactly "real world", and not everyone can achieve them. However, since all vehicles go through the same test, at least I know how they perform relative to each other (e.g. one can be expected to get X% more distance out of a gallon of fuel compared to another).
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