Hello,
I’ve never owned a new car, but after the Honda Odyssey gave up its soul at 260k miles, we jumped on a 2021 Ascension with 1200 miles. It was insanely expensive, but everything is today. Anyway, I used to be a Toyota guy too but elected not to get a Sequoia due to fuel economy and AWD Siennas are not easy to come by. Instead, we compromised on size for something more efficient (or so we thought).
We have only used the Ascent for running around our small town and the speed limit is 60 mph on Hwy. It typically got about 16 mpg for combined city and highway driving. I was very disappointed, but I figured we do so many short trips that maybe it wasn’t too unreasonable.
We took our first road trip over Christmas break from Idaho to southern Utah. We have 4 kids so I kept the top stroller. I calculated mileage for the entire trip and got as bad as 9 mpg on a tank and up to 14 mpg. Overall, we averaged about 12 mpg. I am extremely disappointed! i called two subaru dealers to ask if they had seen this before and they both said they had not nor had they all heard of a service bulletin on this issue.
It’s a nice car to drive around town, but man, what a gutless pig on the open road. After about 2 hours on the interstate I almost thought about going back and loading up on the F250 diesel work truck since it gets about 18 mpg on the open highway at 80 mph. I felt like the Ascent just couldn’t hold speed very well and was straining all the time if there was any grade. I ended up setting the cruise to 70 even though the speed limit was 80.
My thoughts are Subaru small engine for application? It is not actually up to the task of carrying 6 passengers and luggage on a road trip. Keep in mind we are a family with young children so it wasn’t too heavy. I tried everything from manual shifting for a few tanks to slowing down and drafting a half. Overall, I’d say, other than my old 1993 land cruiser, it was the worst vehicle I’ve ever driven on the highway for performance and fuel economy. Oh how I miss the old Honda mini van. It would do 90mph if you weren’t careful and pull 20mpg.
I’m either super unlucky or someone else has to experience this too. I think I’ll trade it in even though I’ll get a big kick out of it.
