Firstly, the Tahoe is a pretty good all round SUV and because of this you will spot a fair few of them on our busy streets, so GM, the owners of Chevrolet, have clearer decided than rather wasting their time (and a lot of money) on designing a fresh-from-the-ground-up, full-on Hybrid car, like the Prius, that they would in this instance simply install some of that fuel-saving technology into one of their popular SUVs and take a look at sales. This is perhaps to encourage buyers to try a Hybrid car, without ‘scaring’ them with a whole new model, offering them a model they are used to, but it’s also more likely to try and get some more sales out of their ailing, large SUV brands - before they eventually completely sink under the weight of the price of a full tank of gas, which, especially in the U.S, seems to happening right now, where SUV sales have plummeted. But, what is the point of the Tahoe as a Hybrid? It still packs a giant V8 engine, after all.

A throbbing, 5.3-litre, 355bhp V8 petrol engine, to be precise, and one that pushes out 460Nm of torque – the kind of pulling power that you really need to get one of these really big beasts moving under any kind of a decent head of steam, especially if you are accelerating hard, or even considering taking it into the desert for some dirty fun; a pastime which has a reasonable following in our UAE desert landscape. So, with this Tahoe, you get a combination of that big, gutsy V8 engine and electric motor power that are in turn powered by extra large batteries, much bigger than the one that starts the petrol engine, located away from sight around the big chassis. When you are accelerating hard the V8 does the work, giving the Tahoe some decent take-off speed, all backed-up by a lovely deep roar that only a V8 can give you. On the complete opposite end of the speed-scale, when you are bumper-to-bumper, this Tahoe’s uprated brain switches off the V8 entirely and you can crawl around under completely non-polluting battery power. But don’t expect to do anything other than crawl under the electric steam.

When you’ve made your pace up and are now cruising at a decent speed, the brain senses the lack of urgency and shuts-down four of the eight cylinders, effectively turning your big, bruising V8 Tahoe into a cute little V4. The engine capacity is then cut down to 2.65-litres and the car can then take smaller sips of fuel – slam your foot into the floor once more and the other four cylinders again burst into life and you are back on full V8 power. This process takes a little getting used to as you still find a small step in the power delivery for the couple of seconds it takes for the other four cylinders to fire up and the V8 to once again turned back into the 355bhp power-mill it once was. However, if you are pretty much on the gas most of the time then the car will also sense this and stick to the full V8 mode, giving you all the power, as and when you need it. But also all the bad fuel economy.

There are little things to get used too, such as the engine turning off completely (and automatically) when you are sat at a traffic signal or in stationary traffic – you’ll feel a slight judder as the big engine shuts-down and then you are running, with everything like the air-conditioning and the stereo still working perfectly, on big battery power. And when the big batteries start to drain, the car fires up the petrol engine once more to charge the batteries back to life. It’s the simple Hybrid idea, very basically transferred into the Tahoe… and I’m not so sure if it really works in this car or not.

You see, the Tahoe is a big and heavy SUV anyway, and it will always need a big and heavy V8 engine to pull it along. With cars like the Toyota Prius, it was designed from the ground-up to work to the full advantage of the Hybrid plan – that is a car that is as light as possible so it will not need a large petrol engine to pull it, and with that lightweight it can also take full advantage of the power offered by the electric motors, as well as not being such a drain on the battery power, again thanks to its lightweight. With this huge Tahoe, we’re kind of defeating the object of it all – why stack out an already super-heavy vehicle with more weight? The extra batteries and motors are very heavy, so when you’re not taking advantage of the electric power, you’re still hauling all that extra kit around with you and messing up the already shocking fuel economy figures. The figures just don’t seem to add up in this instance.

We don’t have to worry about the price of fuel in the UAE (more the price of the Salik!), so offering Hybrids as a way to save money is not really, in my opinion, going to work in here. The best angle for Hybrids locally would be the positive green issues involved in driving a car that pollutes less than a full petrol car. The only people the Tahoe Hybrid can really appeal to here in the UAE are those that want the huge SUV for its space, comfort and perceived safety, but don’t want to harm the environment with its polluting V8 engine. But, with gas prices as low as they are here and the slight lack of green awareness, I’m really not sure exactly how many extra customers GM will see as a result of offering this car. Still, once you get used to using this Chevy Tahoe Hybrid to the full extent of its skills you should start to see better fuel figures, spending less money at the petrol pumps. And if you do cruise everywhere at 100kph you should see a consumption rate of around 9L per 100km, like I did, which lets be honest, really isn’t bad at all for this massive, spacious car.

Technical Specifications:
Model - 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid
Engine - 5.3-litre V8
Power - 355 bhp
Torque - 460 Nm

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