2008 Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid Road Test

Cars like the Toyota Prius have sold very well in Europe and the U.S, with sales driven as much by the spiralling cost of gas, as by the big push to tackle the global warming issues that are now starting to affect us all – but I haven’t seen one single Prius on the city streets and I wonder if in fact there is even one here in the GCC? So, to test drive this Chevrolet Tahoe full-size SUV in a Hybrid form is something of a first, and something of a surprise. But, don’t worry too much, because driving this Tahoe Hybrid is much like driving a normal Tahoe… well mostly.

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.