Late last week, GM admitted that three of its large SUVs fuel economy window stickers did not match their actual efficiency ratings, and so the vehicles couldn’t be sold. The stickers on the 2016 Chevy Traverse, GMC Acadia, and Buick Enclave said their ratings were
one to two miles per gallon better than they should have been. Officially, the number of affected vehicles sits at about 60,000.
But
Consumer Reports
makes a good point: what’s up with all of the previous model year SUVs that are basically the same vehicle? To wit: the 2016 model year vehicles are not substantially different than the 2015 or the 2014, or even going all the way back to 2007. On the EPA’s fuel economy website, all of these older models will “have better stated fuel economy numbers than the new vehicles in GM’s dealerships,”
Consumer Reports noted. CR’s best point, and the one that makes the 60,000 number potentially grow to 2 million if all of the vehicles built on this platform are affected, is that “undefinedt seems unlikely that the company would change the powertrain on these carryover models so late in their model cycles in a way that would cause a dramatic, negative impact on fuel economy.”
GM says that earlier model year SUVs are not affected and the EPA did not respond to CR’s question about the potential for more discrepancies. We’ve seen automakers
reverse course before, so if GM has to come out with a mea culpa soon, don’t be surprised. GM is rushing corrected stickers to dealers so that the SUVs can be sold again, but a fix for the already-sold vehicles could be trickier to solve.
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