Driving nearly 3000 miles across the United States is not for everyone, especially if your car of choice when fully loaded is cramped, noisy, and takes forever to accelerate, like my car. Luckily for these five mommy bloggers from the Silicon Valley Moms Group, General Motors has provided a 2008 Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV for their journey. It doesn’t hurt that GM is picking up the tab on other road trip expenses as well.
The blog contains written and video content and is all sent live from the road via mobile broadband cards as the tech-savvy mothers drive from Washington D.C. to San Francisco, making stops at Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Reno. The five moms have digital camcorders that they're not afraid of using, capturing all manner of candid moments, including singing. In fact, there's a lot of singing. At one point in their blogging, there's even a contest offered to the blog readers to identify seven songs that are sung in one video clip. The prize of the contest is a delectable 80GB Microsoft Zune. Although the bloggers haven’t been pressured to blog about their sponsors, the contest prizes speak for themselves (Zune and a Weight Watchers Online membership).
The blog features nice images of an America that I'd like to visit myself soon. From a restaurant with real game heads on its walls to a town with a population of one, the parts of America that are not California look like an enticing place to experience on a road trip.
The big sponsor, GM, put together a video extolling the benefits of a hybrid SUV within an overview of the women's travel experience. GM has become known for reaching out to bloggers in its marketing. GM highlights the hybrid's mileage through the women's interviews while on the road trip, but I thought they should focus on other advantages like the reduced emissions. While the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid indeed gets better gas mileage than a regular Tahoe, with an EPA rating of 21/22 mpg, the 6.2L V-8 with RWD Tahoe gets 12/19 (the Tahoe Hybrid has a 6.0L V-8; there are 4.8L and 5.3L V-8 engines for the Tahoe that get slightly better gas mileage). If we take an average, the hybrid would get 21 mpg and the 6.2L V-8 would get 16 mpg, a 31-percent increase, but for a long road trip, the three-mpg difference between the highway ratings for both Tahoes doesn't seem too large a gap. Yes, the women drove through cities and were not confined to wide-open stretches of road, but if GM really wanted to hit on the benefits of better gas mileage, it would’ve been better served sponsoring some events where a lot of city or stop-and-go driving is required, such as a delivery fleet.
I really wish car companies wouldn't prey on our emotional attachments to gas prices because I'm sure, especially nowadays, we're all doing our homework when looking at new cars. Kudos for hitting a primary market segment for its best-selling Tahoe SUVs, though.