Warning, this is detail/data heavy.
TL/DR: Yes, its worth it for a road trip but no I wouldn't own one.
Here's the background:
We had a family reunion in Oklahoma this summer and needed a way to get six people (two parents and four children) back and forth for the least amount of money. These were the options I came up with.
- Flying ($2,600)
- Train (Amtrak $1,400 one way, no return option)
- Driving our van (odometer at 200k)
- Driving rental van ($1,300-$2,000)
Flying was certainly the most expensive regardless of carrier, discounts, etc. And we'd have to get a rental van at the other end.
Amtrak seemed like a decent option until we figured that there was no return train for another six weeks.
While we like our 2010 Honda Odyssey, its starting to show its age at 200k and we didn't want to buy a new van on this trip. Best mpg I've seen on it is 22 mpg.
Renting a van seemed like the right option. Renting from the usual suspects (Enterprise, Hertz, Budget, etc) got me a few options. I checked Turo as well and found a few more vehicles. These are the vehicles I looked seriously at with their associated combined mpg ratings.
- 2023 Honda Odyssey (24 mpg)
- 2020 Mercedes Metris (20 mpg)
- 2022 Chrysler Pacifica (24 mpg)
- 2022 Toyota Sienna Hybrid (36 mpg)
- 2023 Toyota Sienna Hybrid (36 mpg)
Taking the mileage of the trip out and back at 2,600 miles (not counting driving around during the week to compare these options with flying and renting a van), using the listed mpg and estimating gas to be $4 per gallon I got the total cost for each option to be between $1,300-2,000.
The other option considered was emergency support. I could rent from someone on Turo, but what happens if something went wrong? The decision was made to rent a new Sienna directly from a local Toyota dealer for $129/day and unlimited mileage. If there was a problem we'd be able to find a Toyota dealer almost anywhere.
We took the Southern route through Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and Arkansas on the way out to Oklahoma because we were following one of my siblings. The Northern route seemed a bit shorter so we took that back through Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
On the way out I set the radar cruise control to 80 mph as was possible for each road. The way back I set it to 76 mph to see if I could eke out any more efficiency without sacrificing too much time.
Here's the raw data for the trip.
Starting mileage---13,761
Fillup_____Mileage___mpg_____Gallons
1------------14271----------34.38-----14.835
2------------14810----------33.29-----16.192
3------------15258----------31.58-----14.187
4------------15524----------32.57------8.167
5------------15965----------30.89-----14.277
6------------16425----------33.01-----13.937
7------------16887----------33.92-----13.622
Overall average:
32.80 mpg
Overall highway average (excluding mid week):
32.84 mpg
Total miles driven: 3,126
Total spent on fuel: $310.36
Rental cost: $1,159.51
Total cost: $1,469.87
So, would I do it again? Yes. The Sienna is a decent cruiser. I had no lack of power on the highway to pass or climb in the mountains. It has plenty of gadgets (about one thousand charging ports inside) and comfort features (cooled seats were a nice touch) and the cargo space was more than adequate for our needs. The radar adapted cruise control was a very nice feature which would allow us to pass semis with ease and included automatic braking for when someone pulled out in front of us. I would certainly rent this van again for a similar journey.
Some of the features we played with:
- Radar adapted cruise control (with 3 following distance options)
- Heads up Display (with current mph, speed limit and GPS instructions)
- Air cooled front seats (both bottom and lower back vents)
- Large GPS screen with guidance which would download from the cloud
- Parking cameras on all four corners
- EV mode (limited cruising and speed)
- Charging and media ports all over (some USB A and some USB C)
- Economy driving score calculator (gamifying your acceleration, use of cruise control and braking)
- More cupholders than you should be able to have in a vehicle
Would I buy one? No. Too many features made this feel like I was flying a modern passenger jet. We weren't owners so there were features that we couldn't program our settings into, but we've found that many features would never be able to be customized and would go to a default as soon as the vehicle was switched off. There's plenty of features that we couldn't understand why they existed and made the experience overly complicated. One of these was the ability to split the GPS guidance and duplicate it on each half of the screen (which we jokingly referred to as the option for when the driver and passenger were going different places). It took us 15 minutes to figure out how to turn this feature off and we still aren't sure how we selected it.
The view out of the front is obscured by the large engine compartment shape and parking cameras are a necessity. The tailgate doesn't open as wide as you'd expect and both my wife and I hit our heads on it more than a few times. She's 5'5" and I'm 5'10", so this isn't a height issue.
The mileage was decently impressive for what we were driving, but it wasn't groundbreaking. I'd worry about the battery life and what it would cost to replace in ~7-10 years.
I think our next van will be another Honda Odyssey, probably used (just like the last two).