The 2016 Chevrolet Malibu Features Hybrid Engine & Teen Driver Mode

The new 2016 Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid is a car that will be loved by parents and hated by teenagers. It’s one of the first cars from the General Motors owned company that comes with a Teen Driver feature. Chevrolet say that this feature will help encourage safe driving but we are pretty sure parents will use its spying characteristics more. Let’s check out the safe driving features first. The car will automatically mute the music from its audio system when it detects that the front seat occupants are not wearing seat belts. Chevrolet thinks that teenagers will be unwilling to go on a journey without listening to their favourite boy band or tongue-swirling not-so-teen diva on the car stereo. Teenagers will also be in dismay when they discover that the volume of the car stereo is limited to a certain level when the Teen Driver mode is enabled. The 2016 Chevrolet Malibu will flood the drivers with audible and visual warnings if they are travelling faster than the speed limit that is set by their parents which varies from 40 to 75 mph. If they do cross the limit, their parents will be made aware of it.


Once a teenager has driven the 2016 Chevrolet Malibu, his/her parents will be able to check the distance travelled and this means they can easily uncover your lies about studying at a friend’s house when you were actually at a Taylor Swift concert in another city. The Chevrolet Malibu also generates reports for maximum speed travelled, over-speed warnings issued, stability control events, antilock brake events, forward collision alerts and forward collision braking events, if equipped. As a teenager if you think that you will be able to bypass this feature by entering a PIN but you are wrong, the mode gets switched on when a teenager puts in his/her key fob that has been assigned by his/her parent. Chevrolet wastes quite a space in #-Link-Snipped-# saying that safety features like park assist, stability control, collision control and more cannot be manually turned off when Teen Driver is activated. It seems quite pointless, why would you be willing to switch off safety features that prevent an accident.

In a country like the United States of America, where it’s pretty common to find cars with V8 motors the 2016 Chevrolet Malibu comes with a jolly polar bear friendly hybrid engine. You find a direct-injection 1.8L 4-cylinder engine mated with an 80-cell, 1.5 kWh lithium-ion battery pack taken from a 2016 Chevrolet Volt. Chevrolet says that the car will give an average of 45 miles per gallon. The 2016 Malibu is the first car from Chevrolet that comes with Exhaust Gas Heat Recovery technology. Exhaust heat from the car will now be used to warm the engine and cabin. Chevrolet says that this improves engine warm up and assures consistent fuel economy performance in cold weather.

The Teen Driver mode will be standard equipment on the mid level variant of 2016 Malibu that will be debuted at the New York Auto Show this April and the car will hit the showrooms by the end of 2015.