2022 Z71 with the 5.3, I'd say 75-80% of my driving is running around in town and I average 11-13mpg in town. On a longer highway drive I might manage 18 or so, I've seen 26 on the instant readout but going downhill so that hardly counts. We live in Southern California so traffic is a constant and there's six of us so big girl is usually hauling us and four kids plus everyone's junk and occasionally the dog up and down hills, through whatever construction and rush hour traffic we run into. So I'm jealous/skeptical of some of the 22+ mpg claims I see, but I count anything over 15 as a win in an off-road capable vehicle that's 7,000lbs+ loaded dealing with our traffic and such.
I can tell you with certainty I’ve gotten 22 avg over 200 mile road trip, but:
1) there was zero wind
2) I did it all on 2 lane highways here in super flat Minnesota
3) I was alone in the rig and only had a small carry on size suitcase with me
4). I drove the whole works at around 60-65 MPH, and there was basically no traffic (no passing, no stop and go, etc)
5) Ambient temp was about 60F
My lifetime mixed MPG in my XL Denali is 16.7 over 13k miles so far.
You won’t get close to that w/ a lot of stop/go city driving or trying to deal with Cali metro area traffic (I often travel to SoCal and the Bay area and have to deal with that and traffic here in MN is nothing like CA.
So, it’s not dubious that some of us could get in the 20’s, but it has to be in specific conditions.