I just got the Insight about 4 months ago, and so far it's great. I might agree with you that using Assist might be costly due to charging, but my assist battery seems to be mostly full most of the time, which would seem to me that when I need to brake or slow down there is no where for the charge to go. So if somehow I could get more use out of the Assist, I would seem to get more benefit from the regeneration. I believe that this may be how MIMA is beneficial, I just don't like the idea of having to manually operate that system. Also it seems like if some people can get over 100 mpg by modding their assist somehow (as well as other items), then I ought to be able to at least get 10 or 20 more mpg if I were to be able to just get a little extra assist (not to mention the side benefit of a possible speed control system). Also I don't really like those after market cc systems with all those wires and extra buttons, I mean I already got an S button I'm not using. Thanks.
p.s. If we we're designing a speed control system, we could make it give a constant assist, ignoring hills to some extent, perhaps reducing assist when going down hill though, you could push the gas when going up hill if you wanted. We could also design it to turn off the speed control if the assist battery went below 50% or some number.