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Originally Posted by basjoos
When the guys at Cleanmpg made their single tank world record distance in an Insight in Oklahoma in 2006 (and in all of their other mpg record attempts using either the Prius or the Insight), they deliberately drove it in a manner that avoided using assist or regen, in other words deliberately avoided using the hybrid system in order to get the highest possible mileage. This tells me that an EQUIVALENT non-hybrid variant of the Insight could have beaten this record since it would have been a hundred pounds lighter and wouldn't have had the added transmission drag of the unused electric motor spinning in the drive train.
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The problem here is that the driving style used for a mpg record isn't acceptable in normal driving. It's equivalent to saying that because there's a solar-powered car race across the Australian Outback, then solar-powered cars work for daily driving.
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A hybrid reduces the mpg hit of urban driving or any driving where you have to use either friction or engin braking, but in pure rural driving where you never have to use braking, a manual non-hybrid with its lighter weight and the reduced drag of its simpler transmission would get a better mileage.
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Wrong, unless your rural driving is entirely in Kansas :-)
The Prius may work differently, but in my experience (7+ years, about 100K miles) of Insight driving, the hybrid doesn't help all that much with city mpg ('cause it sucks whatever you do), it just makes it possible to drive without being a traffic hazard. Where it helps - and we should all know this - is by allowing a smaller engine that operates more efficiently at cruising speeds. But a car with that engine, but without the hybrid boost, would be practically undriveable on anything but straight & level roads.