Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroMPG
Testing info/data added to post#2.
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What prompted me to do this test was a pair of recent highways trips (the same trip, repeated on 2 weekends) to visit friends at a cottage.
It's 293 km (182 mi.) round trip, on secondary roads with a max posted limit of 80 km/h (50 mph). It includes passing through a number of small towns and one small city.
The first time I did the trip before the mods were all in place. My goal was simply to drive with load to keep the car in lean burn at ~100 mpg on the instant display, or higher when at the posted speed limit. I got something like 89 mpg US for the first round trip.
The second trip, in nearly identical weather conditions with all the mods in place, I used the same techniques (~100 mpg target), but I managed to do the trip in 20 minutes less! How? Because the car spent more time going faster on the highway while still maintaining at least 100 mpg indicated. And there was quite a bit more traffic (stop & go) in the city portion of the second trip.
And I ended up with 94 mpg US for the second round trip.
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I'm still not convinced that either of our tests quite gells. It is true that I was out of lean burn about 5% of the time, but the fuel economy for those brief periods is still about 2/3 of the lean burn values, so that wouldn't seem to account for the rather large difference. BTW, I tested at the same speed that you tested at and my baseline speed was nearly identical to yours, and very tightly grouped - so I'm doing something right.
From the above quote, you gained 5 MPG or 5.6% on a long range test - almost identical to what I got. Did you have the IMA system turned on for those trips?
It is said by many Insight "experts" that using the assist/regen will lower fuel economy numbers, since the process is inefficient to some degree - but I haven't seen any numbers on that. I certainly think I see that inefficency but it is a small one if the assist is only occasional.
I think I kinda said it, but I'll say it again, I'm very concerned about testing an Insight over short distances because everything in the system is so twichy. All driving errors are magnified, and after all, we are trying to measure small absolute changes. If you had some sort of systematic error in the way you approached your "test mile" there could be errors. I think my main concern is that the numbers for the results just don't seem to add up, given what we all already know about the effect of those mods-about 3% for the grill blocks and about 3% for the mirrors.
In any case, I do not have the luxury of a quiet, level test course. Richmond is a rather large and busy place and I drove around a bunch to find a course that I thought worked even in the averages.