[Ecky]

Originally Posted by mpg_numbers_guy

I would totally look into it if I were back home from college and had my current car de-ecomodded and sold.

It really looks promising if I could go for it. The blue color is gorgeous, the IMA light just came on so grid charging for a while is still a possibility, and the instrument panel buttons can be replaced with 3d printed ones from IC, right? Only issue really would be the musty smell that even a professional detailer couldn't remove. And of course the checklist.

EDIT: Per the seller's listing, he/she seems acquainted with Insight Central, and has had a lifetime fuel economy of 59.9 MPG.

That's not too bad a lifetime mileage. Mine is around 65 I think, but I have Vermont winters to contend with, and used to tow a trailer with some frequency. The low miles of the car are very encouraging.

Originally Posted by mpg_numbers_guy

What if I only had it grid charge to 80% or 90% capacity and set the ECU accordingly? Rather than overcharging and damaging it - would 80% or 90% still damage the battery?

How would you know when you've reached 80% or 90%?

Originally Posted by mpg_numbers_guy

Is the CEL due to your IMA bypass?

Yeah, the only other CEL(s) my car has ever had are from 1) a fuel injector kill switch, which would rarely cause a CEL which went away the next time I started the car, or 2) when my father-in-law drove the car for 700 miles with one of the spark plugs disconnected, and gummed up the catalytic converter.

Originally Posted by mpg_numbers_guy

Naturally with such a set up regen and assist wouldn't work (right?) but even with a different battery setup couldn't I still maintain Auto Stop? Or would this be more complex than just wiring up a regular kill switch (again I'm leaning toward a hybrid-disabled Insight setup).

A Nissan Leaf battery is like $5500...

There HAS to be a way to maintain at least SOME of the hybrid capability for an indefinite period of time apart from buying new batteries. Even grid charging like y'all do doesn't last forever. And, of course, without spending $$$$.

The Insight differs from the Civic Hybrid in that it's old enough that practically all of the signaling is analog. There's no CANBUS, no data streams, it's all just PWM and voltage. You can spoof any signal between ECU and IMA with tools you could have bought in the 1950's. With a little bit of education, it would not be unfeasible to have a system behave like stock, only with an entirely different controller and battery. Have you considered going into electrical engineering?

Some facts I've found with my IMA bypass:

The main ECU is what calls for auto-stop, and probably what calls for assist and regen as well. My car will actually go into auto-stop every time I hit the brakes if I spoof the battery SOC too high. The only problem is that there's no IMA to restart it so I end up having to start the car every time I dip below 20mph with the brakes on.

If you wanted to replace everything in the back (motor controller, battery, computers), it would be a lot easier than just replacing the battery. It's a matter of reading what the ECU is requesting, which would be an analog signal on its own dedicated wire (clearly labeled in the car's wiring diagram) going to the back of the car, and just using those as inputs for what would otherwise be an independent fully electric system. That's what the Insight's IMA system is, basically - all you need for an independent EV, but with the computer for the gas engine's computer controlling throttle. It wasn't well integrated at all. You could kill the gas engine and run on electricity alone if the battery were big enough and the motor a little more powerful.

However, JUST replacing the battery and none of the other electronics in the back of the car is a much more difficult task. If you drop a lithium battery in and try to use the car's stock motor controller and battery controller, it tries to treat the lithium battery like a NiMH battery, which might kill a lithium battery, but not before the car became very upset that it wasn't behaving like a NiMH battery.

Originally Posted by mpg_numbers_guy

Alright, that's comforting confirmation. So if ecomodded Metros can get 60-70 MPG than an IMA-bypassed Insight should be good for 80 MPG...maybe?

It's more difficult to get consistently high mileage without the battery, but with more effort or ideal conditions you can still do it. This was my trip home from visiting another Insight owner earlier this evening. No pulse and glide, no EoC, just put the car in 5th gear and drove. No traffic on the roads and few stop signs helped.




My commute in the morning I typically get around 57-63mpg - it's mostly uphill. On my way home I deal with bad traffic but it's downhill, so I get more like 65mpg. At my previous job I was getting ~70mpg on my commute both ways without the battery.