Quote:
Originally Posted by Fabio
And you could be right about the relative difficulty of beating the car's original mileage.
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You may want to plug the Insight's specs into this tool:
Aerodynamic & rolling resistance, power & MPG calculator - EcoModder.com
It'll give you an indication of, for example, the impact of weight on power required at different speeds (you can change variables and re-calculate as much as you like). I think you'll find that you might be overestimating the savings to be gained in highway driving through weight reduction.
Run the numbers of sticking a small diesel (eg. from the 1st gen smart fortwo) into the Insight. That, I think, is your only route to beating the car's "stock" highway fuel economy (and I may be wrong there - I don't know how close Honda gets to diesel efficiency with the lean burn 1 L engine).
EDIT: Of course, then you'll have a 40 hp Insight that takes ~20 seconds to get to 60 mph, flat out. But you're used to driving an XFi, so maybe that doesn't matter! (Not being facetious: 20 seconds to 60 mph is acceptable in my books.)