2003 Insight CVT - No cruise control!

[rogerperkins]

Hello, I have a 2003 Insight CVT, I usually get around 55 mpg, my problem is that the Assist battery always shows that it's almost always fully charged or nearly fully charged, it would seem to me that I would get better milage if the Assist was more aggressive as the MIMA system does, but automatically. Now, I also have this stupid Second drive mode button, which only seems to tell the car to use more fuel, seems to be totally useless since I have a CVT anyway. Now, also I would love to have some kind of cruise control and I was thinking, I wish there was some way I could reprogram the Second drive mode button to be a Speed control button instead, by somehow giving extra battery assist even when cruising. I noticed that even when I'm going about 60 mph, I'm only pushing on the gas pedal a small amount, and I'm thinking it would not take much assist for me to cruise at 60 without me having to press on the pedal at all (the system could be set to go back to drive mode if you touch the break or push the D button.). I notice that when I coast that sometimes it shows 75 mpg, and I'm thinking that with a little assist I could get 75 mpg all the time on the highway. Ideally this could be set up with just something that you plug into the computer port. Is something like this possible or even a good idea? Thanks.

[RobertSmalls]

Hello.

The reason Honda never equipped these cars with cruise control is CC hurts your fuel economy. It's much better to drive at a constant engine load - DWL. That means allowing the car to slow down while you gain elevation, and picking your speed back up on the way down. It actually makes a big difference in many cars.

If you're willing to give up a few MPG for some convenience, you can install an aftermarket cruise controller. I think Rosta makes one.

The problem with assist: payback's a bear. When you use assist, you deplete the battery, and you will have to fill it back up sooner or later. Believe it or not, a hybrid gets its best mileage when you don't use assist to accelerate, and when you avoid braking.

How long have you had your car?

[rogerperkins]

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.