The King is dead: Hyundai Ioniq (58 MPG US EPA combined) beats Prius ECO rating (56)
 

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1481123713

Looks like the rumours that Toyota had delayed the release of its 4th gen 2016 Prius to make it as efficient as possible in the face of looming competition from Hyundai may have been true:

Source: Hyundai?s Ioniq hybrid takes first place in fuel efficiency : National : News : The Hankyoreh

The Prius has ruled the roost as the most efficient non-plug-in in America for 10 years -- since the 1st gen Insight left the market.

But the big question: do you trust Hyundai's fuel economy ratings over Toyota's?

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...epa-19675.html

I'm not sure if I totally trust their numbers. However, that won't really matter to the vast majority of customers out there. They'll care about one thing, price. That is why consumers flocked to Hyundai in the first place even when they were still making garbage for cars. I think today they're better, but their prices are pretty much in line with everyone elses too now.

I'd say they have an uphill battle to fight though. Toyota is known for quality / reliability, and the Prius is at the top of the list for most reliable cars on the road.

I do find it great to see the competition though!

As for real world mileage, thats yet to be seen. We here know that the different hybrid systems vary wildly from manufacturer to manufacturer and EPA ratings can mean very little if the hybrid system doesn't work well in real world situations.

Hyundai needs to bring back an equivalent to the original Insight for us cheap-bastiches. ;)

It'll be interesting to get the nitty-gritty on how Hyundai's design makes it so efficient.

So far I'm not seeing any news about this on the U.S. eco car blogs.

There will be 3 drivetrain options for the IONIQ - EV, hybrid, and plugin hybrid is coming in a year or so.

The EV version is the new efficiency king, I think. It has ~110 mile range on a 28kWh pack, if my memory serves.

The ev and the hybrid are up on the EPA page. The plug in hybrid is not up, says coming spring 2017 on Hyundai's page. The ev is 136 combined, 150 city, 122 highway.

Wow, thats a good jump higher than other current EVs.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1481133862

About time the Prius got some 50+MPG competition. Hopefully it can live up to those numbers and help spur other manufacturers into making cars that give similar numbers. I'm going to need some good options in the used car market, my Prius can't live forever. ;)

I'm with daox. The prius has taken several iterations to get to the current level of FE, now hyundai suddenly can do better on its first try? Call me skeptical.

Gen I insight beat the prius on MPG on the first try 17 years ago.

When they are here in the real world on our shores we can see what the differences are between a PRII and an Ioniq, my guess is the PRII will stay more "practical" regardless of smallish MPG differences.

That said, like GM I do not trust Ioniq fuel economy numbers in Apples to APples.

EPA should require the "crossover" MPG at about 50 degrees farenheit to be listed on the placard.

That way if you see the car continuously gets the EPA at say 45mph, you know you have a dud.

Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid Takes the MPG Crown

Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid Rated 58 MPG Overall - Gas 2

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/2...-toyota-prius/

2017 Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid Becomes New Fuel Economy Champ With 58 Mpg

I think we all just blinked and missed it.

* on the 2 US eco car blogs I look at, sometimes.

Yes, but that gen 1 insight isn't a 4 door or meet the same safety standards.

2 vs 5 people... there are so many differences that it is like comparing a ferret to a rat - they are both rodents and that is where is all ends.

The Insight was a visionary car - in its day. It is now an ageing car that is eclipsed by lots of others that offer lots more functionality and safety without the 2 seat compromise.

Simon

It had to meet the same safety standards as the 2000-2006 Prius and was rated quite well from what I remember.

If a new 2 door Insight were built today I have no doubt it could be built to easily meet the safety standards we have currently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbNlR-fMlOw

I've seen an Ioniq at my Hyundai dealership and it is nice, but very much like my 2nd gen Insight.
It must be smaller and lighter than the Prius.

https://www.hyundai.news/eu/models/ioniq-a-leap-forward-for-hybrid-vehicles/https://www.hyundai.news/fileadmin/e...load/info2.JPG

With its DCT gearbox and 1.6 l, hence small(er than Prius) Atkinson cycle engine I see little room to lose efficiency.
Toyota's HSD gearbox is an engineering marvel but generally less efficient than a DCT gearbox.
So those MPG claims may well be true.

Thanks for that image.

Also note the engine claim: "world's highest thermal efficency of 40% (Atkinson cycle)"

The rat and ferret are both mammals; but only the rat is a rodent. ;)

The new Prius engine is claimed to be 40% efficient, as well.

The 32kW electric motor in the Ioniq hybrid is claimed to be 95% efficient, so there's that.

Do we know the Cd of the Ioniq?

Edit: Aerohead says the Ioniq is 0.24 - same as the new Prius, so it comes down to frontal area and drivetrain efficiency.

I wonder how the Ioniq (and the new Prius) warms up and / or stores heat from one drive to another?

I wouldn't call us cheap, just efficient. What's the point of hauling around an unneeded back seat and all the associated structure?

Having 2 seats is NOT a compromise, it's a design feature that is very much wanted by a segment of the buying public. Seen any 4-seat Miatas or Lotuses lately? Nor can I think of any great functionality which the Insight lacks that I'd actually want. Maybe map pockets in the doors?

It is a compromise though. Two-seat cars can only carry two people, and because of this have never sold in large numbers. The Miata is a drop in the bucket in terms of Mazda's yearly sales-- 8,591 cars out of 319,184 in 2015 in the US; Mazda has never sold more than 17,000 Miatas in a year. Lotus peaked at 2604 cars sold in 2007, about twice as many as they sold in Europe that year; last year, they sold 908 cars worldwide.

It should go without saying, but we here on this site are not representative of the preferences of the car-buying public as a whole, so arguing that compromises we would be fine with should be adopted by OEMs as a matter of course isn't very productive; they aren't going to do that because there isn't a business case for it. Honda already demonstrated that with the original Insight, which fell far short of its sales expectations precisely because Honda misjudged the market by introducing a two-seat hybrid that fell to the four-seat Prius, which outsold it more than 10-to-1 the year it was brought to the US, and more than 148-to-1 by the time Honda finally killed the Insight. It's fine that the Insight works for you, but the vast majority of people--whom Honda wants to sell cars--don't feel the same way, so you aren't likely to get another one. If that means we get cars like the Ioniq instead, which are as efficient (more efficient, going by EPA rating) but less space-compromised, that's fine by me.

I was going to say the Hyundai beats the gen 1 insight using the current testing standards, even the manual. I like a manual as well but most people don't want them, add the extra seats, and this is definitely a step forward.

EPA cycles are one thing, but it in the real world it wouldn't touch a gen 1 Insight in lean burn cruise.

Bring back "lean burn"...resurrect Charles Lindbergh and ask him *how* he taught the P-38 pilots in the Pacific to 'squeeze' almost twice the milage out of their Allison engines during 'open-ocean' patrols.

Old Tele man, you're living up to your username today with factoids from the past. (Thanks.)

There was far more to the insight sales numbers and the Prius is part of it but not what you would expect.

Over the entire Insight production run you could not find a new example in any Wisconsin car dealership, and used examples took several years to arrive.
Our local Honda dealer would berate you and refuse to factory order an insight

The reality was that Toyota set a very low starting price and Honda found itself too expensive in an era of cheap gas.

Internally Honda wanted to only sell a low number of cars and was selling them mainly as engineering experiments because the market price (cough Prius) was to cheap for them to make a profit.

One of my college professors had to fly to California to get an insight because no one would order one for him (2000)

Because definite non market bs was present with the insight I'm not sure we can say it's sales figures are only because of 2 seats.
Look at the number of deposits for the elio?

Also a modern 2 door insight would benefit from modern power electronics being
1/5 the size and battery under half, could likely have 2+2 seating for adults and kids.

Ah well

Direct injection is the advantage...?
 

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I do not believe the Prius uses Direct Injection.
If you look at say the Mazda 3 before and after direct injection it was 4MPG or similar. Not sure if this was coupled with the Variable timing or not but I do know direct injection would put the Prius in front.

Toyota news Toyota unveils advanced engines for 2017 and beyond

Which doubt would pass current emissions requirements or Hyundai would use it. Blame the EPA not Hyundai for that. Still, beating it in the EPA test means the average driver will get better mileage with the Hyundai, especially considering it is unlikely the Insight is still operating 100%.

There is a possible reason NOT to use direct injection. It looks like under the 2017 tier 3 emissions standards (which phase in from 2017-2025) they may be needing exhaust particulate filters, and then those will need a regen mode just like on diesels. In the end you end up with no MPG benefit and a huge cost addition.
http://sam.abuelsamid.com/2015/09/01...issions-rules/

And that is why there is so much smog! All these Insight punters need to let go and realise that saving 20 drops of fuel is not worth killing the atmosphere.

NOx and diesel particulates will cost much more in the longer term than a small amount of extra fuel.

Simon

Our consumer test organization 'Consumentenbond' has tested several new cars by the official testing protocol and in practice.

What they found was that more than half of the diesel powered cars go way over the limit for NOx and particulates in normal daily use. So it is not just a Volkswagen problem.
Alarmingly, several gas powered cars fail the daily use emissions test too.
Especially the direct injection engines have basically the same problem as diesel engines: high NOx and particulates.
Source (Dutch): https://www.consumentenbond.nl/nieuw...escherpte-test

The Ioniq is featured in the car comparison results but gets only 3 starts out of 5 for the ecotest, whereas the Prius gets 5.
The Tesla Model S P90 D only gets 4...!!!
https://www.consumentenbond.nl/zuini...COTEST&58423=3

Nice exaggeration,
the insight was one of the lowest polluters during its production run, beats every pickup made before 2007 and all cars 2000 and older.

Grams of NOx per mile is where we need to be concerned in big cities.

Next SMOG cannot form due to NOx alone, period, can't happen.
SMOG is the combination of particulate, VOC, CO, water and NOx in the atmosphere, the insight had one of the lower particulate and lowest CO emissions of any car during the time.

Add to this that, the drilling, transport and refining of oil into gas emits thousands of times more pollution than burning that same gallon of fuel.

Greenwashing our cars so some other guys kids can get exposed to high levels of VOC near the refinery is intellectually bankrupt.

Further that, getting the oil releases huge amounts of lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium into the environment.
The petroleum industry also looses 5% (roughly, depending on the year) of all oil as spoilage which could be lost in the wrong ground level, spilled, or lost as VOC, that's hundreds of thousands of PPM,
yet we worry only about a handfull of PPM of NOx coming out of the car?

The only way to ACTUALLY reduce pollution is to use less fuel or focus on cleaning up drilling, transport and refinery practices. (good luck with that)

^^
There's a bigger picture than just what's coming out of the tailpipe on the car. The car's tailpipe telescopes to a lot of other tailpipes: refinery stacks, fuel truck stacks, tankers, etc.

Saving 20 drops here while emitting a bit more here eliminates even more drops and a LOT more emissions elsewhere. It's an investment with an immediate return.

And RE: the Ioniq. Even if it got way better mileage than the Prius, I wouldn't trust it. Hyundai's reputation was forever poisoned with me based on the utterly horrible reliability of a 1987 Excel. Yes, 30 years have passed. I don't care.

The Insight has two catalytic converters and I'm betting it would easily pass today's emissions standards. However, those cats are full of precious metals and not cheap. Running Atkinson cycle achieves almost the same thing anyway.

InsightCentral.net - Knowledge Base - Honda Insight Emissions Standards

As Vman455 says though, it ultimately boils down to Honda wanting to sell cars in volume, at a profit. The Insight's design was not profitable, it was a "halo product" and proof of concept which would have taken them deeply into the red had they made more of them, and had there been consumer demand to match.

The Insight is no longer the most aerodynamic car on the road, but it's still darn close. It probably doesn't have the most efficient engine ever built, 16 years later, but it's also still darn close. I expect what it's lacking most are modern safety features such as side airbags, traction control, that sort of thing.

EDIT: That said, I find the Ioniq very interesting. I might have to visit a Hyundai dealer and putt around in one when they hit the streets.

I'm also quite skeptical about the fuel economy rating of the Ioniq, mostly because during its development it had been sometimes quoted to be closer to the definition of a mild-hybrid than a full-hybrid. But anyway, even though the DCT is going to add weight, complexity and some friction to its powertrain, Hyundai had a lot of time to figure out the achievements and mistakes from Toyota in the long run.

The EPA data file has the Prius Eco ~3.5mpg ahead of the Ioniq Blue on the uncorrected combined mpg rating, but somehow the Ioniq is ~2mpg ahead on the corrected rating.

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/epadata/17data.zip

That seems kind of strange, but INL testing should hash things out, assuming it isn't cut by the new administration.

https://avt.inl.gov/vehicle-type/all...n-architecture

I've often thought the epa highway rating cross over speed at say 50 degrees F should be listed.

Doing so would remove any testing bias since cars with higher crossover speeds would actually perform.

Most GM products have a cross over speed of only 50mph, Hondas usually 65mph

Next the Ioniq is sort of vaporware , it should have been on sale MONTHS now.

It's possible they aren't achieving their goals and new management sees low gas prices and wants to delay.

Hopefully it means we get a much better product

I've sat in one months ago at the dealership, and see them in traffic over here almost daily. Almost as common as the 2nd gen Insight already.
But we do have an active Hyundai dealer in town and another one close by.

If they are holding back sales in the USA, they sure don't here.

Yep I'm only talking the us version. ;)

There is no indication of when they will turn up for sale here

Based on dealer statements it's unlikely to come to our shores before June and when it does it's likely going to be by special order only and effectively a carb compliance car for at least a year.

I guess I'm the kid in the candy shop, I've waited my whole life for electrification and am tired of how slow the 20 year ev rollout has gone.
(You can only eat so many mars bars before you want something different like a snickers)

MOUNDS™ versus ALMOND JOY™ ?

58 mpg is cool, but I don't see why anybody would buy a new eco ride when you can get a good, used EV for <$10k.