real world mileage on the Insight

Okay, everyone keeps talking about waiting for the real-world figures to come in.. My family took a trip from our home in Fort Worth to Austin this easter weekend. We took the new 2010 Insight, obviously.

Right before we left, I filled up the tank and set the trip meter. I planned to verify the mileage the old-fashion way and see how it compared with the computer mileage.

We traveled almost 200 miles to Austin, drove around the city for 2 days, and travelled back to Ft.Worth. My wife did 90% of the driving, and she drove about 70 mph most of the time and was often passing people. She definitely did not featherfoot the car. Although, she did use the cruise a lot on the open highway.

Now, we stopped in Waco on the way back to refuel. I didn't want to since I was certain the car would make it on the original tank of gas but my wife was feeling uneasy. So the mileage at the fueling station was right at 50.0 mpg on the computer readout. I filled up the tank and it only accepted 7.5 gallons of gas. I divided up the numbers the old fashion way and came up with 49 miles per gallon. So the computer was pretty darned close.. and who knows, there could be a discrepency in the pumps that could cause that.

Now, honestly, I was surprised. I am used to getting slightly less than whatever the EPA says a car is going to get, doesn't matter what car it is. But the Insight actually does better. In fact, we've consistently gotten 43 to 45 mpg around town, which is also better than the EPA.

I also noticed that most of the reviews I've seen by car magazines also say that they got a few mpg more than the EPA estimates, which means I'm not alone in this phenomenon.

So, that being the case, I'd say the Insight would definitely give the prius a run for its money on highway mileage.

This is the time of year hybrids typically get their best, it gets worse in the summer and they usually plummet in the winter. keep us posted in the other seasons so we can see the changes

Definitely keep us posted. How many psi do you have in your tires? What is the recommended psi?

believe it or not, the recommended PSI for the insight is 36 psi. Strange since even the previous generation insight used a much higher psi. I haven't actually checked my tires so they are still at whatever the dealer left them at.

Was the the insight always driven in normal drive mode?

That's higher than Prius. 36 psi both front and rear?

Am I missing something here? Every non-hybrid car I've ever owned had tires designed to run 36 PSI. That is like the industry norm. My old Insight was something like 70 psi and I seem to recall the Prius was something like 45 psi. I'd have to go look it up to be sure, though.

The Insight's instrumentation does not appear to suffer from the same underestimation as the HCH-II. I currently have a 2010 HI tester in my hands and in contrast, the HCH-II displayed FE is traditionally lower 1-4% than the calculated (typical trivia stuff).

In the city, the HI does better than the HCH-II, especially in stop-n-go driving and with the econ button on. It's two stage ICE and lower PCM programming/gearing helps here.

On the highway, the HCH-II continues to be the FE monster. Its 3 stage ICE and abnormally high PCM/gearing gives it the edge.


Cheers;

MSantos

Would be nice to keep a spreadsheet of fuel usage and MPG through the seasons...