I've noticed in looking both at the fueleconomy.gov site and also the real world MPG database that the difference in fuel economy between the manual HCH and the CVT is almost nonexistant. It's only about 2.5 MPG versus the first generation CVT and only 1.5 MPG versus the second generation CVT. This stands in stark contrats to the massively higher FE of the Insight Manual vs Insight CVT.

Why is the impact of the manual tranmission so different in these cases. Aren't the cars both using similar Honda IMA technology? This just seems really odd as generally manuals are a great deal more efficient than automatics, granted CVT is apparently a major improvement over previous automatic transmissions.

With a difference of only 1-2 MPG it almost seems pointless putting up with the inconvenience of a manual, unless one really likes to drive a stick. Of course this is now a moot point since newer HCHs don't come in manual anyway. I'm still curious if anyone has any explanation for the performance of the CVT and manual gen 1 HCH being so similar, as well as if there is any thing really advantageous about going with the manual over the CVT.