I've been using a ScanGauge with my Honda Accord Hybrid the last several weeks. Attached is an Excel file of just a few days of data I recorded with it. With the cold weather, some of the fuel savings features such as "auto stop" don't kick in until I'm almost done with my 6 mile drive to/from work. With the ScanGauge, I can see the instantaneous mileage, fuel flow rate, and other metrics. With regard to the instantaneous mileage, small variations in throttle position can result in major differences in mileage. With regard to the fuel flow rate, in 10 degree F weather the idle fuel flow starts out at about 1.2 gallons per hour. Once the engine is fully warmed up (after about 10-13 minutes of driving), the fuel flow at idle drops to around .2 to .3 gallons per hour. Thus, very short trips in cold weather result in poor mileage. On the one day with relatively warm weather (60 degree F) shown in my data, my mileage shot up significantly.

For those not familiar with the ScanGauge, below is a link to it. I am neither compensated nor affiliated with the ScanGauge folks.
http://www.scangauge.com/

I have the ScanGauge velcroed to the top of my dash front and center behind the steering wheel. The wire runs down the left side of my dash to the ODBC connector, which is located above your left knee when you are in the driver's position. During the day, the ScanGauge works well. However, I found that the orange backlighting on the buttons reflects from my front windshield at night and is distracting (looking much like tail lights on other cars). As a result, I turned off the backlighting which prevents me from using it at night. Maybe in the future I will build a little hood for the ScanGauge to prevent the reflection so I can use it safely at night.

 

To get even more accurate results, if you haven't done so already, be sure to go in and adjust the default engine size to match that of your Accord. Also, if you ever have question about the Scangauge, conact the company. Ron there is an excellent resource.

 

It sounds like you're both happy with the Scanguage. Are there any downsides to this unit?

Rich

 

There are a lot of great things about this gauge. Although I have tried it on several hybrid and non hybrid cars, I have not tried it on a hybrid Accord yet.

A couple of caveats. Currently it cannot accomodate "lean-burn" calculations for mpg. This really matters more for cars like the Honda Insight.
Also, it currently cannot accomodate cars that run in Electric mode (like the Prius and Ford Escape hybrid can). I know Ron, the guy at ScanGauge, is more than willing to work on this if there is enough demand. If anyone in the Phoenix area has a Prius and wants to help out, they should give him a call.


Another thing. ScanGauge has a money back gaurantee (30 days I think?), so other than shipping, if it does not meet your needs, you can return it.

Mike, could you list out exactly which metrics show up on the readout for the Accord?
From your brief paragraph it sounds like gallons per hour and mpg (segment) work but what about the rest of the metrics.

 

Holy crap!! This is EXACTLY what I've always wanted!! I have a 97 Civic, which is OBD-II, but from way before Honda was putting FCD's in any of their cars. Oh boy.. I want it.. I think I'm going to order one first thing tomorrow. I wish I'd known about it 8 years ago when I got my car!

 

If you ever email or write the company or talk to Ron, tell him Eric Powers from "About.com" sent you. He'll get a kick out of that. I am in the process of writing a review the ScanGauge and he has been an excellent resource. Nice guy and very smart. Someday I'll have to share the story he told me about how he came up with the idea for making the ScanGauge.

If I didn't make the disclaimer before, I'll make it now: I am in no way affiliated with ScanGauge other than doing a product review of it.

 

Well like I said, I absolutely could not contain myself, so I emailed the guy and he said the Fly-N-High (an offroad truck store) not far from me sells them. Too cool! Drove right over and bought mine, plugged it in at the parking lot and logged my trip home:

46mph max
23mph avg
9 miles
0.3 hours
37.8mpg
0.2 gallons
3317rpm max
195 F water temp max

I love the thing already! I'm going to rotate my tires, reset the pressures, remove my front mudflaps and head out to a less congested part of town to do some controlled testing. I love seeing the GPH (gallons per hour) display in real time. It reminds me of back when I used to take flying lessons, and your GPH was practically more important than watching the fuel gauges.

 

As I mentioned above, it's a good idea to set the engine size setting since the default engine size may be different than the car you are driving. If you don't change the engine size some of the mpg info will be skewed.

 

Yeah, that was actually the first thing I did when I hopped in the car and plugged it in. I'm thinking you're probably right about it not detecting the lean burn, or the ECU isn't reporting fuel consumption correctly when it's in lean burn mode. I went out on a reasonably empty secondary highway near my house for some test runs. I brought my GPS along with so I could confirm roadspeed with what the ScanGuage says the speed is as well as confirm slope. I ran both directions two times, and averaged the 4 runs. Total slope was 20 feet vertical over the 2 mile measured test section of road.

55mph: 42.5mpg
60mph: 39mpg
65mph: 37.5mpg

All speeds as indicated in the guage cluster. This is where it's kind of interesting; at 65mph indicated, my GPS was showing around 62.5mph and the scanguage would kind of fluctuate between 61 and 62mph. I trust my GPS more than either of those things since it's supposedly accurate to 0.2mph according to the manual. Now I know from past experience that steady cruising at 65mph or so will usually yeild more like 42-43mpg in my HX, so all I can guess is that either it's in lean burn and the ScanGuage doesn't know it, or the wheelspeed is being reported incorrectly by about 1mph or so, but even still, percentagewise, that's not enough to cover the spread from a real world average of 42 or so at 65mph indicated to it showing around 37.5.

I definitely want to do more testing; I mean the trip MPG display certainly isn't the only reason I bought it, and even if it was, I still think it's extremely valuable for comparitive purposes. Kind of like when you dyno your car, for any of you who also have cars that you tune for big horsepower; even if the dyno you use reports different numbers from a dyno your buddy uses, as long as the one you use is consistent, it's still valuable for comparitive purposes when you make changes to the car. In all my runs at each vehicle speed, it was generally almost exactly the same MPG on the display for each run, so the repeatability appears to be good.

There's probably a ton more I could say about it as I learn more, but since you're already writing a review of your own anyway, I'll just hold off and wait for you to post up whatever it is you've found so far. When do you think you'll be posting your review?

 

Well you guys convinced me I needed one. Just ordered it over the phone from Ron's wife, very nice lady. I mention you Eric, but I'm not sure it registered with her. I will be using it on my Civic Hybrid for now unless my Accord hybrid comes in next week.

Rich