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Originally Posted by DarkHorse2160
That guage is practically worthless anyway, unless you happen to have a calibrated and labeled MPG template on the lens of your eye.
Such a low tech guage, in a high tech car. They need a numeric read out.
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Mark - I disagree. The gauge is highly-accurate. The readout IS labeled at 0/50/100 and are you telling us that you are incapable of seeing the readout *halfway* between the numbers 50 and 100 and determining that this is 75 mpg or halfway between 0 and 50 is 25 mpg? This ain't rocket science.
I also don't think a digital readout would help. I had the opportunity this past weekend to drive a Prius (Auto), Insight (5-sp), and previous version Civic (5-sp). I liked all of them except the Prius which had no visual reference on when the battery was assisting/charging but just those blinking lines going forward and backward. I prefer the Civic/Insight layout that has a gauge that grows closer to Neutral or climbs to max FE so that you can adjust your throttle to speed up the bars or slow them down. For example, if I am at 65
mph and heading down a hill I can lift completely off the throttle and the Instant mpg zooms up quickly to 100 and the Charge bars zoom down quickly and then I can quickly apply throttle until the green bars climb up but before they reach Neutral I can slowly lift off the throttle and modulate it based on the speed of the charge bars to get into EV mode - conversely - I can lift slightly off the throttle for the Instant gauge to slowly climb and once at 100 mpg I can slowly apply throttle and keep the car in EV mode.
With the Prius it was impossible to determine how hard/far I had to push the throttle to get it into Electric mode or Charge mode.