Bought a new Insight last June. It is a standard shift. In the summer following the purchase, I averaged about 70 MPG. Fall and Winter came and my milage fell dramatically. Low 60s. Still not bad but a little disappointed that I could not maintain my summer numbers. I couldn't figure out if it was just me and my driving habits or somthing about cold weather. My lifetime average dropped to about 65 MPG by start of Spring. Now warm weathers back. I got 750 miles between my last two fill ups. I zeroed the short term FCD at the fill up and averaged 76.6 MPG at the last fill up. I zero the short term FCD at ever fill up. So I conclude that the winter slump wasn't caused by my driving habits but rather something else. My lifetime MPG meter hardly moves any more. After about a year now it is 66.0 MPG and rarely budges. I keep a pen and a small notebook in the glove compartment and at every fill up I record the date, milage, gallons put into the tank and amount paid. Once in a while I compute a lifetime average MPG from this data and it corresponds to my the lifetime MPG on my FCD to within a fraction of an MPG.

So I'm really impressed with my Insight. A co-worker has a Prius. He averages low 40's. Got to wonder why anyone buys those. I can beat that with a Voltswagon Diesel.

Well, just my 2 cents for the record.

ColumbusHybrid
Columbus, Ohio

 

Hey, great input. thanks for sharing!
Cold weather is an mpg killer. Take a look at my car in the real mileage database. You'll see the winter temp dip.

The June/July dips are anomolies simply because I did a lot of fast driving last year. I hope to bring those up a bit this summer.

My last tank was 73.9. My current tank is at 80.1 on the Dash gauge after ~200 miles.

If you get a chance you may want to consider adding your Insight to the database as well.

 

I wish I could get your mileage, but obviously can't with my Prius II. The reason I bought it though was quite simple: I need to be able to fit more than 2 people, and also need to be able to fit a whole bunch of gear, and at times 2 bikes inside the car. I can do that with the Prius. Also, the Prius - though using more gas than the Insight - has the lowest emissions of any vehicle on the road (lower than the Insight), a diesel has much, much higher emissions. Finally, I really like the technology of the HSD. I do believe that it will evolve into cars that will break the 100 MPG barrier in the not too distant future.

The bottom line is though that all these full hybrids are great, all have their place, and we need more diversity and different styles of vehicles that are powerd by hybrid systems.

Cheers,
M

 

I agree. The more variety there is, the more likely people may find a hybrid that fits their needs.

 

Hi MGBGT:

___In regards to the above, the Prius II is not the cleanest emission vehicle on the road by some margin. In terms of mass produced automobiles, the PZEV based 05 HCH and non-hybrid 05 Honda Accord are. If you are speaking of GHG’s, the Insight 5-speed is by far the cleanest somewhat mass-produced car on the road of any available no matter where on the planet you reside.
___Many IMA equipped Honda Insight 5-speeds have surpassed that pinnacle quite some time ago …

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net

 

Hey Wayne,

maybe the emissions rankings do depend more on the MY and market, but for example in the Australian market I found these rankings for Prius vs HCH:
Greenhous Ratings (GR) and Air Pollution Ratings (APR) 1-10 with 10 = best
Prius GR 8.5 APR 9
HCH (CVT) GR 8 APR 5

On the US EPA website you can find these ratings:
Greenhouse Gas production in tons/yr (GP), and Air Pollution Score in lbs smog / 15k miles (APS):
Strangely, the EPA site still does list different values for CA vs rest of US on all of these cars (Prius and HCH), it also lists two very divergent sets of results for the HCH, I don't know why, maybe Honda made some substantial improvements through the MY. Below I list the CA values as the best ones.


Prius GG 3.5 APS 9
Insight GG 3.5 APS 3
HCH GG 4.1 APS9
HCH second listing for CA GG 4.1 APS 3
Accord non-hy GG 6.5-8 APS 6-9 depending on location and engine.
Accord hybrid GG 6.0 APS 7.
This latter comparison is interesting in that the hybrid version of the Accord has lower GG values, but higher air pollution than the least polluting non-hy version (4 cyl).

So, within the resolution of these ratings in terms of air pollution score, Prius, HCH in one of two versions, and one of the Accord non-hybrids achieve the rating of 9.
Of all the cars, the Prius has the best combined score of GG and APS.
While this of course is just a coarse set of measurements with results given in different ranges, and subject to the way these tests are performed, I do think one interesting thing to note is that the Prius is consistently ranked as the car with the best cobined score, by all agencies where these cars have been tested (US, Europe, Australia), under different criteria, and all these agencies have labeled the Prius as the 'greenest' car. Some admittedly include additional criteria in their labeling, based on the amount of energy involved in manufacturing, amount of recyclables used, etc... Personally I think when all air pollution measures are considered, it's virtually impossible to distinguish the most recent crop of cars in terms of polluting emissions (Prius, HCH, Accord), which I think is a great acchievement!
I think once again the bottom line is that all these cars are great, and anyone who chooses one of these cars over other, more polluting cars, is doing a great job! Of course, how much our individual cars will spwe out will depend a lot on driving style, location, season, etc.. Another thing I constantly force myself to remember, is that even though I drive a Prius, I may end up polluting much more than someone who drives a large SUV, if they only drive 1/5th the distance I do, per year...
M

 

Wayne wrote :
__In regards to the above, the Prius II is not the cleanest emission vehicle on the road by some margin. In terms of mass produced automobiles, the PZEV based 05 HCH and non-hybrid 05 Honda Accord are.

Emissions numbers, please.

 

Glad you are happy with you Insight. While true, this statement is not exactly fair. I'm beating almost half of the Insights in the real mileage database with my Civic Hybrid. Clearly it would be misleading to say that the HCH gets better mileage than the Insight because the Insight is the highest mileage car you can currently buy in the US. Just because you can beat a Prius in a VW Diesel does not mean everybody can or would. The Prius's EPA mileage is higher than the VW and it is cleaner. The Prius is also slightly faster 0-60.

If you want a car with an automatic style transmission the Prius is hard to beat overall. The numbers speak for themselves. Toyota has sold a ton of Prius's while Honda only sells a handful of Insights. Honda also makes far fewer Civic Hybrids, yet they sit on lots (in some places) waiting to be purchased while there is a waiting list for the Prius. For good reason I might add. I love my HCH but the Prius is far more advanced. Personally I prefer a manual transmission, if I wanted a CVT/automatic I would have waited for a Prius.

 

I've tried to find more than the scores listed for example on the EPA website, and have not been able to find anything specific to individual vehicles. The scores don't tell the whole story, because the above mentioned vehicles all achieve the score of 9 out of 10, but that represents a range of possible values

And lo and behold, I just found another EPA site that lists different values than the values I referenced above from another site of the same agency!!!???

Here's the new site:
http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/index.htm

This latest site seems more up to date, and has these scores (for CA only):
Prius 9.5 APS and 10.0 GGR
Toyota Camry 4 cyl 9.5 APS and 7.0 GGR
Honda Accord 9.5 APS and 7.0 GGR
Honda Accord hybrid 7.0 APS and 8.0 GGR
HCH APS 3 or 9.5, GGR 10
Honda Civic CNG APS 9.5 GGR 9.0
Insight CVT: APS 9.0, GGR 10.0
Insight manual APS 3.0 GGR 10.0

The APS of 9 has these g/mile limits:
NOx 0.02, NMOG 0.01, CO 2.1, PM, 0.01 and HCHO 0.004
APS 10 is zero across the board.

what gets me, that on this site too, the ratings for the Prius (and others) differ substantially between CA and the rest of the US. If this is true, it ticks me off, why should we not be able to get the same low polluting technology in the rest of the US?
For example, the Prius in the rest is listed as
8 APS (instead of 9.5).

Hhhmmm

 

Hi MGBGT:
___I could not have said it any better myself
___This is due to only LS (low sulfur) fuels (for the consumer) available in the 5 + clean states vs. the mix and match of HS (high sulfur) and LS (low sulfur) fuels available throughout the rest of the country. I do not know if the Australian refiners are mandated to produce < 30 ppm or not yet?

___The key to SMOG related emissions is in the efficiency of the CAT’s and Fuel control. You can see the PZEV based HCH, PZEV based (non-hybrid) Honda Accord, and the Prius II listed on the EPA’s site. When all 3 are running LS, they meet the most stringent CARB based SULEV-II rating with a score of 9.5. The (2) particular Honda’s I listed include higher efficiency CAT’s and their emissions are much lower when using HS fuels vs. the Prius II as shown in the Federal - Tier II std.. Extrapolating, these PZEV based Honda’s are lower emitters on LS vs. the Prius II as well because of those excellent CAT’s.

PZEV HCH: SULEV-II on LS (9.5)/Tier II-Bin2 on HS (9)

PZEV Honda Accord (non-hybrid): SULEV-II on LS (9.5)/Tier II-Bin2 on HS (9)

PZEV Prius II: SULEV-II on LS (9.5)/Tier II-Bin3 on HS (8)

___EricGo, the following includes even more specifics as requested given the PZEV based Honda’s are Tier II-Bin2 rated vs. the Prius II at Tier II-Bin3. The Prius II can have as much as 300% higher NOx emissions and 200% higher NMOG emissions as that allowed for the PZEV based Honda’s:

___In terms of GHG’s, it is a matter of the FE you actually receive.

Greenhouse Gas Score --- Pounds CO2 per mile --- Fuel Economy (Combined mpg) - Gasoline
10 --- < .045 lb’s/mile --- 44 mpg and higher
09 --- 0.45 to 0.54 lb’s/mile --- 36 - 43 mpg
…

#’s of CO2 emitted per gallon of gasoline consumed = 19.4 <-- This does not include discovery/pumping, transportation, and/or refining.

___Do you know anyone that owns an Insight with < a 44 mpg lmpg? I see just 1 in the RHMDB. Do you know anyone that owns a Prius II that has an lmpg of < 44 mpg? They are to numerous to count. Even considering the Euro Urban/Extra Urban FE and emissions testing program, the CO2/mile coming from the Honda Insight 5-speed is the lowest of all automobiles for sale in the EU the last time I checked.

___A note about diesel … Diesel CO2 emissions are ~ 10 % higher/mile traveled (gallon consumed) because of diesel fuels higher Carbon content. A diesel of whatever type running B100 Bio has the lowest CO2 emissions of all given the plants it is made from - carbon cycle. Ethanol creates a similar reduction in GHG’s for our gasoline consuming automobiles but because of the lower FE when using any % of ethanol, the reduction benefit is not as robust as that of a regular diesel running Bio …

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net