Best Authentic Car Mileage

I took a minute to show you what real car mileage is all about. I made a video of it. See for yourself. The lifetime mileage is clicking over at 200,000 miles. The car uses Mobile 1 0-20 about every 30,000 miles, and does not burn a drop of oil. I just changed the plugs for the first time at 190,000 miles. I use a K&N filter. I add 3 psi to the suggested tire inflation. My car is nothing unusual, but you can see it is getting 100 mpg while driving 60-63 mph with a slightly uphill grade and slight headwind factor, *while*using*air*conditioning*.

You don't need a joe cell, or some other fancy add-on. The engineers at Honda did it right. What happened to this car? People didn't like it because it was a 2-seater. (But most people drive 90% solo in their cars). So, the auto makers decided to degrade the mileage by adding seating. First up to bat was the Toyota Prius, which gets a lifetime milage around 40 mpg (not enough difference from non-hybrids to make the extra costs worth it). Now, Honda has capitulated and matched the Prius and thrown out the high gas mileage concept because WE didn't buy it.

If we were all serious about getting off foreign oil, wouldn't we be more interested in cars like this? Touted as the most aerodynamic production vehicle ever built, and not to be mistaken with later inefficient models, the 2000-2006 is overlooked and underrated. It's the Best Authentic Car Mileage vehicle.

Imagine going 60 miles on less than a gallon....and still having the horsepower to burn rubber....

Thanks for watching

reply to post by Jim Scott


can you explain your dash a little more ,because i was seeing it read 57.3 mpg at 62 mph and when you take your foot off the gas the bottom line rises ,so i assume this a vacumn /econ gauge. Some more info on your gauges would be helpful.

You are right and nicely added for the odometer to click over to 200,000 miles!
Impressive!


The Honda Insight was probably the most innovative automobile of its time. While only produced for a few years, it maintained higher average gas mileage than every automobile on the road to this day. All because of a hybrid technology deeply hidden and secretive to the execs at Honda.

Personally, I believe it's a huge conspiracy that should be fully investigated.

Did Big Oil shut down the production?
Did Honda not make enough profit from it?
Was it a decision made to gradually ween off foreign oil?
Instead of a massive influx of gas sipping cars...why did they stop making them?

I see them all the time on eBay selling for twice their value.

What was the reason that this huge company stop producing the most efficient automobile?




Questions that plague me to this day...a conspiracy!

reply to post by havok


Last I checked the Honda Insight had under 100hp, 67 I think, what rubber are you burning?

There are three mileage indicators shown in the video. First, you see the 57.3 mpg as the average for the past 200,000 miles. At the bottom is the moving mileage indicator for instantaneous readout, showing over 100 mpg at 62 mph. To show that this is not so unusual, I then pan up to the outside view to show the car running on relatively flat ground (slight upgrade). Then I pan over to show that the air conditioning in on, putting a further load on the engine to lower gas mileage. Finally, back to watch the odometer flip over 200,000 miles, then I change the readout to the trip mileage for this tank of gas, which for the past 120 miles has been reading over 66 mpg. You can also see the instantaneous readout moving around 100 mpg.

As for burning rubber, not like Nascar but it will squeal on acceleration when desired --- but that's bad form for mpg.

first off I assume the guages in the dash are accurate. I've never heard of this mpg
my geo metro gets 52 + mpg (us gallon) works out around 60mpg (imperial gallon)
that is unmoddified.
I'll have to look around for a car like yours!

Could be that the $2700 to replace the batteries was a bit of turn off to the average consumer? Along with it being a 3 cylinder two seater. Even the old 3 cylinder Metro did not sell well.

I personally was interested in the old Metro until I found out that price of full coverage insurance was higher than the monthly note on the car with no trade in and no money down (financing the whole purchase price was an incentive because they were not selling well). Why was the insurance so high? Because part of the weight saving came in the form of safety equipment such as air bags... go figure.

Part of the first generation Insight's gas sipping ability was that startup was handled by the electric power assist motor as well as idle time due to traffic and even red rights. Which is what made it a hybrid car. But once the car was being used, you were burning gas unless you took your foot off the pedal for a bit.

Still a good car. And I have never really had anything bad to say about Honda... well except the early cars were a little too rust prone, but that has changed.

reply to post by Jim Scott


And I repeat, it has a 67hp engine. The original model was a proof of concept, very few were produced due to production costs. Few were sold because the car looks rediculous, and gas prices were not quite so insane back then. No tech has been supressed or hidden, I also don't see where you are getting the 100mpg claimed, I see 60'ish. The official MPG of the 2000 model is 61mpg. I actually had a customer who had one of the original models the year it came out, he was beeming, I thought the car looked stupid.

2000: 61mpg 67hp Engine. Hybrid car. 2 door Very lightweight 1,800lbs.
2009: 41mpg 98hp Engine. Hybrid car. 5 door Not Lightweight 2,700lbs.
No conspiracy here. No tech supressed. They simply added additional features in order to sell the car which lowered the MPG.

Mis-read the stats the first time lol but yeah 100mpg is damn special.

The most I managed to squeeze out mine (a 2 litre diesel) was an average of 93mpg over one journey of around 40 miles but I had to drive like a grandma to get those speeds... anyone ever drove at 50mph on a motorway? it's pretty damn boring

Originally posted by OccamsRazor04
reply to post by Jim Scott

 

And I repeat, it has a 67hp engine. The original model was a proof of concept, very few were produced due to production costs. Few were sold because the car looks rediculous, and gas prices were not quite so insane back then. No tech has been supressed or hidden, I also don't see where you are getting the 100mpg claimed, I see 60'ish. The official MPG of the 2000 model is 61mpg. I actually had a customer who had one of the original models the year it came out, he was beeming, I thought the car looked stupid.

2000: 61mpg 67hp Engine. Hybrid car. 2 door Very lightweight 1,800lbs.
2009: 41mpg 98hp Engine. Hybrid car. 5 door Not Lightweight 2,700lbs.
No conspiracy here. No tech supressed. They simply added additional features in order to sell the car which lowered the MPG.

Not suggesting a conspiracy, just promoting the idea that there are cars out there you can buy for less than $8000 that will pay for themselves in a couple of years of driving.
As far as looking ridiculous, it's aerodynamic. The car is not meant to feed egos, just get great mileage.
If you look at the sliding scale under the mph, you will see the mpg holding around 100 mpg.
One of the points I was making is that the 61mpg figure is inaccurate...it's much better than that.
Good news: the newer tech batteries will get you an average over 70 mpg.

reply to post by Jim Scott


Not you per se, but here is a post ...

What was the reason that this huge company stop producing the most efficient automobile?
Questions that plague me to this day...a conspiracy!

I was answering others as well, there is no conspiracy here.

I notice te MPG go up when you take your foot off the gas and go from 63mph to 58mph. I notice it drop down again when you put your foot back on the gas. If you want me to take the 100mpg to be the accurate figure of typical driving when you are are actually coasting without using gas going downhill you're crazy. Your dash says you have 57.3, as I stated 100pmg is a mythical number, it does not represent the cars capabilities.

A bmw 320ED can beat your honda easily. It does around 70mpg on average when driven carefully, about 62mpg when driven hard. It has 163bhp, does 0-62 in 8 seconds, has 5 seats and isnt a hybrid.

These cars are common in the UK.

The VW diesel engines of the 1980s were capable of consistent highway mileage of just under 55 MPG.. The little Golf/Rabbits they came in were much lighter than my present Honda Fit which is a gasoline powered car with the same engine displacement but uses gasoline, and weighs 700 lbs more and gets a little less than 40 MPG driven in the same manner... The Fit has a much more aerodynamic body, 40% more power larger, heavier wheels/ tires and drive train weight....Almost all of today's cars are more refined, handle and outperform the cars most comparable to them built in the eighties yet I miss the little VW diesels even if they only putout 60 horsepower, were loud and lacking the comfort of the new cars.... It is amazing how much low end torque a diesel engine produces compared to a gasoline powered engine with twice the displacement.

Europe has technology available to them that North America does not.

VW for example, has their "BlueMotion" engines, which yield up to 74 MPG gas/diesel.

Ford also has their version of this over seas.

These are normal sized cars, not some tonka toy turd-boxes.

Just TRY ordering one of these cars and have it shipped here. You will be told "they do not conform to our environmental standards" or some other bullshat.

It's a conspiracy, by they very definition of it.

I have a 2000 Insight. Mine 215k miles, doesn't burn oil, gets exactly the same mpg as yours. The batteries finally deteriorated, so I did the calpod (clutch switch) mod and keep right on going! My mpg has dropped about 4 mpg not having any assist or regen. Another thing that I like about them is the aluminum body. No worries about rust.

Engine technology is changing all the time and each new generation engine outperforms the previous one, sometimes by a large margin. I average about 40mpg in my current car, which has a VW group 160BHP 1.8TSi petrol engine. The new updated version pushes out 180BHP, but with reduced emissions, and about a 20% better mpg figure.
As for diesel, my previous car, a SEAT Leon (Spanish arm of the VW group) had a 1.9L 130BHP diesel engine and I found I could easily hit between 55-60mpg on the 50 mile commute to the office, once even hitting 66.6mpg (a devilishly good figure)! The new generation, now 2.0L, can hit around 80mpg and also has lower emissions.
Accordingly, I can't see the point in a Hybrid model right now given the good mpg figures available from current turbocharged petrol and diesel engines. Hybrids also seem to carry quite a cost premium over other cars and, from what I see on the motorways each day, most that I do see are streaking along at +80mph, rather than a more economical speed (probably fleet vehicles).
I also think that the idea of "saving the planet" by driving one of the current Hybrids is a little bit of a con when you factor in the cost and emissions of the vehicles used to transport all the component parts to the final assembly line. A lot of those parts have to take other planes, trains and automobiles from international destinations in order to get to the assembly point, due to outsourcing of manufacture. Take that into account, and the emissions clocked up by those transport vehicles before that Hybrid or electric car ever hits the road, and it doesn't seem so green anymore!

reply to post by Britguy


My wife's 2002 vw turbo diesel gets 52 MPG real time, and is supposed to get 55 but I drive it like a racecar and it still gets me 52 mpg. It out performs my 91 Mercedes 190E hands down, and it gets 22 mpg. I hate to admit it, but I miss the vw. I used to forget to fill it up because it needed it so seldom, and that is not a problem with my mercedes lol. With the small tank it has, I have to fill it every 4th day to keep it on the road as my daily driver. Thinking it is time to trade it in despite it's extreme reliablity...

reply to post by Coopdog


Reliability is the key. I do have to wonder though, as engines become more and more complex and computer controlled, how it will affect the reliability?
That old SEAT Leon of mine never skipped a beat. Had it from new and sold it to a work colleague after 7 years and 146K miles. It's now on it's third owner at work and still going strong and still reliable as it ever was at nearly 10 years old. I hope my current car carries on with it's good reliability record.

My H2O powered car runs on the crocodile tears of skeptics and gets one gazillion miles per gallon.

On a serious note, MPG has increased a lot over the decades but the benefits have been tempered by the increased weight of all the safety equipment in modern cars. Therein lies the problem: balancing efficiency with safety.

My wife is a long-haul trucker, an owner/operator. This last week, her 2004 Freightliner Century just turned over 800,000 miles. She bought it in 2010 at 500,000 miles, and has been averaging about 3000 miles/week. It still has it's original drive train, though a lot of other parts (like the turbo) have been replaced along the way. Just this morning she hit a deep pothole in a customer's lot and holed the radiator; thankfully the owner is financing the replacement, expected to be in the $3000 area.