World's Only Diesel-Electric Honda Insight

Jake Staub writes "Just replaced the gasoline engine in a Honda Insight with a Diesel engine. On a 3,000 mile cross-country shakedown journey the car averaged 92mpg over 1,800 miles. Around a very hilly town in Northwest Washington, the car is averaging 78mpg. These mileage averages are without the electric side of the vehicle fully functional. With a bit more tinkering on the electric side and through a slight gearing change through tire size, it is anticipated that the car will likely average 100mpg. The build for the car has been documented on the web site and is as close to open source as my time allows. The car was built by two guys in a garage in Southern Maryland. If we can do it I don't see any reason why major auto manufacturers can't do it since we used their parts."

Comments

Re:Gutless?

[Rei]

You're 100% wrong. The EPAs tests rated my vehicle 31/40.

Aaannd.... ? How does this argue against my point? 31/40, dividing for the greater energy density of the fuel, is 27/34. Which is about 15% better than a typical sedan.

I've never seen less than 38mpg from day one and I drove the hell out of it.

Thanks for reinforcing my point about anecdotes.

Also the Jetta TDI set the world record for most efficient non-hybrid vehicle in a cross country road trip: 58mpg.

Wow. You seriously can't do better than to parrot a commercial? Oooh, a company hypermiled as a PR stunt -- stop the presses!

The R10 basically proved that diesels are cleaner, faster and more efficient

Laboratory testing proves that diesels are NOT cleaner. Show me a single SULEV diesel. Heck, show me any LEV diesel smaller than school bus sized. Aptera Motors wanted to use a diesel for their plug-in hybrid, but couldn't because there wasn't a single diesel engine on the market in their desired power band that could even *pass* US emissions reqs. As for efficiency, diesels are more efficient, but only by about 15%, as stated in my previous post. As for the R10, it got a whopping 5.7mpg at Le Mans. Come on now.

My puny 140hp (chipped, 100hp stock) diesel makes 300ft/lb at low RPMs

And it's still a 100 (or 140) hp engine. Big fat deal that it's oriented more for torque at the expense of RPM; that's what gear ratios are for. And your chipped engine probably has worse emissions than stock, as is usually the case.