Just a quick post to say that I have just arrived in Indy for Revolution.

Well, technically I arrived about 2.5 hours ago, but I just got back from dinner at the Outback Steakhouse.

The drive to the border from London was actually quite pleasent and easy. No tie ups on the 401, easy driving through Windsor, and I literally rolled through the border crossing. As apposed to last time I crossed for AutoRama, where I was subjected to everything but a body cavity search (disappointing....). This time, the guard didn't even seem to care.

The drive out of Detroit was unusually painless, and I didn't see any freeway congestion until just outside of Indy, and then only slightly. Having left at around 11:30AM, and arriving at roughly 6:30PM, I think I can say that I made good time. Drove the speed limit once I hit the US.

There are only a few people here this early besides myself. I have seen both a silver SA and a silver FD, both of which I suspect belong to the organizers. Have not run into them yet, but I plan on popping by the Lees Inn (I am staying at the Wingate, which among other perks, offers Internet access) later on to see if I can find them. After that, it's likely an early-to-bed night to prepare for the majority of arrivals tomorrow.

On another note, I get the feeling that based on my previous Insight related threads, there are those that might doubt my mileage claims. Well, check out the attached picture of the instrument cluster I snapped after I arrived here. The MPG number on the left represents the mileage achieved over the distance shown on the right. There is no way to reset one without resetting the other, so no cheating is possible. Note that this mileage was achieved by riding lean-burn at the speed limit. In Canada, this is of course 60 MPH, but in the US on the way to Indy, it is 70 MPH most of the way. Also note that after driving over 450 miles, I still have half a tank left (and it's a 10.5 gallon tank).

Not sure if I'll be posting more in the coming days, as starting tomorrow the scheduled events start. Some of the run late into the night, so I doubt I will have much computer time...

 

see you got such good milage because it was idling the whole time.

 

No way to rack up ~450 miles on the trip odometer with the engine idling the whole time.

 

drill hahah damn it i wish i could have made it next year i hope.

 

oh and the insight sucks.

 

How were the Jackaroo chops?


Where in the Indy area are you staying?

 

The chops were almost orgasmic. The Outback people couldn't believe that I drove all the way from London...

I'm staying at the Wingate Inn, which is just down the road from the Lees Inn. The majority of the people are staying at the Lees, or the Ramada which is just accross the road. All these Inns are located in Plainfield on Gateway drive (small suburb of Indianapolis). IRP is about 10 miles away.

 

Damn... must be nice to have money...

Take lots of photos (if possible some video footage.. )

We'll wait for your report later on...

Lates,

 

and your the one with a "FD".?

 

Yes, the Insight gets good mileage..... thanks for the info.........again. It seems I hear more about your Insight than I hear about your RX-7. BTW, I hope that the MPG guage is more accurate than the Prius or the ones found in the VW/Audi or BMW trip computers. They are pretty off.

 

This IS the states afterall - they probably thought that you meant London England!

I think I know where that is - Near W79th Street Right? I usually stay about 5 miles north of there (right near W86th).

Have a good time!

 

So, you admit it... the good mileage was due to the lean burn, and NOT due to the hybrid aspect. I bet if you took the inertia of the electric motor and the weight of the batteries out, you'd be over 90 MPG

 

This morning, around 2AM, the sky opened up and delivered a pretty wicked thunder storm. Lightening, thunder, the works. Poured until about 4AM, and has just stopped raining a few minutes ago. The birds are chirping, and it looks to be about 21 degrees today, so I'm optimisitc. I'm worried about tomorrow, since it looks to be about 8 degrees, with rain. A repeat of last year. What is nice is that there are so many seminars that many of them have been moved to Saturday, so I won't mind the rain much as I'll be under the tents. But it must suck for those on the autox and drag strip...

Neo: Yes, as always I will have plenty of pictures. I actually had hundreds from last year, and a write up, but it never got posted. Don't know why. No video from me, but I'm sure others will provide.

Roshambo: I talk about the Insight because I am enthusiastic about it, and it is the car I am currently driving. Having the RX-7 in the garage for 2.5 years means that I have just as much enthusiasm, but I don't talk about it so much. Yes, the mileage gauge on the Insight is quite accurate. I've only ever seen it out 1 MPG, and usually it is dead on.

Nick86: I think that's the general area. We're just off the I-70W. I've seen the I-79 around here somewhere...

Feds: As I have explained many times before, the secret of the Insight is the lean-burn engine, NOT the hybrid system. The hybrid system just makes the engine useful. If you want a car that does 0-60 in never and the 1/4 in 25 seconds, then by all means drive an Insight without electric assist. You also loose the electronic damping of the motor (it adds the missing torque pulses to the engine, otherwise it runs ROUGH....think RX-7 on 1 rotor....in lean burn), auto stop, and many other functions.

 

LOL I love to get your back up! You can do all of that with a deep cycle battery and a BAS (Belt/Alternator/Starter), like The General has coming in '07 and '08.

Enjoy the show!

 

I agree with Feds 86.4MPG is pretty lame. Imagine if you were driving a regular compact car with a belt driven starter, you could have an extra 1MPG in the city.

 

Hint: Rx-7club.com .......

For enthusiastic talkabout Insights...click here----> http://www.mixedpower.com/





We are just yanking your chain a little...

 

Who gives a damn about gas mileage anyway? The Insight is ugly, heavy, and doesn't have the power to pull a hot knife out of warm butter. I would much rather hear stories of "my 900 hp RX7 just ripped the doors off a 911 turbo while sucking down the entire oil production of a small third world country". Life must be pretty damn boring if a driving experience is limited to watching how slowly the gas gauge goes down. If I ever get to that level I'll have to strap on the lederhosen, take yodelling classes and beg for someone to shoot me. Even then the absolute "LAST" thing I would waste my time telling the world about would be how thrilling it was to get 9 gazillion miles per gallon.

So how about some tales about trips with the turbo N/A? I'm sure the majority of us would much rather hear how that project is going - even if it was going nowhere at the moment.

 

My point is not that good mileage is a bad thing.

My point is that by concentrating their technology on a limited number of vehicles, honda and toyota are using hybrids as a pure and simple marketing device. Other manufacturers are making less expensive fuel saving technology available across the board, and therefore actually making a measureable difference in global consumption, instead of a rolling comercial.

 

I still think the V.W. TDI dollar for dollar getting 70+ mpg (driving fully loaded
with the a/c on doing 70 to 80 mph on a long trip (1200km)) is a better choice
matt
ps. spark plugs are not an issue either lol

 

LOL, that was me until a few weeks ago. I would look forward to filling out my spreadsheet to see how great my fuel economy in the Corolla was...all 128 fills from it being brandnew. Ah...those were the days....and yes it was a very very boring driving experience...but cheap, sorta.

 

I always think of gas milage as in the more money you save on gas, the more money goes into your Rotary Engine.

Now we all know the laws of physics. Speed in all relative in how much money you want to spend. More money, more MPH.

 

Mazda only puts a rotary in one of their cars this year. By your logic that means rotaries are a gimmicky marketing device.

Honda only put hybrid technology in a few cars because it's still easing into public acceptance. Remember when DVD players first came out? Sony, JVC, Magnavox, etc. still kapt making VHS players too. VHS still plays movies, widescreen is still an option, etc. but DVD does it differently and, some would say, better. As it caught on there were more DVD players sold and fewer VHS players.

The same is happening with hybrids. Gasoline has about a 10-15% well-to-wheels efficiency level, (the variance depending on the vehicle, driving habits, refining and transportation methods, etc). Hybrids, using a small gas engine for motive power but adding an electric engine and battery pack to add torque for real-world driving and energy recapturing through regenerative braking and other neat tricks, brings that efficiency up past that of Hydrogen (about 28%, IIRC) and into the 30-40% range (same variables as the efficiency range of gas).

You use The General as an example of how things can be done better? The General's sloppy engineering and lack of innovation has caused their market share to slide by greater than 50% in the past 20 years. GM now has to bribe customers about $4,000 on average (rebates, dealer incentives, etc.) to get them to buy a GM product. GM is offering electric-only steering (the loosy-goosy Delphi system) on some of their cars - why not chide them for their marketing gimmick? Why not tell GM "that's the same as every other manufacturer is doing with a rack and pinion, only you've removed the safety-during-failure component"?

Honda, Toyota, DCX, Ford, etc. have or will have hybrids because unlike pie-in-the-sky technoligies requiring a whole new infrastructure (hydrogen) or heavily subsidised vehicle costs (pure electric), hybrids offer the benefits of gasoline ICE technology with the efficiencies of an electric system. To claim that a 2005 car with pure ICE technology is more efficient than a 2005 hybrid is not only factually incorrect, it borders on xenophobic.

 

But factual inaccuracies and xenophobia are the driving forces behind GM marketing and sales strategies!

 

I agree with what Manntis has said (mostly). Honda HAS made hybrids widely available. The Honda Civic and Accord are two of the highest volume cars out there.

I would argue that Hydrogen fuel cells or hydrogen engines are the marketing gimics. It takes an ungodly amount of energy to create hydrogen in volume. Unless nuclear fusion powerplants become the norm, hydrogen will never be a fuel. I don't know where the 28% figure comes from, but that does not sound right. Separating H2 from water with electrolosis is a brutally costly endevor and extracting it from hydrocarbons doesn't seem to be much better.

 

But a pure ICE engine is less expensive to produce, and therefore less expensive to sell, which makes it much more accessible to the consumer, and thus will have a wider impact.

Let's be serious. The rotary is a marketing gimmic. Mazda uses it as it's "Soul", a.k.a. the basis of their advertising. That doesn't take away from the fact that it's hella fun to own/drive/work on.

Hybrid penetration is forcast to peak at 3% globally. So, 3% of cars will have a 13% increase in efficiency. ICE-only technlogies can go into all cars sold now, with minimal cost penalties. Even if the increase in efficiency is 5%, puting it into 97% of cars sold will have greater benefits.

IF manufacturers (and the public, and legislators) really cared about fuel eficiency, they would focus on the technologies that are transparent to the end user. I can't fault any manufactuer from jumping on the gravy train that is public stupidity, but Hybrids are not the answer, and building/promoting them just distracts people from the search for real solutions.