A new study by Honda in Japan has revealed just how much fuel drivers could save by adopting a fuel efficient driving style.
It found that drivers using the new Eco Assist system on the Honda Insight Hybrid improved fuel economy by an average of 10 per cent and potentially as much as 20 per cent after 300 drives.
The all-new Ecological Drive Assist System, known as Eco Assist for short, is a driver-selected fuel economy information system that helps a driver to maintain a fuel efficient driving style through feedback and a driver-selected ECON button that automatically helps increase fuel efficiency.
It monitors the motorist’s driving style and displays its impact on a vehicle’s fuel economy. It provides driving style recommendations to reflect how efficiently the driver is accelerating and braking; and shows how fuel saving activities like smooth acceleration and braking help reduce fuel consumption by making the speedometer background glow green – by contrast, aggressive driving makes the meter glow blue.
Meanwhile, pushing the ECON button increases the fuel economy of the Insight’s Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) system by increasing the potential for engaging the idle stop feature sooner; operating air conditioning more in recirculation mode; reducing the automatic climate control fan blower speed; optimising throttle angle input; and limiting power and torque by around four per cent.
The results, which were revealed by Keiji Enomoto from Honda research and development at the SAE 2010 Hybrid Vehicle Technologies Symposium in San Diego, were drawn from 1.7million data points from about 5,000 Insights from February-August 2009.
