Paulbrownz wrote: Honda sent us a video teaser about the Honda Fit comming in spring, in the video a few very distinct points were made;
*Is going to use a 1.5 Liter with 105 HP
*Mileage rated at 32/37
*Magic seats were mentioned and demonstrated
*No CVT trans, it will use a 5 speed automatic, but still retains paddle shifters.
Thats about all I got from the Video, but still some very good info about a great car thats about to hit our N.A. shores.
That's....great news and disappointing at the same time. 37 Highway is not exactly something to cheer about IMO...but its good to hear that those paddle shifters will stay.
The only other good thing I can think of is that it gets better city mileage than the current Civic.
___The FE figures listed are terrible! How can an 06/07 Honda Fit that will weigh ~ 20% less, have ~ 30% less HP, ~ 20% less displacement, and more then likely have a smaller frontal area receive 10% less FE out on the highway vs. the 06 Civic LX/EX w/ Auto? What did Honda do to mess that up? The 06/07 Toyota Yaris will clean the floor with the NA based Fit if that is all the FE she can muster … Sad, very sad :(
___The FE figures listed are terrible! How can an 06/07 Honda Fit that will weigh ~ 20% less, have ~ 30% less HP, ~ 20% less displacement, and more then likely have a smaller frontal area receive 10% less FE out on the highway vs. the 06 Civic LX/EX w/ Auto? What did Honda do to mess that up? The 06/07 Toyota Yaris will clean the floor with the NA based Fit if that is all the FE she can muster … Sad, very sad :(
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
I have to agree with you, Wayne. The only possible reasons I can come up with are:
1) The Fit is designed to be a city runabout, thus isn't geared for highway cruising. This seems odd. I wouldn't necessarily want to take a long trip in a ity-bity car, but it should still be able to do so efficiently.
2) Honda isn't providing correct results? This seems even less likely considering all the weight being placed on fuel economy these days.
I will wait for an official model introduction, which will probably be at the NAIAS in January. If FE numbers don't rise, we'll have to ask the Honda team what they were thinking.
Fit should do close to 35 mpg in city and 40+ mpg on highway. It should at least match the now gone Civic HX (which was rated 35/40 with CVT, and 36/44 with 5MT). Otherwise, what would be the point of going with 105 HP 1.5, if the 117 HP 1.7 was getting better fuel economy?
jemmsoft wrote: or... the information provided is not reliable. Who did the mpg rating?
I can assure you that this is genuine Honda information. It did not state if these figure where Hondas figures or EPA. I would assume Honda internal figures as the EPA prob. hasnt tested the Fit yet.
1-SE wrote: OMG!!!
That REALLY SUCKS. What happend to the 60MPG proposed at?
Any one know?
I never saw a 60 MPG proposed, but the MPG numbers do look low. I'm hoping the mileage will be in the mids forties for highway and mid 30's city. Honda rates the car (1.5 liter vtec version) at 47 MPG in Asia, but I don't know how their testing methods compares to the EPA method. Wong KN's review on Vtec Asia reports milage as good as 48.9 MPG.
Seriously, while it is possible to get very good mileage with the Jazz, do remember that it is not a hybrid. So you have to 'work' at it. After reading so much debate and arguements about what mileage the Jazz can or cannot acheive, I tried an experiment and managed to obtain an overall average of 6.0l/100km recently, over an accumulate distance of 427km (I have an AVI video clip to show it too). That's almost 40mpg (US measure) over about 267 miles total travel including getting stuck in traffic jams. But I have to re-emphasize again, I really had to make an extra strong effort during the highway portions of the journey.
Much arguement have gone on about what mileage the Jazz can or cannot acheive. FWIW, I think that if someone who is already getting great mileage with his/her current car is to drive the Jazz, chances are he/she will get fantastic mileage. But give someone who is currently getting horrible mileage with his/her current car, the Jazz will most probably deliver so-so mileage as well. It all depends on the driver's style, and also the environment in which the Jazz is being used; how much highway travel, how far distance travelled daily, how much traffic, how heavy the right foot is, etc.
Also important to remember is that the Jazz is designed to deliver at fuel economy right at the top of its class but it doesn't mean that it is way over the top. Many alternatives at or near the top are going to deliver similar or slightly less mileage than it. We are definitely not going to see something like 60mpg from the Jazz where other cars (driven in the same manner and conditions) can only deliver 30 or less.
Yes, of course the driver has a lot to do with the real world MPG. I think we are just trying to come up with a guesstimate for what the US EPA MPG will be.
As a quick comparison between Japanese and US EPA mileage numbers, I checked the Japanese Civic sites mileage. It is 40 MPG, which is the same as the US highway mileage for the Civic so EPA highway mileage for the Fit might be reasonably be expected to be close to the 47 MPG listed on the Japanese site. Admittedly this number is just a guess and as Wong points out may or may not reflect what real life drivers get.
I choose to benchmark the now gone Civic HX here. That car, with 117 HP motor was leading the way among gasoline powered car, rated 35/40 mpg with CVT and 36/44 mpg on highway. It was 200 lb heavier than (current) Jazz/Fit too.
If the D17 could deliver such fuel efficiency without sacrificing power, why couldn't L15 packaged in Jazz/Fit? I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised. Personally, I will be disappointed to see numbers lower than Civic HX's.
Everyone keeps looking backwards(thru the years) for mileage comparisons - the point is simple = E.P.A. Increasing emission standards have cut into mileage here in the U.S. Plus if it's 50 state compliant it even has Cali's cut coming out of the tank!
Jonniedee wrote: Everyone keeps looking backwards(thru the years) for mileage comparisons - the point is simple = E.P.A. Increasing emission standards have cut into mileage here in the U.S. Plus if it's 50 state compliant it even has Cali's cut coming out of the tank!
I've noticed power go down slightly in "cleaner" versions of same cars (example, Accord in CA/NE versus rest of the USA) but not fuel economy.
The least a new Honda powerplant could do is match (if not beat) fuel economy of an older powerplant and still improve on emissions, if not the power.
I'm not comparing cars from the 1980s to the cars of today.
Wizard wrote: I choose to benchmark the now gone Civic HX here. That car, with 117 HP motor was leading the way among gasoline powered car, rated 35/40 mpg with CVT and 36/44 mpg on highway. It was 200 lb heavier than (current) Jazz/Fit too.
If the D17 could deliver such fuel efficiency without sacrificing power, why couldn't L15 packaged in Jazz/Fit? I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised. Personally, I will be disappointed to see numbers lower than Civic HX's.
The big variable here will be emissions as others have pointed out. The Jazz was the very first JDM vehicle to acheive Japan's own stringent 2005 emissions control way back in late 2003. Many others have as well. But emissions is what killed of so many of the great JDM cars; Skyline GT-R, Supra, S15 Silvia, even our own Honda NSX. The Jazz is also EURO-4 compliant and it's also compliant to the US emissions requirement. When I first harped on the Jazz being able to meet 2005 Japan emission laws back in 2003, maybe people just sneered and my response to them was simply "what's the use of having more power if you can't even sell the car ?". That statement so rings true today.
I doubt that the Civic HX will be able to meet the stringent emission requirements for new cars in the U.S. today.
Also, in real-life ownership experience, how often has the Civic HX been reported to acheive that 44mpg highway mileage ? Would be useful infor for potential Jazz owners to consider.
WongKN wrote: The big variable here will be emissions as others have pointed out. The Jazz was the very first JDM vehicle to acheive Japan's own stringent 2005 emissions control way back in late 2003.
I believe that the Japan 2005 emission limits are similar to the ULEV Level-1 limits as defined by the EPA and CARB here in the USA. ULEV Level-2 (which I believe is close to the CARB SULEV designation) was achieved by the current Honda Civic's R18 engine, but then the R18 has the benefit of being 3-4 years newer in design than the L-series engine block and also is one of the first engines to use SOHC i-VTEC valvetrain technology.
I think the US-market Honda Fit's L15A VTEC engine will likely be certified as a ULEV Level-1 engine.
WongKN wrote: I doubt that the Civic HX will be able to meet the stringent emission requirements for new cars in the U.S. today.
Also, in real-life ownership experience, how often has the Civic HX been reported to acheive that 44mpg highway mileage ? Would be useful infor for potential Jazz owners to consider.
Obviously we don't know real life numbers here, and couldn't talk about it thanks to so many variables involved. The bottomline, however is, that 10-15% drop in EPA ratings in 110 HP (105 HP/SAE revised) doesn't sound like an improvement to me.
BTW, why must a car get worse fuel economy to get better emissions? Doesn't sound logical to me. HP, yes (as is true in cleanest iterations of engines in CA Accord).
The VTEC-E in HX was rated ULEV-1, probably the same as L15 in Jazz.
What is EURO-4 emission level equivalent to in US terms ?
Don't forget the VTEC-E mechanism is what is being used in the L15A VTEC as well. In addition, the L15A VTEC has extra technologies that reduces internal friction. There's a poissibiltiy the Civic HX would be lean-burn. If so, then potentially under ideal conditions, it will return slightly higher levels of fuel economy than the L15A VTEC. Whether or not you can replicate that level of fuel economy regularly on normal day to day travel will be another matter. I certainly couldn't over that 6 years of ownership of the 3-stage VTEC EK3 Civic Vi. I.e. I am getting better real-life fuel economy on the Jazz VTEC than I ever acheived on the EK3 Civic.
___The Civic HX w/ Lean burn could easily pull 44 out on the highway and it could easily match Tier II/Bin 5 in its lean burn form. If Honda would have placed that ICE in the 4 door Civic LX/EX instead of a stripped Coupe, it would have sold in the hundreds of thousands over the last 5 years …
___As for the Fit’s poor FE per the original post, that thing is a POS if that is all it can muster out on the highway. My PZEV Accord (read PZEV) EX-L w/ NAVI w/ the 160 HP K24 rates at 34 out on the highway per the EPA’s HWFET (Highway FE test) and that thing weighs what, 800 #’s more then a Fit? You do not want to know what the Accord is really worth (FE wise) in the real world in, around, and through Chicago’s daily traffic nightmares … I digress. Not only should the Fit’s 1.5 be an SULEV-2 but should have FE in the upper 40’s/Low 50’s per the EPA highway cycle given the lowly HP and extremely lightweight compared to the 7th gen Accord and 7th/8th gen Civic. Because the Fit doesn’t receive even decent FE, there is a real problem in Hondaland. I absolutely detest seeing Honda give this one away so easily to Toyota or anyone else on the planet yet here is that 105 HP ICE in a < 2,400 # car w/ an EPA 37 highway rating. This is absolutely, positively, pathetic and I am being extremely kind …
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