Honda L13A i-DSI engine

A friend was asking me the economy of the Honda Fit/Jazz. I remembered that I read about Fit being more economical than the March/Micra and Vitz despite having a bigger 1.3 engine. I decided to confirm it from their respective websites.

Toyota’s Japan website said up to 21 km/L for the Vitz 1.0L while Honda said up to 24 for Fit. Note that Toyota quotes better fuel economy for its CVT version over 5-speed manual (like I say in my other post). Nissan March manages 19 km/L officially for the 4-speed (old) automatic and 21 km/L for 5-MT. All these figures are for Japan’s 10-15 mode. In practise I have seen that if you add reduce it by 15% you get a good estimate of how much you’ll use here in Mauritius depending on your driving style.

One model to look out for is the upcoming March in Q4 of this year. It is being rumoured to have a new 1.0 litre turbocharged engine that should provide economy and power when you need it. It’ll definitely come with a CVT, finally.

Links:

http://www.toyota.co.jp/

http://www.honda.co.jp/auto/

http://www.nissan.co.jp/MARCH/

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Now, European and Japanese car makers all promote fuel efficient cars and make engines enough to power their vehicles according to their segment. You find 50-100hp power in the budget range, right up to 500hp+ super cars (Nissan GTR). That doesn’t mean that they look down upon smaller engines? What do Americans buy? I’m not saying that everyone in US likes big 6-cylinder and V8 engines. It’s the sale figures that are speaking.

Ford F-series Raptor from Wikimedia Commons

Speaking of sale figures, wouldn’t that explain the big problem of the American car makers. The big 3 GM, Ford and Chrysler all spend big in making large vehicles and mid-size cars (that’s larger than many european family cars). If only these were smaller and available with smaller than the 2.4L minimum that they’re sold with… Those sleeping stock in dealers around the continent could be salvaged…

Oh yes, they’re very much into buying hybrids now… I don’t blame car manufacturers for making 2.4L to 4.0L hybrids. Market demands… 1.4-1.5L hybrids have started to become popular with the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight. But US people are still buying 2.4-4.0L machines. That trend is going down with more people buying sedans (saloons) than SUV/Pickups since a couple of years (can’t remember the source for this…). There’s a long way to go…

European makers who sell in US have started to sell economical modern diesel engines. And the once hated diesel engine is not becoming a hero of fuel economy… The ‘small’ 2.0L turbo Audi TT has shown that it can give the same power as a 3L V6 and even more torque than it, despite having only 4-cylinders – and being much lighter. That’s the efficiency of turbos in engines… But that’s another story…

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