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Hyped breed?

I recently bought a Honda Insight, which I use mainly for short journeys of three to five miles Honda claims about 61mpg for urban work. I am getting about 51mpg for such journeys. I have spoken to Honda about this discrepancy but have not received satisfaction.
Am I being unreasonable in expecting manufacturers to provide realistic targets or is that a naive view?

Asked on 17 October 2009 by

Answered by Honest John
51 is what I would expect for short journeys from cold in summer. The official urban figure does not assume runs as short as 3 – 5 miles from each cold start. And it will be worse in winter, of course. Driving normally we got 55 from the Insight in 'combined' conditions, the same as I got from my long-term Focus ECOnetic diesel.

Real MPG enables you to register the fuel economy you are actually getting against your make and model of car, its engine and type of transmission.

Every time you enter an average consumption figure against your car, the overall average automatically adjusts to reflect it.

Real MPG
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