Horse Power vs Gas Mileage?

Question

Do these 2 things offset eachother? Can you not have awesome gas mileage on a car with a lot of horse power? I don't know very much about car's or engines. I just bought a 2008 honda fit, drives great and gets awesome gas mileage but the acceleration is pretty slow.

Do I have any choices is in making faster? Thats not why i bought the car of corse, but just curious.

I read about doing a K series swap, but that ranges around 3-4 thousand dollars, and that's if you can do the work yourself..

Answer 1

An automotive engine must burn gasoline to make horse power.  To make more power, it must burn more gasoline.  It is as simple as that.

So with your vehicle, if you add more horse power, you will take a hit on fuel efficiency.

Answer 2

generally speaking they do oppose one another.  Horsepower is a type of energy derived from the burning of gas.  Cars aren't extremely efficient at using the energ from the gas and just for talking purposes we'll say they use 50% of the energy contained in the gas.  You can spend allot of money to improve that from 50% to say 60% but thats going to be about it.  Such improvements would be exhaust, roller engine components to reduce friction, intakes.  Other than such items you are going to be using more gas.  Worse thing is when you start getting more power you want to use it more often which definitely hurts your milage.  If you want recreational power for drag racing at the local track or something I recommend Nitrous Systems.  Normal car the rest of the time but considerably more power and worse milage of course only when you want it.

Answer 3

Only excess horsepower will offset gas mileage. A vehicle is most efficient at the right HP level. An underpowered vehicle will also be a gas guzzler.

As a example is a Loaded 6Cyl. Pickup truck will likely use more gas than a 8Cyl under the same circumstances.

Answer 4

They don't necessarily offset one another. for example, super- and turbo- chargers usually add both horsepower and mpg. But those aren't available for the fit yet. It's such a new car that you're going to have to wait a while if you insist on performance upgrades.

If gas mileage is a concern, you want to increase the efficiency of your engine, not upgrade it and certainly not add fuel in the combustion process. Your only real choice is to increase airflow, both through a supercharger and a high performance exhaust. The Fit already has good headers on it from the factory though, so there's not much left to do to that powertrain.

Answer 5

You can modify different parts of the car to make it have more horsepower, and actually improve the gas mileage... you can change the Air Intake to a Cold Air Intake, which would keep your engine running cooler, giving you about 3-5 more horse power.  you can also change the headers of the engine to a performance one, and last but not least, you can change the exhaust system which will give you more horse power, and better gas mileage.

Answer 6

HP equals gas consumption. If you are getting good fuel millage leave it. Why spend a lot of money and take a chance of hurting millage. Also if you put on parts to give it HP you void your warranty.